[HN Gopher] MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admis...
___________________________________________________________________
MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
Author : s3r3nity
Score : 290 points
Date : 2020-03-20 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mitadmissions.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (mitadmissions.org)
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Does MIT ask for AMC/AIME scores which are miles above the SAT
| Math Subject tests?
| whymauri wrote:
| Yes. But it is optional.
| chapplap wrote:
| Yes, they are accepted on the application. Many of the
| undergrads at MIT qualified for the AIME. A substantial number
| qualified for the USAMO or IMO as well - just look at the
| Putnam results every year.
|
| Frankly, in order to stand out among MIT applicants by
| demonstrating some sort of mathematical ability on these exams,
| the minimum is probably USAMO qualification (top 270 of ~200k
| AMC takers). Otherwise it's a nice thing to have but not
| particularly unique. Even then I know a reasonable number of
| USAMO qualifiers who have been rejected.
|
| Source: was a MIT undergrad < 5 years ago
| totalZero wrote:
| This is a bad decision.
|
| Subject tests helped me get into MIT from a public school in one
| of the states in the bottom 5 for education spending.
|
| Take away the tests, and you take away the merit.
| knzhou wrote:
| Anybody cheering the exclusion of some test or other, because it
| was a pain to study for in high school, is simply not noticing
| the frog-boiling secondary effects going on. Every bit of
| emphasis taken out of objective results mean more advantage for
| smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people.
|
| Yes, some misguided parents waste thousands of dollars on SAT
| courses. But students can also prep using the $20 official book,
| which is what I did, and what I still regard as the best option.
| Even if money helps incrementally for tests, it helps for
| everything else even more. International volunteer work? An
| inspiring (i.e. college counselor approved) essay? Recommendation
| letters from authoritative people? Anything that requires
| equipment, like computer labs or robotics? It all costs money --
| and in many cases literally measures nothing besides how much
| money you have.
| hintymad wrote:
| Exactly. And it's worth reviewing how the so-called holistic
| admission process came to be:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in.
| TL;DR: it's not pretty.
|
| A process that lacks objectivity will enlarge inequality gap
| instead of reducing it. And in general, the more complex a
| process is, the less transparent it becomes, and the harder it
| is to be fair to everyone.
| anthm1988 wrote:
| > smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people.
|
| you mean the kind of people who have access to private tutors
| and SAT prep classes?
| walshemj wrote:
| You mean average white middle class kids who have "smooth
| talking, photogenic, well-connected parents" who can pay for
| the tutoring?
|
| This is like the old Uk secondary Modern vs Grammar schools -
| but with the total destruction of the skilled vocational path.
|
| It interesting that if I had staying Birmingham (UK) my mum was
| keen to use family connections to get me into King Edwards :-)
|
| For those not familiar with the UK education hierarchy its
| always in the top 3 in the entire UK and was Tolkien's old
| school - Rich Thickos go to Eaton
| NeverFade wrote:
| Agree completely. SAT isn't perfect or perfectly objective. No
| test is. As long as a test controls admission to a highly
| desirable school, there will be exorbitantly expensive courses
| for it.
|
| However, it is a far more objective test than the rest of the
| admission packet, and it's being dropped with no alternative.
|
| This will make admissions less fair, precisely because SAT is
| still a test that you can ace with discipline and hard work
| without much monetary investment, and it will be replaced by
| other criteria that actually requires more capital.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| To clarify, this announcement is only about the SAT subject
| tests.
| NeverFade wrote:
| For now.
| brewdad wrote:
| Given that there may be no SAT or ACT tests administered
| from March until ????, how will colleges deal with the
| class of 2021?
| MiroF wrote:
| Agreed. In my opinion, the best way to make admissions more
| fair is not to eliminate the SAT but to eliminate score
| choice.
| pge wrote:
| And eliminate legacy preference and ability for sports
| coaches to influence admissions.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I was rejected by MIT even though my father attended. I
| don't think MIT does legacy admissions, or sports
| admissions.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| legacy preference just gives you a +1, not guaranteed.
| pge wrote:
| Didn't mean that comment to be about MIT (who may not do
| legacy preference and certainly isnt lowering academic
| standards to win ncaa championships). But those are both
| factors at other top schools including the Ivies and
| Stanford
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > SAT isn't perfect or perfectly objective
|
| But it is the closest thing anybody's ever come up with.
| swiley wrote:
| >mean more advantage for smooth talking, photogenic, well-
| connected people.
|
| The whole point of the American University is to produce these
| kind of people so that shouldn't be surprising. Otherwise you
| could earn a degree via self study proctored exams. Lack of
| objectivity during the application is a symptom not a cause.
| jfengel wrote:
| I'd like to see more people being able to take self-study
| proctored exams, for those fields that can do it. There's a
| lot to be said for what is essentially a vo-tech education.
| It's purely objective and very useful.
|
| That would leave a lot more space open in schools for
| creative work. That includes both academic research and the
| humanities, which are less objective but nonetheless
| valuable. As has been pointed out before, during the current
| health crisis, people turn to the arts: TV, books, podcasts,
| video games, etc. These are things that are hard to learn
| with self-study and impossible to test for -- except for the
| test of whether people will want to consume them.
|
| Even programmers eventually need at least some of this. A
| development team requires a lot of people trained at a purely
| vo-tech, objective level to be experts in the various
| technologies. But for a product to be successful, it also
| requires people who know what its users want, which is much
| harder to judge objectively, and harder to learn from a book.
|
| I believe too many programmers go to university to learn what
| they could learn on their own, or at a much less expensive
| school that doesn't try give a broad education. We need a lot
| of those, and employers make a mistake in rejecting people
| who don't have that university degree. Worse, even among
| those with that university degree, they test them purely on
| their objective skills, and then later complain that they
| produce ugly interfaces and write terribly.
| bumby wrote:
| Colleges have lost their monopoly on education but still hold
| the monopoly on accreditation. If we can figure out how to
| reduce that latter monopoly colleges will lose a lot of their
| power
| quotemstr wrote:
| > Anybody cheering the exclusion of some test or other, because
| it was a pain to study for in high school, is simply not
| noticing the frog-boiling secondary effects going on. Every bit
| of emphasis taken out of objective results mean more advantage
| for smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people.
|
| Absolutely right. Standardized testing become popular in the
| first place as an egalitarian measure, a way to combat
| inherited wealth and privilege. But wealth and privilege always
| want to propagate themselves to the next generation. Nowadays,
| we see rich parents paying crazy amounts of money to get their
| mediocre children into high-end schools, sometimes to the point
| of straight-up bribery [1]. They bribe crooked doctors into
| lying about their kids needing extra time on exams. After they
| get their mediocre kids into "top" schools, parents demand
| grade inflation. Once the kids graduate, they spend years
| supported by their parents in unpaid internships smarming their
| way into positions of power and influence unavailable to anyone
| who has to get paid to live. We have a thoroughly corrupt
| system that promotes stagnation, corruption, and incompetence.
|
| Standardized testing is _extremely_ inconvenient for the kind
| of person who uses these dirty tricks. It 's hard to buy a
| university enough libraries to cover up your kid's 1100 on the
| SAT. This whole push to deprecate standardized testing is just
| corruption justified with twisty self-serving rhetoric about
| fake justice.
|
| _Only_ standardized testing should count toward university
| admission, because the only thing that matters is the
| competence of the next generation of decision-makers. We can
| only have a functioning society because good decisions get
| made, and status corruption damages society 's ability to make
| good decisions.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber...
| knzhou wrote:
| The bribery scandal especially depresses me, because a lot of
| the colleges impacted had _official_ bribery systems in place
| -- you 're supposed to donate to the "Development Office" to
| get on the "Dean's List", or some other set of euphemisms.
| What the colleges were actually outraged about is that these
| middling-rich people tried to cheap out by paying a smaller
| bribe to some _other_ office.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| If someone donates enough money for a lab or an entire
| building or something that can be used by students for
| decades as a means to get their underperforming kid in,
| yeah, that's technically a bribe but I'm kind of okay with
| that because the good so vastly outweighs the bad.
| lopmotr wrote:
| There's something that doesn't quite make sense to me about
| this worry of wealthy people passing on their privileges to
| their children. Their children are different individuals who
| were effectively randomly chosen to be born into that
| situation. Why should it be some other child who was randomly
| chosen some other way instead? No matter who gets into
| Harvard, it's still the same number of people who somehow
| ended up with that privilege.
|
| Is it simple jealousy of rich people? Or is it a worry that
| their kids aren't really the most capable so society won't
| function so well when they're eventually in charge? I'd say
| their kids probably are the most capable because elite
| universities get their funding and fame from successful
| graduates so they're incentivized to choose the people with
| greatest chance of success. Of a well-connected rich kid and
| a poorly-connected poor kid with the same SAT scores, the
| rich kid has better chance of future career success.
| hintymad wrote:
| The problem of SAT is not that it can be prep'd, but it is too
| easy to be differentiating, and too simple so people can game
| it.
|
| By the way, isn't depending on SAT for years and everyone
| bitching about SAT is a gross failure of our education system?
| Take any serious test, be it STEM competitions, JEE, or NCEE,
| multiple-choice questions are the easiest part. The
| differentiating questions are all kinds of word problems. Yet
| the US can't afford such test, but countries like India and
| China can.
|
| And why do people in the US, the most developed and the richest
| country in the world, complain that people can prep the SAT.
| It's truly a shame. In countries like China, it is public
| schools that produce the best students. It is the public
| schools that set high standards for the country. It is the
| public schools that come up with amazing text books and problem
| sets. Tutoring in China is joke. Classes offered by public
| schools are legendary. Something is wrong in the US.
| knzhou wrote:
| > By the way, isn't depending on SAT for years and everyone
| bitching about SAT is a gross failure of our education
| system? Take any serious test, be it STEM competitions, JEE,
| or NCEE, multiple-choice questions are the easiest part. The
| differentiating questions are all kinds of word problems. Yet
| the US can't afford such test, but countries like India and
| China can.
|
| We do have this kind of system in place, I'm closely involved
| in it. The Olympiads in the US basically fill the vacuum of
| objective assessment at a high level. The entry round for
| each Olympiad is pretty similar in level to, e.g. what you
| would get in JEE-Advanced. But they're also far less
| popular...
| hintymad wrote:
| Yeah, the Olympiad in the US is well organized. Probably
| the best in the world. I'm more concerned with the middle
| tier, to which the majority of the students belong. The
| best students in the US have access to vast resources, the
| academically challenged students do not feel the same harsh
| pressure as kids in other countries do. It is the middle
| majority that suffer from insufficient training.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| College Prep is a giant business that needs to be dismantled.
| They have a monopoly in this area.
|
| IMO each college should be doing their own objective test.
| Definitely agree about subjective tests - smooth talkers will
| get ahead. But that's already the case in getting a job after
| they graduate - interviewing process is already broken.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _College Prep is a giant business that needs to be
| dismantled. They have a monopoly in this area._
|
| Is there really a single company called "College Prep"?
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _monopoly_
|
| Aside from the fact that this is all off-topic since MIT's
| announcement is about the SAT _subject tests_ , not the _SAT_
| itself, it is not a true monopoly anyway.
|
| MIT's web site says they accept either the SAT or the ACT.
| ("We require the SAT or the ACT.") The SAT is from College
| Board, and the ACT is from ACT, Inc., which are two different
| organizations. Both tests are in wide use, so if anything it
| is a duopoly.
| psutor wrote:
| Won't each college having to have their own test lead to
| many/most colleges, especially smaller ones, finding it
| easier or more cost effective to purchase their test from a
| central source, leading to some large College Board-like
| company making exams and a prep industry for that standard
| exam?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I think it's pretty insane that a single company is a
| gatekeeper to elite institutions.
|
| I'm honestly not sure of the solution, but the problem is
| pretty evident. College Prep could raise exam fees by 200%
| tomorrow and you have no law, no oversight from the
| government or anything preventing them from doing so.
| Absolute monopoly.
|
| They're no different than professors in bed with book
| publishers, mandating a particular book for the course.
| Students need to spend $350 on a textbook is insanity.
| filoleg wrote:
| >I think it's pretty insane that a single company is a
| gatekeeper to elite institutions.
|
| Not just elite institutions, I would say 99% of
| accredited institutions in the US. You would be hard
| pressed to find an accredited college program in the US
| that doesn't require either SAT or ACT (talking about the
| general test, not the subject ones).
|
| P.S. That 99% estimation is obviously made up, but I am
| yet to find a college that doesn't require an ACT or SAT
| score, and I applied to many different kinds of colleges
| in early 2010s (out of state, in-state, public, private,
| etc.), with almost none of them being MIT-tier elite.
| MiroF wrote:
| Is the evidence really that suggestive that college prep
| makes such a huge difference? I am skeptical, it seemed
| pretty easy to just study from the blue book.
|
| Probably the biggest way to stop the affluent from taking
| advantage of the system would be to eliminate school choice.
| NeverFade wrote:
| And how exactly will you "dismantle it"?
|
| People want to pay thousands of dollars to try to gain access
| to elite institutions. No matter what test you'll come up
| with, someone will offer an expensive prep course for it,
| because they will have willing customers.
| triceratops wrote:
| Mandate that colleges accept scores from at least 3
| different standardized tests, administered by different
| companies, and that the scores _must_ be easily comparable.
| That may help break ETS 's stranglehold over the market and
| test fees or test prep material might become reasonable.
| leetcrew wrote:
| the SAT test fee is about $65 and there's tons of free
| prep material (including direct from college board). what
| would you consider a reasonable price?
| triceratops wrote:
| Hard to say if that's actually reasonable, given there's
| exactly 1 (maybe 2, if you count the ACT) test providers.
| Not really a competitive market.
|
| For a multiple-choice exam, administered electronically
| to dozens of test-takers supervised by one proctor...is
| that actually reasonable? Plus they charge you $15 extra
| if you want more than 4 scores. Most students apply to
| more than 4 colleges. Are they physically mailing scores
| to these institutions?
|
| For a mostly-electronic process (other than the essay
| grading) $65 sounds like a lot. $40 for the non-essay
| option sounds even more crazy.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I don't mean reasonable in a market equilibrium sense,
| more of a "hey, that price seems about right" sense.
|
| I'm sure it's not trivial to make multiple versions of
| the same test every year where the scores are all
| comparable with each other. then you have to distribute
| the materials while minimizing the chance that they leak
| and people come in with the answers memorized.
