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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

#241

Post by bradleyjg »

Spooky23 wrote: post #117
bradleyjg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. “Holistic” evaluation is entirely game-able. The claim is that they are trying to give the kid from East New York a shot but the reality is that this is all about the Dalton parents not wanting their little precious to have to go head to head on a fair playing field against a Stuyvesant kid. Their goal is to make all desirable institutions look like Dalton—-very wealthy students with an appropriate spri…

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 I’m saying is that isn’t “the issue,” it’s just pretext.

Schools can do affirmative action for African Americans without making standardized testing optional, they have been for decades. What’s harder for them to do without getting rid of such tests is discriminating against Asians (and middle class whites) in favor of rich whites.

It’s no coincidence that this is happening in the wake of the Harvard lawsuit. What these schools want is a class made up entirely of diversity, athlete, and development admits. The first generation Asian-American kid isn’t taking a seat away from a black kid, he’s taking it from the son of the CFO of a Fortune 500 company.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#242

Post by AtlasBarfed »

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.” >…

Allowing Rich kids in. THISSSSSSS!!!! is what it was always about.

It amazes me how corrupt higher education is now. It is AMAZINGLY corrupt.

There is this thing with getting old (I'm in late 40s now) where you think the world is going to hell, but really what is happening is that you are figuring out EXACTLY how fucked up everything is.

However, sometimes things really are going to hell (increasing rich/poor divide, environment/global warming, vast increase in higher ed/healthcare/housing relative to inflation).

Anyway, in this case, I still am trying to gauge if my fondness for the general institution of higher education circa late 1990s was actually still somewhat deserved at the time and it has _truly_ fallen apart in the next 25-30 years, or if it was this bad for the last 40-50 (I can argue there's a good chance it was a great institution in the 1960s fresh after post-WWII investment in higher ed by the gubberment).

Anyone have thoughts? I personally think it is ACTUALLY worse, that the rise of the huge administrator/MBAs in higher ed has led to do-anything-for-a-buck, and it REALLY is this bad.

Signs that it actually is bad:

- the stupendous rise in cost / that little student loan crisis we have

- the stupendous rise in Div I coaching salaries and facilities

- the amount of frivolous facilities built

- the rise of the minimum wage adjunct professor

- the decline of import of tenure (revenue/publishing/research is now everything)

- the decline of humanities. I still as a science guy look down at them, but they are historically important (as in over 1000s of years) to educational institutions.

- grade inflation, it is pay for degree even in some Ivies it appears now

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#243

Post by ww520 »

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.” >…

Legacy admission should have been abolished long time ago. It’s systematic racism. Legacy admission has been part of the official admission system for the longest time. It's a system to favor the incumbents, the riches, the powerful, and the non-minority. It's used to ensure to give the elites are systematic unfair advantage.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#244

Post by bnralt »

sandworm101 wrote: post #204
bnralt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What you say is true, but I've seen this happening even with good teachers. I think there's a few reasons for this - first, if you have a large class and a student is already meeting all the standards, you're going to spend the time you have on the students falling behind. Teachers are going to want all the students to know what they're supposed to for that grade, rather than to have some advanced far off the grade while others fail.

Even if they had the time, there seems to be very little interest in advanced students across the board, and few if any programs put in place to meet their needs.

Secondly, there aren't many opportunities for students to demonstrate that they exceed the standards. Getting a class test entirely correct demonstrates that they know what is being taught, but nothing more. One thing I like about the standardized tests they're given now is that the computer will adjust and ask more advanced problems if the students get answers correct.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#245

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

thegrim22 wrote: post #231
lordnacho wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

How is hiring a tutor "gaming" it? They spend extra time learning, and as a result they do better. It's not like the tutors secretly give them a cheat sheet list of all the test answers; they still have to answer the questions the same as everyone else. If somebody puts more time into studying, whether on their own or with a tutor or with their parents, they'll do better than somebody who didn't.

Prepping for a test doesn't give you any practical knowledge or expand how you think about things; it's just about getting familiar with the test’s format and the way the question authors think. It'd be a bit like getting “better” at poker by always playing with the same people and learning their tells. It's “gaming” it because you're not better at what the test is supposed to measure, you're just better at what it actually does measure.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#246

Post by [deleted] »

faeriechangling wrote: post #198
cma wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Standardized test scores are the hardest metric to game Learning disabilities give unlimited time on the tests. That means you can slowly use brute force on the math section to check each alternative one by one instead of needing to be good at other techniques. Harvard had something like 25% of admitted students do this. Does it sound plausible that 25% of Harvard students need unlimited time on the test due to a l…

The system of accommodating learning disabilities is a grift, I had a few while always being a strong tester who tended to finish tests early. The “accommodation” I always got was extra time which was extremely baffling. Extra time in particular was given out like candy for no reason. Harvard students having learning disabilities that warrant extra time on tests is a fucking joke, how delusional must one be to think…

[deleted]

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#247

Post by Dylan16807 »

ww520 wrote: post #230
Dylan16807 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A legacy with a B grade candidate will get in. It’s a boost, not a tie breaker.

Possible! But my previous answer was based on the "If they are so qualified" scenario. The important takeaway is that the legacy special track has a reason to exist whether or not they let unqualified students in.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#248

Post by ww520 »

chaostheory wrote: post #191
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.” >…

If you ban legacy, then you lose needed donations. If you lose donations, then costs go up for everyone else. There is a net benefit for everyone when there are academically challenged wealthy children. Just keep standardized testing to prevent mass arbitrary admissions that will inevitably become racist. https://priceonomics.com/do-elite-colleges-discriminate-agai... It’s happened in the past to Jewish people and it…

We don't need rich people to all piling in to donate to the top schools. Have them donated to the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th tier schools.

Encouraging donation to top schools via legacy admission creates a perverse incentive to concentrate resources at a few top schools, creating the cycle of everyone fighting to get into them. Money and resources should be spread out.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#249

Post by PaulHoule »

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?

One thing that amuses me is that I occasionally see press releases about some Hollywood star (say Alyssa Milano) who took an IQ test and got a 145 score which is suspiciously the top score for

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices

and given that standard variants of the test have 60 items anybody who is capable of learning a script could memorize them and get a perfect score. I imagine there is one psychologist who coaches you then you go see another psychologist across the street who administers the test.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#250

Post by wirrbel »

When I studied physics it was almost “free admittance” (essentially a high school diploma with at least P-Level courses is what I think would be an equivalent in California).

Within the first semester everyone was weeded out who wouldn’t make it to the degree with theoretical physics and math courses.

It was pretty fair in retrospect. Everyone had their chance and a bad grade in English didn’t prevent anyone from pursuing physics. Since there was only an administrative fee of ~500€ for the semester it also didn’t ruin people’s finances

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