MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#411

Post by ISO-morphism » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #57

Anybody cheering the exclusion of some test or other, because it was a pain to study for in high school, is simply not noticing the frog-boiling secondary effects going on. Every bit of emphasis taken out of objective results mean more advantage for smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people. Yes, some misguided parents waste thousands of dollars on SAT courses. But students can also prep using the $20 officia…

I agree with this comment. I grew up in a rural area of the midwest. There were no AP courses, let alone robotics or opportunities for international volunteer work. I worked through high school to help keep the pantry stocked above levels that required some figurin'. I didn't apply for scholarships, didn't think about where I was going or what I was going to do, I was worried about other things. My high standardized test scores got me noticed by schools and names that meant something to me. I might not have ended up at MIT, but standardized tests gave me perspective that it wasn't just that I was "good at school" compared to my rural peers, but that truly I did have a shot at these places.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#412

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #221

knzhou wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an articulate, socially well-adjusted person who can communicate their values and opinions in an intelligent way Yes, that's me. > and who is comfortable making connections with others And that will never be me. Leadership is inherently nepotistic. You simply aren't permitted to lead if you have the wrong class background or the wrong ethnicity. (There's a reason all Senators look exactly the same.) You're literall…

> You simply aren't permitted to lead if you have the wrong class background or the wrong ethnicity. (There's a reason all Senators look exactly the same.) In what sense did, I dunno, Obama and McConnell look exactly the same?

[deleted]

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#413

Post by godelski » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 5:53 AM UTC

thebradbain wrote: post #254

quartzite wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly correct. Those who fight for fair admissions on the basis of intellectual ability and academic potential should hold up the SAT and standardized testing as a cornerstone of the admissions process. Standardized testing significantly levels the playing field for students across income brackets. Returns on study investment quickly diminish, and reaching a plateau on returns doesn't require much investmen…

The tests don't not work (I believe that within the middle of bell-curve they accomplish their goal well), but at the extremes they are prone to gamification, especially to those in the know. For example, the pre-2017 SAT had some well known (and some lesser known) tricks that you would only know by studying the test, rather than the material: - ALL sections (and sub-sections) have questions that strictly increase in…

This reminds me of a Physics GRE I took. I studied all the tests and remember very clearly the test saying to only calculate to two decimal places to save time. There was a relativity question that had 3 answers that just varied on how many decimal places you carried through your calculations. That question had the answer if you kept 2. But it also had the answers for more. I'm not sure questions like this actually show that you know the material, considering to get 3 of the 5 answers you have to do the actual calculations.

What I learned about studying for tests like these was that you were studying for the test, not the material. This felt extremely different than studying for... say... an actual physics test.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#414

Post by cycrutchfield » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 6:05 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #356

cycrutchfield wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish more people who fall into the kneejerk "we must emphasize only objective testing" group were aware of things like these. Standardized tests are incredibly game-able, particularly at the upper tail of the distribution. Because of the nature of that distribution, that means that if you selected students only by "objective" measures like standardized test scores, you will be disproportionately selecting for stude…

Indeed, much better to select for the kinds of people whose parents know how these things work and can ensure their child has the right letters of recommendation, internships and extracurricular activities. And don’t be terribly specific about what exactly it v is you want; that way you can change it from year to year to ensure the right kind of people get in. Wouldn’t want Harvard to look like Cal Tech or Berkekk OK…

This is not at all what I said, but by all means continue to project your own insecurities.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#415

Post by totalZero » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 6:15 AM UTC

chad_strategic wrote: post #304

I'm sure that I will get in trouble for this but... The SAT/ACT system is corrupt. It's plain an simple. Follow the money. It's as simple as that. The root of most issues involve simple economics. (Maybe a little broad of a statement, so take it with a grain of salt, but certainly applies in this case.) The tests are built on revenue from the taking the tests and industry selling you prep material. I don't have time…

How can you be sure of something that you cannot prove?

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#416

Post by TomVDB » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 6:39 AM UTC

mygo wrote: post #410

cogntive_elite wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top schools are more than fairly niche, especialy at the very top of the very top like MIT, which is extremeley niche. Source: I was a poor kid who got into UC Berkeley based largely on my SAT II scores. Any poor kid seriously considering applying to MIT or Cal is high information enough to be aware SAT IIs exist. Do ya'll understand how patronizing and insulting this bigotry of low expectations is to brilliant trail…

> I was a poor kid who got into UC Berkeley based largely on my SAT II scores. So did the admissions officer mail you a letter that said “congrats! Based largely on your SAT II scores, you’ve gotten in!” If not, what enables you to discount the possibility that you still would have gotten in without the subject test?

They do this through elimination if the application lacked the usual extracurricular items on an application due to being poor...