|
| the college board itself makes about 15% profit each
| year. definitely a lot better than some market segments,
| but hardly exorbitant. I guess they might find some ways
| of trimming the fat if they had more competition, but who
| knows. more competitors means fewer test-takers to
| amortize the test design costs over.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| It needs to be dismantled due to monopoly. I'm not sure
| how. Those are orthogonal.
| 0x8BADF00D wrote:
| What you're getting at is the government creates these
| types of monopolies due to massive regulations and
| licensing.
|
| The issue is not with the college prep companies. It's
| with government getting involved in education, making it
| way more expensive than it should be. The free market
| will drive prices down, especially in the education
| market.
| triceratops wrote:
| What does the government getting involved in education
| have anything to do with the monopoly power of ETS? MIT
| is private, ETS's owner is a company. The problem is that
| MIT accepts _only_ SAT scores - they should be forced to
| accept other standardized test scores too. That would
| create an actual market for standardized testing, along
| with competition and lower prices.
| ghaff wrote:
| According to the original article, MIT accepts SAT or
| ACT. I have no idea if SAT is preferred though. It was
| certainly the default way back when when I was applying
| to schools.
| triceratops wrote:
| That's just a duopoly. Gotta have at least 3 - maybe 4.
| knzhou wrote:
| Standardized testing is a natural monopoly -- if you have
| every college making their own, it's a crazy duplication of
| work, will produce a lot of substandard tests, and will put
| tons of strain on the students. Might as well ask everybody
| to lay their own fiber.
|
| ETS isn't perfect (I think the amount they charge for GRE-
| related stuff is sickening) but it at least does a good job
| of making sure the best prep resources possible are cheap or
| free.
| danielg6 wrote:
| What's the point in taking SAT Math 2, SAT Chem, and SAT
| Physics if you're already sending scores for AP Calc/Stats/Comp
| Sci, AP Chem, and 3 different AP Physics lmao?
|
| I actually feel silly now for having done that.
| gedy wrote:
| > mean more advantage for smooth talking, photogenic, well-
| connected people.
|
| But see it's all okay if those smooth talking, photogenic,
| well-connected elites are more diverse in race/gender/etc
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| But that's entirely the point. The people bitching about how
| the SAT isn't fair aren't smart poor people who are being
| beaten out by upper middle class losers, but rather upper
| middle class losers being beaten out by smart poor people. They
| tell themselves that the test isn't fair, but a part of them
| knows that they could never get into the 1500's even with all
| the prep in the world, so they try to get the admissions
| changed to a more bullshit-centric approach that they know
| favors them. And they say they are doing it to help the poor
| and disadvantaged to give themselves moral cover.
| llcoolv wrote:
| On top of that exam dumps are much less efficient when it
| comes to SAT IIs, where questions are much more diverse an
| subject knowledge is essential. SAT I is the one that is easy
| to game.
| jzoch wrote:
| Eh its all easily game-able. The SAT (and ACT) is a joke.
| So are the subject tests. The only subject test that wasn't
| laughable are the language ones (since you can't "intuit"
| spanish as easily as math or physics or chemistry). Its not
| bad if you are a good test taker (a dumb skill but a useful
| one) or wealthy. My friends were tutored idiots and did
| well (2200+ SAT, 700+ subject tests) and i was a good test
| taker (same scores). Its all garbage
| knzhou wrote:
| You're just bragging that you hit the ceiling on those
| tests.
|
| That doesn't mean tests don't work; if you wanted to, you
| could have found much harder ones. (That's what I did,
| out of necessity. They wouldn't have given my app a
| second look if I hadn't.)
| mgkimsal wrote:
| 30 years ago, the ACT test changed enough that it was no
| longer a valid test to use as entry for Mensa. Prior to
| 1990, an ACT test could be used as evidence for Mensa
| admission.
|
| So... the ACT wasn't always 'a joke', but doesn't have
| the same impact that it had decades ago.
| ivalm wrote:
| A lot of people would argue that Mensa itself is a
| joke...
| llcoolv wrote:
| This is more of a joke story, but a few years ago a
| friend of mine who is neither ambitious nor succesful
| surprisingly scored 165-170 on their test. When they
| offered him a membership and told him the membership fee,
| his reaction was - Alright, but as I am in the top 5% of
| your members - should not you be paying me to hang out
| with you? :D :D :D
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I always tell people this who want "only high IQ" people
| to run society.
|
| "Oh, you want the people at Mensa to run your society?"
| opportune wrote:
| Well to be fair, those are the subset of high IQ people
| who have the time/desire to join a club about having a
| high IQ. Kind of an adverse selection bias
| quartzite wrote:
| That's irrelevant, what matters is that a high IQ society
| has a vested interest in measuring IQ as a proxy for
| general intelligence and standardized testing results
| should reliably correlate to IQ and general intelligence.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| But is IQ really a proxy for general intelligence?
| quartzite wrote:
| Yes, and it's the best proxy we have.
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| Yes.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
|
| An individual's performance on one type of cognitive task
| tends to be comparable to that person's performance on
| other kinds of cognitive tasks.
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| If the SAT were a joke, you wouldn't expect scores to
| follow a bell curve with only ~0.3% of people getting a
| perfect score, but they do.
| salty_biscuits wrote:
| If you had a multiple choice quiz with the actual
| questions hidden you would get a normal distribution in
| results. Anything where you sum lots of small random
| effects.
| im3w1l wrote:
| If the test was not measuring anything at all, then you
| would expect repeat takers to have completely unrelated
| scores on first and last test.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| This isn't a good argument, because the SAT (and other
| tests of the same kind) are normalised to have this
| property.
|
| The SAT may not be good tests, but that fact has nothing
| to do with the presence or absence of a normal
| distribution.
| ebrenes wrote:
| The SATs have a top score, if it were easy to game you'd
| find many people would clump at the top. That would make
| it impossible to normalize that distribution into a bell-
| shape because they're all clustered into the same bucket
| with no way of spreading them.
|
| OP's point was that the perfect scores remain
| consistently outside of people's grasp despite the
| variety of resources available to prep for the exam. I
| only once managed to hit perfect score and my other best
| scores were one or two questions off. I had been taking
| the test since I was 11 (for various extracurricular
| camps/activities) and prepped multiple times for them.
| The biggest scores jumps were more closely related with
| my age and academic achievements than anything else.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| That is correct.
|
| So the SATs are (almost certainly) 3-pl (actually 2) IRT
| models. Essentially, it's a multivariate generalised
| linear mixed model to estimate both question difficulty
| and participant ability.
|
| Normally, they'll estimate the abilities on the logistic
| scale, and use the percentile to back transform to a
| standard normal.
|
| Most people don't cluster at the top because they are a
| good proxy for g, which is an imaginary statistical
| construct that we use to explain differences in school
| outcomes.
|
| So I had a long digression here about the usefulness of
| penalties for guessing, but it turns out the SATs don't
| do that anymore, so wth?
|
| (ETS invented IRT, that's why I'm pretty sure).
| chongli wrote:
| A lot of the reason the SATs are able to maintain a
| spread that lets them normalize the distribution is that
| they fill the tests with stupid tricks that fool people
| into wasting time. If you do a ton of prep then you learn
| to spot these tricks and then a lot of the questions
| become really easy and you can knock them off quickly.
|
| A poor smart student may have mastery of the material but
| their score will suffer if they don't know the tricks.
| [deleted]
| pozdnyshev wrote:
| I mean this is America, a country where the poor are
| extremely marginalized and have no avenue for representation
| and public opinion. This is absolutely helping those with
| less resources.
| opportune wrote:
| I think this is true about the SAT but the subject tests are
| kind of niche and I assume a lot of poor people actually
| don't know about them. If you're not in an environment where
| a lot of people are applying to top schools, it's unlikely to
| be something you are familiar with
| buzzy_hacker wrote:
| That's a good point I hadn't considered, they are fairly
| niche
| trentnix wrote:
| Bingo. The less objective their evaluations are, the easier it
| will be to hide the cronyism, bribery, and racial bias. Going
| to be a lot easier to discriminate against Asian kids when you
| don't have to notice their test scores are better than the kids
| you admitted.
| pulisse wrote:
| MIT isn't eliminating the SAT. They're not considering SAT
| _subject_ tests, which are analogous to AP tests (which
| latter MIT will continue to consider).
| RedBeetDeadpool wrote:
| Personally I feel most standardized tests, including the SAT
| can be gamed. If you have the right teacher or book or w/e you
| should be able to learn how to get a certain score. Granted a
| lot of people simply don't because they never learn the
| techniques properly.
|
| They should still take it into consideration, but more of as a
| baseline aptitude level, smart enough to actually get past a
| certain score, but it shouldn't be a ranking system based on
| performance on the test. More to weed anyone out who are so
| incompetent they can't figure out the basics. Like everyone
| above 75% mark should be considered equally, but people beyond
| that point aren't ranked based on their test scores. As in, if
| someone scores a perfect score but the only thing they've done
| is get good grades and get good test scores and someone else
| scores at the 75% mark but started a small business, or did
| something remarkable to help with a disaster, then the latter
| should take precedence in my book.
|
| After a certain point, IQ doesn't correlate with success
| either. Too much focus is placed on objective intelligence,
| when part of the objectivity is how well someone gamed it.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Maybe if money weren't an obstacle for getting a good
| education, then we could actually have the best and brightest
| going to schools like these instead of just the most well-
| prepared because of family money and the advantage that wealth
| brings.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| How is this comment upvoted? MIT has not removed the
| requirement to take SAT tests.
|
| > _We will continue to require the SAT or the ACT, because our
| research has shown these tests, in combination with a student's
| high school grades and coursework, are predictive of success in
| our challenging curriculum._
|
| This is typical of a knee-jerk reaction without even
| understanding their policy. Let alone reading the actual post.
| It's the answer to the very first question at the top of the
| post. I thought HN would do better than this.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Probably because many (most?) people don't take or know about
| the subject tests.
|
| I thought I had never heard of them, but after looking at
| wikipedia, it looks like they were called the SAT II when I
| was in high school. I remember that existing, but never knew
| why you would take them and never knew anybody that did.
|
| It's not a stretch to imagine people being confused.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT_Subject_Tests
| ghaff wrote:
| And way back, they were apparently called the Achievement
| Tests. I vaguely remember taking a few but don't otherwise
| remember much about them or what the requirements were.
| lonelappde wrote:
| It's explicitly explained in the very short article. Yet
| somehow people lacking basic reading comprehension are en
| masse bemoaning the dumbing down of kids these days.
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| GP comment seems completely relevant to SAT subject tests to
| me. The point is that removing a test from consideration,
| even if it's not the only test considered, makes it easier
| for rich people to game the application process.
| knzhou wrote:
| Exactly. If you look at the comments on the linked article,
| or the ones that were on top here when I wrote mine, people
| are making comments that aren't specific to the SAT subject
| test at all -- "this is great, because I bombed that test",
| "this lowers stress", "that test was too easy anyway".
| brlewis wrote:
| No. The point about replacing a test with more subjective
| criteria is completely invalidated when, instead, multiple
| tests are replaced with a single test.
|
| EDIT: Instead of completely invalidated, I should say
| irrelevant to MIT's change. In another context it could be
| an important point.
| strbean wrote:
| I think the top level comment is based on the assumption
| that a greater quantity of objective data will lead to a
| greater weighting of objective data, and a lower quantity
| will lead to a lower weighting, leading to a greater
| weighting of subjective measures.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Likewise, there are many skills you can't demonstrate on
| the SAT such as Spanish language proficiency. For
| whatever reason I took the French subject test but no AP
| test, perhaps there are other schools that do this.
|
| The math score might say a little about the other
| sciences, but the blmultilingual students are going to be
| disadvantaged by this it seems to me.
| benchaney wrote:
| This is completely incorrect. The SAT is not changing to
| incorporate the skills that would have previously
| measured by the subject test. As a result we are simply
| going to have fewer objective metrics.
| austincheney wrote:
| The problem with tests like the SAT is that on one hand they
| produce quantifiable results and the comparison of one
| student's score to another student's score is indeed objective,
| but that does not mean the test itself is an objective measure
| of performance.
|
| The primary fault is that the SAT is essentially a form of
| convergent IQ test. A convergent test is a test of questions
| with the accepted answered defined before the test attempt and
| comparing the test takers answers to the defined answers. This
| is convergent, or coming together, in that performance is
| measured against subjective, subject based (inferred
| acceptance), criteria. I understand the SAT is intended to be
| used as a measure of general scholarly assessment, but its
| primarily used as a discriminatory filter to limit access to a
| preferential segment. As such it is essentially an arbitrary IQ
| test in practice regardless of its intentions.
|
| In contrast IQ tests more generally preferred by the
| psychiatric community tend, almost exclusively, are divergent
| tests. A divergent test has questions without any prior
| identified answer and so there is not a simple right/wrong
| conclusion. Instead the tests generally seek out things like
| abstract reasoning, creativity, reasoning, answer diversity,
| and other aptitude performance criteria.
|
| In the few psychiatric administered aptitude tests I have taken
| I generally test a bit below the genius level. If on a numeric
| IQ scale genius is 150 or 155 I would be below that at 140 to
| 150 depending on the test and test criteria. The SAT, on the
| other hand, rated me as outstanding a math and reasoning but
| otherwise barely literate. Those SAT scores are clearly at odds
| with my real world performance and other test results.
|
| Confusing the potential for objectivity, such as comparing
| score results, to actual objectivity, such as whether the
| scores are a valid measure in the first place is a common
| error. The most common IQ test is the Stanford-Binet Test
| formed by Dr. Lewis Terman who made the same error:
|
| * https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beautiful-
| minds/2009...
|
| * https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1992-05-31-bk-1247-s...
| leetcrew wrote:
| I don't entirely understand your objection. the "meat-and-
| potatoes" skills tested by the SAT seem to be english vocab
| and algebra. there's certainly some gray area in the meanings
| of english words, but the examples on the SAT tend to be
| pretty cut and dry. as for the basic algebra questions, I
| don't really see how it could make sense for the answer not
| to be determined beforehand. 5 will always be the x value
| that make 5x = 25 true.
|
| seems like as good a way as any to predict whether you'll be
| able to handle the rigor of 100-level courses in your
| freshman year. basically answers the question: "can you read
| and understand what we plan to assign?"
|
| edit: out of curiosity I perused some of your other posts. it
| seems like you have a pretty good grasp of english vocab and
| sentence construction. I'm not really sure how you could have
| bombed the critical reading and writing sections.
| knzhou wrote:
| I'm sure the writers of the SAT are well aware of this, but
| full IQ tests just don't scale. How are you going to provide
| the same test ten million times a year, when the test has to
| be administered one-on-one by a trained professional over the
| course of hours? You're going to have to hire tens of
| thousands of administrators, so how are you going to keep
| bias from creeping in? How are you going to prevent the
| questions from leaking, or keep people from rehearsing
| scripts on the subjective parts? IQ tests have never dealt
| with these problems only because they haven't had to scale,
| not because they're immune to them.
| austincheney wrote:
| > I'm sure the writers of the SAT are well aware of this,
| but full IQ tests just don't scale.
|
| First of all its generally faulty to presume what others
| are thinking.
|
| Secondly, standardized admissions testing in its current
| form should be eliminated and there is a fair amount of
| data to support this[1][2]. If schools really want to
| discriminate on performance they should test for
| originality, composition, and decision capacity all of
| which can be done objectively with automated
| administration.
