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Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

robkhenderson.substack.com

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Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#201

Post by pmoriarty »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #45

As an Asian person, I think it's a cultural thing. There is this old joke about how even if you are a one-in-a-million person, there are still 8000 of "you"s to choose from; how does one chose who to pick, if there aren't positions for all of them? So how do you make it "fair"? Since of the number of seats are limited, so imagine if the cut-off for the last seat is for someone who is in the 90.3765335th percentile, l…

"a standardized test is the only fair way"

It depends on who writes the tests and who the tests are written for.

There's a long and shameful history of standardized tests being written to benefit certain groups over others, or to stigmatize certain groups.

Just because a test is standardized doesn't make it fair.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#202

Post by TimPC »

The US is the only country in the world where standardized testing improves the performance of low-income students. In most parts of the world standardized testing is unfair to the poor. But in the US the rest of the system is so unfair to the poor that standardized testing helps rather than hurts. It’s basically a consequence of funding schools by property tax and having GPA requirements above the maximum possible at certain schools because the bonus points courses aren’t offered everywhere.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#203

Post by Dylan16807 »

ww520 wrote: post #128
mrangle wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an urban myth perpetuated by people interested in generalized grievance. At least from the period I attended prep school, and beyond. From the mid-1990's. Almost in-total, the "old boys" applicants are not under-qualified. When compared to almost any kid that attended lesser secondary schools than the privileged kid attended, on average. These kids have almost always proven themselves in elite educational envi…

If they are so qualified, why not let them compete on the even ground with the rest of the applicants? Why is there a need to special track them via legacy? Legacy should have been abolished long time ago. It’s the epitome of systematic racism.

> If they are so qualified, why not let them compete on the even ground

There's not enough room for all the qualified applicants.

Choosing based on family is less fair than a lottery but it's not like a lottery is very good either.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#204

Post by sandworm101 »

bnralt wrote: post #39
sandworm101 wrote: post #5

Standardized tests remain the only criteria totally in the control of the student. You can study for them and objectively do better, become a better applicant. Everthing else is either circumstantial or based in the opinion of others, mostly highschool teachers. If i had to rely on my highschool teachers' opinion of me i would not have ever gone to university let alone have won scholarships. Standardized testing allo…

I've seen this recently with the elementary school near me. Grading is extremely opaque, and seems to be largely based on teacher intuition. Some very advanced students have gotten grades below where they are (I've heard many teachers just won't give the highest grade until the end of the year because of the weird system). Thankfully they also have standardized test scores, which both have a much more transparent sco…

It is true that many teachers react very badly to the best students, particularly where the students are very evidently smarter than the teachers. In this age of ready access to information, any student with a drive to learn can quickly be head-and-shoulders above the average highschool teacher in a given subject. Good teachers help such students. Bad ones get jealous and seek to harm them.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#205

Post by megmogandog »

ilamont wrote: post #200
adrr wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just need money to game extracurriculars activities and GPA(pay a tutor to do your kids work every day or go to a private a school). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

What happens when the student takes a test in class if the tutor has been doing all the work?

Presumably that's where the rich students who "don't test well" come from

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#206

Post by toss1 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #5

Standardized tests remain the only criteria totally in the control of the student. You can study for them and objectively do better, become a better applicant. Everthing else is either circumstantial or based in the opinion of others, mostly highschool teachers. If i had to rely on my highschool teachers' opinion of me i would not have ever gone to university let alone have won scholarships. Standardized testing allo…

Yup. My HS grades nearly completely depended on whether the teacher was assessing my knowledge or my effort. While most everyone complained about tests and especially the final being equal weight to each quarter year's grade, I thought it was great to effectively get 10 week credit for focusing on a 2-hour exam... So, yes, it is one thing that is far more in the student's control, and my SAT scores definitely helped me get into top colleges (although I did have to also take some extra classes to demonstrate that I could get good grades from doing work).

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#207

Post by Spooky23 »

civilized wrote: post #158
Spooky23 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that the standardized tests correlate with IQ, and IQ has been determined to be have racial and other biases. I went to a shitty rural high school - high scores on my ACT made a huge difference as anyone who could read got out of that school with a 3.7.

What do you mean by bias?

Different populations perform differently on average. There’s also a historical association with IQ assessment and eugenics.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#208

Post by rayiner »

whack wrote: post #120

The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…

I'm experiencing this first hand. My family immigrated here from Bangladesh. Unlike much of my family, my dad had a college-degree required job lined up, and we ended up pretty comfortable with him on a GS-scale job and my mom selling furniture. Thanks to the SATs, my brother and I both ended up breaking into industries (banking, law) that until relatively recently were good old boy's clubs.

Now that I have kids at in private school, I have a totally different perception of the cultural capital these families have that we didn't. We have a second winter break for ski holiday. My daughter asked me why we don't ever go to Aspen. When we were kids, we didn't know anyone, we didn't know what to write in admissions essays. We had enough money to do test prep, but that's incredibly cheap in comparison. I'm not concerned about my kids if we move to a subjective admissions system. We'll send my daughter to Bangladesh to do some gold-star project and hire an admissions coach to wring my dad's story of growing up in a third world village for all its worth. But if I was a recent immigrant, or a lower middle class kid in Iowa, I'd be pretty outraged about this.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#209

Post by wldcordeiro »

wernercd wrote: post #168
whack wrote: post #120

The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…

I bet "why not ban legacy" is answered with "legacy donations mean two things: No chance". https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-why-elite-colleges-... "To find out why elite colleges love legacies, two business school professors were granted access to 16 years of admissions data at one elite Northeastern college. The upshot: it’s in this school’s clear self-interest to take them. Alumni children who received offe…

Yeah it's like they've never walked around a college campus and noticed that every other building is named after some alumni that has made large donations.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#210

Post by lcuff »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #124
whack wrote: post #120

The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…

Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars. I don’t get where the statement “rich kids don’t test well” actually comes from, and it wasn’t just made up to argue a point. Perhaps if you had state sponsored test prep like in China (you spend the last two years of high school just prepping for the test), but high school isn’t compulsory and many poor kids don’t even attend.

> Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars.

Based on comments so far, I'm curious what you mean by this. My own take is that you are correct because standardized tests are 'easier to prep for' because, in many ways, they are IQ tests that you can't prep for, or rather that Bang for the Buck of prepping is low. So, poor, smart kids with no prep can take the test hung over and do well, as the author says. Rich folks can get tutors to spend tens or hundreds of hours prepping, and have only a modest impact on their score.

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