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Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

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Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#281

Post by mbesto »

Psyladine wrote: post #106
dijit wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsure if I buy this. I'm definitely not the person you describe, but the idea of standardised testing being equivalent across all factors just strikes me as being fundamentally untrue. Personally I am very lucky to test well; and I definitely buy the notion that people who test well in SATs may go on to do better in University, but the reasons are probably the same: freedom from worry about financial circumstances w…

>but the idea of standardised testing being equivalent across all factors just strikes me as being fundamentally untrue. What's your take on MIT's stance? our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT 02 Our research shows this predictive validity holds even when you control for socioeconomic factors that correlate with testing.

We have to read the sentence very carefully. It's saying that regardless of socioeconomic factors, the number correlates with graduate success rate. This seems like a very easy "duh". The way I read that is "if a student gets in the 99th percentile regardless of whether they grow up rich or poor, they are likely to do well at MIT". This doesn't talk about acceptance rates based on socioeconomic factors.

The point in question is whether the students in a lower socioeconomic situation even has a chance to get into MIT.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#282

Post by macrolocal »

paulpauper wrote: post #2

our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT 02 Our research shows this predictive validity holds even when you control for socioeconomic factors that correlate with testing. It also shows that good grades in high school do not themselves necessarily translate to academic success at MIT if you cannot account for testing. Of course, we can never be fully certain how any given applicant will do: we…

Don't underestimate the value of the kind of conscientiousness it takes to do well on these tests! I found grit much more useful than cleverness when I was an academic researcher.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#283

Post by caffeine »

paxys wrote: post #255
caffeine wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The no-test policy is espoused by two groups who find themselves to be unlikely allies: naive progressives and actual racists. The naive progressives think what you’d expect: “Minorities and poor people can’t possibly be expected to do well on anything objective, so it’s unfair to test them”. It is bigotry, but at least it’s well-meaning. The actual racists are more cynical: “I don’t want Yale to be 67% Asian.” Obvio…

The far right and far left share a surprising amount of common ground in their beliefs. Vaccines are bad. Science is a conspiracy. Big tech must be strictly controlled by government. Speech must be tightly controlled. Individual rights are less important compared to overall societal benefit. We must not be race-blind but rather use race as a critical factor in deciding outcomes.

> The far right and far left

I wish we could just call them all “far” people and ignore the side.

It would help those of us who are not “far” recognise that we have more common values with each other than with the “far” regardless of side.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#284

Post by rg111 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #260
rg111 wrote: post #130

> as a result, not having SATs/ACT scores to consider tends to raise socioeconomic barriers to demonstrating readiness for our education It all come down to me to what this point touches. When you have a test, you have something definite to prepare for. Even if you do not have dedicated mentors or well-wishing, caring teachers, you simply know there is a test that significantly improves your chances for MIT. When you…

I grew up not terribly well off and I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that college admission depended on extracurriculars and such - I never really thought much about that until I grew up, did relatively well for myself and had my own kids. Then I found out just how much these extracurriculars cost and how much parental guidance is involved in sticking with them. My kids did sports in high school - but the buss…

Yes, extra-curriculars are expensive, too.

The ones that I did- needed spending of little to no money, but needed a lot of time. I could afford it.

Someone I know, who is now a pharmacist at a big-pharma had to help his dad in his men's salloon after school. He has zero extracurriculars, but good scores, and he reached a reputed college with much of his fees paid for due to standardised test scores.

I see myself as a well-rounded person. But if I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t be where I am today as a person; I would be much less. (You can see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30821265)

I am not saying I would have been the same as him. Because I have seen people grow up as comfortable as, or in much better situations than me, yet achieving much lower than me.

Equal opportunity does not ensure equal outcome.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#285

Post by crackercrews »

tharne wrote: post #232
sgustard wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MIT article literally says "diversity" is one of their goals. Seems like you're arguing against yourself.

> The MIT article literally says "diversity" is one of their goals. Seems like you're arguing against yourself. Except no one goes to MIT because it's "diverse", whatever that even means anymore. They go there because it is one of the best schools in the world.

It is actually possible that some people go to MIT because it has more diversity [1] than its very close competitor, Caltech. [2] But it's true that the first filter for these students is undoubtedly world-leading-technical-program.

1: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/massachusetts-instit...

2: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/california-institute...

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#286

Post by AtlasBarfed »

hooande wrote: post #234
david38 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a very rich town, like super rich. I work in tech so am rich by the standards of general population, but by the standards of Silicon Valley. My child did very well on the ACT. All she did was buy a $35 practice book, which almost anyone can do. Literally this was it. Furthermore, she doesn’t know of a single friend or acquaintance that hired a private tutor. All the nay-sayers belly-ache about this but for…

Do you honestly believe that if you were from a very poor town, poor by the standards of african american neighborhoods in Detroit, that giving your child a $35 practice book would have a similar outcome?

My experience with "10 Sample SATs" which was my only prep was about 500 points of improvement. IIRC I was about a 1050-1100 on my first, and my best V/M combo was 1450 (back in early 90s, so pre-recentering). I actually did about 1380, I had a so-so actual one.

It probably is the best bang for the buck, if you're already 1-2 standard deviations on general intelligence. Because the test is a game like admissions is a game, so if you're smart enough to see the game, it's easier and most effective to practice with that.