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#417

Post by austincheney » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 6:44 AM UTC

ebrenes wrote: post #235

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a good argument, because the SAT (and other tests of the same kind) are normalised to have this property. The SAT may not be good tests, but that fact has nothing to do with the presence or absence of a normal distribution.

The SATs have a top score, if it were easy to game you'd find many people would clump at the top. That would make it impossible to normalize that distribution into a bell-shape because they're all clustered into the same bucket with no way of spreading them. OP's point was that the perfect scores remain consistently outside of people's grasp despite the variety of resources available to prep for the exam. I only once…

> The SATs have a top score, if it were easy to game you'd find many people would clump at the top.

I understand and appreciate my school was statistically abnormal but that is exactly what happened. I graduated in a class 334 students and several achieved perfect scores. Perhaps more than a third of the students achieved greater than 1300 and greater than 20% achieved greater than 1400. This is when 1600 was the perfect score.

All these scores indicate is the degree of conditioning imposed upon a student. I know people want these tests to mean something more for personal reasons, but according to all available data this is biased wishful thinking. The research on standardized convergent testing indicates it is not a measure of academic success or potential, but rather an indicator/discriminator of class distinctions due to availability of preparation.

Because I did not come from well groomed pedigree, did not value the subculture of excess vanity, and came from a family that was lower positioned financially I deliberately inverted the goals for a personal social experiment. I wanted to see how close to the bottom I could get and still graduate on time. This was exciting because the risks were greater. If you fail to estimate the conditions correctly you don’t graduate whereas other people get a slightly lower test score or grade point average. Because the goals were different you had plan and weigh the conditions in unexpected ways. Even with all the effort I put in there were still 5 people who graduated with a lower class rank than me.

What impact did that have in later life? I did not get a free ride to an Ivy League school like many of my classmates, enter corporate management immediately out of college, or become a corporate executive within 10 years. I did enter and graduate college. I became a self taught software developer without much challenge and have found very low resistance attaining employment as a senior developer in my full time job. I also became a managing principal in my part time job without as much effort. The greatest tragedy in all this isn’t lost status or earning potential but how boring life has turned out.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#418

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 6:52 AM UTC

jimmyvalmer wrote: post #330

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPA is difficult, because there's no uniform standard. A 3.9 GPA from Caltech is much more impressive than a 3.9 GPA from Harvard (where there's serious grade inflation), but then again, you have to look carefully at which specific courses went into that GPA. But how do you compare those numbers to a grade of 15/20 from a French university, or a 1.1 from a German university, or some other country whose system you don…

> A 3.9 GPA from Caltech is much more impressive than a 3.9 GPA from Harvard Having been an undergrad at one of the above, I can assure you both are super impressive (in either STEM or humanities), and should garner special attention from graduate programs. > The subject GRE is a uniform quantitative baseline. It seems we've moved off the topic of undergraduate acceptances to elite graduate admissions. The dearth of…

> Having been an undergrad at one of the above, I can assure you both are super impressive

They're both great institutions, but the grades from one are much less meaningful than the grades from the other.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#419

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 6:57 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #334

chongli wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the reason the SATs are able to maintain a spread that lets them normalize the distribution is that they fill the tests with stupid tricks that fool people into wasting time. If you do a ton of prep then you learn to spot these tricks and then a lot of the questions become really easy and you can knock them off quickly. A poor smart student may have mastery of the material but their score will suffer if they…

And you can find out about all these tricks for free on Khan Academy or for $20 in a SAT prep book.

I find this truly baffling. How can it be considered good use of time for someone to sink endless hours of time into learning the ins and outs of some stupid test that is not useful for anything? Just think about the man years of enthusiasm and creativity wasted on learning to score on a test, instead of something truly useful.

I understand why the students do it, I don't understand why anyone would consider it a good system.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#420

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 7:04 AM UTC

glitchc wrote: post #392

barry-cotter wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adoptees have IQs in line with their biological parents, not their adoptive ones. It’s heritable like every other psychological variable I’m aware of. Speed of cognition is absolutely correlated with IQ but the difference in speed doesn’t cause the differences in results. Both are downstream of being more intelligent. > Speed of information processing and general intelligence > One hundred university students were gi…

There is no evidence connecting IQ to hereditary traits. This has been demonstrably proven false multiple times. What you are arguing is eugenics and that is patently false.

> Substantial genetic influence on cognitive abilities in twins 80 or more years old.

> General and specific cognitive abilities were studied in intact Swedish same-sex twin pairs 80 or more years old for whom neither twin had major cognitive, sensory, or motor impairment. Resemblance for 110 identical twin pairs significantly exceeded resemblance for 130 fraternal same-sex twin pairs for all abilities. Maximum-likelihood model-fitting estimates of heritability were 62 percent for general cognitive ability, 55 percent for verbal ability, 32 percent for spatial ability, 62 percent for speed of processing, and 52 percent for …

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Plomin/publicati...