[HN Gopher] Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admis... ___________________________________________________________________ Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles Author : razin Score : 761 points Date : 2022-03-28 16:35 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (mitadmissions.org) (TXT) w3m dump (mitadmissions.org) | newaccount2021 wrote: | rayiner wrote: | I don't think people appreciate the radical nature of the attacks | on standardized testing. Standardized tests have been critical to | higher education and the professions for almost a century. | Virtually everyone in an elite academic, government, scientific, | legal, medical, or financial role attained that role based, in | part, on the SAT and similar exams like the LSAT or MCAT. Not | only them, but everyone who taught and mentored them, and | everyone who taught and mentored those people. If the SAT is not | predictive, as some claim, we've been selecting our elites and | professionals the wrong way for three generations. | kragen wrote: | I would say standardized testing has been critical to higher | education and the professions since it was established 1416 | years ago and is a major reason that China and Japan (which | began standardized testing more recently, some 1100 years ago) | never went through the catastrophic colonial subjugation that | did so much damage to India and the Middle East and obliterated | most of the cultural heritage of Africa and America. | | Moreover, the British adoption of the system some 200 years ago | was crucial to their imperialist success, and Western academia | began adopting it slightly earlier. Without this Sinicization | of Europe the Enlightenment might have fizzled out; perhaps we | would never have had an Industrial Revolution. | BHSPitMonkey wrote: | > If the SAT is not predictive, as some claim, we've been | selecting our elites and professionals the wrong way for three | generations. | | Yes, and? | | The easiest way to understand the shortcomings of these tests | (at least their older versions) is to realize that students who | use paid SAT/ACT-prep materials and services get higher scores | than students who don't. Yes, there are confounding factors, | but this fact alone is fairly damning evidence that these tests | can be "defeated" using techniques beyond simply learning the | things taught in high school. A better-designed test would not | yield higher scores to test-takers with more specific knowledge | of how the test itself is constructed. (In software terms, | think "property based testing" as opposed to "unit test cases | written in a predictable manner", with the assumption that your | implementation under test has adversarial motives to obtain | passing builds.) | xeromal wrote: | What do you think is the better way to test students for a | specific univeristy? | jostmey wrote: | All tests have flaws, but a flawed test is better than no | test. Design a better test if you can! Any test can be | "defeated" to some extent | rory wrote: | This complaint is addressed in footnote 10 of the article. | | It would be great to design a test that's less gameable than | the current version, and we should certainly try to do that, | but the current version is already less gameable than | basically anything else colleges consider for admission. | [deleted] | SodiumMerchant0 wrote: | armchairhacker wrote: | I'm genuinely curious about the advantages of going to MIT or any | other super competitive CS college for undergrad instead of say, | UMass or another less-competitive CS university. | | From limited knowledge and experience at other colleges (all | pretty well-ranked but not as well as MIT), it's the prestige and | graduate research which makes colleges like MIT superior. | Otherwise, for most undergrads it's like a typical college | experience, but with harder courses and smarter peers, but even | that is flexible (since they have access to graduate students and | grad-level courses). | | It's particularly relevant today because apparently college | admissions are really competitive. A lot of high schoolers are | upset because they got rejected from everything but their | safeties, except their safeties are like Georgia Tech, Rutgers or | the UCs. | fuzzyset wrote: | Compare a list of companies that attend MIT's career fair vs | those that attend UMass. There will be some overlap, and it's | not a closed door if you don't go to MIT/Stanford/etc. But, if | you want to land an internship at "the best" companies (which | can often lead to jobs), being recruited at a college career | fair is the best option. | frankchn wrote: | Speaking from personal experience, it does help in at least two | ways: | | (1) Being surrounded by other hard-working students pushes you | to do better and exposes you to more advanced classes and | research early on (a majority of my friends in CS started | taking graduate courses by their sophomore year and did | undergraduate research at least for a summer in one of research | labs on campus). | | (2) Recruiting/Ability to get interviews. It isn't a problem in | getting interviews for software engineering internships/full- | time positions if you have MIT, Stanford or Berkeley on your | resume. | notacoward wrote: | This is just so beautifully written it brings a tear to my eye. | It explains their rationale, points to evidence, acknowledges | shortcomings or gaps in knowledge, and shows empathy for those | affected. Worth reading just for its pedagogical value, plus it's | on an important topic near and dear to many hearts. