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Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

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

#651

Post by strikelaserclaw »

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…

Complete disaster for his future? I don't think so, just a slight delay. I've had many setbacks in my life, i've known people in Asia who majorly messed up an exam they'd been preparing their entire life for, they just attempted it next year, and they did fine. If you have the brains to score a 35 on the ACT with no prep, then you really shouldn't have much problems in life if you put effort and deal with setbacks.

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

#652

Post by runarberg »

WalterBright wrote: post #288
runarberg wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intention is irrelevant, the outcome is the same. A parent driving a kid to lacrosse practice every Wednesdays and Fridays shows as much potential to accomplishments as a parent asking their kid to help them with their under the table car mechanic job every weekend. Yet I bet only the former is evaluated as significant. I wonder why that is.

> Yet I bet only the former is evaluated as significant. Are you sure about that, especially for an engineering school like Caltech or MIT? I didn't play lacrosse, football, row, track, baseball, swimming, yachting, nope nope nope.

And was your extra-curricular activity both broadly available to lower class students (in time, cost, culturally, etc.) and a significant contributor to your acceptance?

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

#653

Post by [deleted] »

thehappypm wrote: post #228
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…

This wasn’t my path, but many of my peers where I went to college had a similar type of story. They came from very poor areas like rural Texas or rural Georgia, and they got into engineering after getting into things like Lego sets and video games. They got great at math because it intrigued them even in their subpar schools. Aced the math SAT and then doors opened for them. I’d hate to see that door close.

[deleted]

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

#654

Post by harry8 »

orzig wrote: post #630
linksnapzz wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ti…

>Americans are spending progressively less time in shopping malls[1] and the military[2].

[1] Are Amazon, ebay et al shopping malls?

Given healthcare and college tuition being paid by the state I think you might see [2] drop very, very fast and far. I've heard the argument made that this was why the establishment corrupt of Washington united so cohesively against Bernie.

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

#655

Post by ashtonkem »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #638
muh_gradle wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time seeing US standardized testing as "better." All of my Korean peers who have studied for the CSAT or Suneung laugh at how easy the SAT/ACT math section is in comparison. K-12 education in the US is years behind at this point from many Asian countries. The fact that we are debating whether standardized testing for colleges and prestigious high schools (Lowell in SF, Stuyvesant in NYC, etc) should be…

I always wonder why these asian countries aren't doing laps around USA or other western countries if they were learning calculus in pre school.

Probably because high levels of math skill don’t translate to economic success. Analytical thinking is a good skill that math can teach you, but there is more than one path to that. In the context of a college education the ability to write clearly and persuasively is far more an important skill to learn.

As someone with a degree in math, I’ve always found the monomaniacal focus on how America is “behind” on math education quite baffling. Do people really thinking calculus skill is necessary to succeed?

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

#656

Post by dangle1 »

jacobr1 wrote: post #573
dangle1 wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can relate, and I appreciated the doors the PSAT and SAT opened for me. OTOH, I test higher than my actual abilities in my opinion, and that was a relatively unfair advantage the test gave me.

What does testing higher than one's ability actually mean? I'm guessing either you think the test is an imperfect proxy for a different (more important) skill, or otherwise you have imposter syndrome.

Maybe some impostor, but at the time, there was a penalty for guessing. Between my risk-taking personality and the sense that I wasn't going to get out of the minor leagues by watching pitches go by, I 'swung' at every question and apparently got a lot of questions right that I couldn't actually explain why the answer was correct.

Arguably, someone who knew more than I did but was too hesitant to go out on a limb about it should still have gotten a higher score if the test is designed to assess knowledge.

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

#657

Post by dahfizz »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #638
muh_gradle wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time seeing US standardized testing as "better." All of my Korean peers who have studied for the CSAT or Suneung laugh at how easy the SAT/ACT math section is in comparison. K-12 education in the US is years behind at this point from many Asian countries. The fact that we are debating whether standardized testing for colleges and prestigious high schools (Lowell in SF, Stuyvesant in NYC, etc) should be…

I always wonder why these asian countries aren't doing laps around USA or other western countries if they were learning calculus in pre school.

They're all too busy studying to run laps around us.

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

#658

Post by whatshisface »

aj7 wrote: post #592
johnnyanmac wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 productive and happy human beings. This change is significant but affects less than one percent of the population each year.. I'm ambivalent because I sympathize with both sides of the equation. One one hand, I have the hindsight now that I didn't at 18 to realize that…

Yes, prestigious schools open a huge number of doors. But more importantly, they teach elite mannerisms, standards and beliefs, and prejudices. If you are not a true genius (true geniuses can always make their way, but they are rare, even at MIT et al), this knowledge is invaluable and irreplaceable. I’ll give you an example from my own career. I went to MIT/Berkeley, SB/PhD. But I practically washed out of grad scho…

What defines true genius?

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

#659

Post by mupuff1234 »

johnaspden wrote: post #351
raunak wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without legacy and the prestige and the entire shebang of old English style college, the Ivy Leagues aren't the Ivy League. I agree with you that eliminating legacy would solve the issue of making the school different - it's never gonna happen though, so there's no point in talking about it honestly. Also yeah, MIT is not a legacy giving school

> shebang of old English style college, the Ivy Leagues aren't the Ivy League I'm not quite sure what this legacy thing is, but I don't think English universities do it. It sounds corrupt to me, and I think it would be a national scandal.

Not sure why down voted, Oxford and Cambridge don't take legacy into account. (Well at least officially)

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

#660

Post by singlow »

dangle1 wrote: post #656
jacobr1 wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does testing higher than one's ability actually mean? I'm guessing either you think the test is an imperfect proxy for a different (more important) skill, or otherwise you have imposter syndrome.

Maybe some impostor, but at the time, there was a penalty for guessing. Between my risk-taking personality and the sense that I wasn't going to get out of the minor leagues by watching pitches go by, I 'swung' at every question and apparently got a lot of questions right that I couldn't actually explain why the answer was correct. Arguably, someone who knew more than I did but was too hesitant to go out on a limb abo…

If your intuition allowed you to guess with a high enough success rate that it overcame the penalty then it is that intuition that gave you an advantage. You didn't just get lucky.
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