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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

#321

Post by MaximumYComb »

psyc wrote: post #305
MaximumYComb wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up poor and I achieved some of the highest scores state wide in my country's standardised tests as a child (we get tested at ~8,10,12,14). A lot of my peers at my school were from social housing. My assessment is that their biggest issue wasn't money but their homelife. Parents who didn't value education, or even a basic respect for rules/authority. The kids were wild because their parents were kind of wild th…

Same. My family was below the US poverty line, but my parents were college educated and most of the extended family placed tremendous emphasis on education, academic performance, and college prep. I always get very annoyed with modern discourse that reduces all successes, even staying out of prison, to family income and nothing else. Most of the people I went to school with were from poor or working class families, a…

I think the benefit of religion is that a religious mother/father is less likely to be off on 3-day meth binge compared to a non-religious one. There's a social network to help support people. The social network also encourages a reduction/removal of typical vices that are going to affect a families children (alcohol, drugs, etc).

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

#322

Post by jxramos »

tomkat0789 wrote: post #293

I hated taking the SAT/ACT, but holy cow are we in the US in a better situation than Chinese students dealing with the Gaokao. A Chinese pen-pal once showed me some calculus problems from the Gaokao and the example I saw (a bunch of integrals) looked like a math test a sadist would create: long, complicated expressions just for the sake of complexity, "ugly" numbers that turned into messy fractions you have to carry…

sounds painful, the only thing I could think of would be to test the precision of transcribing step by step. Sounds like the surface area for loss of precision is wider when you just add the noise of messy figures into a problem. A clever student could just replace the messy figures with constant variables that are shorter to write of course and at the very end substitute everything back to evaluate what comes out in the end.

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

#323

Post by kuang_eleven »

thehappypm wrote: post #224
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…

I’m interested to see what happens if schools become truly race blind. I’ve heard that top schools may be >50% Asian. What would that mean for these schools? Would being predominantly Asian mean Harvard isn’t Harvard anymore? Would lopsided racial makeup make these schools less pretigious? Would they produce even more value with the top minds and nothing else?

Practically, the University of California system is as close as you will get to that, as they are bound by law to not use affirmative action. Looking through the statistics[1], you definitely do see strong ethnic trends in admissions, especially for the top tier schools of Berkeley and UCLA, even when looking only at domestic applications.

That being said, the UC system maintains a prestigious reputation.

1. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-...

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

#324

Post by tombert »

caffeine wrote: post #313
tombert wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I'm definitely a naive progressive (and probably hold some internalized bigotry that I'm unaware of), but I was against the SAT/ACT requirements sort of for the opposite reason than what you described. 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 appl…

Edit: I should add, thanks for pointing out a third group - people who think the tests don’t work! > To me, this showed that the tests are not an accurate measurement of how successful someone will be at college The test proves you are smart enough. Like, do you believe you were not intellectually capable of getting through college? That you flunked out for a pure lack of IQ and no other factors? From the writing in…

> I can’t pretend to know you enough to know why you dropped out. But if I had to bet it wasn’t raw IQ.

No it almost certainly wasn't raw IQ (not that I take a lot of stock in IQ in itself anyway), it was a combination of depression and attention issues.

> The test proves you are smart enough.

I wouldn't exactly call the ACT (I never took the SAT so I cannot speak to it) an objective measure of intelligence. It's extremely formulaic, and you can get "good" at taking it just by doing a boatload of practice tests, which is what I did. If the Kaplan practice tests are anything to go on, I would have gotten about 21 (not a great score) the first time taking the test had I not studied for it. I doubt I got considerably "smarter" in a month, I think I just got better at taking ACT tests.

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

#325

Post by andrewclunn »

caffeine wrote: post #209
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…

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…

I think we can disagree with a policy without saying, "The people who agree with this policy are racist.". I mean weren't the elimination of standardized tests also justified on them supposedly being racist? At this point I couldn't care less what people assume the motivations of their opponents are.

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

#326

Post by brimble »

Spooky23 wrote: post #279
ar_lan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anecdotal/lived experience, to your point: The rich kids in my (public) school were the ones afforded not only tutors, but also just the insight into extra-curriculars. They were the ones who had parents who knew to sign them up for college courses at ~15-16 years old to ensure they could maximize their GPA (5.0 scale, so getting a 5.0 was literally impossible unless you did this). This created a competitive disa…

> Not to mention that, but there were sports our school didn't participate in, but the richer kids had levels of access to that looked great on college applications - rowing and lacrosse specifically come to mind. Exactly. I went to smallish rural school. We had soccer, basketball, baseball. Youth soccer in my area was a rigged game where only people who were enrolled in the coaches summer camp would make the varsity…

> Baseball is ruthlessly competitive, and while I was a really good little league player, I had no chance against kids who were in multiple travel leagues, etc. I probably played 50 baseball games from age 9-12. The best players played at least 500.

