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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

#441

Post by MiroF »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #413
MiroF wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd expect that most students who will be able to survive at MIT can make the SAT threshold with no gaming of the test and no test prep other than maybe doing one or two free sample tests. Eh, not so sure. The "threshold", if we really trust that they do threshold and don't consider overperformance beyond that threshold (something I am skeptical of), is likely quite high.

The MIT threshold is 800 minus noise. So MIT can't consider overperformance on the SAT (math section) because the test is designed to make students indistinguishable at the top. All it does is help them weed out the chaff who won't be able to handle the mandatory math and physics classes that all students have to pass.

I don't know what "800 minus noise" means. All 800s is something only about 500 people achieve a year, and not all of them are going to MIT.

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

#442

Post by vxNsr »

david927 wrote: post #329
opportune wrote: post #211

I am so happy to see this. I went to high school in a bit of a backwater in the US. People don’t really go to selective colleges or care much about applying. It was only doing very well on standardized tests and spending time on the internet looking for info about colleges that led me to believe I could go to one of these places. I got into several and attended one, and I believe it greatly positively changed my life…

Similar opinion and story. We live in Boise, Idaho and my daughter does a hybrid model of home school and high school. She knew she got top grades and 5's on all her APs but it didn't give her any idea of where she sat, nationally. She was planning on going to art school until a year ago, when she sat for her first standardized test, the PSAT. She saw the score, which was national merit range and realized that she sh…

Arguably 5s on her APs tells her where she sat nationally, I was under the impression that AP tests were the same across the board, while they don’t rank you against other students the test is made to be just as difficult for the top elite college prep private school students as it is for the inner city public school students. The assumption being the AP class material is the same.

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

#443

Post by d110af5ccf »

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?

Because it's only de facto the primary method, as evidenced by MIT dropping it for a while there. They didn't need government permission to do that. Even public universities here generally have a high degree of autonomy regarding such things.

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

#444

Post by vmception »

bee_rider wrote: post #420
vmception wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and this is why trade schools like coding bootcamps are relevant at all people aren't going to school to learn computer science, they are going to school to get a job and be effective in that field, but the universities shouldn't feel obligated to adjust to that since they've been for the privileged folks who are actually there to pursue education for the sake of higher learning for nearly 200 years (or much longer).…

Also community colleges. We should fund community colleges to the point where bootcamps cease to exist.

Maybe, I think they serve different niches

But don't have to

Community colleges should have electives and tracks that are similar to trade schools: getting you up to speed on whats relevant right now

But as long as they are pushing towards associates degrees and transferable credits to universities I think the utility is less optimal for people looking to be efficient at a job

(Also employers should be training people for what they actually need too, sparing us all from imagining that the Computer Science major is necessary to synthesize better outcomes in unknown situations)

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

#445

Post by d110af5ccf »

orangepurple wrote: post #438
verve_rat wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I really hate this meme. The federal reserve is very much under the purview of the legislature. If the legislature isn't choosing to act in the way you would like, well, then that's a completely separate complaint. Implying that the federal reserve is somehow independent from the government is dishonest.

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

#446

Post by [deleted] »

opportune wrote: post #373
ceeplusplus wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> huge slap in the face to social mobility out of the middle class No, it was an intentional move to restrict the number of Asians admitted because despite their best efforts to hide it, prestigious universities' data showed systemic discrimination against Asians in the admissions process (see: SFFA vs Harvard). Removing the SAT removes some of the data that opponents can use to sue them. One of the reasons the UC re…

Sure, I think that’s in many ways covered by what I mean about middle class mobility. Given that Asians are less likely to be legacies and dont benefit from Affirmative Action, pretty much all their “slots” come out of the high-achieving-middle-class bucket

[deleted]

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

#447

Post by rayiner »

I don't think people appreciate the radical nature of the attacks on standardized testing. Standardized tests have been critical to higher education and the professions for almost a century. Virtually everyone in an elite academic, government, scientific, legal, medical, or financial role attained that role based, in part, on the SAT and similar exams like the LSAT or MCAT. Not only them, but everyone who taught and mentored them, and everyone who taught and mentored those people. If the SAT is not predictive, as some claim, we've been selecting our elites and professionals the wrong way for three generations.

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

#449

Post by achandlerwhite »

orangepurple wrote: post #438
verve_rat wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You think the Board of Governors is meaningless? Do you realize the Fed turns over interest it earns to the US Treasury? What an odd thing to bring up in this context.

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

#450

Post by danans »

rafale wrote: post #393

Unpopular opinion: SAT/ACT correlates with X where X = IQ × work ethic

That opinion is unpopular because it is incomplete. SAT/ACT scores correlate with lots of things, not just IQ and work ethic.

Another huge correlation is with family income:

https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2021/9/28/is-in....

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