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SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

nytimes.com

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Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#941

Post by torgian »

Glyptodon wrote: post #896
torgian wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t agree with this sentiment of yours. While I agree that people that had less than ideal childhoods should be given more opportunities to succeed, it shouldn’t be at the expense of those who worked their ass off for their kids, only to see their hard work taken away by government laws. My own parents and grandparents came from shitty roots. Russia, concentration camp, Brazil, then to the US. My parents worked h…

You working for your kids doesn't mean your kids worked.

So I guess I didn't work either?

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#942

Post by maceurt »

okaram wrote: post #847
maceurt wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want the kids of rich people to win the next generation unquestioned? I am not the person you were replying to, but no. However, the person who wins should be the more qualified person based on merit not based on some standard of suffering. Just because you had a harder environment does not mean you are more qualified than someone with an easier environment.

What do you mean by merit? Ability? Capacity? Effort? Worthiness? Ability at what? Are the SATs a good measure of that?

Probably the best/ most ubiquitous method we have right now.

It would be trivial to improve our tests of merit compared to the almost impossible task of testing how well a student would do free from environmental factors.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#943

Post by rexpop »

yibg wrote: post #762
rexpop wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until the very last sentence. Look, it's a question of implementation. There's a quantitative threshold at which students qualify for admission. Either we change that threshold, or we fudge the score.

Not sure I agree with that. The two choices are not just change the threshold or fudge the score. Ideally it would be to provide the right conditions so that neither is needed. Of course real world is more complex than that, and that condition is not easy to provide. I'm just not sure having an subjective, arbitrary and opaque fudge factor is the right answer.

Sure, there are many other solutions. A world of solutions.

My point was only that it's an understandable implemention.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#944

Post by rexpop »

Erik816 wrote: post #183
rexpop wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SAT scores and GPA are strongly affected by how much money you have.

Yes, because intelligent parents tend to make more money. And their children tend to be more intelligent as well.

Are you sure you're not confusing causation?

I can, just off the top of my head, think of several situational variables impacted by wealth, which impact cognitive capacity:

- sleep - diet - training - study time

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#945

Post by eitland »

learc83 wrote: post #192
eitland wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your suggestion relies on the assumption that there is some way to change standardized tests such that they do not correlate with wealth. Good IQ tests exists that are hard to game. They are easy to learn easy to vary and easy to measure. (I think I have heard someone here talking about IQ tests that include language and geography questions. This is not the kind of IQ tests I'm talking about. Perfect IQ tests shoul…

The SAT is supposed to be a test measuring scholastic aptitude not a pure IQ test. IQ tests always have a knowledge component anyway. Unless you specifically design a test to only measure something like working memory. And who cares about that. Colleges would only care to the extent that it correlated with performance. But you can have 2 people who have equal performance in a given field even though one has a higher…

> Unless you specifically design a test to only measure something like working memory.

The ones I refer to typically test what I'd call pattern matching / pattern synthesis by presenting multiple choice questions showing a number of patterns and asking which out of several patterns comes next.

You can teach how to solve it to a schoolkid and it is still really hard to practice for.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#946

Post by learc83 »

eitland wrote: post #945
learc83 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SAT is supposed to be a test measuring scholastic aptitude not a pure IQ test. IQ tests always have a knowledge component anyway. Unless you specifically design a test to only measure something like working memory. And who cares about that. Colleges would only care to the extent that it correlated with performance. But you can have 2 people who have equal performance in a given field even though one has a higher…

> Unless you specifically design a test to only measure something like working memory. The ones I refer to typically test what I'd call pattern matching / pattern synthesis by presenting multiple choice questions showing a number of patterns and asking which out of several patterns comes next. You can teach how to solve it to a schoolkid and it is still really hard to practice for.

You're talking about Raven's Progressive Matrices and variations thereof.

RPM only measures a very small subset of what we normally thing of as general intelligence, and they correlate with general intelligence less strongly than vocabulary. They definitely aren't nearly as good at predicting future college performance as the current SAT is.

>You can teach how to solve it to a schoolkid and it is still really hard to practice for.

It's actually not, you can definitely practice for them. And they are very sensitive to repeated testing.

Here's a cited Psychology Stack Exchange answer with a good summary: https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/20177/does-pr...

RPM was developed to be free from cultural bias, but we now know that this isn't the case, they can actually be more biased than verbal tests depending on the culture.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#947

Post by rmtech »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #776
pjscott wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a perfect SAT that preparation can't affect; for the purposes of the hypothetical, the test just stares into your soul and measures pure scholastic aptitude. If (a) scholastic aptitude has a significant effect on your lifetime income, (b) people tend to marry people of similar social and economic class, and (c) scholastic aptitude is fairly heritable (through genes, environment, whatever)... ... then you woul…

Once you combine all those premises, the "pretty noticeable" correlation might be something like ten percent. So the problem of it correlating too strongly with wealth would be solved.

> combine all those premises, the "pretty noticeable" correlation might be something like ten percent

it might be, but it will probably be significantly higher.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#948

Post by cycrutchfield »

droithomme wrote: post #929
stale2002 wrote: post #927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I means, it's the educational experience of top colleges, such as Carnegie Mellon, that I attended. This includes the engineering, math, CS, and social sciences class that I took.

I went to Stanford and yeah much of the time was learning the material, then preparing for tests by reviewing material and studying. There was also doing projects, researching, and writing papers arguing various positions and analyzing things. As well as some novel research. It's very strange to hear people here saying all these things are dumb or foolish or something, and good colleges are not like this at all and t…

Sorry, you don’t see the distinction between the type of academic study you described and the kind of rote learning and cramming required for tests like the SAT? They are quite dissimilar.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#949

Post by cycrutchfield »

stale2002 wrote: post #927
cycrutchfield wrote: post #924

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear about your poor educational experience.

I means, it's the educational experience of top colleges, such as Carnegie Mellon, that I attended. This includes the engineering, math, CS, and social sciences class that I took.

Sorry to hear that your classes at CMU involved just rote memorization and cramming, the two skills that standardized tests like the SAT seem to emphasize most. You apparently must not have availed yourself of course projects, discussion sections, or research experiences. I’m sorry to hear that the vaunted CMU educational experience has apparently gone so far downhill.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#950

Post by busymom0 »

ceph_ wrote: post #370
manfredo wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that the definition of "white supremacy" has been expanded to include things like opposition to affirmative action, or support for enforcement of existing border control regulations (let along their expansion). Of course calls to censor those things are going to garner much more opposition than censoring explicit terrorist organizations.

The definition of white supremacy isn't expanding, but those are two topics white supremacists vocally support.

It most certainly is. What's worse is when anonymous strangers on the internet accuse someone of being white supremacist just because they oppose reparations and affirmative action without even knowing anything else about the person. I am a brown immigrant myself (recently moved to Canada) who opposes affirmative action and reparations and just for that, I got called white supremacist, a nazi etc on reddit. Like how exactly can a dark brown person be white supremacist? Makes no sense. But the hidden identity on the internet lets people throw abhorrent insults like no tomorrow.
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