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Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

mitadmissions.org

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Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#431

Post by matheweis »

QuikAccount wrote: post #368

My problem with SAT/ACT actually has nothing to do with the test itself. I grew up very poor in suburban middle of nowhere and even with a waiver for the fee, I had no way of actually getting to a testing center. Parents worked 24/7 to make ends meet, no real public transport and this was before Uber and Lyft. The real culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure.

It’s not just the getting to a testing center, it’s awareness (and cost) of the process.

Was a long time ago now, but parents weren’t really worried about or involved in my college prep process, so I had to figure it out for myself.

It wasn’t until later I realized it would have been better to start taking the test way before graduation. To say nothing of the benefits of test prep..

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#432

Post by notservile »

whynotminot wrote: post #419
lliamander wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Removing admission tests was a huge slap in the face to social mobility out of the middle class. I agree, but arguably the benefits of the SAT with regard to class mobility is less than it was when it was introduced. The heritability of IQ, combined with assortative mating, means that increasingly class divides are forming around differences in IQ. I think many people are rightly concerned that this will eventually…

> The heritability of IQ, combined with assortative mating, means that increasingly class divides are forming around differences in IQ. Do you have a citation for this?

The research on IQ heritability is abundant. You’ll get death threats if you point out the research though.

It’s inconvenient and correlates with SAT performance. Hence the big push to get rid of the SAT to try to hide the disparities in general cognition within groups and between groups.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial...

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#433

Post by verve_rat »

avs733 wrote: post #379
QuikAccount wrote: post #368

My problem with SAT/ACT actually has nothing to do with the test itself. I grew up very poor in suburban middle of nowhere and even with a waiver for the fee, I had no way of actually getting to a testing center. Parents worked 24/7 to make ends meet, no real public transport and this was before Uber and Lyft. The real culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure.

this is a perfect example of why governmental services are so important - even if they are often run poorly. Without them, dis-equities inherently perpetuate due to external incentives. The SAT is treated as a standardized test but it, as you note, is inaccessible to many. It is not government run or organized. I've found, from teaching undergraduates, that most of the students who go to college presume that everyone…

Wow. As someone that isn't in the US, but grew up watching a lot of US TV, I had this same assumption. How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Wow.

As you say, contrast that to my experience where everyone took University Entrance exams in their final year of school. Score over X and you have the right to go to a university. Don't score high enough? The university can still choose to admit you at their discretion.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#434

Post by crmd »

david38 wrote: post #364
time_to_smile wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly every educated adult should understand calculus, and certainly anyone with a technical degree should. Sure many people will be unlikely to need to do the raw computation of calculating derivatives and integrals (even people doing machine learning are typically letting computers do that work), but to understand the way these two concepts work together and describe the world is really essential to understandin…

This is hubris. I can think of many adults that know nothing of Calc and do very in life and work. Knowing basic accounting, being able to fix things around the house, being pleasant to work with, etc are far more important.

Calculus changed the way I look at the world. I suck at math and had to repeat calc ii, but holy hell am I thankful it was a core requirement at my school. I wish more liberal arts kids could have the same opportunity.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#435

Post by whynotminot »

notservile wrote: post #432
whynotminot wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The heritability of IQ, combined with assortative mating, means that increasingly class divides are forming around differences in IQ. Do you have a citation for this?

The research on IQ heritability is abundant. You’ll get death threats if you point out the research though. It’s inconvenient and correlates with SAT performance. Hence the big push to get rid of the SAT to try to hide the disparities in general cognition within groups and between groups. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial...

