I've said this before: read the small print. The SAT (or similar) is no longer required to become admitted to Good School(tm). The donor class that subsidizes those without other means to attend the Good School(tm) have been explicit in their contracts: They award on test scores. Has the SAT (or similar) really become not necessary?
Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
451–460 of 684 posts
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
>These schools are no longer about providing an elite education to talented students who want to get ahead. This is the arbitrage opportunity for lower-ability legacy students. If the schools provided elite educations, they would chew up and spit out lazy rich kids (and probably generate parental acrimony toward the schools in the process, weakening the donor connections.) As affirmative action of all shapes and size…
> arbitrage opportunity for lower-ability legacy students Is that generally true or is that a stereotype? Legacy students also had a higher average SAT score than non-legacy students, at 1523 for legacy students and 1491 for non-legacy students. [1] [1]: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/9/8/2025-freshman-su...
First, if that number could be read directly as a refutation of my hypothesis, it would be tied, rather than showing an advantage to the legacy students.
Now, a few guesses: first, to the extent that affirmative action is even partially successful in targeting disadvantaged groups, affirmative action students should be less likely to be legacy, meaning that applications of legacy students should at least reflect a numerical superiority consistent with the strength of the affirmative action bias. Second, I will say that from personal experience I valued, more highly than was deserved, the schools that my parents attended; in this way those schools were the beneficiaries of highly effective advertising, through my parents, that made me more focused on those particular schools than they deserved (so much so that two of the three were two of the four schools I intended to apply to.) The aggregate outcome of that effect across all legacy applicants should be a higher-than-usual applicant quality in the pool of legacy students.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#453Ivys further cementing their role as champions of inequality.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the data supports this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit... I do think it's true that Caltech students are all very passionate about STEM, so the average family wealth is less apparent.
> the data Keep in mind that I attended in the 70s. Nothing stays the same. I have little idea if Caltech is the same today as then, and rather doubt it. One obvious change is their mission statement has changed drastically. In the 1978 "Caltech Information for Students" pg 105 it says simply: > The primary purpose of the undergraduate school of the California Institute of Technology, as stated by the Trustees, is "t…
>Keep in mind that I attended in the 70s. Nothing stays the same. I have little idea if Caltech is the same today as then, and rather doubt it.
Late 60s, Page, for me. I was lower middle class, which seemed to be the great majority. I recall only one House contemporary who was from serious wealth. Would never have known but for developing a friendship. As you say, I doubt things are similar today.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#455The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…
I have a really hard time believing this is being actively driven by collusion among rich families who know they could game non-SAT metrics. It would require a huge organizational effort, and for what? It's still not going to be a sure thing to get their kids in, there's gonna be even more randomness in the process after this change than there is now. And sending your kids to elite an school doesn't even buy them that much anyway if you're already rich & influential, you can pull strings to get them a job after they graduate from a mediocre school.
It's much easier to believe that this is being driven by college administrators who know that the way to advance their careers in the current climate is by passing radical social justice changes, and this particular idea is simply an organically popular fad among social justice influencers so it's the one they've latched onto.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I still don’t see how it’s discrimination against White students. This actually looks more like discrimination against Asians, with Whites being the biggest beneficiary of the discrimination based on the numbers. Because you are looking at it through the lens of total student makeup of certain top universities. If Whites need 100 points higher on SAT than some others, then Whites are being discriminated against. Th…
> If you look at the overall college system, there's something like 35% of undergrads that are Black/Hispanic and 5% for Asian so in the overall system Whites net benefit more from no discrimination than Asians do. I don't understand this. The vast majority of colleges are uncompetitive. If you apply and can afford it, you get in. Affirmative action is only relevant at competitive colleges. For example, at the totali…
> I just think the AA narrative that it is Blacks that took that Asian kid/s seat is misplaced -- it was more likely the White kid who took their seat.
And at the schools that are very good the Asians that couldn't get into the best ones are taking those spots from others. But you've excluded those colleges from your calculus for some reason.
People generally apply to several schools and may not get accepted to all of them, majors have limited number of spots, scholarship are limited, and so on. If the College Board subtracts 100 from every White person's score they'll apply to or get accepted to lower choice colleges, and this is effectively what race-based affirmative action is doing.
When you have systemic discrimination like affirmative action the whole system is affected. It seems like you don't believe race-based affirmative action causing White kids to get accepted to their 3rd choice instead of their 2nd is fine since you're pretending it doesn't happen.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
That public funds can go to private schools like Harvard is such a joke.
Okay. Why? Some of the public funds come by way of Pell Grants. What's so terrible about poor kids getting a top-tier education? Other mechanisms are research grants. You don't think it's in the public's interest to incentivize graduate students at top institutions to do socially beneficial research? Help me understand what your objection is to federal policy, and what you wish federal policy were instead.
Harvard has an endowment worth more than $50B. Harvard grads are the ruling class of our nation, and their system of legacy admissions mean it’s essentially a hereditary system of nobility. This endowment isn’t taxed, and generates huge returns. Its one thing to defend poor kids getting a leg up with federal grants, but I’m not sure the ones who pay for it are the same ones who benefit, and the system seems to be enormously profitable for the private universities.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
40% for meritocratic entrance is more than twice what is at elite schools in the US. Maybe ambitious Americans should move to India for a fairer chance. At most US elite schools, less than 20 percent is for “non-reserved” seats. Elite schools reserve seats for sports teams (affirmative action for rich white elites with “sports” like fencing and rowing), legacies (affirmative action for rich white elites), related to…
> So it is a brilliant way to use regular affirmative action for Blacks as a weapon to ensure that rich white elites always win and do not compete with the “deplorable” poorer whites, the Asians and immigrants. I just realized that there are more Appalachians in America than Asian Americans. But how many people have you run into in an elite school with an Appalachian accent? (Or a southern or mid-atlantic, or other l…
[deleted]
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is kind of a racist against whites who I think are used as a scapegoat no matter what. In my experience, those sports teams you are talking about are filled up with international and Asian students[1][2]. The dumb white elite student and the extremely talented, poor Asian student stereotypes are not true in my opinion. Maybe they were in the past. Even the SAT score can be gamed.[3] I think pretty much every adm…
This particular example is just not representative. It does "benefit" whites who are apparently 83% of the athletic quota. The graph is just terribly made. We need not blame or scapegoat whites but at the same time acknowledge that they are the beneficiary https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/9/8/2025-freshman-su...
As a contrast, this points out that Asians disproportionately were affected by Stanford's decision to cut varsity sports.[1] This resonates with the experience I have had.
I don't know if whites are generally the beneficiary of student athletic admissions policies at all elite schools although it is complicated because of things like decades old sports from before diversity was a concern and team size. I don't see Harvard cutting long successful teams just to appease non white people but then again they probably would. Also things like the men's football team have a very large roster of 100+ people.
[1]: https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/27/varsity-cuts-challengin...
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#460As an Asian person, I think it's a cultural thing. There is this old joke about how even if you are a one-in-a-million person, there are still 8000 of "you"s to choose from; how does one chose who to pick, if there aren't positions for all of them? So how do you make it "fair"? Since of the number of seats are limited, so imagine if the cut-off for the last seat is for someone who is in the 90.3765335th percentile, l…
I come from a poor Asian immigrant family, and this SAT shit seems wild. My parents always told me that America is an easy country to succeed in. Just do decently in school, ace the SAT, and boom full ride to a upper middle class life, no matter the background. Its proven pretty true so far.
[deleted]