Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year • Hacker News Board

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#371

Post by macspoofing » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

defen wrote: post #364

macspoofing wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. OK, but there are other places that provide scholarships. >if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. That's awesome for students from low-income families. I support it 100%! But let's be clear here, a family with a household income of $66k/year (up to, I don't know, $200k/year) cannot afford $85k/year tuition without the stude…

> But let's be clear here, a family with a household income of $66k/year (up to, I don't know, $200k/year) cannot afford $85k/year tuition without the student going into massive debt. Click the link - "Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0-10% of their income, and those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10%, based on their individual circums…

>Essentially nobody graduates from Harvard with a significant amount of debt.

That's great! No argument from me. If Harvard structures their tuition in such a way that students aren't graduating with a massive student loan debt, awesome!

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#372

Post by xyzzyz » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

sct202 wrote: post #339

syshum wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I think you'll still find plenty of interest in the topic (and it's intersections with the others) on the left. Please provide examples because I am not aware of any.

Interest in the topic is what drove the popularity around books like Hillbilly Elegy and tons to articles in NYT and WaPo after the 2016 election about poor white people and what were the challenges that they were facing and motivations.

You mean the ones which explained that the poor whites are actually privileged racists, who are too lazy to learn to code?

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#373

Post by fiftyfifty » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #239

Loughla wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most high school students take the SAT/ACT in their junior year already. Many only take the test that once. Many high schools have test-taking built into the curriculum for the first half of that year of school. Some states have replaced their standardized testing with the SAT/ACT.

What states are those? No schools that I know of locally have SAT prep as a school course or use the SAT as their standardized tests. It is good that some schools are already moving this way. I think it makes sense to have just one standardized test that can be used for admission and also tracking progress of schools and states.

In Colorado all high school Juniors take the SAT in April for free. I think they have to pay to add the writing section but most universities have removed the writing requirement.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#374

Post by hintymad » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #327

That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque from the point of view of the applicant. Also, the applicant pool will rise because there is no SAT filter. Having said that, I don't think it's a big deal because nobody needs to go to Harvard. In fact, if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or…

Harvard started the institutionalization of "hollistic admission": https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in. According to the article, it was not about being fair, it was about limiting the admission of a specific group of people.

In general, the more complex a system is, the easier it is for people to game the system, and therefore the easier it is to hide inequality. It's hard to believe that Harvard does not know this, but I guess I'm dead wrong here as our progressives always ask for a more complex system to battle inequality.

In contrast, look at China. Their National College Entrance Examination is widely considered the most equal system in the country. Is it perfect? Of course not. However, students from poor country-side have a shot to get into elite universities. All they need are good teachers and well designed problem sets and text books . The cost of the books cost less than few Burger King's double cheese burgers. In the meantime, the government invested heavily on teachers. The result is that the best teachers are always in public schools. The inequality really lies in the fact that fewer and fewer quality teachers are willing to go to the poor areas nowadays. But hey, it's not like our government are focusing on raising teacher quality in the US either, right?

What about the fact that tests themselves can be gamed, we may ask, like students cramming for exams? The problem turns out to be relatively "easy" to solve: make tests differentiable. Just take a look at a problem set from India's JEE, China's NCEE, Korea's CSAT, or Japan's entrance exams from different universities. You'll see how hard it is to cram or to "tutor" for an exam. If we use math as an example, the only patterns one sees in a problem will be mathematical patterns. If one can cram for that, well congratulations, the person just learned good math.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#375

Post by honkycat » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

throwaway287391 wrote: post #136

not_a_moth wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone intimate with Germany's vocational training system, that's used as an alternative to college by approximately half of all graduating high school students? 2-3 years small salary vocational training straight out of HS at 1 of 400k participating companies in 1 of 400 role types. I want to know why implementing this isn't a national debate in US, it seems like such an obviously good idea.

I'd bet a large part of the reason is cultural. For just about any American high school student who's been exposed to the mainstream culture their entire lives (including myself at the time), the idea of missing out on the "college experience" (i.e. mostly partying) that just about every conventionally successful person they've ever met will have gone through and instead going to "small salary vocational training" wo…

This is pure conjecture. The younger generation currently consumes way less alcohol and is overall much more studious and serious than previous generations. Years of austerity have eroded the "animal house" culture you are picturing from your youth.

