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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

#921

Post by yes_really »

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…

> 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 stuff that demonstrates that they can participate in the society in which they live.

I genuinely thought your comment was serious before reading other comments and realizing you were being sarcastic.

It actually *is* important that these people can get into these schools. If they are studying and working diligently they will contribute to society.

If you need them practicing sports or singing in choir for you to understand that they can participate in society, then that is your failure on assessing students.

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

#922

Post by Jimbonius »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #918
tqi wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of the least interesting students are "box checkers" who have a bunch of disconnected extra-curriculars that don't show passion, direction, or a proclivity towards success. If a student defines "success" as "getting into college," then what will they do once they get there? Probably flounder. This comment really rubbed me the wrong way. Sorry these "box checkers" worked too hard to follow the rules of the game…

Counterpoint: box-checkers are no fun to have as classmates.

No post body was provided.

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

#923

Post by ImaCake »

fsckboy wrote: post #806
ImaCake wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that sentence as they think SAT scores are correlated with but not causal for MIT student success. You would need to do a randomised controlled trial or a mendelian randomisation analysis (requires a lot of genotyping of students) to establish any kind of causality. Those experiments have not been done, so the relationship is correlated.

there are other factors that are correlated with success beyond IQ, but IQ is also very highly correlated with success, that's part of what's been established by IQ science.

Yes, regression models do shows that IQ correlates with socioeconomic status. But remember that our statistical techniques often tell us about what factors matter on average. In something as messy as human IQ there are going to be people with low status and high SATs. MIT can find those people by filtering for high SAT and low socioeconomic status, however MIT measures it.

I would consider the problem of socioeconomic status correlating with IQ to be a different problem. Maybe a bit more equality in society would help.

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

#924

Post by ken47 »

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…

As someone who uses to be very good at this kind of "math" in high school...it's not even real math. It's a bunch of teenagers being tested on how good they are at being poor man's computers. And I don't just mean standardized tests - almost the entirety of the high school math "education" is sad.

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

#925

Post by ken47 »

I understand the audience here, but we don't need more emphasis on iq. We need more emphasis on ethics. We already have the power to destroy ourselves many times over, and within a century, will likely be seeing AI that can best a human in any intellectual endeavor, by an order of magnitude. Ethics first, with some baseline level of intellect, will be the only way out of this impending disaster.

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

#926

Post by selimthegrim »

aj7 wrote: post #827
fmajid wrote: post #729

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. More precisely it was first invented by Yale to limit the number of Jewish students admitted, and was later repurposed to limit the number of Asian students admitted.

Exactly. If you’re really intellectually bright and committed, all those extracurricular activities, populated by average students, are a total waste of time. Regardless of anything they say, MIT and Cal Tech have prospered precisely by ignoring that crap, and giving preference to people who can do the work.

Exactly how did they prosper? Caltech seriously mishandled its endowment between 1999-2008 despite getting some of the largest individual donations in history.

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

#927

Post by agar »

tqi wrote: post #894
agar wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is filled with people arguing false dichotomies: "test scores" vs. "fancy extra-curriculars" or "rich experiences" vs. "working class experiences." I recently saw one child into college, and have another on the way. I've spoken to many admissions officers, counselors, and similar folks making admissions choices for public and private universities. To a one, they all claim to be looking for two things: (1)…

> Some of the least interesting students are "box checkers" who have a bunch of disconnected extra-curriculars that don't show passion, direction, or a proclivity towards success. If a student defines "success" as "getting into college," then what will they do once they get there? Probably flounder. This comment really rubbed me the wrong way. Sorry these "box checkers" worked too hard to follow the rules of the game…

I'm simply unable to follow the flow of logic that gets you from my comment, which reflected the statement of an admissions officer, to your conclusion about how "people who think like me" would dismiss Asian kids.

The admission officer was describing someone who shows no passion towards anything, and only does it because they're supposed to - which often includes why they're applying to college, because they're supposed to. Is it an idiotic bias to think that someone without passion in a subject area will be less successful than someone with passion and direction?

In case you missed the earlier part of the comment, kids with high GPAs, test scores, etc. - the "grinder" you describe, regardless of race - fit into a different category of a likely successful student that they also look for. To elaborate though, there are lots of "grinders" and differentiation still matters. Are they grinding in math and CS, and also have a Github and contribute to OSS and are applying to the college of engineering? That's better than someone with super high scores but nothing else, because there are probably lots of other applicants with even higher scores. Competing on only one axis is hard.

Like it or not, in a limited resource like seats at a competitive school, admissions officers are looking for small signals. It may seem unfair, but it's what I was told.

And as for the evidence, I'm merely passing on the information I was told by the people making the decisions. They hold the evidence (if it's even an evidence-based decision) not me. Feel free to have your own discussions with them if you'd like, I've generally found admission officers to be extremely friendly and open about their criteria.

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

#928

Post by wraptile »

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 really don't understand how many tests still allow trick questions like that when we have so much data that indicates that it's an awful metric. To me it indicates incompetence of the test creators.

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

#929

Post by agar »

devwastaken wrote: post #890
agar wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is filled with people arguing false dichotomies: "test scores" vs. "fancy extra-curriculars" or "rich experiences" vs. "working class experiences." I recently saw one child into college, and have another on the way. I've spoken to many admissions officers, counselors, and similar folks making admissions choices for public and private universities. To a one, they all claim to be looking for two things: (1)…

They're saying the lines they're paid to say the same as an oil exec is paid for theirs. There is a significant amount of profit being made in higher education, yet look at your statements right there - they're looking for people whom are willing to slave themselves. It's discriminatory and a massive waste of resources. We have to do away with these institutions to build something that actually meets the needs of tod…

A student who pays tuition for 4 or 5 years is more profitable than one who drops out (or transfers) after a year.

Their interests are (generally) aligned with their statements, in that they want to find people who will be a good fit for the school and want to stay there. That means academically and also culturally.

As an aside, my kid got into several schools and was rejected by several others. She chose a small private campus you've probably never heard of that was a perfect fit - and she has thrived like I can't believe. They also gave her a scholarship that made the cost lower than almost anywhere else, including public/state universities.

The real tragedy is people who only look at top 10 schools and feel they're a failure if they don't get in. There really is a school for everyone. And I'm not sure what "government" has to do with it, most universities are either private or run by independent boards of regents or trustees.

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

#930

Post by barry-cotter »

mike00632 wrote: post #740
Strilanc wrote: post #15

I was kind of hoping that the inline citations would lead to how they reached their conclusions. But it's just more "our research shows" conclusions without the meat underneath. Do they publish their methodology anywhere? (It's pretty funny that the first red highlight hover is explaining that you can hover over red highlights to see more information. The only people reading it are the ones who no longer need to be t…

I had the same observation. There is no data. It's nonsensical if you think about it: MIT stops using SAT/ACT in 2020 and now in March 2022 they have "robust" data that those students don't perform as well academically.

They’ve had a year with the students they admitted with no SAT. So they have one year of instructor experience with students selected without benefit of SATs. 700 or so students, two semesters of examinations. That’s plenty of data to see a dramatic fall in student preparedness.
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