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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

#41

Post by Brian_K_White »

prepend wrote: post #15
ec109685 wrote: post #13

The key part that is glossed over is that Columbia is making SATs optional, so if a candidate is amazing in all ways except they are a poor test taker, they do not have to submit a test score. And the author also tries to correlate SATs with the Armed Forces aptitude tests, the latter which weeds out those at the far bottom end of aptitude versus making hitting a high bar a requirement for entry. Once in, recruits ar…

> Should I have a leg up over everyone because I am good at what it tested? Yes, that’s a feature not a bug. The SAT doesn’t test randomly. It is designed to test for specific subjects and knowledge in those subjects. I’ve SAT is not fun but I think it’s purpose is to fairly test all takers and rank them to assist with allocating educational resources. It’s such an odd question to ask “should I get a leg up because I…

I think the point might have been, you can be excellent at chemistryy, a real value to society with your ingenuity and rigor, and be no good at all at writing about chemistry.

A test like that would be fair if it were testing for journalists.

Maybe every job needs at least a little bit of rounded basic skills like that, and so it's fair for the test to include some the same way. In that case I see no problem there either.

But I don't know how out of balance the commenter is talking about. Was the test they are thinking of totally wrong or did it just include the appropriate portion of basic rounded literacy/competency, and if they sucked at it, then that was exactly the job the test is there to do is to guage those weaknesses?

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#42

Post by LeonardoTolstoy »

paulsutter wrote: post #10

Employers should embrace standardize testing: we're on the cusp of a revolution in education driven by the tireless personalized tutoring and feedback of LLMs Of course not all schools are ending testing, MIT for example: "We are reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles" https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our...

If you read the explanation I do think that makes sense in that they are very clear that it is specifically the _math_ portion of the SAT/ACT where they see the value. And generally I agree with that, especially as a threshold (as opposed to a fine ranking).

It was similar when I applied to grad school (this was engineering). They told us pretty unequivocally that getting a perfect GRE math score was pretty much required, but that the verbal went right in the bin, so don't worry about it.

It makes sense for engineering focused schools or those applying to engineering schools. I'm still less convinced places like Harvard where a good chunk of the students won't take a ultra-difficult math class during their time there has much use in the SATs. At least in the "I got a 1580 on my SATs but someone with a 1570 got in over me, how is that fair?" Kind of way.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#43

Post by qsort »

tomp wrote: post #7
djaouen wrote: post #2

The only reason I was able to break into programming was because of high standardized test scores. The SAT and others like it really are a great equalizer. Dropping the requirement is a shame.

Sorry, but what do you mean? If you said any other career except programming I'd agree with this, but programming is literally the least gate-kept of the high-paying careers. Anyone can break into programming, all you need is the internet, interest and aptitude to understand code.

> Anyone can break into programming, all you need is the internet, interest and aptitude to understand code.

If by "break into programming" you mean getting any decent paying job, it's even easier than that. I'd say it's closer to "show up on time having showered and be able to code yourself out of a paper bag".

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#44

Post by onos »

lapcat wrote: post #35
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…

> 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. This view ironically makes schools and education irrelevant. Why even send students to school, if test scores are "totally" in the control of the student?

Agree, when school is there just to mark elite status.

For those pursuing expertise though, schools can provide a lot of value through offering access to others with talent and to some degree infrastructure.

That these schools serve both sets of demand is a problem: Sure hand out the elite status tokens to favored groups, they dont matter much anyways. But if society actually believes that there are pressing problems that need to be solved (global warming perhaps etc) training resources should be aimed at those who can best go on to make use of them.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#45

Post by ryzvonusef »

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, look at how many significant digits that is! (Yes, that's how specific it can get, when population sizes grow large enough.)

Yes, you can argue about having a "bad day", but there are thousands of other people ALSO in the same percentile as you, and you all didn't have a "bad day", at some point it's about resource limitation.

There are two and a half billion Asians of different varieties, that means MILLIONS of people at each economic/social strata. You simply CAN'T provide the same resource to all of them, some of them will have to vie for a lower-ranked resource.