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | Yeah, when you're doing something that is | politically/ideologically unpopular or in the minority you tend | to need to have bulletproof justification if you want to get | away with it. | | Then again, with these sorts of things you can never be sure | how much the tail wags the dog. | 0des wrote: | I think I get where you are going with this, can you expand a | little bit on the wagging the dog part? I am not familiar | with that term. I get what it means, having looked it up, but | being new to the concept I want to make sure I understand the | context of that segment of the comment correctly. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | The actions of big prestigious institutions like MIT have | an effect on opinion. So if MIT starts doing something tons | of people will just knee jerk take their side on whatever | the thing is. So another few institutions might follow suit | and it might snowball and standard testing could become | back in fashion as fast as it went out of fashion. | IncRnd wrote: | That's a great point. However, you're using the idiom of | the tail wagging the dog incorrectly. The tail wagging | the dog usually means something important or influential | being controlled by something less so. In other words, | the tail would be wagging the dog if I wrote a blog post | that made people change their opinions on the SAT. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | The movement to shit-can standardized tests was far | bigger than MIT or any one institution and was part of a | broader political trend whereby these sorts of | institutions have been adopting particular positions. | Hence MIT is the tail in this case. | 0des wrote: | Ah ok thank you for taking a moment to help me understand | that. Having looked up the term and re-read the comment, | I see what was meant. | nemo44x wrote: | > Yeah, when you're doing something that is | politically/ideologically unpopular or in the minority | | I don't think they are though. I think there would be | massively popular and wide support for this. You're seeing it | in SF right now as the school board is being overthrown for | trying to ruin the school system in the name of "equity" or | some other garbage reason. The people finally found out and | organized. | | All this woke stuff today is actually very unpopular and it's | why you see Democrats trying to separate themselves from it | and make progressives own it. It's even unpopular with the | arbitrary groups it claims it helps. | | Most people want to be good people and treat others with | respect and woke ideology sounds good on the surface ("anti- | racist", sure sounds great!) until you get past the formal | meaning and into the actual meaning. Sort of like how | Democratic Republic of Korea sounds great until you actually | read into it. | [deleted] | peteyreplies wrote: | thanks! | neovive wrote: | 100%! As a parent of a child about to go through the college | admissions process (with his heart set on MIT--of course), I | want him to read this particularly for the later part of the | article: "...you are also not your MIT application..." The | acceptance rate is so low, that it should not be used as a | measure of self-worth and accomplishment. | commandlinefan wrote: | As the parent of a student who was just rejected from MIT... | I wonder if the reinstatement of the SAT requirement came too | late. I'll never really know, but it is possible. | adamsmith143 wrote: | If their score wasn't in the 99% percentile it probably | wouldn't have made a substantial difference. | toomuchtodo wrote: | I'm a technologist who wanted to attend MIT but, for reasons | that are beyond the scope of this thread, didn't make the | cut. I've still had the opportunity to work for the US | federal government, unicorn startups, and a detector team at | the LHC. As you said, "The acceptance rate is so low, that it | should not be used as a measure of self-worth and | accomplishment.", and enjoyable, meaningful work can still be | accomplished without the MIT experience (although if they get | in, also good, I wish them well and hope they're accepted). | xwdv wrote: | Likewise I know people who went to MIT and are now working | shitty low paying jobs in unrelated fields of study and | generally have failed to get their life together in | reasonable time. | killerdhmo wrote: | ... the natural extension of you are not your MIT | admission, is that your MIT admission is not you. Do you | know they don't have their life together? What if they | wanted something different than you? The tone of this | comment sucks. | mikeryan wrote: | It's also important to note that they try to make clear that | they're describing their own situation and not providing a | blanket statement. | eruci wrote: | Score back to 1 for merit based admissions, 0 for politics of the | day. | myle