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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

#631

Post by ryzvonusef »

hgomersall wrote: post #475
ryzvonusef wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the point of standardized tests, is from what I understand, getting some sort of "objective" ranking, not for the purpose of intelligence per se, but to have a number so that when there is a cutoff, no one complains because everyone had ( ceteris paribas ) had an equal chance of getting in that cut-off, if they had worked hard enough. In countries like India, the test like JEE are really absurd, because the competiti…

> but in the end, it's just a way to rank "fairly" to create cut-off, to look too deeply into it is not worth it, that's the job for your regular school education. Except, presumably, when there are debates about how the tests benefit or not one particular cohort?

Do they really? As compared to any other system?

Tests seem to be the cheapest, timely (OCR-marked tests can be marked quickly) and most equitable (in comparative terms, not absolute terms) way to gauge people when you have a lot of them.

Any other methods increases cost and time, and introduces subjectivity, which creates issues of its own.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#632

Post by WalterBright »

tomcam wrote: post #625
WalterBright wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the 70s, if you gamed your way into admission at Caltech by doing test prep, coaching, having someone else do your application essays, etc., you were going to be sorry. Because you would find it impossible to do the work required. Caltech did a good job of screening because the ones they admitted could do the work (though a lot dropped out simply because they didn't want to work). But there were a few tha…

> Being around people like that was just amazing RIP. He probably say the same about you

I doubt it. I was just the annoying freshman next door. He was nice to me (and to everybody) but I wasn't in his circle of confidants.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#633

Post by BurdensomeCount »

onetimeusename wrote: post #441
QuarterReptile wrote: post #427

Earlier 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...

Now remove the affirmative action portion of the non-legacy students and compare numbers again.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#634

Post by MrMan »

csa wrote: post #546
Jiro wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First, using Harvard as an example, 25-28% or so of the entering class is Asian. Given that Asians-Americans are about 6% of the US, this hardly smacks of systemic racism. Something doesn’t add up with this argument. There's a larger percentage than the whole population of the US, but a smaller percentage than the percentage who apply and have similar qualifications to accepted students who aren't Asian. What you're…

> What you're seeing is that Asian-Americans are better qualified, but not enough of them are accepted as one would expect from being better qualified. Please reread my entire comment. I covered your thesis, and I am fairly certain that it is an inappropriate characterization of the reality. Specifically, every study I have seen that makes this claim determines that Asians are “more qualified” based exclusively on a…

this is chilling. thank you I guess for completely dropping any pretenses here. this system of well-roundedness was, as other people have alluded previously, invented to exclude high achieving ethnic groups ( as per the perception of the in-group ) from overrunning elite institutions of learning. this system is being employed to cap Asian admissions.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#635

Post by [deleted] »

freework wrote: post #46
wunderland wrote: post #27

All of this debate about what measures should be used to gatekeep higher education ignore that the US system is only loosely about teaching students; the goal of an American university degree is class differentiation. There is not a shortage of textbooks or qualified teachers who could explain calculus or history or economics. As a society, the could easily produce far more educated people (and for a lower cost), but…

I feel the same way. Imagine if Harvard had the ability to enroll one billion students per year. There would be no need to use either grades, SAT score, personal essays or anything else to reject students. They would be able to accept everybody, and then everybody could get an elite education and society would be so much better off. But that would never happen. The whole point of ivy league is that they are exclusive…

[deleted]

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#636

Post by csomar »

faeriechangling wrote: post #583
markdown wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would hope so. Ideally, the people of the future will have progressed beyond the relative savagery of me and my peers and look upon us with disdain. Perhaps for how much I enjoy a good steak, or for the genital mutilation of our boys.

Pet ownership is my favourite example of what will be seen as immoral in the future.

We have a dog and had cats. I have pet friends. They are free to leave as they wish. The cat left and then came back with kids. Then they left but some will come back and go. The dog is still there, doesn't seem so enthusiastic about going too far from the house.

And yes. I think slaving/caging an animal is brutal. But many animals will happily have your company.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#637

Post by throwaway1851 »

cma wrote: post #185
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.” >…

> Standardized test scores are the hardest metric to game Learning disabilities give unlimited time on the tests. That means you can slowly use brute force on the math section to check each alternative one by one instead of needing to be good at other techniques. Harvard had something like 25% of admitted students do this. Does it sound plausible that 25% of Harvard students need unlimited time on the test due to a l…

I actually think this suggests it would be beneficial to just eliminate time limits on standardized tests. There is no inherent need to make time pressure the hard part of the exam. I’ve always thought it reflects a kind of laziness in the test design, and establishes a metric (thinking fast/under pressure) that isn’t really well aligned with the traits that help the most in real academic pursuits.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#638

Post by msrenee »

tomcam wrote: post #626
msrenee wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's happening to lower middle class kids in Iowa? I'm honestly just confused here. To my knowledge, they're getting decent lower middle class jobs and doing fine. Maybe going off to college and moving to the coast, probably not unless they want to leave. I don't think of that particular group of individuals as disadvantaged, at least not in the context of getting into a good college.

Yeah Iowa is getting totally jacked in this thread.

People on the coasts and even in the big cities in the Midwest just can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that a lot of us wouldn't be willing to live in New York City or California for all the money in the world. It's not that one lifestyle is inherently better. People have different preferences and it's pretty condescending to think that folks who live in the great plains and don't go to the big name schools are only in that situation for lack of opportunity.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#639

Post by OOPMan »

They dropped the passing grade in South African high schools a decade or so back (maybe a bit more or less, longer after I exited the system in 2001).

Wouldn't you know it, graduating more students with terrible grades didn't magically lead to more capable working or studying adults.

It almost like pushing people through who are struggling to cope doesn't help them...

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#640

Post by red-iron-pine »

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)

explain
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