Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

I half-assed my entire way through high school, but studied for about a month for the ACT and did extremely well (perfect in all categories except Math, which I got a 32 in). I didn't get into MIT (I never applied) but I did get into a few other relatively well-regarded universities (Auburn, NYU) despite my awful grades, almost exclusively riding off the strength of my ACT scores, and ended up going to Florida State (since it was cheaper than the other two I listed). I dropped out after 2 years (nearly flunking out due to low grades).

To me, this showed that the tests are not an accurate measurement of how successful someone will be at college, but instead just how well someone can prepare for a specific test. If that's the case, why add the extra cost, both time and money-wise? If a mediocre student can just cram for a few weeks and do well on the test, then it seems to me that it's not a great test.

I acknowledge that this is pure anecdata, but that was my perspective, not "minorities can't be expected to do well on anything objective" and not "I don't want Yale to be 2/3 asian."

One conclusion that MIT hints at (although it doesn't say it outright) is that SATs might be a better indicator of success across economic levels in part because it's harder to buy a better SAT score with money. Looking at things like extracurricular activity runs into many of the same problems as looking at Github repos during hiring processes -- a lot of people don't have time to do a bunch of extracurricular activities, and access to those extracurricular activities is likely highly correlated with socioeconomic status. It might be difficult to move in that direction when access to school resources varies so much between areas.

I do think the SAT could be improved -- I think one really easy way would be to change how it's administered so that it optimizes less for formal test-taking skill. The really good thing about the SAT is that it's a less school-specific measure than GPA. So a better alternative might be a version of the SAT that kept a standardized metric but that either widened its scope significantly or was administered differently.

I also want to put forward the idea that admissions might just be really hard, period, and there might not be an easy way to assess potential, and trying to figure out the easiest way to do it might be like asking, "what's the best way to teach a child to play an instrument in a single day?"

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One really important point that I want to get across: there is a difference between a measure being good and a measure being "the least terrible option we have at the moment" -- and confusing the two can cause real harm.

At the top of this thread I see the quote, "so much for that common, popular notion that standardized tests do not predict anything of value." And if that's somebody's attitude, then they're never going to find a better option because the whole thing is being approached through the lens of "see, we were right, this is a good metric."

I think a lot of criticism of standardized testing, IQ, coding tests for hiring, etc... is not necessarily trying to destroy everything, it's just trying to point out that many of these measures are really bad and they shouldn't be treated with the respect they're often given. I think that someone can very easily both have the position, "yeah, MIT probably should use SAT scores alongside GPAs" and the position, "people place way too much confidence in these things as an indicator of success."

Years later, his weaknesses were evaluated at a Community College. He went to work on a one-year remedial skills plan. Then he was admitted to a state University. Four years later got a chemistry degree with honors. IMO it's likely he'd have succeeded at MIT as well. The man was a born techie.

Moral: shitty schools are everybody's loss. And we've continued to lose a lot because some of them are designed that way. Slyly, deliberately, officially sanctioned sly.

At the time, the SAT was purported to provide a score that predict ability to perform academically at higher learning institutions.

Along with other factors such as GPA, and participation in extra curricular activities, a school could reasonably determine how well a student would do.

In practice, the normal distribution for scores correlated with the distribution of college performance. It was a reasonable predictor of success, but it did penalize students from certain backgrounds.

Because the test was devised by psychologists and statisticians, uncovering the pattern to the types of questions and the expected answered allowed test prep people to devise tricks to improve scores beyond the expected deviation.