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Whites also have lower average scores on them. Lower than Asians and Jews. At the elite level this would make a huge difference. At the state level not at all.
Can we somehow blame this on oppression?
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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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>Removing admission tests was a huge slap in the face to social mobility out of the middle class. To reiterate other commenters, admission tests are the hardest part of the process to game and the least biased towards things like having a tiger parent, while being the most predictive indicator of success in college. Wealthy and well connected people can easily game extracurriculars and essays, and HS grades are vastl…
IMO there is a difference between gaming a test and just getting better at what a test means to cover. For example, programs like Kumon allow students to learn math more rigorously/at a higher level than what they may get exposed to in a classroom. That doesn’t mean they’re gaming the test, they’re just getting a better education. While it’s perhaps unfair that some students don’t get this opportunity, I don’t think…
Back in my day when SAT's were 2400, I heard the swing being a difference of 100 points. Since reverting back to 1600 a 60 point swings sounds proportionately similar to 13 years ago.
Anyways, I think when people mean "gaming the system", they mean test prep classes literally geared towards the SAT and little else. Not practicing calculus to overprepare for the SAT math portion (maybe even using it to validate answers on a lower level), but being told that X is on the test and using older copies of the SAT to practive with. That does start to feel a bit game-y in my eyes. You're not better understanding combinatorial or algebra, you're understanding the pattern that a test has and playing based on that knowledge.
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Yeah, a lot of tests like that are actually testing for memorization, and not problem solving ability.
I don't think the math part of the Gaokao tests memorization. Looking at a sample paper ( https://medium.com/@yujia_jo/2016-jiangsu-gaokao-national-hi... ), it seems like the examination really tests for the ability to do math and problem solve under fairly heavy time pressure (150 minutes total for all questions if you are in the science stream).
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> The notion of a "well rounded student" ... > is a legacy of blue blood WASP culture First of all, I don't know what "blue blood WASP culture" is. Explain that please. Second, there's nothing wrong with expecting students to participate in extra-curricular activities like music and art as a basis for admission. MIT is still going to evaluate those things.
Selecting for students whose parents can afford formal music, art and sport lessons is selecting for wealth. Having extra-curriculars you can document costs money and time. Poor kids are getting 'well rounded' by spending summer break at work, saving enough money to survive the school year.
This is an interesting point: why shouldn't work count towards being well-rounded? If anything, work is much more grounded in reality, and a lot of kids who never had to work in high school and college would come off as out of touch (at least to me, as someone who did work thru high school and college). It would be nice if work experience (even if unrelated to a field) was valued as much as being part of a silly club.
I used to be against standardized tests, but I grew up as a low-income minority in a single-parent household and I ended up getting into good schools pretty much only due to my high test scores, which has been a life changer. Other than test scores, I couldn't afford to do any fancy extra-curriculars. It felt a lot more achievable to know I can change my life if I just focus and do well on a test than it would if I h…
what do you think about people who claim standardized test is systematic racism? standardized test is the only way to measure somebody on their aptitude for doing well like the LSAT. yet somehow asian americans being discriminated at ivy leagues even with good standardized test score is not seen as systematic racism.
They don't measure human potential at Birth and don't try to.
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> The notion of a "well rounded student" ... > is a legacy of blue blood WASP culture First of all, I don't know what "blue blood WASP culture" is. Explain that please. Second, there's nothing wrong with expecting students to participate in extra-curricular activities like music and art as a basis for admission. MIT is still going to evaluate those things.
Selecting for students whose parents can afford formal music, art and sport lessons is selecting for wealth. Having extra-curriculars you can document costs money and time. Poor kids are getting 'well rounded' by spending summer break at work, saving enough money to survive the school year.
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The Indian education system doesn't care about learning at all. It's all about scoring good grades and getting a job at the end. It's quite important as every individual needs to be able support themselves. However, it's really bad for learning. I'm a product of that. I've been struggling a lot with an online course from MIT but at least I'm enjoying learning a lot of stuff as I'm employed now. Physics and Mathematic…
>The Indian education system doesn't care about learning at all. Honestly, I think people from other countries get that impression about you guys too. I've been a part of multiple (honestly, quite racist) conversations where we just WTF over the fact that these guys have masters degrees but can't solve the most basic problem assigned to them.
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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…
The notion of a “well rounded student” who does music, art, and extra curricular activities, is a legacy of blue blood WASP culture. That is not to say that I think only test scores should matter. But the kinds of extracurriculars colleges value—in particular that they don’t value having a job or working in the farm—smacks of old money ideals.
For what it's worth, several of my old college friends are heavily involved with extra-curricular programs at the middle school and high school level across a few different states.
From what I've observed, your generalization isn't true at all. The extra-curricular programs are actually heavily populated with students who have two parents working long hours who want something productive for their kids to do after school.
I would like to know how much of an “improvement” in outcomes these tests bring. From another article linked in the one from this discussion: “In short: Our research has shown that, in most cases, we cannot reliably predict students will do well at MIT unless we consider standardized test results alongside grades, coursework, and other factors. These findings are statistically robust and stable over time, and hold wh…
I think the bigger question is whether we should have exclusive schools like MIT. Screening for college admissions made sense a century ago, when 5% of people went to college. Today, not so much. From an undergrad class perspective, the difference between MIT and a better state school is mostly the brand stamp and the admissions department. Why do we want to stamp people with a stamp like "MIT"?
If nothing else, the branding is reflective of how the world at large works, I guess.