wrote: | Just two hours ago, there was a very engaging talk from | Daskalakis, a professor at CSAIL at MIT, that is very related to | the topic: | | https://youtu.be/9sePKcQnrXE | | The research he talks about includes college admissions. | diebeforei485 wrote: | Kudos. SAT Prep is freely available online at places like Khan | Academy. Extracurriculars, not so much. | lightup wrote: | My son found out 2 days ago he didn't get accepted to his in- | state land grant public university. The University of Minnesota. | This was his fall back plan. Now he's screwed and may not be able | to start college in fall. | | His sins: - a 35 ACT score (legit with no studying or ACT prep | classes) - a 3.8 weighted GPA (because he took multiple AP | classes and actually was in college for his junior and senior | years through Minnesota's PSEO program) - leader on robotics team | - lettered in 2 extra curriculars - etc etc | | Why? Because U of MN doesn't consider weighted grades nor do they | accept test scores anymore. So why even try hard? | | The only upside is that we weren't stupid enough to put his | college savings in a 529 tied to MN. We would be superscrewed if | we'd done that. | | 35,000 applicants. 7,000 freshman admissions. My kid not even in | top 1/5 of applicaents? Complete BS. | ffggvv wrote: | gourabmi wrote: | I'm curious. How many universities did he apply to ? How many | accepts/ rejects from that pool? | lightup wrote: | He applied to Iowa State, Rice, UNC, Duke, and U of MN - Twin | Cities. Accepted at Iowa State (they have a formula for | everyone). He also got their highest out of state | "scholarship" - which is more like a break on out of state | tuition - no reciprocity with MN. No word from Duke yet but | that probably won't happen either. | | Complete disaster for his future and really a shot to his | otherwise happy and optimistic life. He's really upset as are | we all. | muh_gradle wrote: | Your son and I had really similar stats in high school. I | also didn't do well in college admissions, but that was | mostly due to my poor strategic decisions and affirmative | action (I'm Asian). I would really emphasize that transfers | are 100% legitimate avenues for him to take. It just | requires immediate planning and dedication now. | cheeze wrote: | > Complete disaster for his future and really a shot to his | otherwise happy and optimistic life | | I'm sorry but this is a bit over dramatic, no? | | Your son still got into college. Just didn't get into the | specific school he wanted. | | I didn't get into the college I wanted either. I'm doing | just fine. | | Some of the best coworkers I've ever had went to a | community college and transferred after a year or two. | | I get it, it's okay to be bummed. But you're acting like | his life is already over. Set a good example and instill | the value that you can overcome barriers and failures in | life, it's going to be okay. | js2 wrote: | > If you're worried about having the account in one state and | attending school in another, don't be. With most plans, your | school choice is not affected by the state of your savings | plan. You can be a resident of Minnesota and send your student | to college in North Carolina. | | https://www.mnsaves.org/plan/details.shtml | | (This is generally the case for most 529 plans.) | lightup wrote: | Off topic. Doesn't apply. | spoonjim wrote: | Asian? | lightup wrote: | No, but I'm sure some of the kids on his math team will be in | the same boat even through they're mainly South Asian and | Chinese. Backlash against them too it seems. | lr4444lr wrote: | Wait, your state 529 plans penalize you for applying the funds | to out of state schools? That sounds like a highly unusual | setup. Not all states do this. | ausbah wrote: | definitely not over. kicking ass in community college for a | year or two and transferring to a much better school with | scholarship is a great option for anyone | lightup wrote: | And young people on here imagine having 2 children 2 years | apart. One of them doesn't get to go to college because of | covid and the other doesn't get to go because ability didn't | matter for a year. | | In MN we're kinda slow so maybe ability won't matter for 4 more | years. | rg111 wrote: | > _as a result, not having SATs /ACT scores to consider tends to | raise socioeconomic barriers to demonstrating readiness for our | education_ | | It all come down to me to what this point touches. | | When you have a test, you have something definite to prepare for. | Even if you do not have dedicated mentors or well-wishing, caring | teachers, you simply _know_ there is a test that significantly | improves your chances for MIT. | | When you don't have a test, you have to study all the year round, | do all homeworks, be active members of math, chess, or debate | club all the year round and win at least province-level | competitions, play an instrument at the school band, be elected | the class monitor, create social equity clubs, do social service | and so on. | | Which path do you think will be easier for someone from an | impoverished, troubled background? | | Is it easier to prepare for a test for three months or be a whole | different person severely constrained by your