They are pushing college WAY less and pushing vocational training WAY MORE. I've had my younger cousins reach out to me interested in vocational training and my opinions on that. ( My opinion? Pick a major with a career. Do two years of community college, finish up at a major university. Vocational jobs are well paying and are perfectly respectable, but tend to be pretty hard. )

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#376

Post by fiftyfifty » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #332

snarf21 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What states are those? No schools that I know of locally have SAT prep as a school course or use the SAT as their standardized tests. It is good that some schools are already moving this way. I think it makes sense to have just one standardized test that can be used for admission and also tracking progress of schools and states.

The last I knew: SAT: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia. ACT: Alabama, Arkansas, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming. Also, the implementation of SAT prep is spotty at best. As with most things, whet…

One of the drivers for Colorado moving to the SAT from the ACT was the amount of free SAT prep courses online. SAT partnered with Khan Academy to offer a lot of test prep and practice tests online for free.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#377

Post by honkycat » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

tinyhouse wrote: post #197

Harvard can be corrupt. There's a very average girl in my town who wouldn't get admitted to grad school at Harvard if her dad wasn't a law professor at Harvard. Regarding asians. It's not about race. Diversity in academia is important for many reasons. It's not about being asian, it's about living in a rich family at a top school district, regardless of your race. A poor kid from a bad neighborhood cannot compete wit…

> A poor kid from a bad neighborhood cannot compete with that

Yes. Exactly. You have no idea.

I went to a poor rural school. We had 0 AP classes. We did 0 ACT prep, wasn't even mentioned. I didn't even know you could retake it. We did not have air conditioning and the temperature outside would often reach 100 degrees. Kids would tear up the floor tiles and smash them against the blackboard in my math class.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#378

Post by jjoonathan » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

tharne wrote: post #319

wait_a_minute wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new American left does treat it as a zero sum game. That is why they focus on disparities instead of universal programs that would eliminate the largest absolute amounts of poverty and suffering.

Zero sum thinking is probably the most central tenet of the broader philosophy of the American left. That's why there's so much talk of "disparity" or "inequality" vs. actual improvements to standards of living and quality of life. Almost all economic growth creates inequality for the simple reason that the more wealth there is, the more potential you have for skew. In China, for instance, there was much less income…

40 years ago, if you looked at the preceding 40 years of economic growth in the US, the reality was "a rising tide floats all boats."

Today, if you look at the preceding 40 years of economic growth in the US, the reality is "rich get richer, poor get poorer."

Clearly, magic capitalism beans aren't the only ingredient in an economy that improves everyone's lot. My theory is that the other key ingredient is growth. Growth is chaotic and stirs money around, it's one of the precious few strong market forces that pushes towards equality rather than winner-take-all, even though it does so purely on entropic grounds and isn't strong enough to actually arrive anywhere near the maximum-entropy state.

Of course, once the growth stops, the market settles out again, and the real question is how to deal with that. "Try to stimulate growth at all costs" just creates bubbles. It's a tough question, but whatever the answer is, I'm pretty sure it involves stirring money around, and I'm pretty sure big monied interests are going to fight it tooth and nail out of self-interest.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#379

Post by Barracoon » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

wait_a_minute wrote: post #269

iagovar wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds bad if you're a white non-rich kid.

Who cares about those? Definitely not the new American left.

The "new American left" wants universal health care, college education, housing, and a clean environment. All of those issues affect lower-income whites just as much as any other racial group.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#380

Post by jessaustin » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

tinyhouse wrote: post #197

Harvard can be corrupt. There's a very average girl in my town who wouldn't get admitted to grad school at Harvard if her dad wasn't a law professor at Harvard. Regarding asians. It's not about race. Diversity in academia is important for many reasons. It's not about being asian, it's about living in a rich family at a top school district, regardless of your race. A poor kid from a bad neighborhood cannot compete wit…

It may be relevant that she got admitted as a grad student rather than undergrad. There are about twice as many grad students, and they get admitted by department rather than by the main admissions office. When I complained to my undergraduate advisor about how much work there was in a particular upper-level course, he scoffed: "The other students in that course went to undergrad elsewhere; you should be fine if you apply yourself." This professor certainly perceived a difference between the application processes of the two different groups.