SAT score distributions in Michigan • Hacker News Board

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#341

Post by warner25 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

roflyear wrote: post #129

basic_test_prep wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically. Test prep has diminishing marginal returns. On the flip side that means just 1 hour of prep makes a big impact. This is what research has found and why a lot of focus is on getting kids to do any studying for anything at all. Many kids do zero homework and zero studying. Getting them to 1 is the hardest part. This is the biggest…

Right, I think this is true. I scored really well on my SAT despite being a poor student and having parents that did not give a fuck at all, b/c I did just some minor prep for the test.

Yeah, this is interesting, and it's close to my experience. Just by working through the questions in the official SAT practice booklet a couple weeks prior to the test (which I think was "free" upon signing up), and learning a couple lessons from my first sitting (set a faster pace and guess rather than leaving questions blank), I probably raised my score by 300 points into the 1400+ band on my second sitting. An instructor could easily teach those lessons in a single prep session that starts with a short mock test.

The hard-core, months-long, daily prep courses for super-high-achievers seem like extreme overkill. The kids who need that are probably the ones in the 700-900 range, who need to learn a baseline level of math and English for the first time (of course, if that were possible, it would have already happened in school).

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#342

Post by rayiner » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 5:13 PM UTC

aabajian wrote: post #11

The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically. The stratification is more granular than Asian versus Black or White versus Native America. For example, Jewish students excel beyond the Caucasian average while Cambodian and other Southeast Asian Immigrants perform significantly below the national average for Asian Americans. The challenge…

> The challenge for large and heterogeneously diverse nations like the U.S. is to offer an educational system that provides access to quality education regardless of parental involvement.

It's a challenge, for sure. Should it be the overriding goal? Maybe if we weren't competing with other countries on the world stage.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#343

Post by treis » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

fleetwoodsnack wrote: post #275

treis wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming your point by calling them "real accomplishments". But that's the whole debate. Is being an Eagle Scout a "real accomplishment" or is it a participation award? And if it's a participation award did the kid get it through his own initiative or because he was forced by his parents? The answer to that question is the whole debate. And this is not a "totally contrived" scenario. The guy is posting his kid…

Eagle Scout is the highest rank in American scouting, and is achieved by less than 5% of those who pursue it. Eagle Scouts include U.S. Presidents, Judges, Astronauts, Generals, and technology Founders. Those who achieve it and pursue a career in the military are advanced to a higher rank and higher payscale upon enlistment in all branches of the armed services. https://www.baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/Boy-Scouts…

Yes, that's why this dad (probably) forced his kid to become an Eagle Scout. But it is not evidence that being an Eagle Scout is an accomplishment. Because it's really not. It's the ultimate box checking exercise. No individual step is something that a kid with a room temperature IQ couldn't do. It's simply sustaining a modest amount of effort for ~8 years.

If a kid does that of their own volition then it's evidence of something.

If a kid does it because their parents made them do it in order to put it on their college application then it's meaningless.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#344

Post by throwaway8582 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

netheril96 wrote: post #170

someguydave wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there is a way, you put kids in test prep and see if they do better. They generally do not improve much. The SAT is an IQ test, and IQ is mostly inherited from your parents.

So you are saying that Asians have higher intelligence, and not just a little bit higher, but significantly higher than other race?

The Asians present in North America are not a random sample. A large portion of them came here specifically to work in STEM or other fields requiring high levels of intelligence and education. It's very probable that the ones here are, on average, significantly more intelligent than both the average American and the average Asian in Asia.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#345

Post by nfw2 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

thwayunion wrote: post #329

nfw2 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's reductive. My parents were white liberal hippies who didn't push me at all. I got C's in school and a perfect math SAT and SAT 2. To be fair, I did spend a lot of time thinking about math because I liked it.

> To be fair, I did spend a lot of time thinking about math because I liked it. Spending childhood doing things you enjoy and which also have economic utility is a secret power. Most people in the top 5th percentile of academic things also happened to spend a truly absurd amount of their youth obsessing over that academic thing. They may also be gifted, but spending all that free time in youth thinking about things i…

Legal theory is a joy I discovered much later in life. The LSAT brain-teaser questions are also pretty fun. I've considered switching careers (now in my 30s), but I expect the realities of the job are much less thought-provoking.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#346

Post by BeetleB » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #200

socialismisok wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hardly simple to prep for the SAT. It requires time and money and space.