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2019/12/11/law
| suit-...
|
| [2] http://www.nea.org/home/73288.htm
| WalterBright wrote:
| SAT scores are used because they turn out to be good
| predictors of success at college. They aren't the only
| measure used, probably about a third.
|
| For example, my SAT scores were average for an MIT
| admission, but I was rejected.
| austincheney wrote:
| There is a lot of evidence that this is absolutely not
| the case. On of my links in a prior comment indicated
| there are now many universities that are standard test
| optional and keep stats comparing the performance between
| standard test students versus other students to find no
| difference in performance.
|
| Consider your example. You are a famous developer well
| known for a performance oriented programming language. Of
| the many computer science students that graduated from
| MIT I cannot name any who are as well known for such. It
| is impossible to say that if your SAT scores were closer
| to perfect you might have gained admission. Regardless
| you have clearly excelled where others have not
| regardless of institution or institutional entry. At the
| least this suggests the incorrect combination of
| parameters were assessed given real world performance.
| knzhou wrote:
| Sorry, but I write tests and I have absolutely no idea
| how you propose to measure these things objectively and
| automatically, without producing exactly the kind of
| "convergent" test you said you didn't like. For example,
| take "decision capacity". I don't even know what you mean
| by that, and I don't know how this will be assessed
| automatically without fixing a pre-designed correct
| answer.
|
| Incidentally, the GRE has a system for grading essay
| composition automatically. It also absolutely sucks. It
| has no idea what your arguments are actually saying, so
| points are allocated based on irrelevant features like
| average sentence length or the total number of
| paragraphs. Researchers have succeeded in getting perfect
| scores by just copy-pasting the same sentence 25 times.
| In my book, this is worse than multiple choice.
| Animats wrote:
| _For example, take "decision capacity"._
|
| For that, there's an "inbox test", a set of incoming
| messages to be dealt with in order. Such tests are widely
| used to screen candidates for manager jobs.
| knzhou wrote:
| Wow, I just learned something new. These look legit and
| well-matched to the actual work. It does seem hard to
| make a "standard" decision test though, it seems each
| would have to be tuned to the job it was made for.
| beepboopbeep wrote:
| I did well on the SATs because there is a method to taking the
| tests that is agnostic of the underlying knowledge. I was only
| able to learn that because I could afford the classes. The SAT
| is a silly game.
| quartzite wrote:
| This is exactly correct.
|
| Those who fight for fair admissions on the basis of
| intellectual ability and academic potential should hold up the
| SAT and standardized testing as a cornerstone of the admissions
| process.
|
| Standardized testing significantly levels the playing field for
| students across income brackets. Returns on study investment
| quickly diminish, and reaching a plateau on returns doesn't
| require much investment at all (internet connection and the
| purchase of a few large study manuals).
|
| At my high school in sophomore year I remember speaking with a
| wealthy friend whose father had signed him up for flying
| lessons so he could "stand out in college admissions". There
| are many, many cases like this.
|
| Admissions should disregard such superficial peacocking and
| focus on metrics like the SAT that disentangle intellectual and
| academic potential from wealth.
| mekoka wrote:
| The premise of your answer is that MIT wants good "students"
| and "test takers". What if that's not what they want so much
| anymore? A test is supposed to be a metric, an _indicator_ of
| something. But metrics tend to become target as soon as they
| 're exposed. Maybe then they still remain an indicator of
| something, but not necessarily what they were originally
| intended to filter for.
|
| I understand that it might feel like the goalposts are being
| moved for people who optimize to score high on such metrics,
| but such is the nature of this type of games. That's also why
| search engine companies have to keep refining their
| algorithms.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| While I agree, let's acknowledge the fair critique from the
| end that is not, "Keeping high-achieving Asian kids out": the
| part where the tests themselves cost money parents (and
| school systems) don't have; the part where the study guide in
| and of itself is not enough to prepare for these exams,
| leaving us the true, astronomical cost of preparation; the
| part where this is all begging the question of what
| admissions tests are for anyway (generally, the same things
| poll taxes and quizzes were for).
|
| I agree that the answer is the base SAT, but with an addition
| of a lottery past a point threshold. Luck (of birth) got us
| into this mess, and luck could get us out.
| Yhippa wrote:
| > Luck (of birth) got us into this mess, and luck could get
| us out.
|
| I'm all in favor of adding some kind of RNG to this
| process. The overpreparation of the wealthy in all kinds of
| aspects of admissions gives them a big advantage over those
| who don't. RNG evens it out.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| > Standardized testing significantly levels the playing field
| for students across income brackets.
|
| There's a correlation between parental income and SAT scores.
|
| "[S]tudents from families earning more than $200,000 a year
| average a combined score of 1,714, while students from
| families earning under $20,000 a year average a combined
| score of 1,326."
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/03/rich-students-get-better-
| sat...
|
| An "equalizing effect" would imply students of both parental
| income groups would have the same score.
| freepor wrote:
| But there's a much greater correlation between parental
| income and other measures you could use to evaluate
| applicants. Even height has parental income correlation,
| you can't eliminate it completely.
| tristor wrote:
| There's a correlation between parental income and IQ scores
| too. There's also a correlation between parental income and
| GPA. It's just a correlation, though, and it does not
| follow that a good standardized test would result in the
| average score would match across different parental income
| groups.
|
| Just because a test is standardized doesn't mean it
| completely eliminates all confounding factors outside of
| the test, but it does mitigate some of them. Equality and
| equity aren't the same thing.
|
| Certainly, without reliance on standardized testing I'm
| somehow certain that Braden who got a helicopter pilot's
| license at 16 so he could fly the family helo from
| Manhattan to Westchester is going to do better in
| admissions than Tyrone who excelled in academics and was
| lucky enough to attend a technology magnet school, but grew
| up in the projects and had no access to anything outside of
| what school and the library provided. With SAT tests
| included, the fact Braden made a 1530 and Tyrone made a
| 1970 plays a factor.
|
| That's what folks are saying.
| aitait wrote:
| "Admissions should disregard such superficial peacocking and
| focus on metrics like the SAT that disentangle intellectual
| and academic potential from wealth."
|
| Why? Not trying to troll here but you assume that
| intellectual potential leads to success. I remember reading
| an article - unfortunately I am not able to track it
| down/google it - that looked into exactly this issue.
|
| There were free US high school selecting on just intellectual
| ability and when they looked at the careers of the students
| they were far less successful in their careers than you would
| expect from such a selection. (What stood out was that they
| seem to be much happier than average persons).
|
| The counter example was Harvard that selected on many
| criteria. The article mentioned a guy getting rejected
| because he had "pig ears" (not the official rejection but a
| note taken in an interview or something). The unfortunate
| fact is that rich, famous, driven, well connected people will
| be the better selection of success than intellectual ability.
| George W Bush was unlikely a brilliant intellectual. Yet he
| went to the top schools and him becoming president showed
| that this was the right decision by the schools that took
| him.
| thebradbain wrote:
| The tests don't _not_ work (I believe that within the middle
| of bell-curve they accomplish their goal well), but at the
| extremes they are prone to gamification, especially to those
| in the know. For example, the pre-2017 SAT had some well
| known (and some lesser known) tricks that you would only know
| by studying the test, rather than the material:
|
| - ALL sections (and sub-sections) have questions that
| strictly increase in difficulty / projected "miss-rate" as
| time goes on. This is to keep test takers from coming back to
| answers they're unsure about but may themselves know how to
| solve -- so if you find yourself struggling with questions in
| a row, it's better to stop and go back rather than miss out
| on what you may already know trying to solve questions that
| you don't. For the reading section, the scale is scoped to
| each passage. For the vocab section, where there are 3
| sections (vocab, grammar, and multiple-choice fill in the
| blank), the scale is scoped to each subsection. For the math
| section, it is scoped to the whole thing.
|
| - The "Free Section" (e.g. the one that doesn't count toward
| your score, which instructors tell you before you start that
| section, so you can use it as a break if you wish) is usually
| section 4 or 5 of the test, to help plan your breaks. Some
| students, not previously-knowing or confused that the "free
| section" is ungraded, still take it thinking there must be a
| penalty of some sort.
|
| - The word "equivocal" is tested within the SAT Vocab in
| around 60% of tests. Unequivocally, these questions have some
| of the highest wrong-rates of any question on the test.
|
| - Within the grammar questions, Choice (e) "None of the
| above" is 99% of the time NEVER the answer. This is one of
| the most certain things on the test.
|
| - The math questions will usually have (1) answer that is an
| outlier. 95% of the time, this is not the correct answer; (2)
| will be similar to the correct answer in different ways; and
| (1) will be the correct answer (e.g., say you're supposed to
| subtract "x" by 5 to get to the real answer. The obviously
| fake one might be multiplied by 5. One of the slightly-wrong
| answers might have 5 added rather than subtracted, another
| might just be off by 1). If you're ever in doubt, you can
| drastically increase your chances at guessing on a question
| by picking the question "most similar" to all of the others
| -- something like 65% chance, rather than 25% in the naive
| case.
|
| - Again for math questions -- particularly the "word riddle"
| type ones -- the SAT will generally purposely pick questions
| that could have multiple seemingly-correct questions if you
| plug in 1, 2, 5, or 10 for the variables. 3 is almost always
| a safe bet, though I particularly liked to choose 7, because
| who thinks you'd ever choose to plug in 7.
|
| - The essay is _funny_. Per the SAT 's own published rules,
| they are not graded on fact at all; purely rhetoric,
| vocabulary choice, and clarity. All of the prompts also
| usually include a historical figure or event of some sort --
| you don't need to know anything about them other than what
| the prompt tells you, but a well-known and easy way to win
| points with the graders is to make up a fake quote from
| someone adjacent to the event / historical figure as a hook:
| e.g. "Disconsolate upon hearing the tragedy of [EVENT X],
| [FIGURE Y]'s au pair journaled 'His life was short, but his
| memory will last forever'. Previously unknown to historians
| until then, Y's au pair embodied Y's belief that [SOMETHING
| FROM THE PROMPT]. [then THESIS STATEMENT on 3rd or 4th
| sentence, always]." (this is an objectively wrong and
| _terrible_ sentence that I would _hate_ to read in any other
| context. This is, however, similar to the SAT 's example of a
| top-tier intro).
|
| This is just the tip of the iceberg, too. It's a very
| predictable format and pattern (it has to be, as it's given
| multiple times during the same academic year; tests must be
| similar, lest one session of test takers do statistically
| significantly better than an equally-talented group which
| takes the test a month later)
|
| So yes, while I believe the SAT _does_ attempt to test for
| knowledge, it 's that same pursuit of a bell curve that makes
| it easily gamifiable for those who know the test and not the
| material -- who are, once again, usually already the wealthy
| and connected.
| knzhou wrote:
| Wow, this is a remarkable level of gaming that I never was
| aware of!
|
| > - Within the grammar questions, Choice (e) "None of the
| above" is 99% of the time NEVER the answer.
|
| > - The math questions will usually have (1) answer that is
| an outlier. 95% of the time, this is not the correct
| answer; (2) will be similar to the correct answer in
| different ways; and (1) will be the correct answer
|
| This is exactly the reason that, when I design tests, I
| strive to make "none of the above" or the outlier answer
| the correct one about 20% of the time. I really hope the
| SAT writers are doing that now.
|
| > ALL sections (and sub-sections) have questions that
| strictly increase in difficulty / projected "miss-rate" as
| time goes on.
|
| The computerized GRE goes even further... it's like a
| videogame, it feeds you harder questions the better you do,
| then reverts to easier ones when you mess up.
| thebradbain wrote:
| I completely agree, and as much as I hate CollegeBoard
| hope they've done more to reinvent their tests, as I do
| think objective measurement of some kind does have a
| place in admissions, even though perhaps as not the end-
| all-be-all it used to be.
|
| I used to be semi-adjacent to that sphere, but I do not
| know anything about the current format of the tests other
| than what is published.
| fyz wrote:
| > The computerized GRE goes even further... it's like a
| videogame, it feeds you harder questions the better you
| do, then reverts to easier ones when you mess up.
|
| Isn't that one of the better ways to finely calibrate a
| score? Rough approximation of heapsort?
| knzhou wrote:
| Yes, it definitely is!
|
| It does feel a little crazy, though, when suddenly all
| the vocab words are like, "tergiversate" and
| "pulchritudinous". And then when you get them all wrong
| it's back to "the cat sat on the mat". :P
| walshemj wrote:
| Yes you need to learn to look for the distractors and
| rule them out
| jrandm wrote:
| > The essay is _funny_. Per the SAT 's own published rules,
| they are not graded on fact at all; purely rhetoric,
| vocabulary choice, and clarity. All of the prompts also
| usually include a historical figure or event of some sort
| -- you don't need to know anything about them other than
| what the prompt tells you
|
| When I realized this applied to a lot of required essays --
| ie, they can be fiction or satire -- I had a lot more fun
| writing papers. I wouldn't exactly _recommend_ it but can
| confirm it doesn 't completely tank your GPA.
| lonelappde wrote:
| The SAT is intended to test aptitude, not knowledge. It's
| right there in the name.
| _hardwaregeek wrote:
| This is not entirely true. SAT scores can be used as ways to
| admit more privileged students, as they tend to have access
| to more test prep along with privileges such as extra time:
|
| > In 2010 three College Board researchers analyzed data from
| more than 150,000 students who took the SAT, and they found
| that the demographics of the two "discrepant" groups differed
| substantially. The students with the inflated SAT scores were
| more likely to be white or Asian than the students in the
| deflated-SAT group, and they were much more likely to be
| male. Their families were also much better off. Compared with
| the students with the deflated SAT scores, the inflated-SAT
| students were more than twice as likely to have parents who
| earned more than $100,000 a year and more than twice as
| likely to have parents with graduate degrees. These were the
| students -- the only students -- who were getting an
| advantage in admissions from the SAT. And they were exactly
| the kind of students that Trinity was admitting in such large
| numbers in the years before Perez arrived.
