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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

#381

Post by Ekaros »

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…

Wouldn't teacher recommendations just leave to bribery? And not even that expensive. Have the kid deliver some nice present before each suitable occasion. Maybe brown envelope with cash.

At least with tests you could release previous tests and then possibly some groups could release free instructions on key points or tactics.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#382

Post by jadengeller »

WalterBright wrote: post #370
prpl wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lower middle class (and even uneducated pedigree upper middle class) is where the brutalism is for competitive schools, but lower middle class has state schools (if in California, Cal State schools) or community college- and almost always finishes high school with a middle-of-the-pack education, thanks both to average public scholar and average home lives. So, generally they are fine. I wish the obsession with top-ti…

When I attended Caltech, there was no evidence that it was a rich kids school. For example, very few students had a car. The ones that did had a Bug or an old Ford pickup. I don't recall anyone wearing tailored clothes, the students mostly wore completely unremarkable stuff. When I'd meet their parents, they were perfectly ordinary people.

I don't think the data supports this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...

I do think it's true that Caltech students are all very passionate about STEM, so the average family wealth is less apparent.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#383

Post by steve76 »

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…

[dead]

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#384

Post by the_third_wave »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #292
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 lower middle class kid in Iowa, I'd be pretty outraged about this. Of course, no one cares about these kids (least of all the elites and their cadre), and any outrage from lower middle class Iowans is already explained away as racism (never mind that Iowa, like much of the rest of middle America, went to Obama in 2008 and 2012).

...and anyone mentioning this is voted down by the chattering class of HN.

Predictable yet still disappointing.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#385

Post by erikpukinskis »

btilly wrote: post #375
erikpukinskis wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry, but I take offense at this "it is all a matter of opinion and all opinions are equally valid" BS. 1) It is trivially true that if you define your measure right, you can make anyone succeed. For example black people are better at looking like black people. But we try to define "stuff" in a way that correlates with ability to do economically useful tasks. There are excellent reasons to do so. 2) You are ignoring…

Your tone seems disagreeing, but I think your second to last paragraph is making the same point I’m making?

I agree with you that it’s not fair, I’m just acknowledging that the adjudication of fairness happens outside the reach of science. It’s a matter of values not evidence.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#386

Post by kenjackson »

bsdetector wrote: post #251
kenjackson wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don’t see how it’s discrimination against White students. This actually looks more like discrimination against Asians, with Whites being the biggest beneficiary of the discrimination based on the numbers. Blacks get the biggest bump, but it is Whites who “steal” the most spots. It does make me wonder about the marketing of anti-affirmative action. For example you see on social media the kids who posts about t…

> I still don’t see how it’s discrimination against White students. This actually looks more like discrimination against Asians, with Whites being the biggest beneficiary of the discrimination based on the numbers. Because you are looking at it through the lens of total student makeup of certain top universities. If Whites need 100 points higher on SAT than some others, then Whites are being discriminated against. Th…

> If you look at the overall college system, there's something like 35% of undergrads that are Black/Hispanic and 5% for Asian so in the overall system Whites net benefit more from no discrimination than Asians do.

I don't understand this. The vast majority of colleges are uncompetitive. If you apply and can afford it, you get in. Affirmative action is only relevant at competitive colleges. For example, at the totality of the UC system, it's only 4.5% Black, 22.5% Hispanic, 22.2% White, and 32.2% Asian. It's in these schools Asians get the benefit. Whites and Blacks were the two groups hardest hit by the elimination of AA in the UC system.

And I'm OK with this personally. I just think the AA narrative that it is Blacks that took that Asian kid/s seat is misplaced -- it was more likely the White kid who took their seat.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#387

Post by edflsafoiewq »

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.

You don't spend the endowment, you spend the interest.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#388

Post by Ekaros »

Jensson wrote: post #310
lordnacho wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would home environment be more influential for GPA, which is a bunch of tests, versus the SAT, which is also just a test? Extracurriculars I agree with, rich people are more likely to have connections to get the nice internships.

You don't see why studying 20 hours for 1 test that you can easily repeat is easier to scrape together than 2000 hours to score well on all tests throughout high school?

Maybe a test is bad if you can study all of the material or enough of it in 20 hours.

Realistically good test would require that multi-hundred hour build up.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#389

Post by [deleted] »

moomoo11 wrote: post #335
sandworm101 wrote: post #5

Standardized tests remain the only criteria totally in the control of the student. You can study for them and objectively do better, become a better applicant. Everthing else is either circumstantial or based in the opinion of others, mostly highschool teachers. If i had to rely on my highschool teachers' opinion of me i would not have ever gone to university let alone have won scholarships. Standardized testing allo…

In re to LSAT at least a decade ago your LSAT score meant shit. I’m S Asian, scored 99th percentile 17x, but my GPA was around 3.3 because I think college is a joke when it involves homework. I had never gotten less than a A on midterms and finals, but what I’m trying to say is that GPA and race matters much more. There was a law school acceptance calculator. With my scores and my Asian background, the T14 were eithe…

[deleted]

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#390

Post by kwhitefoot »

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.” >…

> legacy preferences

Why does this even exist?

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