I keep hearing this, and I don't doubt that statistically access to test prep helps, but amongst all the tests I've seen, the SAT is still the easiest to do well in if you're willing to self study. I got in the elite range simply by buying SAT prep books. I memorized the vocabulary, and the book had enough tricks for me to do well. Granted, I always excelled in math in school. I, however, did not excel in English (my…

Also, wanted to point out that all the people around me who did great on the SAT used only the prep books - none took one of those dedicated classes. Right or wrong, we all thought tutors and tutoring institutes were for struggling students - because none of the top students utilized them. The notion of a great student becoming even better with the help of a tutor was foreign to us. It was only years later did I learn that tutors for top students existed (basically dedicated 1:1 instruction by a "true master").

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#347

Post by nfw2 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 5:19 PM UTC

thwayunion wrote: post #329

nfw2 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's reductive. My parents were white liberal hippies who didn't push me at all. I got C's in school and a perfect math SAT and SAT 2. To be fair, I did spend a lot of time thinking about math because I liked it.

> To be fair, I did spend a lot of time thinking about math because I liked it. Spending childhood doing things you enjoy and which also have economic utility is a secret power. Most people in the top 5th percentile of academic things also happened to spend a truly absurd amount of their youth obsessing over that academic thing. They may also be gifted, but spending all that free time in youth thinking about things i…

Law is cool because it's like math, but because language is less precise than math, the rules are more malleable, and there is more room for creativity.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#348

Post by e63f67dd-065b » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 5:19 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #227

eternalban wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically. I scored very high in both. Believe me, as new immigrants we were completely clueless about the heated race to top spots. In my case, credits goes to my makers (mom and dad :) and the fact that Iran had fairly good public schools. Culture is important. Two relevant shockers for me (as a ver…

> disrespect for teachers ... disdain for the smart kids I've gotten the impression from every high-achieving-country immigrant that I've ever talked to that schools in those countries just kick out the troublemaking kids before they have a chance to disrupt the environment for everybody else. Nobody gets kicked out of US public schools, for any reason - so the kids who don't want to be there and spend all of their t…

That's very much true. I remember very clearly that when I was a new 1st grade student in a poor southeast asian country that the kid that yelled back at my teacher in my 60-person class didn't come back next week, whereas I suspect the same would not fly in US public schools. The things I've read (threatening violence, etc) would've never happened in my home country's schools, and if it did would've led to corporal punishment (caning was regularly practiced) and expulsion, not necessarily in that order, and very quickly at that.

My impression is also that the academic culture is very different - even in my poorly funded primary school full of poor kids, there was a sense of academic accomplishment being of the highest importance -- all the students knew the importance of good grades, and students that disagree were socially shunned. Smart kids were the popular kids, and the people who ranked the top 10% got into a special class and were widely admired.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#349

Post by chewbacha » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 5:19 PM UTC

bloaf wrote: post #253

chewbacha wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you expect the exact same results next year? If the same students all retook the SAT with different questions would we get the exact same breakdown +/-0.3%? I doubt it. These data are for this specific measurement and must be tempered in their extrapolation into other areas. I don’t think you can declare them significant.

You must not believe any statistics if you think sampling 85% of a 110k population can't resolve a score like this to 1%. Your original question, which I have been addressing, was about generalization to the population (i.e. what the margin of error quantifies) not nebulous "other areas." I would expect a re-test to have slightly higher averages overall because all the kids now have experience with the class of quest…

Not at all, I trust statistics a great deal. I don't have statistics on the reliability of the SAT nor how reproducible it is, so I have no way to know based on the numbers presented how noisy the distributions ought to be. You can imagine that some band of test-takers is on the bubble and can fall above or below the "top-tier" line on any given day. You are asserting that this is less than 1% of the population, I'd argue it's likely higher than that. But I don't believe I have the data to present either way.

To address the population; if the "population" you are referring to is only the seniors in Michigan on _that_ day then it's might be pretty accurate. Looks like the population of Michigan is around 10 million (20% of that is under 18), meaning that this would be extrapolated much more to address just the population of Michigan, not to mention what it means if we apply it to the entirety of the united states. Any population that we apply this to that isn't the sample audience at that specific time will incur some error.

At each of these higher levels of population abstractions we have orders of magnitude higher error margins, which would quickly dwarf the ppt difference between males and females in a single test.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#350

Post by sweezyjeezy » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 5:19 PM UTC

meragrin_ wrote: post #318

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #205

Is it reasonable to assume that an African American with SAT score in the top band(s) would probably get accepted to a better college than Michigan? There are loads of kids here with pretty low scores, so clearly this is not representative of the highest performing students in the US, nor that the race breakdowns are representative of the highest performing students in each race. This only seems to give us informatio…

I think you misunderstand the article. "The state of Michigan required all public HS seniors to take the SAT last year". That's not related to universities or applying to them. It is the data for all high school seniors in the state of Michigan.

Yep you're correct.