|
| > By contrast, according to the College Board's demographic
| analysis, students in the deflated-SAT group, the ones whose
| SAT scores were significantly lower than their high school
| grades would have predicted, were twice as likely to be black
| as students in the inflated-SAT group, nearly twice as likely
| to be female and almost three times as likely to be Hispanic.
| They were three times as likely as students in the inflated-
| SAT group to have parents who earned less than $30,000 a
| year, and they were almost three times as likely to have
| parents who hadn't attended college. They were the students
| -- the only students -- whose college chances suffered when
| admissions offices considered the SAT in addition to high
| school grades.
|
| Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazi
| ne/coll...
|
| The article goes on to explain that while grade point average
| is relatively consistent across income level, SAT scores are
| skewed towards the rich. Schools have realized this, which is
| why many schools no longer require the SAT or ACT.
| graeme wrote:
| Does that study control for school quality? If grades are
| normalized for a local school population, then good grades
| at one school can be worse than mediocre grades at another
| school.
|
| This was exactly the purpose for which tests like the SAT
| were created. If that factor wasn't controlled for, then
| the quote above is misleading.
| [deleted]
| bsder wrote:
| I suspect this is just getting rid of redundancy. Everyone
| taking the SAT subject tests is probably taking the
| equivalent Advanced Placement test anyhow.
|
| However, the biggest problems with these tests (and the AP
| tests) is that they are _expensive_ --they cost a non-trivial
| amount of money to sign up for and they cost a lot of time to
| prepare for if your school doesn't offer direct AP classes.
|
| The expensiveness is the barrier.
| danielg6 wrote:
| Exactly. I took all of the AP equivalents of the SAT2s
| senior year before starting at MIT. It seemed pointless.
| And my parents paid for each one.
|
| Edit: I meant I took the SAT subject tests along with their
| AP equivalents.
| snazz wrote:
| Aren't the AP tests far more difficult than the SAT
| subject tests? That's what I remember at least for
| chemistry (maybe?) back when I took both exams.
| lonelappde wrote:
| Yes, AP is college level, and SAT is high school level.
| danielg6 wrote:
| To clarify, I meant to say "along with". I took the APs
| and their SAT subject equivalents
| nilkn wrote:
| I think it's important to clarify that that SAT is not the same
| as the SAT Subject Tests. The latter are being excluded, but
| not the former. One could reasonably argue at this point that
| the Subject Tests are simply redundant with AP tests.
| mcnamaratw wrote:
| In the press release MIT says they are still looking at SAT
| scores. What they say they stopped looking at is the "SAT
| subject tests." That's something like the old Achievement
| Tests.
| tehjoker wrote:
| If only we could take the pressure off the need for a prestige
| college admission to guarantee that you won't suffer for
| decades...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| SAT prep is bullshit that lets rich kids test prep their way
| up.
| LanceH wrote:
| SAT prep is largely a scam.
|
| Have kids take the test, mark the score. Do absolutely
| nothing. Kids take test again and naturally do better.
|
| Be a SAT prep company, do the above but insert yourself
| between tests and take the credit (and the money).
| adtechperson wrote:
| SAT scores is heavily correlated with income level (the data I
| have is for the standard tests, not the subject ones, but I
| would guess they follow a similar pattern).
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280232788_Race_Pove...
|
| I applaud the MIT decision in this area.
| knzhou wrote:
| And everything else I mentioned is correlated even more
| strongly.
| pfranz wrote:
| Is it? I've heard about the movement to make the SAT
| optional for years. The argument was that grades correlate
| with success much more than SAT scores. That SAT scores
| were how privileged were "gaming the system" because they
| could afford tutors, can take it multiple times, and appeal
| for phony disability claims allowing extra test taking
| time.
|
| I'm all for objective tests, but a single test mostly shows
| subject knowledge, not necessarily success. When I studied
| and took them, I always felt like it mostly evaluated
| standardized test-taking skills (which is a trained skill I
| feel many smart and successful people lack). It doesn't
| show anything if people cheat or if the process is gamed.
|
| I don't really have a strong opinion either way--this is
| just what I've gleaned from following the news over the
| past few years. Here's an article I found that mirrors what
| I've heard:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/03/19/is-it-
| fi...
| jldugger wrote:
| IMO, the subject tests are kind of a niche environment. You
| can't prep for them with the $20 official book and there are
| like 20 of them. (Also Amazon lists it for 30 but we get the
| point). You basically need to go to a school where they offer
| AP coursework, and pay something close to $100 bucks to the
| College Board to take subject tests.
|
| When I was doing college search, the only college I recall that
| requested these subject tests was MIT.
| leetcrew wrote:
| note that the SAT subject tests are actually different from
| AP tests. when I was applying to college, a smart kid from
| the regular section of <subject> could expect to do fairly
| well on the SAT subject test for that topic. the AP tests ask
| questions on material that isn't typically covered in the
| regular classes, so it's hard to do well on them if you
| haven't taken the AP course or done a lot of extracurricular
| study.
| jldugger wrote:
| TIL. Never took one.
| dawg- wrote:
| What you call a "smooth-talker" is what someone else would call
| an articulate, socially well-adjusted person who can
| communicate their values and opinions in an intelligent way and
| who is comfortable making connections with others. Perhaps if
| this was the standard college admissions used, public schools
| would have more incentive to educate students as functional
| humans rather than test-taking drones.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Problem is, hard science has been known to be difficult to
| articulate, and a successful researcher may lose their
| characteristic as being socially well-adjusted (to the point
| of being burnt at stake).
| watwut wrote:
| I think that "smooth-talker" is typically not sonmeone who is
| articulate and socially well-adjusted who communicate their
| values and opinions in an intelligent way.
|
| The typical use of the word refers to manipulative people who
| will smoothly pretend values and opinions they don't have in
| order to mislead people and take advantage of them.
| Alternatively it is people who talk about things they know
| nothing about convincingly enough for those who also know
| nothing about the topic.
|
| The two are much different things. People who communicate
| their values and opinions have massive comparative
| disadvantage against them.
| knzhou wrote:
| > people who talk about things they know nothing about
| convincingly enough for those who also know nothing about
| the topic.
|
| Exactly. This is what a room full of smooth talkers looks
| like: two top journalists agreeing on national TV that 500
| million divided by 327 million is greater than 1 million.
|
| https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/06/msnbcs_b
| r...
| pdonis wrote:
| The problem is that "articulate, socially well-adjusted
| person who can communicate their values and opinions in an
| intelligent way and who is comfortable making connections
| with others" is (a) highly subjective, and (b) only a means
| to an end. The end is to have a productive civil society
| where people do not prey on other people. Unfortunately, all
| these highly subjective characteristics are used by people to
| prey on other people instead of to help with having a
| productive, civil society. So by themselves they can't be
| used as a standard. There has to be some objective criterion
| to distinguish people who can actually contribute to a
| productive civil society from people who prey on other
| people.
| tssva wrote:
| How exactly do standardized tests identify those who will
| or won't prey on other people?
| pdonis wrote:
| They don't identify that directly. But they do identify
| the potential to do something productive. Obviously that
| can't be the _only_ thing being used to judge people; but
| some objective standard like that has to be part of what
| is being used.
|
| Also, regardless of what standardized tests do or don't
| do, judging based on "articulate, socially well-adjusted
| person who can communicate their values and opinions in
| an intelligent way and who is comfortable making
| connections with others" is, IMO, a very poor way of
| filtering out people who will prey on other people, since
| anyone who preys on other people has to have those skills
| to be successful at it.
| mLuby wrote:
| If a university's objective is to select the applicants
| most likely to reflect prestige and wealth back onto it,
| the university is best served by picking those _who can
| most effectively cause themselves to be selected_ (rather
| than the most academically gifted students).
|
| Admissions essentially boils down to "impress me." (Not
| saying that's good for society, but it's good for the
| university.)
|
| It's one of the exceptional cases where Goodhart's Law--"a
| targeted metric is no longer good"--doesn't hold.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Well, maybe.
|
| But being the _kind_ of articulate person college people
| appreciate is also a strong cultural marker that you come
| from the "college tribe".
| newen wrote:
| Exactly. People don't talk about class enough in this
| topic. The kind of people that college interviewers
| appreciate (in terms of behavior) will almost always be
| upper middle class people and those who know enough to
| behave like upper middle class people.
| lonelappde wrote:
| That's not true anymore in the "diversity" era.
|
| Harvard just had a huge lawsuit about that.
| j88439h84 wrote:
| Valuable point, I don't see this framing enough.
| olalonde wrote:
| > an articulate, socially well-adjusted person who can
| communicate their values and opinions in an intelligent way
| and who is comfortable making connections with others
|
| If there's any correlation with this and academic success,
| it's not necessarily a positive one. There's a grain of truth
| to the stereotype of "nerds" not having great people skills.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > test-taking drones
|
| I've never done well on a test when I didn't understand the
| material, and I've always done well on test when I did.
| xppa wrote:
| functional humans ==> parasites who steal the economic output
| of non-smooth talkers.
|
| The whole world is a gigantic Animal Farm, also in the West.
| The apparatchiks have different functions and names, but the
| principle is the same. The system works better though.
| manfredo wrote:
| It's hard to create an accountable system to identify
| "smooth-talkers". We already know that perceived charisma is
| highly dependent on attractiveness, ethnicity, and other
| innate factors.
|
| What we could do is gauge students' communication ability in
| a way that is less subject to these factors. Which we already
| do, by examining students' writing.
| araara wrote:
| What's the difference between perceived charisma and
| charisma?
| manfredo wrote:
| Charisma that can come off in a 1 hour meeting, vs.
| ability to communicate and work with a team towards a
| goal.
| opportune wrote:
| All this would do is benefit the already-privileged and
| create affinity bias. Basically just affirmative action for
| white people from middle class and above homes.
| fairenough42 wrote:
| Why do you feel the need to name white people specifically?
| opportune wrote:
| Well, I am white and think that there is a difference in
| the way people socialize depending on their socioeconomic
| status, the area they grew up in, and the
| culture/language they are exposed to at home. And in the
| US it's basically all white people who are most
| advantaged in these aspects. It will likely change over
| time as more Hispanic/Asian people become second+
| generation immigrants rather than first, though
|
| I remember going to college not so long ago and meeting
| kids who had grown up in the US who still had an
| accent/manner of speaking that they got from their
| parents (like a Chinese or Spanish accent). And of course
| there are very smart kids who grow up with AAVE or strong
| regional accents, some of whom are probably white but who
| probably aren't from a good socioeconomic class.
| knzhou wrote:
| Because the Senate is over 90% white, and most of the
| rest are at least half-white.
|
| To people in this country, that's what leadership looks
| like, so if you grade based on leadership, that's what
| you're going to get. Not playing identity politics here,
| just stating a fact.
| fairenough42 wrote:
| Remind me of the relationship between the Senate and
| testing for college admissions.
| knzhou wrote:
| > To people in this country, that's what leadership looks
| like, so if you grade based on leadership, that's what
| you're going to get.
| knzhou wrote:
| > an articulate, socially well-adjusted person who can
| communicate their values and opinions in an intelligent way
|
| Yes, that's me.
|
| > and who is comfortable making connections with others
|
| And that will never be me.
|
| Leadership is inherently nepotistic. You simply aren't
| permitted to lead if you have the wrong class background or
| the wrong ethnicity. (There's a reason all Senators look
| exactly the same.) You're literally just advocating for an
| old boys' club, and if that's what you want, you might as
| well be explicit about it.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| > You simply aren't permitted to lead if you have the wrong
| class background or the wrong ethnicity. (There's a reason
| all Senators look exactly the same.)
|
| In what sense did, I dunno, Obama and McConnell look
| exactly the same?
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| You might consider how Obama and Clinton being president
| drove the over-class completely insane.
| solinent wrote:
| Language is a social creature, you can't have language
| without society and social interactions, if you're not able
| to communicate with spoken word you simply can't work as
| effectively with others. Especially if you can't make
| connections with others.
|
| In fact, most of history the etymology of words wasn't a
| huge topic because everyone would pronounce the words in
| their language similarly and thus language wouldn't evolve
| nearly as rapidly--the phoneme is as important as the
| lexeme when it comes to language.
|
| The _insert bridge here_ wasn 't built in a day, with one
| person.
| jdmichal wrote:
| > In fact, most of history the etymology of words wasn't
| a huge topic because everyone would pronounce the words
| in their language similarly and thus language wouldn't
| evolve nearly as rapidly--the phoneme is as important as
| the lexeme when it comes to language.
|
| Uh, what? How do you think we got more than one language
| in the first place? How do you think we have entire
| language families with mutually-unintelligable members?
| Or what about dialectal continuums? If anything, I would
| posit that we are closer to your statement now than at
| any other time, because the printing press calcified
| spelling -- which could vary quite a bit in the time of
| scribes. And radio and TV and the Internet have started
| spreading linguistic innovation faster.
| shiado wrote:
| "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once
| pressure is placed upon it for control purposes."
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Note to those who haven't been in high school for some time:
| these aren't the main test. The main test still gets considered
| (in addition to your parents' money)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT_Subject_Tests
| rickwierenga wrote:
| > (in addition to your parents' money)
|
| That is not true. MIT is need blind which means it doesn't
| consider financial needs [1].
|
| [1] https://mitadmissions.org/afford/cost-aid-basics/access-
| affo...
| thedance wrote:
| "As for the children of prominent campus donors, [former MIT
| director of undergraduate admissions] Crowley said a
| college's development office might reach out to the dean of
| admissions to say, "Hey, just so you know, Lisa's dad has
| been very generous to us in the past, or something."
| hksh wrote:
| Since one isn't provided this is the top google result
| containing the quote [1].
|
| The context of the linked article is that Crowley now works
| for an admission prep company IvyWise and this quote may
| not directly reference MIT but his broader experience in
| this more recent role.
