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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

#491

Post by [deleted] »

adrr wrote: post #189
mrangle wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an urban myth perpetuated by people interested in generalized grievance. At least from the period I attended prep school, and beyond. From the mid-1990's. Almost in-total, the "old boys" applicants are not under-qualified. When compared to almost any kid that attended lesser secondary schools than the privileged kid attended, on average. These kids have almost always proven themselves in elite educational envi…

Is it an urban myth? We can look at former presidents like George who attended Yale with a 1200 SAT and a 2.5 HS GPA.

[deleted]

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#492

Post by [deleted] »

tekla wrote: post #129
ryzvonusef wrote: post #45

As 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]

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#493

Post by pjscott »

goosedragons wrote: post #14
sandworm101 wrote: post #5

Standardized tests remain the only criteria totally in the control of the student. You can study for them and objectively do better, become a better applicant. Everthing else is either circumstantial or based in the opinion of others, mostly highschool teachers. If i had to rely on my highschool teachers' opinion of me i would not have ever gone to university let alone have won scholarships. Standardized testing allo…

Who grades the standardized tests? Besides multiple choice there's subjectivity in grading. Even with multiple choice there's some subjectivity for questions like "What's the best word choice". Why were teachers biased against you?

I remember taking the SAT and ACT, and didn't notice any multiple-choice question which didn't have exactly one right answer and three unambiguously wrong answers. They put actual effort into making sure this is the case.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#494

Post by 2snakes »

moomoo11 wrote: post #473
counters wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What discipline did you study in undergrad? In many majors - or even just in well-taught classes - work outside of lecture or recitation is desi…

To me education is about what you learn. And I’m happy that I aced every single exam and project. Like I mentioned to the other poster, there are people who do all the homework and still fail the class. I aced every single project, midterm, and final. I can understand most topics the first or second time I learn them, and when I don’t I will do some homework. But for the most part I personally didn’t need it and I go…

No doubt school is far more about social signaling than intelligence. For someone like you without the personality trait of conscientiousness (at the time of doing homework), you would have been better served by finding an employer who only cared about an iq test. Another factor is social conformity that employers are looking for.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#495

Post by everybodyknows »

umvi wrote: post #481
WalterBright wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Caltech is very different today than it was 50 years ago. Modern Caltech recently cancelled Robert Millikan (the founder)

Millikan as in the oil drop experiment, foundational to quantum physics?

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#496

Post by zamnos »

pmoriarty wrote: post #218
csa wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trusts are the most common way to do this.

Then any trusts that benefit you should be counted as part of your wealth.

So then the trust doesn't list you as a beneficiary but instead goes through a series of shell corporations that they don't control on paper. With stakes this high - your very child's future, there are always going to be people that are rich enough to break the spirit of the rules.

If it's a small handful of people, there's probably better things for them to spend time on, rather than trying to make an unbeatable system.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#497

Post by nemo44x »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #436
nemo44x wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. It’s a way to “cycle the elites”. A healthy society will always include an elite minority. But to remain healthy there needs to be a way to circulate the elites so that those that should rise have methods to and those that should fall get their spot taken. Trying to engineer this around arbitrary things like sex or race can’t work because those people don’t have what it takes in the end.

> a way to circulate the elites Thr proper terminology is Sovial Mobility > arbitrary things like sex or race can’t work They work as a litmus test-> if you are massively excluding someome, probably something in the process is fucked.

Sure, I’m just using terms that Gaetano Mosca uses when describing elite theory.

As for litmus test, again sure. But accounting for cultural and biological differences matters. There’s a reason Asians are over represented in certain things due to a culture that values education. Or men tending to distribute differently than women. And many other things. It would be naive to believe any difference in outcomes is purely discriminatory. Although of course that can be a factor.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#498

Post by markdown »

umvi wrote: post #481
WalterBright wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Caltech is very different today than it was 50 years ago. Modern Caltech recently cancelled Robert Millikan (the founder)

Looks like he was a rabid racist and eugenecist. Glad to see that modern Caltech has progressed.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#499

Post by analog31 »

rayiner wrote: post #208
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'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…

An amusing contrast, the public high school where my mom taught, had a week off for deer hunting. It was that, or teach to an empty classroom.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#500

Post by tacitusarc »

jlawson wrote: post #431
btilly wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I take offense at this "it is all a matter of opinion and all opinions are equally valid" BS. 1) It is trivially true that if you define your measure right, you can make anyone succeed. For example black people are better at looking like black people. But we try to define "stuff" in a way that correlates with ability to do economically useful tasks. There are excellent reasons to do so. 2) You are ignoring…

>The scientific truth is that we have no data either way that can even begin to address whether one group is innately better than any other. The reason being that we have no way to separate out the impact of racism and history from innate ability. I'm sorry but this is blatantly false. "Innately better" is a vague and inflammatory term, but if you define the measure, we can use straightforward statistical techniques…

All the studies I’ve seen of these attributes fail to control for external factors in a way I find convincing.
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