Same thing drove me out of baseball after age 12 or so. I had more than a little natural talent and put in some time drilling with my parents, so I could keep up with the kids doing the traveling leagues and such until (a little before) then. After that it became clear that my parents and I were gonna have to devote hundreds more hours per year (plus not a small amount of money), realistically, for me to keep playing. The gap was just growing way too fast, otherwise. What was left were bad teams/leagues where few players were really trying, so that's no fun, and ones for which I couldn't make the cut. Someone who liked it but just wanted to put in a high-side-of-normal amount of time and effort for a youth sport, had no place.

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

#327

Post by varenc »

KMag wrote: post #292
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…

I went to MIT 20 years ago. Plenty of people smarter than me failed out. MIT seems to do a pretty good job of screening out people who won't pick up the material fast enough. In my experience, the ones who failed out were the ones who were plenty smart but didn't adjust fast enough to having to work hard for the first time in their lives. If you get into MIT, you've probably gotten special treatment from teachers you…

MIT has a ~95% graduation rate, so most students really do graduate. And for the 5% that don't it's unclear how many dropped out due to the workload vs dropped out to found a company, etc. MIT has tons of internal resources to help you if you're struggling.

The shock for entering freshman is very real. I really like the practice of making your first semester Pass/No Record so that there's less pressure to try and get an A, and if you do fail it won't even be on your transcript. Second semester still treats F as No Record as well.

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

#328

Post by nullc »

parkingrift wrote: post #287
nullc wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. T…

> To game the SAT or ACT you must spend a few thousand dollars during grade 11 or grade 12.

"Or check out a SAT book or two for free from the library.", says my partner from an extremely poor family who got into college on the basis of her perfect SAT score and whom never would have qualified to a prestigious school on a GPA basis. (And whom was also admitted to law school on the basis of a nearly perfect LSAT, which she studied for only with free and extremely low cost used materials)

> Intuitively, how could it be correct that people pay thousands of dollars on these courses

People, particularly those to whom a thousand dollars isn't a big deal, spend all kinds of money on speculative and outright ineffective treatments. Including mystical mumbojumbo, quack medical treatments, and products and services which accomplish nothing except contributing to the 'identity' they present to themselves and others. ("I am a parent who cares, look I spent $zillions getting Jr the best opportunities!").

> 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.

I think on this point we're agreeing to a great extent but we're drawing opposite conclusions. I agree SAT improves with focused study, though I believe that improvement is available for free (other than time and knowing you should do it).

You seem to agree with me that it is very expensive to hyper-optimize GPAs, requiring costs and actions extremely early and on a sustained basis.

My conclusion from this is GPA optimization relatively more available to students with more affluent families, because it takes more time, more money, and requires it earlier and more speculatively. -- we don't have an option where you can't improve your performance with the input of time,money, care but we can choose metrics where the available improvement is available to more people.

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

#329

Post by david927 »

opportune wrote: post #211

I am so happy to see this. I went to high school in a bit of a backwater in the US. People don’t really go to selective colleges or care much about applying. It was only doing very well on standardized tests and spending time on the internet looking for info about colleges that led me to believe I could go to one of these places. I got into several and attended one, and I believe it greatly positively changed my life…

Similar opinion and story. We live in Boise, Idaho and my daughter does a hybrid model of home school and high school. She knew she got top grades and 5's on all her APs but it didn't give her any idea of where she sat, nationally. She was planning on going to art school until a year ago, when she sat for her first standardized test, the PSAT. She saw the score, which was national merit range and realized that she should have higher ambitions. She took the SAT last October (she's a Junior) and got a great score. So now she's considering top schools. She wasn't before.

Without these types of tests, you could end up being biased toward a measure of "how hard did the parents push."

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

#330

Post by zozbot234 »

paxys wrote: post #273
uwuemu wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue exactly otherwise... with the advent of the web platform and frameworks like .net, the vast majority (and I mean like 95%) of developers will never touch anything ML related in their careers. I mean, I get that this is MIT and many of their students will end up working with ML, but applying that globally to CS is nonsense. Back when I was studying CS (cze) more than a decade ago, we had to pass linear a…

This is exactly why so many people (myself included) advocate for a pure "software engineering" degree at more universities. Let people who are interested study graph theory, combinatorics, linear algebra, advanced probability and statistics and whatever else. For the rest, provide a path to be ready for an industry job building websites and applications, which is what 90% of graduates will end up doing. Every other…

Software engineering is based on applied mathematics too. You'll need at least some basic calculus to make sense of O(n) analysis, and Calc II as a prereq for probability. Then add plenty of logic, discrete mathematics (needed for algorithms and data structures), models of computation and concurrency, category theory (which is becoming a shared language of everything "compositional"), topology etc. etc.

If you really want a "math free" intro to tech, look into Business Information Systems. That tends to be more ad hoc, at least for now. At some point, people will start to care about software assurance even in that context, and the standards will rise accordingly.

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