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/college-cheating-
| scanda...
| chatmasta wrote:
| To be fair, the SAT is pretty useless when you have enough
| applicants with 99 percentile scores that you can fill your class
| multiple times over. It was never a differentiator.
| larrik wrote:
| Title nitpick, "SAT Subject Tests" is in a specific case in the
| original title, and the lack of title-case on "Subject Tests" is
| making it hard to understand the true announcement.
|
| IE. SATs are staying, SAT Subject Tests are not.
| legionof7 wrote:
| Slightly unrelated but could be useful to any HS seniors here: My
| n=1 study method got me a 1520. I would study for the SAT in a
| dark room, with horror movie music or war sound effects playing
| in earbuds, while planking. For every incorrect answer, I'd do 10
| pushups or 3 pull-ups (can adapt to your own level). Rationale
| was that if I could do well in the worst conditions possible,
| then I'd do better sitting in a quiet room.
|
| I'm a pretty bad student also, I had like a 3 GPA.
| jwilber wrote:
| Another item on the list of recent things MIT has
| done/participated in to reduce its reputation in favor of
| pleasing the rich and powerful.
| better0uts1d3 wrote:
| Sometimes, there's good news from coronavirus
| forkexec wrote:
| I'm glad I didn't study at all or have any coaching for the 1600
| pt SAT I in the mid 90's because it would've been entirely
| unnecessary. I missed one question on the math section and it was
| a dumb mistake on my part. Our school's graduating class alone
| had over a dozen perfect SATs, multiple full rides to
| Harvard/MIT/Stanford and around 70 over 1500. ~97% had test prep.
|
| Now go to India, take the JEE and find out how fun testing can be
| because the SAT is not much harder than a driving test. :)
| (Emphasis on the JEE being a much better measure because it's
| more difficult and more voluminous so that it would make Einstein
| feel insecure and inadequate.)
| makstaks wrote:
| To clarify, SATs are still required, subject tests are different.
|
| From page:
|
| "Will you still require the SAT or the ACT?"
|
| "We will continue to require the SAT or the ACT, because..."
|
| edited: formatting
| sriram_sun wrote:
| > "... for non-native English speakers, we strongly recommend
| taking the TOEFL if you have been using English for less than 5
| years or do not speak English at home or in school..."
|
| I hope that TOEFL is offered on a pass/fail criteria. For. e.g.
| if you score (say) 85% or more, it shouldn't matter if you score
| 100% for purposes or communication or comprehension.
| thedance wrote:
| The only criteria for English should be abilities at least as
| good as the worst teaching assistant in the undergraduate
| college. This is the lowest possible standard of English
| language proficiency.
|
| """ WHEN Mark W. Eichin showed up for his course in
| differential equations at the Massachusetts Institute of
| Technology this year, he found that his instructor was a
| Hindustani whose spoken English was ''almost
| incomprehensible.'' Along with most of his classmates, the
| freshman stopped attending lectures. ''People just got their
| assignments and left,'' he recalled. """
|
| ^ Consistent with my own undergrad experience.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Wouldn't demanding English language abilities help to reduce
| instances of this in the future? Like if they're letting
| students graduate with language deficits then the chance of
| tutors/teachers/professors having less language ability than
| desirable would seem to go up?
| noodlesUK wrote:
| Is there some other standardised exam (AP? IB?) that they will be
| considering instead? I went through a very non-traditional route
| to university, and standardised exams were an important part of
| me being able to demonstrate preparedness for university. I
| hesitate to just go on what grades someone gets at school, as it
| simply puts them at the mercy of their teachers and
| administrators.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| These were called "Achievement Tests" in the early 90s, and man,
| they were much harder than the SAT. If the current "Subject
| Tests" approximate their level of difficulty, then it's a clear
| mistake for MIT to disregard these datapoints. When I was
| applying to college, yes, people paid for SAT prep but very few
| paid for Achievement Test prep, and so Achievement Tests were a
| superior indicator.
| pulisse wrote:
| > These were called "Achievement Tests" in the early 90s, and
| man, they were much harder than the SAT. If the current
| "Subject Tests" approximate their level of difficulty, then
| it's a clear mistake for MIT to disregard these datapoints
|
| Difficulty as perceived by test takers is irrelevant. What MIT
| cares about is how well test performance predicts undergrad
| performance. As TFA notes, MIT is retaining the standard SAT
| because their data indicates that performance on that test _is_
| predictive.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| We don't disagree. I remain dubious that excluding a subject
| test term wouldn't deteriorate MIT's scoring model.
| cosmotic wrote:
| The post is a little misleading. MIT will still require SAT or
| ACT, just not the subject tests.
| bryanhpchiang wrote:
| That's exactly what the headline says.
| kart23 wrote:
| So you still have to submit it, but they won't consider it?
| I'm confused.
| thatiscool wrote:
| I can project the going south of MIT.
| Koshkin wrote:
| BU?
| 0xff00ffee wrote:
| 34 years too goddamn late for me. Yes I'm still angry I didn't
| get in, because my SATs sucked. Now I run a software company. EAT
| IT MIT! :)
| gumby wrote:
| Is SAT prep known to make any difference?
|
| Back when I applied to MIT (early 80s) our entire SAT prep was
| "fill in the circles completely, bring only #2 pencils to the
| test and if you can't eliminate even one possible answer skip the
| question." Back then I never heard of anyone using any more
| advice than just that.
|
| A few years ago I bought some SAT prep books for my kid and he
| never cracked them.
| foreigner wrote:
| Practice definitely helped me.
| awinter-py wrote:
| boolean satisfiability?
| Koshkin wrote:
| I wonder if this has something to do with the pandemic.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| It isn't exactly a surprise. Back then, in school, we toured the
| national synchrotron facility, and the same question came up: if
| didn't have much physics at school can you still study physics?
| The answer was: if you study physics they'll teach you physics
| just fine, where you'll run into trouble is the adjacent
| subjects, chemistry, biology, computing. You'll need to take care
| of that yourself.
| abhisuri97 wrote:
| Honestly welcome change. The SAT Subject tests (at least for
| people around me in HS) were always considered as a much easier
| test you'd take after the AP for that very same subject. I just
| equated it to another way for collegeboard to get money
| especially since the questions were way more straightforward than
| AP. I am slightly concerned about what this means for schools
| where AP classes are not offered (I imagine SAT Subject tests
| presented the most accessible opportunity for these students to
| demonstrate their aptitude in a subject).
|
| EDIT: changed wording in response to child comment.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| You can take the AP test without taking an AP course.
| abhisuri97 wrote:
| Yep! But there are a few more barriers in the way if your
| school does not offer AP courses (you'd need to find
| neighboring schools that do allow it and talk to the AP
| coordinator at that school). For subject tests, there are
| pretty minimal barriers associated with signing up. You just
| register as you normally would for an SAT exam IIRC.
| xibalba wrote:
| The majority of comments in this thread are an abject
| demonstration of a failure in reading comprehension.
|
| If only we had a test for that...
| Dalrymple wrote:
| This is indeed a strange decision for MIT. The conventional
| wisdom has long been that the SAT subject tests are MORE
| predictive of future success at MIT, because the influence of
| test prep, cramming, test coaches, etc. is minimal for the
| subject tests. While there are reports of people raising their
| scores artificially on the non-subject tests by hundreds of
| points through these short-term methods, the subjects tests have
| long had a reputation as being more representative of what you
| really know.
| knzhou wrote:
| If the reason is benign, I'm guessing it's just because AP
| tests have gotten so watered down that they're just a stand-in
| for the SAT subject tests at this point.
| whymauri wrote:
| >The conventional wisdom has long been that the SAT subject
| tests are MORE predictive of future success at MIT, because the
| influence of test prep, cramming, test coaches, etc. is minimal
| for the subject tests.
|
| Citation needed? The admissions office has much better data on
| this stuff, but in my experience, MIT students who performed
| well on these tests did so because their schools offered AP
| exams that were relevant. For students like me, we were S.O.L.
| and had to teach ourselves a year's worth of test material
| entirely by self-study while still maintaining top grades in
| school, doing research, and studying for the SAT.
|
| To clarify: not disputing that there's less cramming, just that
| it's a better predictor.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The conventional wisdom has long been that the SAT subject
| tests are MORE predictive of future success at MIT, because the
| influence of test prep, cramming, test coaches, etc. is minimal
| for the subject tests.
|
| Who cares what the conventional wisdom says? The psychometric
| results are that SAT I scores and SAT II scores predict
| performance about equally well in isolation and don't have more
| predictive value in combination than they do in isolation. In
| other words, they measure exactly the same thing.
|
| (Contrast the other major predictor, high school GPA, where the
| predictive value of considering GPA + SAT in combination
| somewhat exceeds the predictive value of either metric
| individually.)
| posterboy wrote:
| There is another implication as a consequence of the
| statement "the influence of test prep, cramming, test
| coaches, etc. is minimal for the subject tests." That is, I
| first read thag _the students don 't suffer under these
| conditions_. It is a valuable trait no doubt, to be able to
| cram swaths of loosely associated facts. I'd argue that it's
| a vital trade for study, but perhaps it is less severe than
| only twenty years ago, because very powerful memory aids have
| become ubiquitious.
|
| > predict performance about equally well
|
| having no tires or no engine predicts performance of a car--
| or rather the lack thereof--equally well. Yet grip and
| horsepower are independent variables. I think that means SAT
| scores don't predict success too well at all beyond a certain
| threshold.
|
| Having the right motivation (haha, a pun) for a certain
| disciplin might make a huge difference. So you can test e.g.
| vocabulary learning in general, or top9cal knowledge, which
| requires precise choices of vocabulary nonetheless, but one
| not found in a general dictionary. It's more like knowing
| which dictionaries exist, and what texts are referenced
| therein.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I think that means SAT scores don't predict success too
| well at all beyond a certain threshold.
|
| Try reading about it.
|
| https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/Webb_RM_2001_Top.pdf
|
| > There is another implication as a consequence of the
| statement "the influence of test prep, cramming, test
| coaches, etc. is minimal for the subject tests." That is, I
| first read tha[t] the students _don 't suffer under these
| conditions_.
|
| This is not a valid inference to draw; the influence of
| test prep, cramming, coaches, etc. is also minimal for the
| main SAT, but students suffer through them anyway.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| > Who cares what the conventional wisdom says? The
| psychometric results are that SAT I scores and SAT II scores
| predict performance about equally well in isolation and don't
| have more predictive value in combination than they do in
| isolation. In other words, they measure exactly the same
| thing.
|
| This is point where you take a step back and conclude that if
| this is your measured result, you may have been measuring
| nothing at all.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Did you miss the first part?
|
| > SAT I scores and SAT II scores predict performance about
| equally well in isolation
|
| They're both good predictors. They're just the same
| predictor twice, as opposed to being two different
| predictors.
| DevX101 wrote:
| I'm assuming most everyone taking the SAT subject test is also
| taking AP tests. AP tests were significantly more rigorous than
| SAT subject tests and would have provided more useful
| information to admissions. It took more prep to get a 5 on an
| AP Chemistry test vs a top score on the SAT subject test.
| thecleaner wrote:
| Some rich trustee's dumb kid probably got "screwed over" by a
| poor kid who put in insane hours. I dont see how this leads to
| egalitarian access to education given that on every other
| metric spoilt idiots carrying rich parents DNA will have an
| advantage.
| johnmarcus wrote:
| >For all applicants: We require the SAT or the ACT. We do not
| require the ACT writing section or the SAT optional essay. > we
| still require the score because it is predictive in conjunction
| with other acedemic factors
|
| So.....basically nothing has changed and the headline is
| extremely misleading.
|
| Edit: so apparently this applies to the "subject" tests. I never
| took those and didn't know they were a thing, now I do.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| A comment section of people who didn't read the article lol. They
| explicitly said they consider SAT to be a predictive metric of
| success at MIT. This is not critical of SAT, only SAT subject
| tests.
|
| While they weren't explicit about why SAT subject tests won't be
| accepted, this may be a clue:
|
| > No: in fairness to all applicants, we won't consider them for
| anyone. We think it would be unfair to consider scores only from
| those who have scored well and therefore choose to send them to
| us.
|
| Seems reasonable to expect tests which are optional to suffer
| from heavy selection bias as they described. I'd expect optional
| tests to also skew towards the rich because there is a cost to
| each test.
| [deleted]
| dbcurtis wrote:
| "And last, but certainly not least: I know we are making this
| announcement during the COVID-19 pandemic. We had already been
| planning to make this change, and decided to announce as soon as
| possible in part because we wanted to make sure no one was
| spending more time or energy studying for tests they wouldn't
| have to take for us, especially during a public health emergency.
| "
|
| Riiiiiiiight. 'Cuz nobody that applies to MIT ever applies to a
| back-up school. You know, just in case they don't get accepted.
| I've heard that can happen.
| alexhutcheson wrote:
| SAT Subject Tests are either optional or not considered at most
| schools. I personally took a few SAT Subject Tests that were
| only required for a single school I was applying to.
| vondur wrote:
| Ah man, 20 years too late for me!
| pelasaco wrote:
| The only question that now matters: Do you like Trump? if yes,
| you are out.
| cwperkins wrote:
| What about the College boards initiative to consider adversity?
| Has that initiative gone anywhere or is it dead? I would rather
| consider adversity of a child's upbringing in context of
| standardized test results then any immutable traits.
| [deleted]
| pulisse wrote:
| A number of comments here seem to be confusing SAT subject tests,
| which are domain-specific tests about subjects like biology, with
| the "standard" SAT. It's only the former that MIT is dropping
| from consideration in admissions:
|
| > We will continue to require the SAT or the ACT, because our
| research has shown these tests, in combination with a student's
| high school grades and coursework, are predictive of success in
| our challenging curriculum.
| basementcat wrote:
| Makes sense; doesn't everybody pretty much get perfect scores on
| these? (at least everyone who is a serious applicant to an
| institution like MIT) If everyone gets the same (perfect) score
| then the test doesn't really help the admissions committee select
| for the best applicants. Tests like AMC 12 may be more useful for
| this type of purpose.
| applecrazy wrote:
| Yep. SAT Math II is all but worthless at this point. The middle
| 50% for top universities ranges from 800-800 (aka the max
| score).
| hhs wrote:
| Earlier this year, Caltech made the decision to eliminate the SAT
| subject tests: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-
| eliminate-require...
| [deleted]
| thecleaner wrote:
| So they will consider what ? Recommendation letters ? Maybe they
| dont realise that people from disadvantaged groups dont really
| have the luxury to volunteer at one of those fancy NGOs.
| Standardized tests are actually except for the super expensive
| textbooks in the US. If these books for basic education could
| somehow be made free but oh wait - socialism.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > So they will consider what?