For the "normals", I have no idea if it will work. But we're specifically discussing MIT, who do NOT want normals, I'm not good enough. They want 2-3 standard deviations people.

MIT should be able to weight for socioeconomic and location/environment given the amount of information required for financial aid and "the internet".

If this becomes ubiquitous, I can see suburbanites getting ghetto apartments for the address to game the weights :-)

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#287

Post by parkingrift »

nullc wrote: post #229
parkingrift wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's far easier for rich students to game GPA, college essays and extracurriculars than it is for them to game the SAT. Disagree. I worked for the Princeton Review while in college back in the day. We would outright guarantee 99th percentile for one on one tutoring. If you didn't get 99th percentile the course was refunded or you could take it again. For classroom tutoring we would guarantee some improvement of I be…

> If you didn't get 99th percentile the course was refunded or you could take it again Plenty of other domains have study programs with similar guarantees where the program has little to no effect-- it's a simple economic calculation: Set your rates so you make a good profit even if the program has no effect (even if you allow retaking the course, students won't be willing to waste their time and yours forever). It w…

>Plenty of other domains have study programs with similar guarantees where the program has little to no effect-- it's a simple economic calculation: Set your rates so you make a good profit even if the program has no effect (even if you allow retaking the course, students won't be willing to waste their time and yours forever).

They offer a refund or to retake the course. It is indeed a simple economic calculation. The company would quickly go bankrupt if a sizable percentage of students were refunding. The company itself, and the location I worked, had excellent reviews. Even today it has a 4.9 star rating on Google Maps. Quite a high rating for a service that people in this comment section proclaim has no impact.

Intuitively, how could it be correct that people pay thousands of dollars on these courses and receive zero or near to zero benefit from them? If this were true no one would take the courses, the courses would be rated poorly, and the underlying business would fail.

>Indeed, which means that people who's families have been carefully shepherding their education since they were much younger have an _insurmountable_ advantage in the GPA game.

Sure, but the context is "which is easier to game." To game the GPA takes four years of study and prep and you must start doing it at the beginning of grade 9. Tens of thousands of dollars and preparation+work over multiple years. To game the SAT or ACT you must spend a few thousand dollars during grade 11 or grade 12.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#288

Post by WalterBright »

runarberg wrote: post #251
WalterBright wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as extra-curricular activities go, like sports, etc., those aren't really the point. The point is for the candidate to demonstrate that they can accomplish significant things other than academics. This can be anything. For me, I didn't do sports, or any school extracurriculars. What I did do was run a small business (paper route), used the money to fund my hotrodding efforts, was an Eagle scout (back in the da…

Intention is irrelevant, the outcome is the same. A parent driving a kid to lacrosse practice every Wednesdays and Fridays shows as much potential to accomplishments as a parent asking their kid to help them with their under the table car mechanic job every weekend. Yet I bet only the former is evaluated as significant. I wonder why that is.

> Yet I bet only the former is evaluated as significant.

Are you sure about that, especially for an engineering school like Caltech or MIT?

I didn't play lacrosse, football, row, track, baseball, swimming, yachting, nope nope nope.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#289

Post by danShumway »

tharne wrote: post #243
danShumway wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've pushed back against standardized testing at certain points of my life, and I don't think this comment even remotely summarizes my views. If anything, I would say that my views are the opposite -- homogenization creates a lack of differentiation around skill and aptitude based on questionable science (and sometimes outright pseudoscience) and often leads to an oversimplification of human intelligence in general.…

> If anything, I would say that my views are the opposite -- homogenization creates a lack of differentiation around skill and aptitude based on questionable science If that were true, you'd expect countries like South Korea, Japan, and German to perform poorly in science and engineering, among other things. Diversity may be a worthy goal for societal reasons, but it certainly is not a perquisite for excellence, seei…

> If that were true, you'd expect countries like South Korea, Japan, and German to perform poorly in science and engineering, among other things.

It's wild to me that someone can have the view that the existence of other countries settles the debate over whether or not our school systems encourage well-rounded/successful students given that comparisons to more homogenized schooling environments like China is still one of the more contentious high-level debates about educational quality we have today. Again, I'm not here to convince you one way or another, but that is not a debate that I think most of society considers settled.

> Diversity may be a worthy goal for societal reasons, but it certainly is not a perquisite for excellence

If that's the argument you want to make, then fine, go for it. But then don't say that you're opposing a group that "hates the idea of excellence and differentiation." You are arguing for removing differentiation between different kinds of intelligence and skillsets and compressing that spectrum into an objectively less descriptive metric.

Make up your mind whether I'm arguing for more diversity and more differentiation between people or for less of it.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#290

Post by bena »

tiahura wrote: post #161
bena wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they also wouldn't be old enough to buy you beer. Unless you are suggesting adults would buy you beer for you to take the ACT on behalf of a minor they knew. Which seems odd.

He’s old. You used to be able to buy beer at 18. This country used to be a lot less uptight.

And 18 year olds aren't taking the ACT. Or if they are, there are other reasons why they aren't getting into certain schools and they aren't as concerned with getting good ACT scores.

Not to mention, the drinking age being 18 was for a window of about 14 years in the 70s and 80s. (Unless he's from Louisiana)

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