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Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

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Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#441

Post by usaar333 »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #326
grumple wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that person will still get into a great school. It just doesn’t have to be Harvard.

Not necessarily. I have a niece who is a textbook A-plus Asian student, she didn't get into any top school nor did any UC-school accept her. She is in a CA community college now hoping to transfer later. (She did get into an expensive 2nd tier private college, but since Covid shut everything down she withdrew and transferred to a CC near home.) Years ago I tried to counsel her parents into letting her do extra-curric…

Top 9% of students in the state have UC guarantee (https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requi...) by pure test scores and grades.

Yeah, you might not get Berkeley, but an A+ student is guaranteed admission to a UC. The profile you describe is far better than the average student at UCR and would be quite competitive at Davis or Irvine.

Did something fall through here? Did she not even apply to a mid-tier "safety school"?

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#442

Post by dheera »

dheera wrote: post #415
macspoofing wrote: post #327

That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque from the point of view of the applicant. Also, the applicant pool will rise because there is no SAT filter. Having said that, I don't think it's a big deal because nobody needs to go to Harvard. In fact, if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or…

> What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard Unfortunately, the standard is a bad standard and I'm fully in support of abolishing the SAT as a requirement. For engineers, the SAT math section basically amounts to measuring how many mistakes you make doing stupid easy math under 90 minutes of stress. The SAT verbal section basically measures how well you memorize word lists. Let's not BS ourselves --…

Based on the downvotes, I guess HN is a bunch of adamant test-loving folks. I guess this kind of open discussion isn't welcome here.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#443

Post by Pfhreak »

r-zip wrote: post #328
Pfhreak wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard has 2400 professors and admits about 6000 students each year. Each professor might have a child that is at college age, but most won't. And parental admittance isn't a guarantee. We're talking about a negligible number of students on this path weighed against the employee happiness and retention.

The total undergrad population of Harvard isn't even 7,000, so I'm not sure where you pulled the 6,000 number from. A quick look at their website will show you they admit around 2,000 per year.

I divided the total enrollment number from Google by 4. My investigation was not super thorough, I'm happy to correct it, though I think the point still stands.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#444

Post by watwut »

yorwba wrote: post #417
watwut wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is distinctively not the same as "high school drop out". These are people who do go to school, finish it and get a degree. These are people "within the education system" who were taught to do specific thing. High school drop out did not finished the school he intended to and does not have degree. This is person who is "out of the education system" who are not assumed to know anything.

The social status is of course different due to the lack of recognition for the "high school drop out", but the years of education received are similar.

The type of education is however completely different. Years of education is meaningless metric in this context.

In one case you are learned woodworker (say) and in another ... nothing.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#445

Post by chrischen »

akyu wrote: post #115

I have a hard time understanding the logic here. GPAs are essentially useless, so what else do we have to go off of? "Hollistic admissions" processes seem to be even more skewed towards rich kids, as they have far greater opportunities outside of the class room to pad their resumes in exactly the way that colleges look for. This seems entirely backwards to me. If there is a systemic bias in test scores, it is still b…

Isn’t the process already opaque? They already claim to take many factors into account.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#446

Post by hintymad »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #420
hintymad wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard started the institutionalization of "hollistic admission": https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in . According to the article, it was not about being fair, it was about limiting the admission of a specific group of people. In general, the more complex a system is, the easier it is for people to game the system, and therefore the easier it is to hide inequality. It's hard to believe that Harva…

Imagine looking at China and its massively wasteful system of cram schools and rote learning and thinking that's a system you would like to emulate.

Whether exams, which solely focus on academics, are effective for selecting talents is definitely up to challenge. That's a whole different topic from which system is less likely to be biased or gamed, though.

Just to fact check one thing: cram schools and rote learning for elementary students are rampant because of cut-throat competition for students to get into middle schools, but it's not that much in high school. Sooner or later you just can't rote learning any more. It's like one can probably rote learn James' Calculus, but good luck with Stein's or Rudin's Analysis. Besides, remember most of the good teachers are in public schools? The quality of cram schools was pathetic compared with what's offered by public schools, so the cram schools don't make much of a dent.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#447

Post by dartdartdart »

fortran77 wrote: post #262
travisoneill1 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else are you going to keep the Asians out?

Exactly. They had similar quotas to keep Jews out several generations ago. > Certain private universities, most notably Harvard, introduced policies which effectively placed a quota on the number of Jews admitted to the university. According to historian David Oshinsky, on writing about Jonas Salk, "Most of the surrounding medical schools (Cornell, Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Yale) had rigid quotas in place. In 1935…

Someone should add this shameful piece to the Harvard wikipedia page as a main section. History will repeat itself if they hide it. I learned of this recently, the President of the college said something along the lines of if we accept x amount of Jewish people then other people won't want to come to the college anymore. Disgusting.

I'm not a conservative, but I agree with this piece by the American Conservative: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of...

Notice how Jewish admissions tanked after the college found a socially acceptable anti-semitic policy.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#448

Post by dartdartdart »

devmunchies wrote: post #382
fortran77 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They had similar quotas to keep Jews out several generations ago. > Certain private universities, most notably Harvard, introduced policies which effectively placed a quota on the number of Jews admitted to the university. According to historian David Oshinsky, on writing about Jonas Salk, "Most of the surrounding medical schools (Cornell, Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Yale) had rigid quotas in place. In 1935…

Yeah but not anymore. There is a higher jewish population at harvard (~28%) than non-jewish whites (~22%) despite non-jewish whites making up 60% of the population of the US and jews making up less than 2% of the population. No skin off my nose since I went to a mormon school in Utah. There is clearly an anti-white, anti-asian agenda at these top schools now.

Anti-asian for sure, probably not as much anti-white since white applicants can get lower academic scores than Asian people and still get accepted. Discriminating against a minority that makes up only 5% of the population is ridiculous.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#449

Post by [deleted] »

viklove wrote: post #288
Pfhreak wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard has 2400 professors and admits about 6000 students each year. Each professor might have a child that is at college age, but most won't. And parental admittance isn't a guarantee. We're talking about a negligible number of students on this path weighed against the employee happiness and retention.

We're talking about someone getting something they don't deserve due to their birth alone. That kind of injustice doesn't last long in society without someone calling it out.

[deleted]

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#450

Post by treis »

rococode wrote: post #427
treis wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> top Ivies as rich kid schools They're definitely that as well. Everyone that gets into Harvard is very talented, but the general groups of differentiation on top of that I see is: (1) Rich kids who's parents can buy them opportunity, bribe the school with donations, and legacies. (2) White/Asians from modest backgrounds that are "holy shit" levels of exceptional. (3) Other minorities that are exceptional but more o…

Fair enough, that breakdown sounds about right to me. Though it's important to note that "rich kids" here means really super rich. I recall once hearing some admissions person half-jokingly say that they don't even notice donations under $10m. Which kind of raises the question, if the kid's family is contributing that much to the school, and part of the value for regular folks going to these schools is the opportunit…

Maybe we should just go back to divine right kings and cut out Harvard as the middleman.

Seriously, though, it is a complicated problem. Elites are going to get a leg up in any system. It's just a bad look when you're giving one group advantages because they are supposedly disadvantaged while also giving a leg up to the super privileged.

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