background? | | Whom does no-test policies benefit? The rich White student living | in a gated community, or a Black/Hispanic person living in slum- | like condition? | | ____ | | I have little first hand experience (was born in a middle-of- | nowhere small town, but wasn't truly poor), and a lot of second- | hand experience. I know a lot of friends, acquaintances who moved | up the socio-economic ladder just because test-score based | admission policies existed. | | The people who promote no-test policies are deluded ivory-tower | dwellers detached from reality. | spideymans wrote: | > When you have a test, you have something definite to prepare | for. Even if you do not have dedicated mentors or well-wishing, | caring teachers, you simply know there is a test that | significantly improves your chances for MIT. | | Totally tangential, but this is also why I've slowly come | around to appreciating technical interviews. Yes, it's | annoying, but it's also a pretty straightforward path to | getting a $150k+/yr job. | commandlinefan wrote: | I grew up not terribly well off and I knew somewhere in the | back of my mind that college admission depended on | extracurriculars and such - I never really thought much about | that until I grew up, did relatively well for myself and had my | own kids. Then I found out just how much these extracurriculars | _cost_ and how much parental guidance is involved in sticking | with them. My kids did sports in high school - but the busses | don 't take kids to and from the school in the off-hours that | sport practices take place, so I had to drive them in early and | pick them up late. That was an option for me - it wouldn't have | been for my dad. The only reason they made the teams in the | first place, also, was because they had been doing rec league | sports since they were little kids and were already competitive | going into high school (we knew plenty of kids who tried out | for the teams and didn't make it). We've sunk who knows how | much money into private lessons/coaching/one-on-ones, etc. None | of this would have been possible for my parents, even if we'd | been the type of family that did that sort of thing. | rg111 wrote: | Yes, extra-curriculars are expensive, too. | | The ones that I did- needed spending of little to no money, | but needed a lot of time. I could afford it. | | Someone I know, who is now a pharmacist at a big-pharma had | to help his dad in his men's salloon after school. He has | zero extracurriculars, but good scores, and he reached a | reputed college with much of his fees paid for due to | standardised test scores. | | I see myself as a well-rounded person. But if I were in his | shoes, I wouldn't be where I am today as a person; I would be | much less. (You can see | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30821265) | | I am not saying I would have been the same as him. Because I | have seen people grow up as comfortable as, or in much better | situations than me, yet achieving much lower than me. | | Equal opportunity does not ensure equal outcome. | caffeine wrote: | The no-test policy is espoused by two groups who find | themselves to be unlikely allies: naive progressives and actual | racists. | | The naive progressives think what you'd expect: "Minorities and | poor people can't possibly be expected to do well on anything | objective, so it's unfair to test them". It _is_ bigotry, but | at least it's well-meaning. | | The actual racists are more cynical: "I don't want Yale to be | 67% Asian." Obviously, this is even worse. | andrewclunn wrote: | I think we can disagree with a policy without saying, "The | people who agree with this policy are racist.". I mean | weren't the elimination of standardized tests also justified | on them supposedly being racist? At this point I couldn't | care less what people assume the motivations of their | opponents are. | caffeine wrote: | That's why I made the comment. | | One group wants to delete the tests because they think the | test is racist. | | The other group wants to delete it because they are | actually racist. | | I found the irony of it amusing. | paxys wrote: | The far right and far left share a surprising amount of | common ground in their beliefs. Vaccines are bad. Science is | a conspiracy. Big tech must be strictly controlled by | government. Speech must be tightly controlled. Individual | rights are less important compared to overall societal | benefit. We must not be race-blind but rather use race as a | critical factor in deciding outcomes. | caffeine wrote: | > The far right and far left | | I wish we could just call them all "far" people and ignore | the side. | | It would help those of us who are not "far" recognise that | we have more common values with each other than with the | "far" regardless of side. | rg111 wrote: | They just want to see some races and ethnicities more at | colleges. | | This is a sad case of Goodheart's Law [0] in action. | | Some people have chosen one metric as a measure of progress | of historically oppressed races- enrolment in college | degrees. | | And this serves no one. | | [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320640 | tombert wrote: | I mean, I'm definitely a naive progressive (and