|
| They explain it very clearly: The SAT or ACT, and high school
| grades.
|
| They are just skipping the _subject_ _tests_ , because they
| don't think they are useful.
|
| The subject tests are the optional tests that students can take
| in addition to the normal SAT.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Oh... this actually makes sense. MIT is still accepting the main
| SAT test _and_ AP tests.
|
| SAT subject tests were always a weird thing in the middle. AP
| tests cover the same goal, but with more rigor and
| differentiation. (I remember taking the SAT subject tests just to
| "cover my bases", because they were there, not because there
| seemed to be any real reason.)
|
| Also -- remember, even if your high school doesn't offer AP
| courses, you can still study for and take the AP tests on your
| own.
| codingslave wrote:
| Most of this is to obscure their admission criteria. Harvard has
| come under fire for actively discriminating against Asian
| applicants. By removing a standard test, these colleges can
| actively discriminate whilst making it more difficult to prove
| admissions bias from a numerical and arguably more objective
| standard.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| There's been a similar debate over subject GREs in my field.
| The argument has been made that subject GREs are racist/sexist,
| because of the differing distributions of test scores in
| different demographic groups. There is a strong social pressure
| to accept this argument, despite its obvious absurdity, leading
| most people in the field to do so (and if they disagreed, they
| probably wouldn't tell you).
|
| The problem is that graduate school admissions committees are
| left with very few quantitative measures. Undergrad grades are
| difficult to compare, because every university grades
| differently, and applicants come from different countries with
| completely different grading scales. So many people score
| perfectly on the quantitative GRE that it's nearly useless. The
| verbal GRE seems irrelevant to a scientific field, and it seems
| pointless to rule out international applicants because they
| don't know the meaning of the word "garrulous." In short, the
| subject GRE was one of the only uniform quantitative measures
| available to admissions committees, and now it's considered
| "racist."
|
| There upshot, ironically, is that the elimination of
| quantitative measures makes discrimination easier to hide. This
| discrimination is meant to be positive, helping increase
| representation of underrepresented groups. The applicants who
| suffer most from this policy are those who are just on the line
| between admission and rejection, and who don't come from the
| "correct" demographic. The people pushing these policies think
| they're changing the world for the better, but it sure looks
| unfair to the individuals they're denying entry to. Applicants
| are being treated as representatives of their race or gender,
| rather than as individuals who should be considered
| individually.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| MIT's grad schools jettisoned GRE consideration a while ago.
| As you say, the GRE quant is trivial by MIT's standards, and
| the GRE verbal largely irrelevant.
|
| It's fairly easy to spot the "heavy-hitters" just from
| recommendations, undergraduate publication record, thesis,
| and GPA. In short, MIT and its elite cohort (CMU, Caltech,
| etc.) only accept undergrads who found their way into their
| professor's research groups -- this feat in and of itself is
| a superior indicator.
| knzhou wrote:
| Absolutely! I have a lot more faith in grad admissions than
| undergrad, because there's so much more good signal.
| Unfortunately nothing like this is available when people
| are in high school.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| GPA is difficult, because there's no uniform standard. A
| 3.9 GPA from Caltech is much more impressive than a 3.9 GPA
| from Harvard (where there's serious grade inflation), but
| then again, you have to look carefully at which specific
| courses went into that GPA. But how do you compare those
| numbers to a grade of 15/20 from a French university, or a
| 1.1 from a German university, or some other country whose
| system you don't know?
|
| Undergrad research (including a published first-author
| paper) is almost a requirement now for entry into many top
| programs. But you have to know the research group the
| student worked with, and you get applications from all over
| the world.
|
| The subject GRE is a uniform quantitative baseline. It
| isn't everything (or even most of everything), but it is a
| somewhat objective standard that can at least flag
| applicants who might have real difficulty in a top program.
|
| The thing is, I've heard "equity" arguments for
| disregarding not only the subject GRE, but also published
| research ("Not everyone has the opportunity to do research
| as an undergrad") and letters of reference ("Letter writers
| suffer from implicit bias"). The "equity" advocates seem to
| want to throw out every piece of relevant information. Of
| course, that makes it easier to hit whatever targets
| "equity" requires.
| krastanov wrote:
| They are removing the extra optional tests, not the main SAT
| test. Sounds great to me, as these extra tests just show you
| have the money to take them. Your comment is an unfounded
| opinion, please do not present it with the certainty of a fact.
| gnicholas wrote:
| The SAT IIs are not extra/optional if you're applying to most
| selective colleges/universities. They aren't the main SAT,
| but they are far from optional for students who would be
| considering MIT.
| lainga wrote:
| The first sentence of GP was, but the second statement was
| fact, and the third a description of a plausible possibility.
| metalforever wrote:
| Low income students get a fee waiver
| tryptophan wrote:
| See also the recent restructuring of the SAT, which changed the
| scoring so more people have perfect/high scores.
|
| Harvard et al can now pick from a wider pool and still claim
| they have the "best and brightest".
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I am always wary of universities removing testing requirements as
| they are usually motivated by activist pressure (vilifying
| meritocracy and pushing for equity, AKA equality of outcomes)
| rather than evaluating for the best talent more precisely. Anyone
| know more about what the story is behind this one?
| codelord wrote:
| In my home country Iran we had the equivalent of SAT general and
| subject tests. I did pretty poorly in general tests, but the
| subject tests saved me (near perfect scores in physics and math)
| and opened the door for me to go to a good university in my
| country. Just to get a clear understanding of my financials, I
| was living off 1$ per month at that time which was just enough to
| buy heavily subsidized food stamps in college. I ended up
| graduating with a PhD degree and worked at several top companies
| in the US later. This seems to me like a case of a cure that is
| worse than the disease.
| grantsch wrote:
| Nearly none of the comments are really about what they're
| eliminating: SAT subject tests (NOT the SAT!)
|
| The main SAT is basically a basic skills and IQ test while the
| SUBJECT tests are almost entirely about preparation, making them
| much easier to game/prepare for.
|
| Source: I tutored the SAT and subject tests.
| chad_strategic wrote:
| I'm sure that I will get in trouble for this but...
|
| The SAT/ACT system is corrupt. It's plain an simple. Follow the
| money. It's as simple as that. The root of most issues involve
| simple economics. (Maybe a little broad of a statement, so take
| it with a grain of salt, but certainly applies in this case.)
|
| The tests are built on revenue from the taking the tests and
| industry selling you prep material. I don't have time to find the
| article but the SAT organization got busted a while back for
| charging different prices for different zip codes.
|
| Although I can't prove it, but I'm sure there were kickback for
| universities that used the tests. It's a little unsubstantiated
| claim but we already know you can bribe your way into to school.
| (The Rick Singer debacle) Why wouldn't these "Testing" companies
| be doing the same.
|
| Memorizing a method/strategy to take test is a waste of time and
| national resources.
| httpz wrote:
| To clarify, SAT subject tests are the ones like physics,
| chemistry, Spanish, etc. Not the main verbal and math portion.
| For students smart enough to get into MIT, the subject tests are
| way too easy. Most students applying to MIT probably have near
| perfect score already, so for MIT it's probably not a useful
| indicator.
| ismail-khan wrote:
| What's the point of the subject tests anyway when you already
| have AP exams?
|
| It was pointless for me to do both in high school, the subject
| tests were much easier.
| supernova87a wrote:
| If they ever extend this to the SAT / ACT itself (and not just
| the subject tests) I will have lost a lot of respect for MIT.
|
| A goal of higher education is to give the opportunity to people
| who will likely make the best use of the education, and have the
| greatest chance of succeeding given their preparation. Spots at
| top colleges are a _limited resource_. There has to be a
| selection function, and an unbiased test that asks questions
| about math, reading comprehension, etc. is as close as you 're
| going to get.
|
| The SAT, regardless of your opinion of whether it exacerbates or
| merely reflects inequities in the system, is a very strong
| indicator of whether a person has the preparation to succeed at
| university. You cannot get around that fact.
|
| Whether high-priced prep courses or studying out of a book from
| the library help you pass the test, the person doing either of
| those things has gotten education and skills along the way. God
| forbid you consider the idea that someone actually learned
| something even though the test was standardized. And the fact
| that even poor families will pay to put their kids through test
| prep courses suggests they see value in it. It's not like they're
| paying to be given instructions on how to cheat the system.
|
| People who want to water down the admissions criteria to be a
| social equalizer ought not mask their motives by saying that the
| test is flawed. The test is perfectly fine, and it reflects
| people's preparation and abilities to succeed at university. If
| you want to change the outcome, change the inputs -- and work on
| getting more people qualified to pass that test.
| yardie wrote:
| I used to think the SATs were fair. Until I found out how much
| money was being spent on SAT prep. And those expensive prep
| courses had the potential to increase scores over 100 points.
|
| I took the recommended SAT prep course through my high school. It
| was 2 weekends of going over material that might be on the exam
| and a workbook recommended by The College Board. Imagine my
| surprise going to university and meeting students much richer
| than I who had multi year SAT prep courses with actual exam
| questions!
| neaden wrote:
| The question shouldn't be is the SAT unfairly biased towards
| families with money, since of course it is, but is the SAT less
| biased towards families with money then other criteria. Having
| parents with money and connections lets you get tutoring to
| increase your GPA, tutoring to write essays, connections to get
| internships, the free time to do clubs, training to excel in
| sports, and so many other things.
| Spivak wrote:
| Right! I don't understand why people in this thread are
| apparently mad rich families for this? Like a family with
| means is doing all the things to raise a socialized, well
| rounded, experienced, well-read and tutored, worldly person.
| Like god damn I can't think of a better use for the money as
| a parent.
|
| I get that college admissions is a contest and performative
| but hot damn this thread is full of people mad at other
| people's happiness.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| I'm an underrepresented minority and I increased my SAT score
| by 200-300 from the PSAT to SAT, depending on how you want to
| measure the change. This was just by doing self-study with off
| the shelf test prep material. The classes aren't what increases
| your score, its the consistent structured study and ones innate
| potential. For some people, no amount of study is going to get
| them into the 90+th percentile. While others who have the
| capacity to do well but haven't had the best instruction over
| the years can cover a lot of ground with the right prep. But
| this is exactly what SAT is intended to measure, scholastic
| potential. That some people can increase scores dramatically
| through preparation does not indicate a failure of the test,
| but rather its success.
| applecrazy wrote:
| This. I'm a college freshman and took the SAT and PSAT when
| in high school. I'm also not a minority. While I and my
| parents could have afforded the expensive prep courses the
| students around me were taking , I decided to skip these and
| focus purely on solo prep. Across the PSAT and SAT, I spent a
| total of $50 for my prep-a $35 dollar, thick book of SAT
| problems, and a $15 PSAT prep book. Technically, you don't
| even need to buy these books--many libraries offer the books
| to borrow for free.
|
| Just going through those books and drilling incessantly on
| weekends and in my free time was enough to get me a 1520 on
| the PSAT (the max score, which helped in gaining merit
| scholarships, which is the reason I go to school for free
| right now), and a 1540 on the SAT (99th percentile). I also
| used Khan Academy extensively, which provides free prep
| sponsored by Collegeboard.
|
| In my opinion, prep courses are just a means for unmotivated
| students to put in the same amount of work as a highly
| diligent, self-studying student. There's plenty of free and
| relatively inexpensive resort resources out there nowadays,
| it just requires time and attention (which sadly a lot of my
| generation doesn't have).
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >But this is exactly what SAT is intended to measure,
| scholastic potential.
|
| But if you define the variable like this, you end up opening
| a can of worms.
|
| Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they have
| better access to resources? Or should scholastic potential be
| the measurement of how a child performs assuming they had the
| same access to resources? Should children who belong to a
| racial/ethnic group that have social stereotypes of having
| more scholastic potential be defined as having more
| scholastic potential because of the effect of stereotypes and
| labels, or should the measure of scholastic potential be of
| the underlying potential if the effects of stereotypes and
| labels were equal?
|
| Normally measurements of potential aim to be to measure the
| factors least impacted by other factors, because if we
| account for those factors we are measuring actual instead of
| potential.
| askafriend wrote:
| > Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they
| have better access to resources?
|
| Yes. They do. It's maybe not the answer you were looking
| for, but if you are better prepared, you'll do better at
| the task at hand. Seems fairly straightforward.
|
| The next question would be how easy are those resources to
| access (in the case of the SAT)? And the answer is you can
| do pretty well with a $20 test prep book that you can order
| from Amazon. The rest is time, effort, awareness etc.
|
| Then we start getting into factors that are much harder to
| control or evaluate - parental involvement, guidance,
| nutrition, emotional support, etc.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >Yes. They do. It's maybe not the answer you were looking
| for, but if you are better prepared, you'll do better at
| the task at hand. Seems fairly straightforward.
|
| I think you missed the point of the two questions, which
| is a question of what scholastic potential issue. What
| you are measuring is something that I might call
| scholastic actuality. It is how good they are with the
| tools they have. Potential is how good they are if we
| normalize the tools.
|
| Granted, we don't have to go with that definition. If you
| want to call what I'm calling actuality potential, then
| that is fine. Just redefining a variable. But then we
| need a name for what I'm calling potential. Potential
| potential sounds a bit weird, but naming variables is
| hard so I'll use it as a placeholder for now.
|
| So now that we have academic potential and academic
| potential potential, which should a person be ranked
| based off of when going to college? Given that academic
| potential is more dependent upon environmental factors
| that will change and be normalized between all freshmen
| (to some degree, there is still some differences), then
| should academic potential potential be a better predictor
| for success at college?
|
| That isn't the complete answer, and real life is much
| more complicated than these simple equations. Just like
| emotional support can lead to a more mature individual
| that even once the emotional support is gone they have a
| life long benefit from.
| ebrenes wrote:
| But every metric used by colleges is to measure what you
| termed "scholastic actuality":
|
| - School grades: if you didn't get the GPA you're already
| out of the running in many colleges
|
| - Extracurricular Activities: if you didn't actually
| participate, then no one is going to look at how you
| might have done if you had participated
|
| - College Essay: if you can't write you're not going to
| get any points here, no matter the potential you might
| have to eventually write something amazing
|
| I don't see why the SAT should focus on some ethereal
| "potential" when everything else is centered on the
| current reality and not potential. Colleges aren't
| looking for the completely unrefined ore, they're looking
| for a diamond in the rough that needs to be cut and
| polished if you will. Not a bucket of rocks that are
| _very likely_ to contain a diamond.
