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Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

robkhenderson.substack.com

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Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#351

Post by orthoxerox »

lordnacho wrote: post #219
whack wrote: post #120

The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…

I used to think standardized tests were the way to go, but... My kid recently went through another testing gauntlet, which is the 11+ test. For those who aren't in the Southeast corner of the UK, this is a multiple choice type test that looks a lot like an IQ test in some ways. It's a single sitting and determines whether you are allowed into something called a Grammar School, which is just a selective school, and th…

> I think what might actually be hard to game is teacher recommendations. After all these people have been with the kid for a long time and know what they can do. They also tend to be distanced enough that they don't have to say good things about every kid.

How can you compare recommendations from different teachers? The whole point of the SAT is that it is a single number: you can compare SAT results from different schools and see which children are better at taking the test.

> If you have a look at one of these tests, it's pretty clear you benefit from practicing. Like just about any test, if you've done it before you are at an advantage, the more the better.

Yes, but you can't get from 500 to 1500 by practicing. You can probably get from 1450 to 1500, but that's just a few practice sessions to learn what the questions look like, how to fill in the answer sheet, how to tackle the most common ones.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#352

Post by jvanderbot »

Master_Odin wrote: post #311
nick__m wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elite institutions like MIT, Yale, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard do not need more donations. Look at the worth of theirs endowment funds at the end of 2021 : Harvard 53G$ Yale 42G$ Stanford 37.8G$ Princeton 37G$ MIT 27.4G$ Can you honestly tell me that they need more donations ?

None of these (and other) schools view endowments as something to spend. It must always be growing to show how amazing and great the school is. I remember how during the pandemic there was a number of articles about how these schools might have to take out some small pittance of the endowment to fund certain things and the schools were all doom and gloom about it.

Many endowments pay the salary of the fundraisers at major universities, in fact. And legacy gifts are usually set up for "forever" scholarship, where, say 5000 bucks is available for a certain type of student each semester forever, because the gift to the school was large enough that they know investing it will make at least enough to cover the cost.

So no, endowments aren't spent, but the returns fund a lot of stuff.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#353

Post by Broken_Hippo »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #327
rayiner wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm experiencing this first hand. My family immigrated here from Bangladesh. Unlike much of my family, my dad had a college-degree required job lined up, and we ended up pretty comfortable with him on a GS-scale job and my mom selling furniture. Thanks to the SATs, my brother and I both ended up breaking into industries (banking, law) that until relatively recently were good old boy's clubs. Now that I have kids at i…

> But if I was a recent immigrant, or a lower middle class kid in Iowa, I'd be pretty outraged about this. It may be worth mentioning that one of the, if not the , most powerful IP lawyers in the Bay Area is “only” a University of Iowa Law School grad. https://www.quinnemanuel.com/attorneys/verhoeven-charles-k/#...

It isn't that anyone things that folks from Iowa, going to the nearest in-state State college, can't make it. It happens. It just probably won't, but you might be more comfortable than someone that didn't go. Just don't, say, be a public defense lawyer or be a teacher.

It is that we know that going to places like Harvard, you are much, much more likely to have a well-paying job, comparatively. Bonus points if you are rich and can do things more often with your peers. I'm not under the impression that the education is that much better (it might be, I can't assess that). The networking you definitely seems better. You are getting a foot in the door, a thing that poor families can't always get without a good dose of luck.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#354

Post by paulolc »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #347
tomp wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a general question for the whole "social justice" movement. If you're concerned about the wellbeing of black people, and you justify your concern with statistics pointing out that they're disproportionately poor, why not, instead of instituting preferential treatment for black people (which, btw, is racist), you support preferential treatment for poor people instead? That way, you are more efficient (e.g. you…

The basic hypotheses for the pro-affirmative action crowd are: 1) Black people are not actually less “good at stuff”, we just have a habit of defining “stuff” in a way that excludes the things that black people are more likely to excel at. And, 2) Where black people do statistically worse, it’s not due to any innate difference, it’s because socially accepted “normal” support systems are more useful for people with ch…

No. The truth is not unknowable. Some truth is unknowable, though.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#355

Post by speleding »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #238
lordnacho wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think standardized tests were the way to go, but... My kid recently went through another testing gauntlet, which is the 11+ test. For those who aren't in the Southeast corner of the UK, this is a multiple choice type test that looks a lot like an IQ test in some ways. It's a single sitting and determines whether you are allowed into something called a Grammar School, which is just a selective school, and th…

In the Netherlands, teacher advice (based on standardized tests)is the way. They really restrict practice for the test in multiple ways, some legal and some cultural.

Interestingly, the Netherlands tried it a few years without the results of the standardised tests being known to the teacher (the results came in after they'd given their advice). It turned out that children from a poor background started getting worse recommendations...

As a result that practice has been reversed and teachers now use the result from the standardised test again when making their recommendation.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#356

Post by [deleted] »

tekla wrote: post #129
ryzvonusef wrote: post #45

As an Asian person, I think it's a cultural thing. There is this old joke about how even if you are a one-in-a-million person, there are still 8000 of "you"s to choose from; how does one chose who to pick, if there aren't positions for all of them? So how do you make it "fair"? Since of the number of seats are limited, so imagine if the cut-off for the last seat is for someone who is in the 90.3765335th percentile, l…

I come from a poor Asian immigrant family, and this SAT shit seems wild. My parents always told me that America is an easy country to succeed in. Just do decently in school, ace the SAT, and boom full ride to a upper middle class life, no matter the background. Its proven pretty true so far.

[deleted]

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#357

Post by toast0 »

rayiner wrote: post #208
whack wrote: post #120

The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…

I'm experiencing this first hand. My family immigrated here from Bangladesh. Unlike much of my family, my dad had a college-degree required job lined up, and we ended up pretty comfortable with him on a GS-scale job and my mom selling furniture. Thanks to the SATs, my brother and I both ended up breaking into industries (banking, law) that until relatively recently were good old boy's clubs. Now that I have kids at i…

> We have a second winter break for ski holiday.

We've got this at my kid's public school. Neighboring school districts don't, but they have two weeks for spring break (Easter) and we have only one. So that works out for me, although I don't much want to go on a vacation that needs two weeks when everyone else is on vacation; it's no fun to go to fun places that are overcrowded.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#358

Post by [deleted] »

zenta wrote: post #309
rayiner wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prepping for the test is a valuable signal when you're talking about the entire pool of high school students. And it does not gate opportunities by economics as much as you'd think: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/magazine/asian-test-prep-... . Immigrant families eligible for reduced price lunch are able to scrounge up the money for these tests.

It's not though. Give ten kids from the same class a self study online course and give another ten a private tutor, and they won't see the same score distribution. Where's the signal there? SAT results don't have a line item that notes the amount of wealth or privilege that went into preparing. > Immigrant families eligible for reduced price lunch are able to scrounge up the money for these tests. Some families can't…

[deleted]

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#359

Post by morelandjs »

whack wrote: post #120

The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…

This is an interesting idea. You could stratify the admissions process by family income level, and set bars for admission at each level that ensure an equal distribution of admissions relative to the population distribution of income.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#360

Post by PNWChris »

mvelbaum wrote: post #324
bluescrn wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000 megabucks

1024

I think that’d be gibidollars (Gi$ or something like that?).

All these unusual units are kinda fun, could spice up a presentation or conversation to throw in without context.

It gives me that hacker having fun, tarsnap picodollar/byte-month pricing vibe.

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