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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

#401

Post by btilly »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #385
btilly wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The second to last paragraph supports a minor point you made.

But the others contradict most of what you said. The pro-affirmative action position that you outlined requires willful blindness and stupidity to accept. It is very emphatically not equally valid to the alternatives.

There may be better arguments for accepting affirmative action as valid. But that one is terrible.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#402

Post by pclmulqdq »

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.

What house were you in? When I was there, there were huge income disparities between the houses. You may have had that experience in one of the less-well-off houses if you didn't socialize outside of that environment much. There are a lot of rich kids at the school, but it's less pretentious than Harvard or others.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#403

Post by pjscott »

sklargh wrote: post #305
djbusby wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your family has $10MM in the bank, you too can take (and report) to IRS zero income.

Assuming US due to agency choice. What about a 1099-INT? Surely even trivial interest earnings on 10mm would trigger this? Moreover I'd expect that any given user w/10mm would be rolling into multiple accounts to maximize protection offered by FDIC.

If you put the money mostly into bonds or stocks that don't issue significant dividends, you'll pretty much just have to worry about capital gains (form 1099-B), and those aren't taxed until the fiscal year in which they're realized.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#404

Post by foobiekr »

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #146
_mh56 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in India, we have quotas for different kinds of people. There's caste based, Gender based and finally EWS (Economically Weaker Section) Quota. Overall 60% of total seats are reserved for these people. My friend who's ultra rich was selected in EWS Quota. His father who runs his own company took Zero pay for the last two years so he qualified for the benefits. Meanwhile people who actually deserved this had to co…

> The point is you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge. Okay, well this is the US. Your tax returns are a very good indication of how much money you make. If you lie on your tax returns then you have much bigger issues than college admissions counselors.

Deferred compensation plans allow you to strategically create a low w2 income for awhile and are mostly available to high earners.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#405

Post by cuteboy19 »

onetimeusename wrote: post #307
notlukesky wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40% for meritocratic entrance is more than twice what is at elite schools in the US. Maybe ambitious Americans should move to India for a fairer chance. At most US elite schools, less than 20 percent is for “non-reserved” seats. Elite schools reserve seats for sports teams (affirmative action for rich white elites with “sports” like fencing and rowing), legacies (affirmative action for rich white elites), related to…

This is kind of a racist against whites who I think are used as a scapegoat no matter what. In my experience, those sports teams you are talking about are filled up with international and Asian students[1][2]. The dumb white elite student and the extremely talented, poor Asian student stereotypes are not true in my opinion. Maybe they were in the past. Even the SAT score can be gamed.[3] I think pretty much every adm…

This particular example is just not representative. It does "benefit" whites who are apparently 83% of the athletic quota. The graph is just terribly made. We need not blame or scapegoat whites but at the same time acknowledge that they are the beneficiary

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/9/8/2025-freshman-su...

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#406

Post by jefftk »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #155
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge. Okay, well this is the US. Your tax returns are a very good indication of how much money you make. If you lie on your tax returns then you have much bigger issues than college admissions counselors.

Taking a $0 salary for a few years is feasible for most rich people. That's why the FAFSA (financial aid form) also asks about assets.

And the CSS profile, like FAFSA but for fancier schools, is even more exhaustive.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#407

Post by WalterBright »

ab0aa907 wrote: post #188
jakeinspace wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is off topic, but do you find it difficult seeing this friend the same way while knowing that they and their father gamed the system like that? If I learned this about somebody I knew it would seriously hurt their image in my eyes.

Coming from other side of border but with similar culture and attitudes, corruption is so common in that part of the world that most of the people don’t even see it. They would consider it smart to game the system. Only way I can explain this attitude is to compare it tax loopholes in the west. It is very hard for many Americans to see loopholes in tax codes as unethical. Like using mega-backdoor-ira loophole to bypa…

The only equitable tax is one that taxes other people.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#408

Post by hgomersall »

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.

This is what puzzles me. What is the intent of the SAT, is it to assess aptitude for something? Is that something the desire to achieve good grades? Is it intelligence? Is it the aptitude to fire guns in a tank? For sure if you have a test that tests something, then you assign outcomes based on that assessment, then anyone has the opportunity to understand what is being assessed and practice until they are good, but what does that tell you?

I don't doubt there's a correlation between some aptitude that measures propensity for success and SAT score, but I'm still struggling to see how that benefits the poor or the migrants in general? In truth, it benefits a narrow section that "fit the mould" that is expected by success on a SAT; that is, members of the notional outgroup that do the SAT in the expected way can benefit, those that don't still fall by the wayside.

There are very many intelligent people that for whatever reason - cultural, bad parenting, poor education - still fall to achieve this mark of success. Is that acceptable? I think there's at least scope for saying that maybe a SAT is not the optimal strategy for finding all those that would benefit most from higher education. I've no idea what is, but there seems to be some very strong opinions here that don't seem particularly intent on seeing the bigger picture.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#409

Post by WalterBright »

_mh56 wrote: post #266
jakeinspace wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is off topic, but do you find it difficult seeing this friend the same way while knowing that they and their father gamed the system like that? If I learned this about somebody I knew it would seriously hurt their image in my eyes.

Atleast in India, everyone "games" systems as much as they can. Those who can't dream about gaming it. The Kafkaesque system makes sure that the few who actually tread the right path are never rewarded [1]. And unlike EU, this benefits corporates/capitalism as they can cut through the red tape easily by "gaming" things. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33368104

Does it benefit capitalism? India has always had a less prosperous economy.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#410

Post by [deleted] »

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.

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