I was asking more about class divides becoming IQ based. Do you have a citation for that.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#436

Post by KMag »

varenc wrote: post #327
KMag wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to MIT 20 years ago. Plenty of people smarter than me failed out. MIT seems to do a pretty good job of screening out people who won't pick up the material fast enough. In my experience, the ones who failed out were the ones who were plenty smart but didn't adjust fast enough to having to work hard for the first time in their lives. If you get into MIT, you've probably gotten special treatment from teachers you…

MIT has a ~95% graduation rate, so most students really do graduate. And for the 5% that don't it's unclear how many dropped out due to the workload vs dropped out to found a company, etc. MIT has tons of internal resources to help you if you're struggling. The shock for entering freshman is very real. I really like the practice of making your first semester Pass/No Record so that there's less pressure to try and get…

There's a certain subtle ego disorder that creeps up on you slowly when you're used to regularly being introduced as the smartest person someone has met, and you let that slowly become part of your identity. The people I knew who failed out had too big of an ego to seek help, and even were afraid to work too hard, because that made them feel less smart. They didn't outright brag, but were used to others doing their bragging for them, and had a kind of false modesty about them.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#437

Post by kragen »

deanCommie wrote: post #123
rossdavidh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the usefulness of calculus to a working developer in ML is pretty marginal. The difference between different ML algorithms for hill climbing or gradients, is orders of magnitude less than the effect of having the right training data, formatted the right way. Statistics or data science is far more applicable to nearly any field on real-world programming. But, you know, like Latin in the 19th century was alwa…

> Latin in the 19th century was always still useful to one's education, Was it? Or was it perpetuated by a community that happened to already know it and so they leveraged it?

Latin is what almost the entire Western academic literature prior to the 19th century was written in. You may or may not know this, but Google Translate didn't exist. So, it was essential to anyone undertaking academic studies at the time (in the West) to read Latin, though not to write it. Nowadays English holds that position, despite Google Translate.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#438

Post by orangepurple »

verve_rat wrote: post #433
avs733 wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a perfect example of why governmental services are so important - even if they are often run poorly. Without them, dis-equities inherently perpetuate due to external incentives. The SAT is treated as a standardized test but it, as you note, is inaccessible to many. It is not government run or organized. I've found, from teaching undergraduates, that most of the students who go to college presume that everyone…

Wow. As someone that isn't in the US, but grew up watching a lot of US TV, I had this same assumption. How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Wow. As you say, contrast that to my experience where everyone took University Entrance exams in their final year of school. Score over X and you have the right to go to a university. Don't score high enough?…

> How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Wow.

Probably the same reason that the Federal Reserve Bank is not a government entity (they only have a meaningless government "oversight board") even though it loans all money to the US Government with interest and has never been audited.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#439

Post by QuikAccount »

satthesat wrote: post #425
QuikAccount wrote: post #368

My problem with SAT/ACT actually has nothing to do with the test itself. I grew up very poor in suburban middle of nowhere and even with a waiver for the fee, I had no way of actually getting to a testing center. Parents worked 24/7 to make ends meet, no real public transport and this was before Uber and Lyft. The real culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure.

> The real culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure. What was your area like? I grew up similarly poor but in a wealthy area and would walk several miles to a public library for early computer access, biked to school, etc. Even then, our school offered SAT, etc.

Not sure I would call the area I lived in wealthy. Probably middle-class suburban area. My high school at the time did not offer SAT/ACT testing on campus. If I recall correctly, and it's been a while so I might be misremembering, the closest SAT/ACT testing location was at the community college in the next city over.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#440

Post by danans »

gmadsen wrote: post #37
Robotbeat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Things other than standardized tests are easier to game. Letters of recommendation, extracurriculars, GPA, etc.

I think that is the implied meaning of "quite telling". Many institutions hastily removed SAT scores due to social pressure that standardized tests weren't effective or equitable, while the data shows the opposite

> due to social pressure that standardized tests weren't effective or equitable

Effectiveness and equity shouldn't be confused.

The tests are effective for assessing academic preparedness.

However, there is a strong argument that they aren't equitable.

MIT isn't claiming here that SAT/ACT are equitable. They are just claiming that they are a valuable data point in addition to other factors that they consider to deal with equity.

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