Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by simulate-me » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:13 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #20

All MIT students, regardless of intended major, must pass two semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based physics, as part of our General Institute Requirements. ... There is no path through MIT that does not rest on a rigorous foundation in mathematics, and we need to be sure our students are ready for that as soon as they arrive. For a period in the 1980s-1990s, you could argue that calculus was not…

Calculus underpins almost every scientific advancement since its discovery. To exclude it from the curriculum at a school focused on technology would be insane.

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

#372

Post by MiroF » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:14 PM UTC

xanaxagoras wrote: post #128

artful-hacker wrote: post #14

SAT scores correlate with IQ test scores. SAT is just a 'legal' thinly veiled version of IQ test.

So let's cut the shit then and just do IQ tests. This is the best technical university in the world offering the best technical education in history. It's where the smartest minds learn foundational knowledge that will enable them to make amazing technological contributions to mankind. Not everything needs to be a battleground for the boring diversity of skin color. It's actually important that we get the most qualif…

But shouldn't starting points be taken into consideration when you are judging someone's merit?

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

#373

Post by opportune » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:14 PM UTC

ceeplusplus wrote: post #363

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…

> huge slap in the face to social mobility out of the middle class No, it was an intentional move to restrict the number of Asians admitted because despite their best efforts to hide it, prestigious universities' data showed systemic discrimination against Asians in the admissions process (see: SFFA vs Harvard). Removing the SAT removes some of the data that opponents can use to sue them. One of the reasons the UC re…

Sure, I think that’s in many ways covered by what I mean about middle class mobility. Given that Asians are less likely to be legacies and dont benefit from Affirmative Action, pretty much all their “slots” come out of the high-achieving-middle-class bucket

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

#374

Post by meepmorp » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

lliamander wrote: post #370

> Our research can’t explain why these tests are so predictive of academic preparedness for MIT Can't explain why an IQ test predicts success in cognitively demanding work?

The SAT/ACT aren't IQ tests.

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

#375

Post by simulate-me » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

david38 wrote: post #364

time_to_smile wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly every educated adult should understand calculus, and certainly anyone with a technical degree should. Sure many people will be unlikely to need to do the raw computation of calculating derivatives and integrals (even people doing machine learning are typically letting computers do that work), but to understand the way these two concepts work together and describe the world is really essential to understandin…

This is hubris. I can think of many adults that know nothing of Calc and do very in life and work. Knowing basic accounting, being able to fix things around the house, being pleasant to work with, etc are far more important.

> Knowing basic accounting, being able to fix things around the house, being pleasant to work with, etc are far more important.

Those are totally useless skills. If you live in America and your only contribution to society is being pleasant, knowing how to fix things around the house, and basic accounting, then expect your livelihood to be replaced by someone willing to do your unskilled work overseas for a fraction of the cost in the very near future. Not to be harsh, but that's the reality.

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

#376

Post by KMag » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:16 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #300

grego61 wrote: post #212

One way that rich parents can game SAT/ACT is through aggressive seeking of test accommodations for disabilities. There was common knowledge of up to 50% of test takers having extended time in some affluent private schools in the SF Bay Area prior to the Covid pause.

In the case of students trying to get into MIT I wonder if there is actually much point in gaming the test? The article says they are using the tests as a threshold. It sounds like they don't care by how much you pass the threshold, just that you have passed it. I'd expect that most students who will be able to survive at MIT can make the SAT threshold with no gaming of the test and no test prep other than maybe doin…

Roughly nobody at MIT brags about SAT scores (at least when I was there 20 years ago). Any test is most sensitive around a given range. I think most MIT students are performing well enough in math that most of their mistakes in the SAT I and SAT II math subject tests are roughly statistical noise. I happened to get 800 on the math sections of both the SAT I and SAT II, and I got the impression most of the other students at MIT did similarly. I'm sure there are plenty of people with better mathematical ability than me who got 760s because of a loud neighbor or a bad breakfast burrito.

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

#377

Post by thedougd » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:17 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #324

caffeine wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ext…

The 'truer' measure of your aptitude was likely your highest score. They allow multiple takes of the test because they understand that testing has errors from jitters, misunderstanding the wording, time management, a bad night of sleep, etc. Even within the bounds of a single class, we often get better at taking tests in a class once we understand the instructor's style.

Ultimately, the score of everyone who takes the test fairly is capped by their aptitude. If we want to even the playing field, we should find a way to allow disadvantaged kids to have multiple tries at the test with some preparation. They may already have it.

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

#378

Post by gime_tree_fiddy » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:18 PM UTC

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…

I am not sure how it compares but India suffers through the same problem. It is essentially a rat race. A lot of those problems could be trick questions, but to be able to identify it, especially on a regular basis takes longer(when the question has less than a minute dedicated to it).

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

#379

Post by avs733 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:18 PM UTC

QuikAccount wrote: post #368

My problem with SAT/ACT actually has nothing to do with the test itself. I grew up very poor in suburban middle of nowhere and even with a waiver for the fee, I had no way of actually getting to a testing center. Parents worked 24/7 to make ends meet, no real public transport and this was before Uber and Lyft. The real culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure.

this is a perfect example of why governmental services are so important - even if they are often run poorly. Without them, dis-equities inherently perpetuate due to external incentives.

The SAT is treated as a standardized test but it, as you note, is inaccessible to many. It is not government run or organized. I've found, from teaching undergraduates, that most of the students who go to college presume that everyone takes the SATs, that it is government administered, and that it is free.

compare this to the, still far from perfect and problematic in other ways, centralized university admissions testing system in many other countries.

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

#380

Post by fantod » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:19 PM UTC

david38 wrote: post #357

zozbot234 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't really need to know calculus (derivatives and such) but it's true that big O notation requires some sort of "asymptotic thinking" which is probably only explicitly taught in a calculus course.