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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

#471

Post by cwp »

paxys wrote: post #273
uwuemu wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue exactly otherwise... with the advent of the web platform and frameworks like .net, the vast majority (and I mean like 95%) of developers will never touch anything ML related in their careers. I mean, I get that this is MIT and many of their students will end up working with ML, but applying that globally to CS is nonsense. Back when I was studying CS (cze) more than a decade ago, we had to pass linear a…

This is exactly why so many people (myself included) advocate for a pure "software engineering" degree at more universities. Let people who are interested study graph theory, combinatorics, linear algebra, advanced probability and statistics and whatever else. For the rest, provide a path to be ready for an industry job building websites and applications, which is what 90% of graduates will end up doing. Every other…

If all you're interested in is getting a good job, you don't need a degree at all. The information is available for free in a variety of presentations and formats. The source code to just about all the software you'll use is available for free as are all the tools. You don't even need a bootcamp, just time and energy.

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

#472

Post by WalterBright »

KMag wrote: post #292
WalterBright wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as extra-curricular activities go, like sports, etc., those aren't really the point. The point is for the candidate to demonstrate that they can accomplish significant things other than academics. This can be anything. For me, I didn't do sports, or any school extracurriculars. What I did do was run a small business (paper route), used the money to fund my hotrodding efforts, was an Eagle scout (back in the da…

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…

I, too, had a disastrous freshman year due to my attempts to laze through it like I had all through public school. Fortunately, I was able to change before I was forced out.

I also got my comeuppance about being "smart".

At the time, being an Eagle wasn't cool anymore, either, and I never talked about it. I was reluctant to even mention it here. Also, these days, it seems that being an Eagle is a project for dad, while the kid is along for the ride. My parents had zero involvement with scouting.

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

#473

Post by jimmaswell »

crdrost wrote: post #385
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…

They might be the least gameable, but this is kind of a “bare minimum” for diversity/equity practices. It is the cheapest way to get little bit of reliable signal. Because let's be clear about the standardized test situation. Test takers had time to take the test, they weren't doing work on the side for their parents instead to make ends meet. They had transportation to the test location, they were able to pay the fe…

> Standardized tests themselves have mostly tested not IQ or domain knowledge, but how anxious you are taking tests.

So you really think a completely unstudied person off the street with a sedative would get a better score than someone who does KhanAcademy in their free time?

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

#474

Post by ajsnigrutin »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #191

Definitely for the best. Standardized testing was pretty much the only reason I and many other working class folks I know could get into good schools -- I was never going to do a million side activities, and my summers were spent working, not building my academic resume. Of course the real tragedy is that we fixate so much on college, even prestigious ones, at all given how unnecessary they are for making people into…

I live in slovenia, and the system is pretty much unchanged from the socialist times.... standardized testing + grades are used to get entry into colleges (and previously high schools). No resumes, no diversity/affirmative actions, clubs, volounteering etc... just grades+results.

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

#475

Post by [deleted] »

nemo44x wrote: post #340
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when you're doing something that is politically/ideologically unpopular or in the minority you tend to need to have bulletproof justification if you want to get away with it. Then again, with these sorts of things you can never be sure how much the tail wags the dog.

> Yeah, when you're doing something that is politically/ideologically unpopular or in the minority I don't think they are though. I think there would be massively popular and wide support for this. You're seeing it in SF right now as the school board is being overthrown for trying to ruin the school system in the name of "equity" or some other garbage reason. The people finally found out and organized. All this woke…

[deleted]

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

#476

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#477

Post by gpt5 »

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 really weird to see this as the top comment.

Is there evidence physical access to the test center still a problem today (small or large)?

Is SAT worse than other criteria (such as extra-curriculum achievements) when looking at those poor suburbun middle of nowhere students? i.e. even in this example, did SAT actually made thing worse for those people when comparing against the alternative.

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

#478

Post by davesque »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #191

Definitely for the best. Standardized testing was pretty much the only reason I and many other working class folks I know could get into good schools -- I was never going to do a million side activities, and my summers were spent working, not building my academic resume. Of course the real tragedy is that we fixate so much on college, even prestigious ones, at all given how unnecessary they are for making people into…

> Of course the real tragedy is that we fixate so much on college

This is what gets me. The whole concept of college, and especially selective, high profile colleges such as Harvard, MIT, etc., seems antiquated and almost entirely manufactured at this point. It's artificially crafted scarcity designed to create a market and brand. I feel the true, primary function of these institutions is to give the rich and powerful a means to identify each other and their respective pedigrees. Sure, they throw the unwashed a few bones and let them take home some degrees. But what do you actually get for your effort and money? I can't believe the competitiveness is justified by an actual difference in the quality of the experience or the person that results from it.

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

#479

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

rayiner wrote: post #447

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…

> If the SAT is not predictive, as some claim, we've been selecting our elites and professionals the wrong way for three generations.

Yes, and?

The easiest way to understand the shortcomings of these tests (at least their older versions) is to realize that students who use paid SAT/ACT-prep materials and services get higher scores than students who don't. Yes, there are confounding factors, but this fact alone is fairly damning evidence that these tests can be "defeated" using techniques beyond simply learning the things taught in high school. A better-designed test would not yield higher scores to test-takers with more specific knowledge of how the test itself is constructed. (In software terms, think "property based testing" as opposed to "unit test cases written in a predictable manner", with the assumption that your implementation under test has adversarial motives to obtain passing builds.)

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

#480

Post by kragen »

vxNsr wrote: post #442
david927 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure but 38% of AP Calculus BC takers get a 5 so it doesn't give you much information.
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