Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

home.dartmouth.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 451 posts

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#241

Post by gnicholas »

LeonardoTolstoy wrote: post #232
gnicholas wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will processes like this result in families avoiding (or at least not seeking out as much) rigorous high schools? It seems like some families might choose to send their kid to a not-super-rigorous high school — where they can coast in class and learn via outside enrichment — instead of a school with more rigorous academics where they'll be held to a higher bar by colleges. This would allow students to have a lower-st…

I'm skeptical someone would risk giving their child a significantly worse education in the off chance it might give them a marginally better chance to get into a top university. Regardless high income families moving to low income areas to go to those schools I would assume would be a net benefit for all from a tax perspective. Some of those taxes would presumably go right back to improving the local schools for ever…

I wasn't suggesting that families would move, just that they would select lower-intensity schools that they currently have access to. For example, families in Menlo Park can send their kids to high school in Atherton, Redwood City, or San Carlos. If they can get an edge by sending their kid to a school in RWC, where they'll be at the top of the class, and apparently get a boost when colleges weight their SAT, I wouldn't be surprised if some families started choosing this path.

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#242

Post by gnicholas »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #35
ccleve wrote: post #28

Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.

If the universities were sincere about that, they would figure out how to increase enrollment. Why is every parameter of admissions open to change despite tradition, except that one?

Dartmouth actually has a pretty unique program that allowed them to increase enrollment substantially. Basically, every sophomore stays around for the summer semester, but takes off either fall or spring to do an internship or something. The sophomore summer is a great bonding experience for the students, and the program allows the school to enroll significantly more students than they would be able to house otherwise. To my knowledge, no other similar school has a program like this.

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#244

Post by costco »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #143

My ideal admissions system would consist of highly weighting standardized test scores and grades along with community impact and other extracurriculars as well as letters of recommendation from teachers and other community members. ...oh, wait, we have that admissions system. That's the admissions system of every flagship state school and the US Service Academies. Why does Dartmouth (and before it, MIT's) flip-flop o…

Extracurriculars are by and large a scam. I became vice president of a few clubs, started a UNICEF chapter at my school, etc. But I made almost 0 impact on the world because we only raised like $200, most of which was from me and my family. The proof that most people don't actually care about these things is that they quit them the day they start college. Maybe participation in something like ISEF is a better signal. But not National Honor Society membership (which I of course had, because that's what you do).

No one can verify the accuracy of letters of recommendation and teachers routinely break the rules by showing them to students. In some cases I have heard of teachers asking students to write them (!).

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#245

Post by [deleted] »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #33

If this was a paper submitted by one of my students, they would fail. Why would these faculty members sign their names to this drivel? If you read carefully, you see how useless SAT and ACT scores really are. Here are just a few insane things. > Figure 1 shows a linear relationship between SAT scores and cumulative first-year GPA for Dartmouth students. SAT scores are grouped into 16 equal-sized bins, and we plot mea…

[deleted]

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#246

Post by cameldrv »

retzkek wrote: post #82
troupe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a school asks for SAT or ACT scores but, hypothetically, wants to discriminate based on race or some other characteristic, doesn't requiring the ACT/SAT make them more likely to be liable for discrimination because there is an objective standard to show that they are treating some groups differently than others? I thought that some of the recent rulings against selecting students based on their race hinged on the…

The NY Times article about this addressed that concern specifically, indeed it was the key point of the study: > It’s worth acknowledging a crucial part of this story. Dartmouth admits disadvantaged students who have scores that are lower on average than those of privileged students. The college doesn’t apologize for that. Students from poor neighborhoods or troubled high schools have effectively been running with wi…

> It’s worth acknowledging a crucial part of this story. Dartmouth admits disadvantaged students who have scores that are lower on average than those of privileged students.

They may have a higher bar for "privileged" students, i.e. Asian/white, but the bar is far lower for the truly Privileged legacies/donors.

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#247

Post by scythe »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #120
piombisallow wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, you mean kids from a disadvantaged background can't build a 10 page CV filled with outreach, volunteering, expensive sports and musical practice by the time they're 18? They don't have an instinctive feel for the current pieties, bred into them since they're 3, to put in their admission essays?

This is a super goofy thing to say about Dartmouth admissions, because as of 2019 they expected admits to have all of that and have a 1550+/35+ test score. I'm beginning to think a lot of the people commenting on these things have this weird concept of these schools admitting poor kids from the sticks and asian kids from Chinatowns with no resume items except good grades and test scores....it's true they have much lo…

If expected admission scores are too close to perfect, the tests should be harder.

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#248

Post by [deleted] »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #33

If this was a paper submitted by one of my students, they would fail. Why would these faculty members sign their names to this drivel? If you read carefully, you see how useless SAT and ACT scores really are. Here are just a few insane things. > Figure 1 shows a linear relationship between SAT scores and cumulative first-year GPA for Dartmouth students. SAT scores are grouped into 16 equal-sized bins, and we plot mea…

[deleted]

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#249

Post by LeonardoTolstoy »

gnicholas wrote: post #241
LeonardoTolstoy wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical someone would risk giving their child a significantly worse education in the off chance it might give them a marginally better chance to get into a top university. Regardless high income families moving to low income areas to go to those schools I would assume would be a net benefit for all from a tax perspective. Some of those taxes would presumably go right back to improving the local schools for ever…

I wasn't suggesting that families would move, just that they would select lower-intensity schools that they currently have access to. For example, families in Menlo Park can send their kids to high school in Atherton, Redwood City, or San Carlos. If they can get an edge by sending their kid to a school in RWC, where they'll be at the top of the class, and apparently get a boost when colleges weight their SAT, I would…

High achievers / high earners moving into lower achieving / low earning schools seems like a good thing regardless.

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#250

Post by trgn »

msravi wrote: post #40
ccleve wrote: post #28

Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.

And this: >> Third, under test-optional policies, some less-advantaged students withhold test scores even in cases where providing the test score would be a significant positive signal to Admissions. Importantly, Dartmouth Admissions uses SAT scores within context; a score of 1400 for an applicant from a high school in a lower-income community with lower school-wide test scores is a more significant achievement than…

It's so weird to me that all this data exists, and that's it available and munged enough to be actionable. Do colleges really keep track of this for the tens of thousands of high schools, not only that, but all the income info, the mechanics of student placement for each school district, etc... it just seems so intensely convoluted.
Post reply on HN