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Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

mitadmissions.org

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

#351

Post by johnaspden »

raunak wrote: post #205
ShaveTheTurtles wrote: post #157

A lot of folks focus on act/sat scores when talking about diversity when really these ivy league schools shouldn't have an express lane for legacy entrants. If you are trying to be different than how it was previously, how can you expect that to happen when you give preference to folks that benefited previously?

Without legacy and the prestige and the entire shebang of old English style college, the Ivy Leagues aren't the Ivy League. I agree with you that eliminating legacy would solve the issue of making the school different - it's never gonna happen though, so there's no point in talking about it honestly. Also yeah, MIT is not a legacy giving school

> shebang of old English style college, the Ivy Leagues aren't the Ivy League

I'm not quite sure what this legacy thing is, but I don't think English universities do it. It sounds corrupt to me, and I think it would be a national scandal.

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

#353

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

zozbot234 wrote: post #330
paxys wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not to mention relational calculus for a deeper understanding of databases.

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

#354

Post by adamsmith143 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #270
neovive wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%! As a parent of a child about to go through the college admissions process (with his heart set on MIT--of course), I want him to read this particularly for the later part of the article: "...you are also not your MIT application..." The acceptance rate is so low, that it should not be used as a measure of self-worth and accomplishment.

As the parent of a student who was just rejected from MIT... I wonder if the reinstatement of the SAT requirement came too late. I'll never really know, but it is possible.

If their score wasn't in the 99% percentile it probably wouldn't have made a substantial difference.

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

#355

Post by 0x20cowboy »

tonymet wrote: post #342
0x20cowboy wrote: post #336

I grew up poor, and from my anecdotal experience people do better on the SAT if they "are rich". You can also pay people to take the test for you. Maybe it's because they don't have to spend their days worry about getting shot, stabbed or beaten to the ground by gangs. Maybe it's because they get to eat every day. I guess, perhaps, they get more quality study time. Or, heck maybe you're all right, random questions -…

i grew up poor and SAT helped me escape poverty. are we forced to only accept negative outcomes when sharing experiences ?

Absolutely not! Good on ya!

I'd rather everyone got a fair go, but mate, I am very happy for you. Keep on keeping on.

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

#356

Post by [deleted] »

tonymet wrote: post #342
0x20cowboy wrote: post #336

I grew up poor, and from my anecdotal experience people do better on the SAT if they "are rich". You can also pay people to take the test for you. Maybe it's because they don't have to spend their days worry about getting shot, stabbed or beaten to the ground by gangs. Maybe it's because they get to eat every day. I guess, perhaps, they get more quality study time. Or, heck maybe you're all right, random questions -…

i grew up poor and SAT helped me escape poverty. are we forced to only accept negative outcomes when sharing experiences ?

[deleted]

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

#357

Post by david38 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #330
paxys wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don’t. I’ve never been asked a O() that requires calculus. The vast majority is just understanding if it’s log(n), n, nlog(n), n^2, etc.

Discrete, sure, but Calc? Not for most.

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

#358

Post by rossdavidh »

dontreact wrote: post #81
rossdavidh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the usefulness of calculus to a working developer in ML is pretty marginal. The difference between different ML algorithms for hill climbing or gradients, is orders of magnitude less than the effect of having the right training data, formatted the right way. Statistics or data science is far more applicable to nearly any field on real-world programming. But, you know, like Latin in the 19th century was alwa…

I disagree with this. Being able to read and understand the math in the paper of the algorithm you are implementing is useful, and calculus is common in ML papers. You may have some short term success without understanding the algorithms at all, but as the field changes and you are no longer in school, being able to keep up at least somewhat with papers is very useful. I agree that the day to day is mostly about form…

Well I took calculus, and I did a Master's thesis (much smaller than Ph.D., obviously) on neural networks, and I didn't find much application. Plus, the vast majority of work on ML is not going to be taking an ML paper and implementing it in code. It's going to be transforming this raw data into a format that the existing ML library can accept as input, selecting which cases are useful for training (e.g. making sure each important sub-case is adequately represented), and other things surrounding the data and how it is fed into the (already existing) ML library. Perhaps also playing with the options of the ML library, as to what kind of model you build.

But 99% of the alterations you can make to an ML library, will not make nearly as much difference as what data you feed into it and how. If it's the right data, many ML models will work, and if it's not the right data, none of them will. But regardless, none of this requires, or even really benefits from, calculus.

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

#359

Post by lucidbee »

0x20cowboy wrote: post #336

I grew up poor, and from my anecdotal experience people do better on the SAT if they "are rich". You can also pay people to take the test for you. Maybe it's because they don't have to spend their days worry about getting shot, stabbed or beaten to the ground by gangs. Maybe it's because they get to eat every day. I guess, perhaps, they get more quality study time. Or, heck maybe you're all right, random questions -…

If I were you I wouldn't apply right away to a 4 year college. Do community college in your chosen field and then transfer.

In California if can do 2 years in a community college you are guaranteed a spot in a school in the UC system. Not UC Berkeley, but still some place great. I think to qualify for this transfer you need to have a 'C' or 'B' average.

If you stay on the pity pot you won't get anywhere. Also, in California, community college is very cheap.

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

#360

Post by TuringNYC »

fhood wrote: post #199
TuringNYC wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I don't really have evidence for this, but it's always felt like SAT/ACT coaching doesn't improve scores so much as get rid of some of the "dumb mistakes" that cost you score. As i learned in college, the real "coaching" was rich parents getting rich kids more time on the SAT by getting psychiatric diagnostic classifications that give you more time. Time has been the real challenge on SATs for most people beyond a…

From my, albeit rather distant, recollection, if you desperately needed more time on the SAT you are probably already screwed.

For students in the category of "exam easy. finished the exam w/o any time issues", the whole sub-thread is irrelevant. You're going to ace the exam rich, or poor.

The sub-thread and discussion is about wealth bias for exam scores.

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