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Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

robkhenderson.substack.com

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Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#461

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Jensson wrote: post #140
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars. I don’t get where the statement “rich kids don’t test well” actually comes from, and it wasn’t just made up to argue a point. Perhaps if you had state sponsored test prep like in China (you spend the last two years of high school just prepping for the test), but high school isn’t compulsory and many poor kids don’t even attend.

> Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars And that makes them perfect for poor kids who don't have much time or money, they can easily get similar levels of test prep as rich kid with little effort. GPA or extracurriculars however, no chance, those are much more dependent on home environment and wealth.

Agreed except the easily part. You need to even know that you can prep, and have some clue about prepping, along with quiet places at home or a library you can get to to do the work. Let's not make a lot of assumptions here.

The only exception I can think of are the temporarily poor; e.g. refugees from Southeast Asia or Africa whose families were well to do back home and still have that familial knowledge even if they are currently lacking in money.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#462

Post by ryzvonusef »

lordnacho wrote: post #450
ryzvonusef wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't a (limited) exam stress a worthy tradeoff compared to life-time stress from uncertainty of sustenance? Because that's what Asian parents would say, stress a bit now, be sure of an income for a lifetime. obviously, I am not going to discount that stress does not scale well and that for children, who do not have the maturity to deal with it all, exam stress and peer pressure could lead to devasting outcomes... bu…

Yes, that is exactly what they say. I've heard it many times since I am one of those kids. But they don't really think about how to deal with the fallout if things don't go well. I mean sure, tell the kid it's important to do well, but don't put everything on passing the test. I've never heard any strategy for what to do in case it doesn't go well. You'll destroy the kid's confidence and possibly his friendships too…

Because there is no safety net otherwise.

also, wages (and respect) for employees are already limited, and the lower down the "totem" pole you are the worse it gets. parents don't want to imagine such a scenario, even if they have moved to the US where despite everything, things are still much better, minimum wage wise.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#464

Post by seanmcdirmid »

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #141
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars. I don’t get where the statement “rich kids don’t test well” actually comes from, and it wasn’t just made up to argue a point. Perhaps if you had state sponsored test prep like in China (you spend the last two years of high school just prepping for the test), but high school isn’t compulsory and many poor kids don’t even attend.

> Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars All the data shows the exact opposite. Also, it's pretty obvious this is false if you spend 10 seconds thinking about it. You're forced to give the test yourself. Whereas you can easily hire a tutor to read over and "check" (i.e. rewrite) your school essays/homework. Rich kids can also easily get internships/research experience while in HS…

Cram schools exist for a reason. You can get lots of help on the ACT/SATs, heck, they even offer it in China.

Grades and extra circular can be gamed as well, but you have to do a lot more planning ahead of time...like you can't just start 6 months before a test date and maybe try again 6 months after that. You have to start form late elementary school and be consistent up until 12th grade.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#466

Post by moomoo11 »

jcranmer wrote: post #440
moomoo11 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In re to LSAT at least a decade ago your LSAT score meant shit. I’m S Asian, scored 99th percentile 17x, but my GPA was around 3.3 because I think college is a joke when it involves homework. I had never gotten less than a A on midterms and finals, but what I’m trying to say is that GPA and race matters much more. There was a law school acceptance calculator. With my scores and my Asian background, the T14 were eithe…

> Yes I don’t give a shit about homework, I understand the material which is why I’m slaying each test. I hated that about college. We are adults. I’m paying to get an education, why the fuck is homework 20% of the grade? It’s practice, for people who don’t get the material. So what you're admitting is that you are willing to not to do required parts of your job because you don't feel they're important. If you go out…

Homework being worth 20% is dumb for school.

Besides I worked the entire time in college to pay for college. Being penalized because I don’t have time to do homework without which I can’t pay for school helps nobody. I don’t think I ever got anything lower than a B on an exam, and nothing lower than A on a final/midterm/project.

And yeah, homework is for people who need it. Work and school are totally different one you’re learning the other you’re utilizing what you learned. Having homework be worth anything more than maybe 5% is stupid. I’m not getting paid to do homework, in fact I am paying to even learn.

People do homework and still fail. So what’s the point of homework?

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#467

Post by SoftTalker »

nradov wrote: post #312
pmoriarty wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge That's why you have to look at total wealth, not just income... though I'm sure the ultra wealthy will find some way to work around that as well.

As a practical matter how would college admissions departments even try to account for "total wealth"? That number doesn't appear on income tax returns. Applicants could write down any number and there wouldn't be any way to verify it short of a court ordered forensic audit.

You disclose it on FAFSA, which most schools require even to be eligible for non-need-based financial assistance (such as academic scholarships)

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#468

Post by lordnacho »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #435
derbOac wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm familiar with that 30 point differential because it shows up in research. You're right that 30 points isn't that much if you're thinking about the whole distribution, but I guarantee it can be significant around the selection threshold. That threshold might be implicit or explicit, but it's there, and if it's enough to nudge applicants past it, it's significant.

Sure, but having read a large chunk of educational literature I'm not aware of any alternatives with fewer distortions from parental aid. Grades correlate more highly with a good home life than test scores do, for example. As long as we have "prestige" universities there's going to be some form of skills testing, and no one has ever designed an un-gameable test that can be administered nationally. The question we hav…

Would you have some papers I could google, or some keywords to get me started? I'm quite interested in reading those studies.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#469

Post by andrepd »

whack wrote: post #120

The 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've made this proposal several times: judge an applicant by his/her delta relative to their cohort. For example (highly simplified) a kid from a wealthy family in a nice neighbourhood statistically scores 70% on average, if he scores 80 that's a +10. A kid from a poor single-parent household going to a dilapidated school where scores are 40% on average, if he scores 70 that's a +30.

Very rough example but the idea is this. Philosophically/ethically, it seems better. But practically as well: you want to admit the students most likely to excel if given the high quality resources at your university. Among a kid with all the comforts and private tutoring and all that, and a kid who rose way above his shitty lot in life, wouldn't the latter fit that description better?

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#470

Post by yieldcrv »

prpl wrote: post #345
rayiner wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm experiencing this first hand. My family immigrated here from Bangladesh. Unlike much of my family, my dad had a college-degree required job lined up, and we ended up pretty comfortable with him on a GS-scale job and my mom selling furniture. Thanks to the SATs, my brother and I both ended up breaking into industries (banking, law) that until relatively recently were good old boy's clubs. Now that I have kids at i…

Lower middle class (and even uneducated pedigree upper middle class) is where the brutalism is for competitive schools, but lower middle class has state schools (if in California, Cal State schools) or community college- and almost always finishes high school with a middle-of-the-pack education, thanks both to average public scholar and average home lives. So, generally they are fine. I wish the obsession with top-ti…

> I wish the obsession with top-tier colleges would go away.

Until the ceiling of utility goes away the obsession wont go away.

If your goal is to climb the corporate ladder, all schools have nearly the same utility. Maybe industry specific, but I contend that its not different enough.

If your goal is to skip the corporate ladder, only top tier schools get you in the room. And only if the pedigree is used in very specific ways. Still not a silver bullet by any means.

But not being there is basically the same as having no ammunition.

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