| tathougies wrote:
| > Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they
| have better access to resources?
|
| Do kids with involved parents have access to more
| scholastic potential because their parents cared? Almost
| certainly, and that's a good thing and we should harvest
| it, not attempt to force something that is not going to
| work.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Once they are in college, the impact of parents is quite
| minified. So if you have a stupid whose default academic
| potential is 10 but has a parental multiplier of 2 for
| having involved parents and another kid whose default
| academic potential is 15 but has a parental multiplier of
| 1 for parents who don't care, once they get into college
| and the parental multiplier goes away the one who has a
| 15 should do better than the one who has a 10.
|
| Now, numbers aren't that easily available. And maybe
| parents caring has a permanent effect that lasts even
| once they are gone. Real life is far more complicated
| than my example. But it shows a very simple possibility
| of why measuring potential while ignoring environmental
| failures can lead to a sub-optimal ranking.
| tathougies wrote:
| > Once they are in college, the impact of parents is
| quite minified
|
| What an absolutely ridiculous thought. Literally our
| entire personality, our study habits, and our grit come
| from our parents.
| threatofrain wrote:
| If you want a less gameable test you eventually just end up
| testing for IQ, but do we want to promote mere intelligence
| vs what you've done with it?
| koboll wrote:
| >And those expensive prep courses had the potential to increase
| scores over 100 points.
|
| I took one of those expensive scores and got the _exact_ same
| score after the course as I did before the course.
|
| It turned out the cheap study book was every bit as effective
| as the expensive course.
| scythe wrote:
| The question isn't "can the SATs be gamed?", though. The
| question is "can the SATs be gamed _more_ than whatever _other_
| criteria you use? ". Simply analyzing one half of the equation
| won't produce a correct answer.
|
| Rich people can game standardized tests. They can also game
| grades. They can game admission essays. They can game
| interviews. If colleges admitted students based on brain fMRI
| data, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that rich
| people managed to exploit that, too.
|
| Are the SATs unfair? Absolutely. Are they _more unfair_ than
| the alternative? I 'm not convinced. I usually prefer the devil
| I know.
| bermanoid wrote:
| That's a fair criticism of the general SAT - I used to teach
| those classes, and the test is very gameable in the sense that
| there really are "A FEW SIMPLE TRICKS!" to learn that have
| nothing to do with actually knowing the material in a useful
| way.
|
| But at least some of the subject SATs are not like that at all,
| specifically the math/science ones. There really aren't many
| tricks or traps, they really are like normal school tests (if
| multiple choice) where doing well on them requires you to know
| the material they cover. Nobody who is "good at tests" is going
| to 800 the physics one without knowing physics well enough that
| they'd do well in a freshman mechanics course, and someone who
| gets a 400 either slept through class or is going to struggle
| at college level.
| sushid wrote:
| This reads more like a humblebrag to me than a thoughtful
| criticism against standardized testing.
| duckMuppet wrote:
| Anyone can study the SAT prep books for free at a bookstore a
| few hours at a time daily.
|
| If your offended by that, what about professors or HS teachers
| who teach certain sections of the textbook because it's going
| to be on the exam.
|
| One can self-study the SAT prep book or self-study their
| biology book and in both cases can potentially be more
| knowledgeable than those who attended a formal university class
| or prep workshop. Most students aren't driven to do that
| though.
|
| This goes to the fundamental problem, that our university
| system at present is really just a credentialing and signaling
| system.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > If your offended by that, what about professors or HS
| teachers who teach certain sections of the textbook because
| it's going to be on the exam.
|
| Yes, this another big problem caused by (too much emphasis
| on) standardised testing. I learnt the most in classes that
| didn't do this. But people do better on tests when they do do
| this. Standardised tests are destroying our education system.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Surely the standardization matters?
|
| Teaching to an _aptitude_ test is clearly counterproductive
| (and ditto tricks for hacking the test--like just testing
| each multiple choice answer instead of solving an
| equation).
|
| On the other hand. the AP classes I took in high school
| (admittedly, a long time ago) seemed pretty reasonable.
| Perhaps you could quibble with how the syllabus weighted
| various subjects, or the (mercifully few) classes on how
| structure exam answers. Overall though, I felt like I got a
| decent education in Spanish/History/Physics/etc from those
| courses.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I think it's the testing that's the problem, more so than
| the standardization (although standardization can
| definitely be taken too far to the point that it's
| unhelpful). You can of course have a standardized
| curriculum without any testing at all. Countries like
| Finland put far less emphasis on test results, and a lot
| more emphasis on teacher's assessment of their pupils. It
| seems like a much healthier system to me.
| mattkrause wrote:
| I'd buy that, especially when the tests are optimized for
| "objective" automatic grading rather than written
| responses.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Diversity in knowledge across the working population
| would seem preferable to homogeneity to me.
|
| Sure you want some core things, like all engineers being
| able to solve 2nd order DEs, but outside that you want
| diversity if you're looking for innovation and
| application to diverse fields.
| mattkrause wrote:
| In general, sure, but how much diversity you can
| reasonably expect for say, high school calculus? It's not
| as though schools abandoned their infinitesimal-based
| curricula to match the AP syllabus better.
|
| The AP US History curriculum also kind of anticipates
| your critique: "As has been the case for all prior
| versions of the AP U.S. History course, this AP U.S.
| History course framework includes a minimal number of
| individual names: the founders, several presidents and
| party leaders, and other individuals who are almost
| universally taught in college-level U.S. history courses.
| As history teachers know well, the material in this
| framework cannot be taught without careful attention to
| the individuals, events, and documents of American
| history; however, to ensure teachers have flexibility to
| teach specific content that is valued locally and
| individually, the course avoids prescribing details that
| would require all teachers to teach the same historical
| examples. Each teacher is responsible for selecting
| specific individuals, events, and documents for student
| investigation of the material in the course framework."
|
| https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/ap/pdf/ap-us-history-
| cou... (Page 11/15)
|
| I would argue that it's possible to have a good yet
| flexible standardized system; it's just hard.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Goodhart's law in action!
| askafriend wrote:
| That's true, but at the same time it's a standardized test so
| anyone can replicate those prep courses. There's tons of prep
| books with practice questions, tips, etc.
|
| It's a matter of awareness and taking it seriously (obviously a
| simplification, but hope you get my point).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I mean, it's not really true. People spend a lot of money on
| test prep, but this isn't even a case where the evidence
| hasn't come in yet. We know perfectly well that test prep has
| negligible influence on SAT scores.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Those studies were mostly funded and influenced by the
| college board, and they needed that to be true, so that's
| what they found. But there is prep and there is prep!, they
| are different with different influences. Studying the
| former (say a few weekend long prep course) to make
| conclusions about the latter (intensive cram school for a
| couple of years) is criminal.
|
| I've seen an SAT cram school in China, and yes...it will
| influence your scores significantly because they pull out
| all of the stops.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Those studies were mostly funded and influenced by the
| college board, and they needed that to be true, so that's
| what they found.
|
| The SAT draws a huge amount of overtly hostile attention.
| So does SAT prep. But these highly motivated SAT-hostile
| researchers haven't been able to produce the results they
| need.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That simply isn't true, eg see
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-
| sheet/wp/2017/05/...
|
| The College Board can't really have it both ways. And of
| course: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-
| report/college-...
|
| Which is just one example of pulling out all the stops.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Yes, no one disputes that memorizing an answer key can
| give you a higher score. But by the same token, no one
| believes that the influence of cheating is of interest
| when studying potential gains from "test prep".
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That isn't just it though: they have access to old tests,
| they have access to test takers who memorize questions,
| given the importance and popularity of any test, these
| options will arise and people with means will have access
| to them.
|
| There is no avoiding Goodhart's law.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You can make a case for a much weaker form of Goodhart's
| Law, that with the SAT as a well-known target, SAT scores
| are less informative than they would be otherwise.
|
| But "there is no avoiding Goodhart's law" is obviously
| wrong if you interpret Goodhart's Law as it's actually
| phrased; the SAT is doing a fine job of avoiding it
| today. The SAT hasn't _ceased_ to be a good measure. It
| 's still very informative.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| You can get like 80% of the value of an expensive sat prep
| course from a cheap sat book.
|
| But money also buys you grades, gpa, extracurriculars, and
| recommendations.
| indigochill wrote:
| The main thing that frustrated me about the SAT, at least when
| I took it, was that it essentially boiled down to an IQ test,
| not a true "scholastic aptitude" test. I did barely any prep
| (aside from, I think, a flip calendar with questions), but I
| scored 1510 out of 1600 at the time which qualified me for a
| prestigious program in my university.
|
| Then I narrowly avoided flunking out because I'd never actually
| learned to study or manage my time properly in high school
| because I'd never needed to until college. Study skills and
| time management seem like pretty important factors in a true
| measure of scholastic aptitude.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Similar story to you except I graduated with a 3.4 from a top
| 10 university without learning to study or manage my time. I
| guess the test was right?
| outlace wrote:
| I think the courses mostly help with discipline in studying for
| the test. There's nothing magical about them. I've taken many
| standardized exams with and without prep courses and it's quite
| possible to do very well with inexpensive self study material
| if you're incredibly disciplined about studying.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| I work for a company that collects aggregated SAT data. I was
| pretty upset when I discovered there is a very strong, direct
| correlation between family income and SAT score, with a
| credible spread of several hundred points between the average
| scores of the highest and lowest income groups. I knew that
| there would be a correlation, but seeing how strong it was was
| pretty depressing.
| fastball wrote:
| Why is that depressing?
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| Just so we're clear: IQ does correlate with income, for
| obvious reasons.
| hangonhn wrote:
| These advantages are more subtle than even that.
|
| I was shamed by some older fellow alums when I told people that
| my parents had hired someone to go over my application and
| essays. Their stance was that my parents gave me an unfair
| advantage (note, both of my parents are immigrants who did not
| even finish high school). My retort to them was point out that
| most of them didn't exactly grow up in the crime ridden rural
| parts of the world (quite the opposite in fact). Their parents
| paid a higher tax rate to support the world class public
| education they got, which they just assumed is the norm. That
| shut them up rather quickly.
|
| SAT prep classes or not, coming from a more advantageous
| social-economic background grants you so many benefits in many
| ways. My parents wouldn't have to hire someone to review my
| applications if my school had a good college counselor (50% of
| my classmates do not go on to college).
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >coming from a more advantageous social-economic background
| grants you so many benefits in many ways //
|
| It's not all benefit: you can be taught to be lazy, not to be
| self-reliant, you can lack tenacity and resilience, you can
| have perverse expectations and a sheltered view of the World.
| Such things can turn out to be a hindrance to self-
| fulfillment.
| hangonhn wrote:
| Yeah that's a fair point for sure and I've seen examples of
| those too. However, even then some well resourced parents
| will still clear a path for these children to get into
| selective schools as the recent college admissions scandals
| revealed.
| losvedir wrote:
| 100 points isn't _that_ much. The average score is 1000-1100.
| The elite universities expect 1500. Tutoring, even if it gave
| you 100 points, isn 't going to cross that gap.
|
| I'd say it's still relatively fair. Fairer than essentially any
| other admissions criterion: grades aren't comparable across
| schools, extra-curriculars are much more about money spent,
| etc.
| Symmetry wrote:
| SAT prep courses advertise that they can increase scores by 100
| points but generally they're lying in order to sell more test
| courses. But the real number is closer to "11 to 15 points on
| the math section and 6 to 9 points on the verbal."[1]
|
| [1]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228337033_Using_Lin
| ...
| knzhou wrote:
| Not only that, but these prep courses tend to assign practice
| SATs that are harder in the beginning and easier at the end,
| to give the impression of rapid progress.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >Students were able to indicate if they had prepared through
| the use of school courses, commercial courses, tutoring, or a
| variety of preparatory materials. In what follows, a coached
| student is defined as one that reported participating in a
| commercial preparatory course.
|
| Is there any indication that they actually broke down any
| further, or is this just limited to the impact of average
| coaching and thus not a good representation of those who
| receive the top tier coaching?
| skat20phys wrote:
| Those estimates are generally in line with what other
| independent investigators find, maybe a bit smaller.
|
| The elephant in the room in these kinds of discussions is the
| validity of the tests to begin with. MIT makes a statement
| that the general tests are predictive in combination with
| other criteria, but how predictive?
|
| Generally studies of these sorts of things find that they're
| moderately predictive of first-year GPA (like .4
| correlation), and then trail off to zero as the interval
| between testing and outcomes increases. The effects are even
| smaller in studies in relatively unselected samples (due to
| court orders or legal decisions, for example).
|
| So one argument always goes that you should use whatever
| empirically-supported stuff you can to make fair decisions,
| but we treat them as if they're more than they are. Sure, you
| could have a lot of things that are significantly predictive
| but with small effect size, or where there's lots of noise,
| but why as a society to we pretend these are huge effects?
|
| The other thing about that paper is the hint that the
| practice effects are larger in higher-performing examinees,
| which also makes sense and is consistent with other studies.
| Why is this a problem? Because those are exactly the types of
| students for whom these issues are more applicable. A 12
| point average gain with practice doesn't matter if you're
| including people who never had a chance at MIT anyway, but a
| 20 point gain might in a highly competitive group where small
| differences are being magnified tenfold.
|
| The issue in all of this isn't the people in the 99th
| percentile versus the 50th percentile, which is the bulk of
| what's going into these predictive models and effect sizes,
| it's the 99th versus the 95th. There's a ton of real-world
| noise, but society acts as if the noise is nonexistent. It's
| like we're idolizing the outcome of some kind of survivorship
| bias process.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Note also that the measurement error of a section score is 30
| points, which dwarfs the effect of prep.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| As a former SAT tutor (and a guy who gamed the hell out of
| the SAT) I have trouble believing that. There are only a few
| classes of questions they ask on the test, and if you master
| them the whole test is a walk in the park.
|
| Maybe the problem is most students just don't give a damn
| about the classes their parents make them take? Can someone
| explain the findings in this paper?
| graeme wrote:
| My impression as a former SAT instructor is a lot of
| students don't spend that much time prepping. And if they
| have no good reading/math background it can take some
| effort to master things.
|
| That said, typically saw increases well above that in my
| classes. Even with zero instruction I'd expect a self
| studying student to improve more than that from
| familiarization.
|
| It did say upper class people improve more.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| Students naturally do better without test prep, too. They
| get older, their brains grow more, and they're more
| intelligent. Much of the score increase people see is
| attributable to that. And most kids bright enough to
| exercise good test taking skills will have them without
| special training, I guess? 11 years of school will do that.
