U.S. students will take the SAT online • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#401

Post by blharr » Sat, Mar 09, 2024, 9:03 AM UTC

mksreddy wrote: post #244

meroes wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still paying in time for a poor person. The wealthy hire an SAT tutor for a hundred+ an hour to bump their kid’s scores up by a third for maybe 20 hours of work. The poor student will spend much more time. It’s like many things where the poor pay in time rather than money.

My kids wrote SAT. The only resource used was Khan Academy and previous test papers made available by college board. You really don’t need any more resources for SAT.

Your situation is not the same for everyone, though. It should instead be more carefully worded, "[We didn't] need any more resources for SAT." Imagine the more extreme case of a student who took it first try and got a perfect score. You wouldn't necessarily expect everyone else to be able to do the same.

Being on this site, you're probably someone who values education. And you probably raised your kids to be capable. Or maybe they just lucked out and got the correct weights to succeed in that particular scenario, but you can't assume that the situation for everyone is the same as you!

Many people simply can't learn by just doing practice tests and watching videos. If it were so easy, then we wouldn't need teachers or schools in general. Mentorship and guidance are important, and it's the reason why so many people want to get into universities in the first place.

Essentially, yes you can do without, but having it helps. Overall, that would create a disparity that favors more wealthy people.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#402

Post by goryramsy » Sat, Mar 09, 2024, 3:54 PM UTC

Hi HN, I’m currently sitting in a testing center right now, and the technicial issues are real. Among other things, the testing app needed a last minute update, the preloaded test on the app failed to load for everyone, and the Wi-Fi is down/at a crawl from people using it to download said update. This is fun.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#403

Post by judith48 » Sat, Mar 09, 2024, 3:55 PM UTC

goryramsy wrote: post #402

Hi HN, I’m currently sitting in a testing center right now, and the technicial issues are real. Among other things, the testing app needed a last minute update, the preloaded test on the app failed to load for everyone, and the Wi-Fi is down/at a crawl from people using it to download said update. This is fun.

[dead]

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#404

Post by goryramsy » Sat, Mar 09, 2024, 3:59 PM UTC

goryramsy wrote: post #402

Hi HN, I’m currently sitting in a testing center right now, and the technicial issues are real. Among other things, the testing app needed a last minute update, the preloaded test on the app failed to load for everyone, and the Wi-Fi is down/at a crawl from people using it to download said update. This is fun.

Also, for anyone wondering, the password for every student (the one that prevents people from taking the test at home) is 8 characters and *extremely* easy to guess. I won’t say it here, but given that this code grants access to take the test in the first place, you’d think it would be more complicated.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#405

Post by blharr » Sat, Mar 09, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

slily wrote: post #176

meroes wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still paying in time for a poor person. The wealthy hire an SAT tutor for a hundred+ an hour to bump their kid’s scores up by a third for maybe 20 hours of work. The poor student will spend much more time. It’s like many things where the poor pay in time rather than money.

Poor people's parents don't have the money to bring them to vacations, enlist a violin teacher or drive them to baseball on the weekends, so clearly they have more time to allocate to studying and thus are advantaged. Conclusion: do away with meritocracy and just exclude poor people altogether. Did I get the "logic" right? Of course put this way it can't be valid because that wouldn't support the American Neomarxist…

I really don't get how the context follows through on your point here. Music, sports, and travel all have been shown to increase your mental health and thinking capabilities.

All I get is that if you start from an extremely unfounded point you'll get to the wrong solution. But that doesn't say anything about the points people are making here

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#406

Post by blharr » Sat, Mar 09, 2024, 6:15 PM UTC

polski-g wrote: post #163

eganist wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> eventually want to build out a tool to accurately monitor a student's performance over time. How does AutoMark account for disparities in quality of education?

School quality has no impact in outcomes: https://web.archive.org/web/20161114182009/http://legis.wisc...

That seems like a really bold claim that I was excited to read about in the source. But this seems like it is only saying that for one school district and one particular choice program, they weren't able to see a difference on a test.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#407

Post by astrea » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 6:35 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #239

eropple wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canonical's interview process is legendarily invasive and dumb, and they get very touchy when you tell them so. I enjoyed how, when I pointed out that the questions about high school extracurriculars would narrow down many of my demographics and let you guess at a few others (and just the way I write would let you make strong inferences about others), they clammed up and told me I could do it or drop. I dropped.

I applied for a job with the FAANG that rhymes with "pajamas on" and their interview process was dumb as well. I told them so and got the interview ended right there. Good riddance, I suppose.

Similarly, I had an interviewer (same place) who just oozed “I despise being here”. Dismissed everything I said and gave me only the last 2 minutes to solve the problem he was supposed go give me. Didn’t bother to check back in with the recruiter after that.