If there are limited number of seats, and your economy cannot afford to fund more seats, then a standardized test is the only fair way, at least it allows you to have SOME sort of control at your luck.

----

That same thinking applies to Asians who move to the US. It's patently unfair, from their PoV, to give weightage to things they CAN'T control for (race/wealth etc.) and not give weightage to a thing they CAN control for; a standardized test.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#46

Post by freework »

wunderland wrote: post #27

All of this debate about what measures should be used to gatekeep higher education ignore that the US system is only loosely about teaching students; the goal of an American university degree is class differentiation. There is not a shortage of textbooks or qualified teachers who could explain calculus or history or economics. As a society, the could easily produce far more educated people (and for a lower cost), but…

I feel the same way. Imagine if Harvard had the ability to enroll one billion students per year. There would be no need to use either grades, SAT score, personal essays or anything else to reject students. They would be able to accept everybody, and then everybody could get an elite education and society would be so much better off.

But that would never happen. The whole point of ivy league is that they are exclusive. Companies get to feel special when they hire an ivy league grad so they can feel special for having one of the special chosen ones. If everyone gets to have an ivy league degree, then the ivy league degree becomes worthless.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#47

Post by baremetal »

1letterunixname wrote: post #9

Maybe I'm old or insufficiently woke, but I don't see legacy or identity as substitutes for demonstrated learning. I see the decay of rigor and achievement as signals of decline of excellence and the crumbling of knowledge. The mythology of "everyone needs degrees" created a wealth transfer scam and a lowering of standards to sell more student loan debt for sheepskins. Maybe we need to throw away arbitrary employment…

If everyone must be equitable, then the most expedient way to achieve that is to reduce the standard.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#48

Post by Zigurd »

civilized wrote: post #6
Zigurd wrote: post #3

In principle, SAT scores enable people like me, who were very very good at such tests, to break into elite schools. In fact, test prep works well enough to enable a shockingly high percentage of legacies and donor brats in elite schools. Ending SAT use in admissions might enable a more balanced approach to admissions, but it does not broaden access to elite schools. They could increase class sizes, or they could get…

Standardized tests are designed to be as non-gameable as possible. They're definitely less gameable than the other admissions criteria still used in elite colleges: admissions essays, playing obscure sports, fancy extracurricular experiences, etc. Most studies find SAT prep confers very limited benefits to the average person. Having an essay essentially written for you by an expensive consultant with contacts in admi…

14% of Harvard undergrads are legacies. It is exceedingly unlikely that SATs help a higher percentage of deserving but otherwise overlooked applicants.

My point is, there is a way to have a far higher impact on opening seats for kids who should be getting an elite education than the question of whether SATs help or harm attaining that goal. They're not really serious until they don't preference legacies.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#49

Post by CJefferson »

1letterunixname wrote: post #9

Maybe I'm old or insufficiently woke, but I don't see legacy or identity as substitutes for demonstrated learning. I see the decay of rigor and achievement as signals of decline of excellence and the crumbling of knowledge. The mythology of "everyone needs degrees" created a wealth transfer scam and a lowering of standards to sell more student loan debt for sheepskins. Maybe we need to throw away arbitrary employment…

“Legacy” applicants is the opposite of woke, it’s been how the “old boys network” has run for hundreds of years, getting under qualified students into top Universities.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#50

Post by lapcat »

onos wrote: post #44
lapcat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This view ironically makes schools and education irrelevant. Why even send students to school, if test scores are "totally" in the control of the student?

Agree, when school is there just to mark elite status. For those pursuing expertise though, schools can provide a lot of value through offering access to others with talent and to some degree infrastructure. That these schools serve both sets of demand is a problem: Sure hand out the elite status tokens to favored groups, they dont matter much anyways. But if society actually believes that there are pressing problems…

> For those pursuing expertise though, schools can provide a lot of value through offering access to others with talent and to some degree infrastructure.

I think you misunderstood what I meant. When I was referring to schools, I meant high school and earlier. In other words, the schools that should presumably give you an education relevant to the standardized tests.

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