| closeparen wrote:
| The SAT is designed to be an intelligence test, not a
| course final, and it's possible that the large team of
| education and psychometrics people who've been working on
| it for decades know what they're doing.
|
| Armchair speculation: there are probably _some_ really
| bright kids out there with poor test-taking skills, and
| prep likely has a dramatic effect on scores _for them_ ,
| but most students are not that.
|
| Did you actually sit an SAT before you started gaming? What
| was your improvement?
| asdfman123 wrote:
| > it's possible that the large team of education and
| psychometrics people who've been working on it for
| decades know what they're doing
|
| Don't assume that society is optimizing for what's
| socially optimal.
|
| Back when it was on a 1600 point scale, I got a 1300 on
| the first practice test for my SAT course. When I took
| the test for real, I got a 1570.
| closeparen wrote:
| I wouldn't _assume_ it, but it 's one of the plausible
| explanations for the test appearing to meet its design
| goals.
| bermanoid wrote:
| Not GP, but also a test prep teacher in a previous life.
| I always scored well on the SAT and test well in general,
| so I can't speak to personal improvement there, but a few
| points:
|
| First, the test prep companies heavily encourage (and may
| even require?) students to take the test multiple times.
| _That change alone_ will boost most people 's top score
| by a solid margin, because it's a noisy test. The first
| response they always gave to people complaining about
| lack of improvement was "take the test again, and if you
| still haven't improved, take the course again for free,
| and then take the test again".
|
| Second, psychometric expertise is great, but the goal of
| the SAT is not to be impossible to train for except as a
| secondary thing. It's really hard to do, especially when
| you are such a high value optimization target and have to
| build a test that doesn't rely on much specific knowledge
| _and_ can be quickly scored. A lot of what the SAT
| courses do is just teach students to make slightly more
| accurate guesses on multiple-choice questions where
| someone unfamiliar with test strategy would leave things
| blank. That alone tends to boost scores, and some of the
| other strategies are fairly clever to help avoid common
| mistakes.
|
| Last, though I didn't have room to improve on the SAT, I
| also taught GRE classes and can speak to my improvement
| there. The math section is trivial to get an 800 on (it's
| easier than the SAT math, or at least it was when I
| taught 15+ years ago), but the verbal section is quite
| tough if you haven't studied, and in a lot of ways is a
| glorified vocabulary test, and the reading comprehension
| sections can be pretty tough as well. Before I trained to
| teach the courses, my verbal score was a 490 (on the real
| test, not practice), so I was considering not even trying
| to teach (there's some threshold you have to hit, maybe
| 700 at the time?), but the trainer encouraged all of us
| to try anyways because he said the content made such a
| difference. After just two weekends of intensive teacher
| training, I tested again and ended up with a 740. After
| teaching the course around a dozen times, I'm pretty
| confident I could have hit 800 without any difficulty,
| you basically just have to get used to the types of
| questions that they ask and get in the headspace of the
| question authors. Just one data point, but I definitely
| believe that this stuff is effective.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| But for someone who did well on the SAT, you would be
| expected to do well on the GRE too. That you were able to
| prep your way into a good score doesn't indicate the GRE
| is measuring the wrong thing. You already previously
| showed a strong aptitude for g-loaded tests. What you
| needed was familiarity with the content and the kinds of
| questions asked. But that doesn't invalidate the test.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| How is that functionally different from most things considered
| by college admissions? Money helps a ton for normal class,
| extra-curriculars, etc.
| thedance wrote:
| What really increases your score is having a good night's sleep
| and a healthy breakfast before school every day of your life
| prior to taking the test. The test doesn't really measure
| aptitude because it can't control for those inputs.
| lonelappde wrote:
| Those inputs cause aptitude.
| realtalk_sp wrote:
| While it's true that prep courses can help dramatically, the
| SAT subject tests are also not really that hard. I don't
| consider myself terribly smart (certainly not MIT level) and I
| managed to get an 800 on the Math II and 800 on Chemistry with
| a minimum of studying using pretty inexpensive books. This
| applied to many of my friends as well.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| I was a child of the 80s, and while I agree the Math "Level
| 2" was a cakewalk, getting an 800 on Chem was definitely
| something to write home about. I get that scaling may have
| changed in the past thirty years, but still!
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This is one of the reasons the subject tests are not
| especially useful. And since they test knowledge rather than
| aptitude, making them more difficult doesn't actually find
| smarter people but instead people who had access to more
| rigorous high school coursework.
|
| At the GRE level this is even more extreme. For competitive
| programs a perfect score doesn't distinguish you so taking
| the test can only harm you. When applying to grad school I
| was explicitly advised not to take the GRE subject tests.
| applecrazy wrote:
| The subject tests, IMO, are terrible. I took the Chemistry
| one right after taking AP (college level) Chemistry, and
| while I got a full score on that, I got absolutely
| destroyed on the subject test. They asked trivia-like
| questions and barely tested for actual chemistry knowledge.
| aliston wrote:
| The real scandal that I can't believe hasn't gotten more
| attention is that wealthy families are hiring psychologists to
| claim their child has a learning disability. They can then get
| more time to take the test and due to a policy change a few
| years ago, this information is hidden from the schools when
| students report their scores.
| Spivak wrote:
| Look, faking a disability is deplorable but this stance is
| bonkers. I wish my parents had the money when I was growing
| up to get me checked and diagnose my ADHD.
|
| And of course you wouldn't want to report to the college if a
| person has a disability, are you trying to scarlet letter
| everyone who needs a little more time to read from dyslexia?
| hoka-one-one wrote:
| As someone who has used similar accommodations (though not
| specifically on the SAT), yes. Dyslexia will hold you back
| in college. SAT is intended to measure odds of success in
| college.
| Spivak wrote:
| You're not wrong but I think that's due to how much of
| university is based around timed tests. The artificial
| difficulty is maddening. I was fortunate that my school's
| disability office had fangs and that the maths program
| wasn't super competitive and wanted students to learn
| more than get marks.
|
| My favorite professor was teaching number theory and
| always scheduled his classes for the end day and gave
| unlimited time for exams. Every time I would sit there
| for at least 5 hours (which wasn't super uncommon) and it
| was the nicest thing to not be freaking out and trying to
| force myself to focus.
| hoka-one-one wrote:
| I disagree that it's artificial. There's only so much
| time in a day. A programmer who can do a task in one hour
| will in the long run outsprint one who needs two.
|
| Yes, you can (like many, many others) spend an extra
| couple hours at work every day, but it'll all come back
| to center eventually. Sometimes, or even much of the
| time, you won't even have that option. These are times
| when people seriously depend on you to perform.
|
| It's not personal. I get that it can be stressful and
| I've been there but I don't kid myself that I'm as good
| as the people who can work quickly and under pressure.
| aliston wrote:
| Admissions committees at top universities are some of the
| most bleeding heart do-Goode types on the planet. There is
| no way disclosing a learning disability would get you
| Scarlett lettered. If anything, it would probably help your
| application.
| lonelappde wrote:
| Which illnesses count? Why does dyslexia count but not
| lower IQ? Why is there a time limit at all?
|
| The point is that not everyone gets diagnosed and has equal
| access to performance enhancing drugs and extra time when
| taking a _competitive_ test.
| bazzert wrote:
| Yes, in some circles you are almost considered foolish not to
| get this accommodation.
| https://patch.com/massachusetts/newton/30-percent-newton-
| nor...
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I've worked as an SAT prep tutor and I've worked in the oil
| industry.
|
| Actually, I felt way more guilt about my SAT tutoring work than
| the oil industry. The world runs on oil, but no one needs
| expensive SAT tutoring to give rich kids an edge over the poor
| ones.
| Spivak wrote:
| This seems like such a weird stance since pretty much all
| formal education isn't free. Even without SAT prep rich
| families can still afford better schools, private tutors, set
| up apprenticeships.
|
| It's a weird world where people are mad that those with means
| are using them to educate themselves and their children.
|
| As an adult I choose to pay for lots of different forms of
| education that gives me "advantage" -- bleh -- over my
| friends, peers, coworkers, etc.. Why should I feel guilty
| that I have the means to buy culinary textbooks so I can bake
| better?
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I'm not angry at the people who want to help their kids,
| but at the system that we're making. Our "meritocracy" has
| become a caste system in which a small group of people are
| doing very well and everyone else is scrambling to make it.
| It's a big social problem. Look at how suicide rates in
| middle America has skyrocketed, look at how much more
| divisive our politics have become.
|
| I have no idea what the solution is, and can't say for sure
| where we should place the blame, but I have an innate
| distaste for the passing along of inherited advantages.
| kaibee wrote:
| I think the difference is that, better schools and private
| tutors, are at least in theory, teaching useful skills and
| ultimately creating a better person at the end. Being good
| at the SATs doesn't have the same excuse, so its much more
| obvious when you're basically just paying to get a better
| score.
| Spivak wrote:
| Look, I don't disagree with you -- other than the score
| SAT prep is fantastically bad education investment. But I
| think this is a problem with the testing more than some
| larger class issue. We've rewarded learning a bunch of
| useless facts and test taking strategies. You could
| probably switch out the SAT for an entire test of movie
| trivia and you'd probably get the same distribution of
| performance since ACT/SAT just reward the people who
| study for it the most. You can't accidentally prepare for
| these tests by other schooling that's not geared for it.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I think you're reading the position a little wrongly.
|
| People are upset when being rich means you can be prepared
| for a test and so get a higher score than someone who is
| equally able.
|
| Supposedly, in a properly operating university, once at the
| uni the background of the students shouldn't matter [as
| much], those who came from schools where they couldn't
| afford equipment should now have equal access as those who
| could buy anything they needed and more. Simply having
| access to facilities makes a massive difference to what can
| be achieved and that feeds in to intellect growth.
| RedBeetDeadpool wrote:
| If you gave me a student who had enough motivation to succeed,
| I bet I could raise his score far far far more than just 100.
| saithound wrote:
| The SAT is not fair. By taking an expensive prep course, you
| can potentially increase your SAT score by 100 (although that's
| quite extreme, the average improvement attributed to SAT prep
| is closer to 20 points). That's a significant, but not earth-
| shattering improvement: it moves you from the 75th percentile
| to the 84th, or from the 97th percentile to the 99th.
|
| Now let's compare that to other criteria used in the college
| admissions process.
|
| It's way easier to have impressive and relevant extracurricular
| activities if you're rich and go to a good school. And unlike
| SAT prep, acquiring good extracurriculars will definitely take
| years of your time and money.
|
| Well-written admissions essay? MIT requires one. But you do it
| at home, instead of a tightly controlled testing center. So if
| you're rich enough, you can have ghost-written admissions
| essays. Needless to say, this process can turn even a
| completely worthless essay into an impressive one.
|
| Creative portfolio? Unless you're in the 99th percentile of
| musical talent, the difference between "I write songs that I
| play on an old guitar" and "an orchestra performed my
| composition" is money. The former is probably not even 75th
| percentile; the latter, probably 95+.
|
| Alumni parents who would be likely to donate big bucks? You
| don't need an expensive prep course to get that, yet it can
| provide your application with a much bigger boost than 100 SAT
| points. And unlike the SAT, if you don't have alumni parents to
| begin with, then you'll never get this boost, no matter how
| much extra work you put in.
|
| The SAT is not fair. But it's the fairest admissions criterion
| used by U.S. universities today.
|
| (note: MIT still relies on the SAT; today's announcement
| concerns the SAT Subject Tests)
| perennate wrote:
| Re: the last point; MIT says they do not consider alumni
| relations in the admissions process
| (https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/just-to-be-clear-we-
| do...).
| jessriedel wrote:
| Is that 20 point bump a comparison taking an expensive prep
| class to zero preparation? Or is it a comparison taking an
| expensive prep class to doing self-directed preparation with
| a $5 prep book? My guess is the former, when the latter is
| what's relevant for arguments about the advantages obtained
| through wealth.
| 0xff00ffee wrote:
| MIT requires interviews, too. But complaining that rich
| people have advantages is a bit of a "no shit, sherlock."
| lollercoasr2020 wrote:
| Truth be told: the culture of those institutions is based on
| extremely synthetic virtue-signalling and superficial values
| and is very far from being meritocratic or open to social
| mobility.
|
| This might be great for rich kids, though in case you are
| ambitious, clever, gritty but come from not-so-privileged
| background (not necessarily low-class or third world - just
| temporary economic turmoil is enough) - you are going to hate
| every single second you spend there with all your heart.
|
| So maybe this way it is a win-win in the end. The aristocracy
| get their titles and the plebs their opportunities for self-
| realisation. No harm done.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > it's the fairest admissions criterion
|
| I have yet to see an "abolish standardized tests" type
| suggest a workable alternative (or even an unworkable one).
| ghaff wrote:
| You don't _need_ to use the SAT or ACT as a criterion. The
| problem if you don 't is probably two-fold.
|
| 1.) You're throwing out a signal that has proven to be
| pretty reliable in at least establishing a floor as what
| students have a good chance of succeeding and
|
| 2.) As a related matter, it's a very simple, quantitative,
| standardized metric (with decent predictive power) that
| lets you bucket applicants pretty easily.
|
| Do you maybe throw out some applicants who are really bad
| at standardized tests, but would otherwise thrive in an
| undergraduate academic setting? Probably. But the data
| suggests that standardized testing is a pretty good
| predictor of success in school (which, of course, is not
| necessarily the same as success in life).
| devonkim wrote:
| I realized how much of a scam standardized testing was when I
| used to do the PSATs and increased my score mostly by using a
| different strategy rather than getting smarter or anything. The
| SAT prep class my high school offered for like $40 was a
| complete joke because they were designed for public school
| students where you get around 1250 and it's pretty good for
| state school admissions. Until I learned to treat the test as a
| game and understand its scoring I went from 1330 to 1520 simply
| by _not_ answering anything I wasn't fully confident with my
| answer - this is literally the opposite strategy I was
| instructed to do where they encouraged people to guess. To get
| to the higher end, you are best off never getting even a
| partial deduction for getting something wrong. When I got my
| best score, I only got 3 questions wrong but far more
| unanswered.
| manfredo wrote:
| Coming from someone who took said expensive prep courses, I can
| tell you that just taking practice exam after practice exam is
| easily 90% of the benefit. The test taking strategy they teach
| is something anyone with serious prospects of getting into MIT
| would have learned years ago.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-03-20 23:00 UTC)