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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

#901

Post by erosenbe0 »

neovive wrote: post #57
notacoward wrote: post #3

This is just so beautifully written it brings a tear to my eye. It explains their rationale, points to evidence, acknowledges shortcomings or gaps in knowledge, and shows empathy for those affected. Worth reading just for its pedagogical value, plus it's on an important topic near and dear to many hearts.

100%! As a parent of a child about to go through the college admissions process (with his heart set on MIT--of course), I want him to read this particularly for the later part of the article: "...you are also not your MIT application..." The acceptance rate is so low, that it should not be used as a measure of self-worth and accomplishment.

'Heart set' attitude is irrational.

The most successful people I know as a class are the ones who turned down Harvard or MIT and went to a state school or somewhere private with incentives instead.

Granted, nobody does this anymore because credentialism is now an uncontrollable monster.

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

#902

Post by allturtles »

barry-cotter wrote: post #888
Dig1t wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valuing something like breadth of experience and being a well rounded person might be considered one of the things that makes a western style education as good as it is. Compared to other types of university systems, for example the one in India which is extremely concerned with test scores and performance metrics, many people would consider the western one to be better (including many people in India who try to come…

What's this Western education system of which you speak? Among Western nations the US is unique in how much emphasis it puts on extracurriculars and character. We know why that is too. The system arose as a smoke screen around Jewish quotas. The overwhelming majority of universities admit students on the basis of results of blind marked exams and nothing else. I'm by no means an expert but the usual examples given of…

Many of the colleges people are actually attending in the U.S. are the same, and offer automatic admission if you hit some threshold of GPA, class rank or test scores. A couple examples:

https://uh.edu/undergraduate-admissions/apply/freshman/fresh... https://www.missouristate.edu/Policy/Op5_01_3_FreshmanAdmiss...

Actually here's a list of a bunch more: https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/10-best-colleges-wit...

These hand-wringing conversations about fair admissions mostly apply only to the elite top X schools. Those places receive tons of applications from academically top-tier students. The are looking for "something else" to make you stand out from the crowd.

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

#903

Post by Dylan16807 »

RC_ITR wrote: post #716
rayiner wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>The notion of a “well rounded student” who does music, art, and extra curricular activities, is a legacy of blue blood WASP culture Kind of wild to erase centuries of cultural heritage by implying that teaching academics with art is a uniquely Anglo-Saxan ideal.

Kind of wild for you to replace "WASP" with "Anglo-Saxon" and toss in the word "uniquely".

WASP is a tiny subset, and that subset has a very specific history with that concept that's coming into play here.

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

#904

Post by biohacker85 »

csa wrote: post #883
biohacker85 wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've asked similar questions to people who hold this view of "standardized testing is racist". While I never got a direct answer, I could infer or "read between the lines" that they are not oblivious to the seemingly glaring contradiction to some of their solutions to racism, its just that when it comes to equality--the ends justify the means. Groups whom have previously enjoyed privilege with college admissions (whi…

> I've asked similar questions to people who hold this view of "standardized testing is racist" The most defensible explanation that folks who claim standardized tests are racist is that the range of scores are not approximately equal across races. In theory, a “fair” non-racist test would have similar ranges of scores for all races. There are a lot of assumptions baked into the argument, many with which I disagree,…

> ...the range of scores are not approximately equal across races. In theory, a “fair” non-racist test would have similar ranges of scores for all races.

This is a good example of what I meant by "they are not oblivious to the seemingly glaring contradiction to some of their solutions to racism". If you follow that argument to its logical conclusion you have to explain why races don't have similar ranges while also accounting for the core belief that "we are all equal and race doesn't matter."

The "socio-economic factors" argument is easier to argue and also more widely accepted, yet this doesn't explain why these folks focus primarily on race.

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

#905

Post by [deleted] »

gime_tree_fiddy wrote: post #378
tomkat0789 wrote: post #293

I hated taking the SAT/ACT, but holy cow are we in the US in a better situation than Chinese students dealing with the Gaokao. A Chinese pen-pal once showed me some calculus problems from the Gaokao and the example I saw (a bunch of integrals) looked like a math test a sadist would create: long, complicated expressions just for the sake of complexity, "ugly" numbers that turned into messy fractions you have to carry…

I am not sure how it compares but India suffers through the same problem. It is essentially a rat race. A lot of those problems could be trick questions, but to be able to identify it, especially on a regular basis takes longer(when the question has less than a minute dedicated to it).

[deleted]

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

#906

Post by justin66 »

muh_gradle wrote: post #669
ashtonkem wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 edu…

It's not just math education. It's science as well. I'm bewildered that this is even something that people are even contesting what I wrote in 2022 on Hacker News of all places. The majority of PhDs in the STEMs are done by international students and have been for many years now. It's well known that American K-12 is woefully insufficient. But sure, I guess a-ok. But carry on with the straw man.

> The majority of PhDs in the STEMs are done by international students and have been for many years now.

Isn't this to be expected simply by virtue of the US's small population vs. the rest of the world?

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

#907

Post by noduerme »

rayiner wrote: post #642
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…

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.

When they talk about well rounded students: They do value working on a farm. Or going to Guatemala and building wells for people. Or construction work building houses. It's definitely not just about doing ballet and fine arts.

I was the only kid in my class who didn't go to college, but I went to one of the top 3 prep schools in terms of Ivy League placement in the country, and the entire focus for extracurricular activities was doing volunteer work. Sports, music, fine art and theater were all there as a potential route, but the advisers pushed kids who wanted to do those things as a career away from leaning on them as a way to be "well-rounded" in the eyes of the college admission boards.

TL;DR In my experience, a kid who had no creative talent but took a summer to build houses in Ecuador was much more likely, in the 90s, to get into the Ivy League than one who played violin, or football.

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

#908

Post by whatshisface »

aj7 wrote: post #895
whatshisface wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What defines true genius?

1) Bachelor’s level by 15-16. 2) Doctorate or equivalent by 20-21. 3) Decent communication and social skills. This is a significant flameout point. 4) Creativity and absolute refusal to work on directed projects by others, except voluntarily for some higher good. 5) Tremendous persistence. 6) Cheerfulness, related to 3) above, increases the degree of genius-ness. What have I left out?

Not to demand too much rigour for a casual discussion forum, but what you left out were the reasons to believe that was the list and not some other list of different things.

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

#909

Post by noduerme »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #593
sparrc wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed. I could also buy a test prep book on amazon plus get a few others from the school and public libraries for a grand total of $15 spent on test prep. That's a lot cheaper than dedicating my working summer to smarmy volunteer/extra-curricular projects.

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…

>> and not have to do any of the other trivial stuff that demonstrates that they can participate in the society in which they live.

That's a nasty bit of what I assume to be sarcasm

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

#910

Post by thaumasiotes »

wh313 wrote: post #898
yes_really wrote: post #867

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese leaders were the ones that let COVID leak out of the lab and censored the doctors that tried to warn the population.

Could you share some sources for that assertion?

The second half is well sourced.
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