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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

#211

Post by pmoriarty »

tokey wrote: post #71

Isn't this patently obvious that dropping the SAT is entirely about creating pretext for continued discrimination against Asian applicants? In 1996, California repealed affirmative action via Prop 209. At the UC Berkeley and UCLA, considered the 'best' of the UC system, Asians represented 25-30% of the student base. Studies and fear-mongering at the time showed that a repeal of affirmative action would imply that Asi…

"any quantifiable, OBJECTIVE framework"

The whole contention is that these measures are not objective, and that they're biased in favor of certain groups.

You can't just base the core of your argument on the assumption of objectivity when that objectivity itself is what is in question.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#213

Post by PragmaticPulp »

jakeinspace wrote: post #145
_mh56 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in India, we have quotas for different kinds of people. There's caste based, Gender based and finally EWS (Economically Weaker Section) Quota. Overall 60% of total seats are reserved for these people. My friend who's ultra rich was selected in EWS Quota. His father who runs his own company took Zero pay for the last two years so he qualified for the benefits. Meanwhile people who actually deserved this had to co…

This is off topic, but do you find it difficult seeing this friend the same way while knowing that they and their father gamed the system like that? If I learned this about somebody I knew it would seriously hurt their image in my eyes.

A suggestion: Judge the parent who did the action, not the child who was along for the ride.

Unless you have some specific knowledge that the child insisted on their parents taking the action, it’s not really fair to blame the child. A lot of children don’t have much choice in the matter at that age.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#214

Post by Dylan16807 »

freework wrote: post #46
wunderland wrote: post #27

All of this debate about what measures should be used to gatekeep higher education ignore that the US system is only loosely about teaching students; the goal of an American university degree is class differentiation. There is not a shortage of textbooks or qualified teachers who could explain calculus or history or economics. As a society, the could easily produce far more educated people (and for a lower cost), but…

I feel the same way. Imagine if Harvard had the ability to enroll one billion students per year. There would be no need to use either grades, SAT score, personal essays or anything else to reject students. They would be able to accept everybody, and then everybody could get an elite education and society would be so much better off. But that would never happen. The whole point of ivy league is that they are exclusive…

The ivy leagues combined are half a percent of college students. They are not representative of the system as a whole.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#215

Post by analog31 »

In my view it might be possible to distribute resources to a greater extent by making it explicitly a lottery. For instance, a college could assign a "score" to each applicant, using their existing process, but then deliberately add a certain amount of random noise to the score. Socially, everybody would know that acceptance was decided by a combination of "merit" (by whatever measure) and luck.

The degree of randomness could depend on the school. For instance, community colleges accept virtually 100% of applicants anyway, and a random factor would not change anything.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#216

Post by selimthegrim »

sokoloff wrote: post #77
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get into Jesuit High in New Orleans, you need to have parents with money, no criminal record, and a pulse. The average student ACT score there is 31. That's the 95th percentile nationally. Those kids get great educations and have involved parents, but they aren't averaging 31s due to merit unless you're counting their parents' wallets too.

That looks to be about the equivalent of 1400 in the SAT. An ACT of 31 is more aligned to Tulane’s admitted class than Harvard’s. (Tulane is a top 50 university, so still “a good school” relative to the entire population of 18 year old high school grads.)

I’ve taught at Tulane and I promise you some of these 31 ACT kids can’t add fractions or understand how exponents work, leave aside integrals.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#217

Post by LightHugger »

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.” >…

Then what do you do for children coming from wealthy families who don't support them? Just because the parents have money doesn't mean they spend any of it or time on their kid, and with your system, those kids get screwed.

It's difficult.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#218

Post by pmoriarty »

csa wrote: post #187
pmoriarty wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge That's why you have to look at total wealth, not just income... though I'm sure the ultra wealthy will find some way to work around that as well.

Trusts are the most common way to do this.

Then any trusts that benefit you should be counted as part of your wealth.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#219

Post by lordnacho »

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 used to think standardized tests were the way to go, but...

My kid recently went through another testing gauntlet, which is the 11+ test. For those who aren't in the Southeast corner of the UK, this is a multiple choice type test that looks a lot like an IQ test in some ways. It's a single sitting and determines whether you are allowed into something called a Grammar School, which is just a selective school, and the test is taken the year the kid turns 11.

So the thing about this test is that nobody will admit to it, but everyone in the middle class will hire tutors to help their kids pass the test. Furthermore, private primary schools will spend a lot of time prepping for this test in the two years before the kids take the test. Plenty of people do both: send their kids to a fee-paying primary school, and pay for tutors.

Guess what, the pass rate for fee-paying (aka independent) schools is way higher than for state schools. It's hard to break down which parents went for state + tutoring, but it's not exactly a stretch to suppose those kids did better than state school kids with no tutoring. Furthermore state schools that do well tend to be in certain wealthy areas.

If you have a look at one of these tests, it's pretty clear you benefit from practicing. Like just about any test, if you've done it before you are at an advantage, the more the better.

I don't see how this isn't gaming the test. The idea with a test is to uncover which kids will get the most out of the selective school, but how is that going to work when a select few are prepped for the test?

Now just for the record I did the SAT back when I was a kid. It's pretty much the same as the 11+, for a slightly older age group. Again, it doesn't make any sense to say it's hard to game. People are gaming it as we speak.

I think what might actually be hard to game is teacher recommendations. After all these people have been with the kid for a long time and know what they can do. They also tend to be distanced enough that they don't have to say good things about every kid.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#220

Post by [deleted] »

mrangle wrote: post #125
lapcat wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should the social kids go to the academically rigorous college and the academic talents go to a lesser University? I was speaking from the perspective of college admissions, not from the perspective of applicants. Note also that I said "for better or worse". I wasn't making an overall judgment of the university system, merely noting that colleges themselves find extra-curricular activities important. I personal…

>I'm confused. You seem to be suggesting that extra-curricular activites are in fact an accurate indicator, contrary to the SAT proponents? I'm unsure how you arrived at that conclusion. I'll chalk it up to me being unintentionally unclear. What I am saying is that its largely a fallacy that Universities are commonly put to the decision of a more social candidate versus a more academically talented candidate. The mor…

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