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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

#621

Post by 30829984 »

TimPC wrote: post #612

The SAT being a help to low-income students shows how messed up the US high school system is. Normally standardized tests hurt low-income students because they require extra-curricular resources to do well on. In the US they hurt poor students less because the GPA system is so badly broken. AP courses are not offered in the poorest schools but offer such large bonuses to GPA that a 4.0 GPA is considered very poor for…

> A student can literally have a perfect GPA in the best courses offered by their school and be considered a very poor applicant academically.

Do you have a source for this?

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

#622

Post by wkrause »

lightup wrote: post #566
gourabmi wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. How many universities did he apply to ? How many accepts/ rejects from that pool?

He applied to [redacted] State, Rice, UNC, Duke, and U of MN - Twin Cities. Accepted at [redacted] State (they have a formula for everyone). He also got their highest out of state "scholarship" - which is more like a break on out of state tuition - no reciprocity with MN. No word from Duke yet but that probably won't happen either. Complete disaster for his future and really a shot to his otherwise happy and optimist…

I can only imagine how upsetting this must be for you and your family. I just hope that after you’ve had some time to process, that your son finds a way forward that brings him closer to the future he wants for himself. Just a bit of unsolicited advice from an internet stranger, but describing the situation as a “complete disaster for his future”, even if not expressed directly to your son, runs the risk of becoming a self fulfilling prophecy. Transfers, grad school, good job placements/pivots, a gap year, are all options.

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

#623

Post by blip54321 »

peter303 wrote: post #562

MIT grad here. The achievement tests are more of a counter-indicator If you score under 700 on either test, you probably cant handle the coursework. The tests only test a 10th grade level. I likely would not get into MIT this decade this decade with my test score 1480.

Yeah.... no.

Number of stupid mistakes on a test is not indicative of success at MIT. I was lucky in that I test well from having competed in different math contests, but I don't confuse that with being better. If I didn't compete in those, I would have been no less qualified.

The article is spot-on. MIT ignores test scores above some threshold. That's a reasonable way to go.

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

#624

Post by david927 »

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.

Yeah, there's some truth to that because she applied to Oxford earlier this year, before she got the SAT results and she got to the interview having passed the academic requirements with mainly the five APs of 5. Still, I think the SAT results proved it to her in a way that wasn't ambiguous.

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

#625

Post by SeanLuke »

lightup wrote: post #566
gourabmi wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. How many universities did he apply to ? How many accepts/ rejects from that pool?

He applied to [redacted] State, Rice, UNC, Duke, and U of MN - Twin Cities. Accepted at [redacted] State (they have a formula for everyone). He also got their highest out of state "scholarship" - which is more like a break on out of state tuition - no reciprocity with MN. No word from Duke yet but that probably won't happen either. Complete disaster for his future and really a shot to his otherwise happy and optimist…

If his acceptance to Iowa State as a complete disaster, why would he apply there?

Iowa State is quite a good school. BTW, it's the home of one of the first computers in history, the ABC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff%E2%80%93Berry_comput...) Surely he'll do well there.

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

#626

Post by lliamander »

jerojero wrote: post #575
lliamander wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds nice. Those other things are great, but have little value in terms of academic success. I think that for people who do poorly in academics but well in those other areas should have other avenues of advancing themselves rather than being forced through the college funnel.

It could be nice if access to education is equitable. In chile we also have grades + standardized test + ranking (your position versus your cohort). But the top universities are filled with the top alumni from expensive private schools because they are usually 1. given inflated grades 2. trained to perform well on standardized tests (in their own schools, theyre rich so they can afford this). If you look at OECD stat…

At least here in the US, test prep isn't actually effective at increasing test scores. The SATs were introduced in order to allow kids of lesser economic backgrounds to get access to prestigious colleges without having to go to expensive preparatory schools. And they have been largely successful in that regard.

The problem in the US is that, for political reasons, colleges have been trying to get away from standardized tests.

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

#627

Post by alerighi »

flatiron wrote: post #99
solveit wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that calculus is essential in discrete maths, but ML is not essential in Computer Science.

professional developer for close to 20 years, never used calculus. but i also a dumb java on the backend javascript on the front end web jockey.

To be a developer you don't even need to go to university. I know a lot of valid developers with a technical high school diploma, and I see that most of the time are better than a lot of people with a degree (or even a master degree).

To this days to be a developer university must be seen just as something extra that you do if you want to occupy positions that goes beyond being a simple programmer.

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

#628

Post by blip54321 »

uwuemu wrote: post #90
Animats wrote: post #20

All MIT students, regardless of intended major, must pass two semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based physics, as part of our General Institute Requirements. ... There is no path through MIT that does not rest on a rigorous foundation in mathematics, and we need to be sure our students are ready for that as soon as they arrive. For a period in the 1980s-1990s, you could argue that calculus was not…

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…

If your goal is to be a code monkey writing database-backed web applications, MIT is probably a very expensive way to get there.

The goal of the degree is to prepare people for data analysis, machine vision, 3d graphics, ML, signal processing, and similar. If you're not into that, going to MIT is wasteful for everyone involved.

That's not elitism talking; that's just the nature of MIT. Other schools aren't like that. For example, if you want to do a startup around a database-backed web application, Stanford is a fine choice. I'm not arguing Stanford is either better or worse; it's just a little bit less academic and little bit more entrepreneurial. There are other schools which emphasize other things. Harvard or Yale will move you more into the class of powerful people. Etc.

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

#629

Post by pcurve »

lightup wrote: post #566
gourabmi wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. How many universities did he apply to ? How many accepts/ rejects from that pool?

He applied to [redacted] State, Rice, UNC, Duke, and U of MN - Twin Cities. Accepted at [redacted] State (they have a formula for everyone). He also got their highest out of state "scholarship" - which is more like a break on out of state tuition - no reciprocity with MN. No word from Duke yet but that probably won't happen either. Complete disaster for his future and really a shot to his otherwise happy and optimist…

U MN has acceptance rate of 70%. Your son is probably more brilliant than most people who go to U MN. The hell with them and their shitty admission process. They don't deserve him.

Like others have said, he should re-apply / transfer. I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but this might actually be blessing in disguise because many kids don't get to experience setback in life until too late.

Yet, this one is something he can easily overcome because he's brilliant and has supportive family. He just got super unlucky. Just need to play the game one more time to win.

Best of luck.

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

#630

Post by orzig »

linksnapzz wrote: post #598
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to high school in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and almost all of the top academic students in my class were first or second generation immigrants (mostly Indian) that had no interest in extra-curricular activities like sports, band, choir, or really anything. It's important that people, especially immigrants, can get into these schools based solely on their test scores and not have to do any of the other trivial…

If you recast your civilization as simply the sum total of the economic activity generated by fungible worker-units, that's the sort of thing you get. A giant. somewhat dilapidated luxury shopping mall with a military attached.

There are a lot of negative things that one can imply about America, so I'm surprised that you reached for 'boring'. I don't even know what source to cite, but it seems self-evident that Americans care passionately about causes besides economic efficiency, for better or worse.

Trying to find some objective ground for discussion, I'll take the bait on your specific analogy: Americans are spending progressively less time in shopping malls[1] and the military[2].

[1] https://www.jeremykisner.com/shopping-malls-will-they-become... [2] https://www.newsmax.com/us/army-recruitment-reduction-milita...

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