probably hold | some internalized bigotry that I'm unaware of), but I was | against the SAT/ACT requirements sort of for the opposite | reason than what you described. | | I half-assed my entire way through high school, but studied | for about a month for the ACT and did extremely well (perfect | in all categories except Math, which I got a 32 in). I didn't | get into MIT (I never applied) but I did get into a few other | relatively well-regarded universities (Auburn, NYU) despite | my awful grades, almost exclusively riding off the strength | of my ACT scores, and ended up going to Florida State (since | it was cheaper than the other two I listed). I dropped out | after 2 years (nearly flunking out due to low grades). | | To me, this showed that the tests are not an accurate | measurement of how successful someone will be at college, but | instead just how well someone can prepare for a specific | test. If that's the case, why add the extra cost, both time | and money-wise? If a mediocre student can just cram for a few | weeks and do well on the test, then it seems to me that it's | not a great test. | | I acknowledge that this is pure anecdata, but that was my | perspective, not "minorities can't be expected to do well on | anything objective" and not "I don't want Yale to be 2/3 | asian." | caffeine wrote: | Edit: I should add, thanks for pointing out a third group - | people who think the tests don't work! | | > To me, this showed that the tests are not an accurate | measurement of how successful someone will be at college | | The test proves you are smart enough. | | Like, do you believe you were not intellectually capable of | getting through college? That you flunked out for a pure | lack of IQ and no other factors? From the writing in your | comment alone I find that hard to believe. | | There are some other factors you need to be successful in | college, like interest, motivation, work ethic. Also luck - | avoiding illness for example. | | And I don't think anybody is suggesting colleges should | ONLY use standardised IQ tests for admittance, they should | try to select for those other things too if they can do so | fairly and accurately. | | I can't pretend to know you enough to know why you dropped | out. But if I had to bet it wasn't raw IQ. | tombert wrote: | > I can't pretend to know you enough to know why you | dropped out. But if I had to bet it wasn't raw IQ. | | No it almost certainly wasn't raw IQ (not that I take a | lot of stock in IQ in itself anyway), it was a | combination of depression and attention issues. | | > The test proves you are smart enough. | | I wouldn't exactly call the ACT (I never took the SAT so | I cannot speak to it) an objective measure of | intelligence. It's _extremely_ formulaic, and you can get | "good" at taking it just by doing a boatload of practice | tests, which is what I did. If the Kaplan practice tests | are anything to go on, I would have gotten about 21 (not | a great score) the first time taking the test had I not | studied for it. I doubt I got considerably "smarter" in a | month, I think I just got better at taking ACT tests. | selimthegrim wrote: | What happened at FSU? It is enough of a good deal that I | might send my kids there one day. | thedougd wrote: | The 'truer' measure of your aptitude was likely your | highest score. They allow multiple takes of the test | because they understand that testing has errors from | jitters, misunderstanding the wording, time management, a | bad night of sleep, etc. Even within the bounds of a | single class, we often get better at taking tests in a | class once we understand the instructor's style. | | Ultimately, the score of everyone who takes the test | fairly is capped by their aptitude. If we want to even | the playing field, we should find a way to allow | disadvantaged kids to have multiple tries at the test | with some preparation. They may already have it. | jxramos wrote: | right, I think that type of bigotry is commonly identified | with the phrase _the soft bigotry of low expectations_. Never | knew the origins of that phrase until today. Interesting to | see the word implicit show up in the definition, sounds about | right. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soft_bigotry_of_low_exp | ectati... | opportune wrote: | There are other groups too. Like Big Rich Daddy who wants his | kid to go to Yale as a legacy but he only has a 26 ACT and | has only donated like $1m. When test scores are required, top | schools basically have a "budget" of 25% of their student | body they can admit with any score without it adversely | affecting college rankings. Making tests optional makes it | easier to admit more students that don't "meet the bar" | otherwise, since they don't count against the 25% quota. | caffeine wrote: | When I went to $(fancy school not quite Yale but like | Yale), they were even more blatant - the admissions people | just flat out stated they have a quota for legacies and | they have different standards. | nullc wrote: | You sound like they should be ashamed of it? I'd rather | go to a school where the under-performing students at | least had well connected and wealthy families: much of | the point of these institutions are _networking_ -- if | you just want to learn there are many other alternatives. | thehappypm wrote: | I'm interested to see what happens if schools become truly | race blind. I've heard that top schools may be >50% Asian. | What would that mean for these schools? Would being | predominantly Asian mean Harvard isn't Harvard anymore? Would | lopsided racial makeup make these schools less pretigious? | Would they produce even more value with the top minds and | nothing else? | kuang_eleven wrote: | Practically, the University of California system is as | close as you will get to that, as they are bound by law to | not use affirmative action. Looking through the | statistics[1], you definitely _do_ see strong ethnic trends | in admissions, especially for the top tier schools of | Berkeley and UCLA, even when looking only at domestic | applications. | | That being said, the UC system maintains a prestigious | reputation. | | 1. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about- | us/information-... | tzs wrote: | Caltech is probably the closest to race blind in the US. | Their current undergraduate enrollment is 44% Asian | American [1]. | | [1] https://registrar.caltech.edu/records/enrollment- | statistics | sam-2727 wrote: | You will likely not have to wait long to see, given that | the supreme court is most likely going to strike down | affirmative action next year | javajosh wrote: | One would hope that if admittence into these schools is | truly based on merit, then they'd pick the best regardless. | I mean, what if Inuits turned out to be the most gifted | genotype of humans WRT intelligence. Would it be wrong if | Harvard became 80% Inuit? Presumably the student body would | be smart enough to retain the culture that works and dump | the stuff that doesn't, at a relatively conservative rate. | (Personally I think elitism itself is what these | institutions are defining/producing/protecting, and math | ability is (relatively) easy to measure. I personally would | love it if MIT started feeding us Presidents and Senators | instead of Harvard -- or maybe better, if Harvard really | kicked people out for failing to learn calc by second | year.) | blululu wrote: | Not quite the same as an Ivy, but UC Berkeley (top public | university) is doing just fine with disproportionate | representation of East Asian Students. Still prestigious, | still a great school, and still stocked with hippie coops | if that's your idea of the school's culture. | | Ivy League schools are a bit different. Part of the value | is access to capital, which means maintaining a wealthy | community of alumni. The legacy admissions are grotesquely | unfair but they do happen for a reason. | [deleted] | jvanderbot wrote: | You don't put out fires by disabling smoke alarms. And you | don't solve socioeconomic / class-related barriers by disabling | their indicators. | [deleted] | jordanpg wrote: | Part of the problem I see with standardized testing is that the | stakes are so high. Some fraction of the people out there just | get nervous or have a bad day. Nothing about these high pressure | situations really reflects anything important in the real world. | | I'm a law student now. In law school, your entire grade usually | comes from one 3-4 hour essay exam. Much depends on luck, how | well you slept the night before, and how frantically you can | type. It's absurd. It's been that way for some 100 years. | | I've always been able to play ball with standardized, timed | exams, but I have had enough exposure to neuro-diversity that I | can empathize with many. I just wish there was a way to de-stress | these kinds of exams somehow. I don't know the solution, but I | think it would answer of a lot of objections to them. | Ekaros wrote: | Still standardized tests are the most fair and least gameable | way for admissions. Just because there is some issues, doesn't | mean everything else isn't infinitely worse. | rossdavidh wrote: | I can't comment on law, but back when I took the SAT and ACT | (granted, it was a previous millenium) you could retake the | test. The issue was, unless you were sick or otherwise in an | abnormal state, you would usually get a pretty similar score | the second time. They provide a few examples of old tests, so | you know going in what your score is likely to be, thus you | will know if it is likely to improve much if you take it again. | [deleted] | criddell wrote: | I think I'd have less of a problem with the tests if the time | limit was removed and you could bring reference materials with | you. | tzs wrote: | > I'm a law student now. In law school, your entire grade | usually comes from one 3-4 hour essay exam. Much depends on | luck, how well you slept the night before, and how frantically | you can type. It's absurd. It's been that way for some 100 | years. | | Well, not quite that way for 100 years. When I was in law | school 30 years ago (University of Washington) it would for | most people be "how frantically you can handwrite" rather than | "how frantically you can type". | | There was a room set aside for people who wanted to bring and | use typewriters but it was fairly hard to actually find a | typewriter that they would allow. By the early '90s even low | end typewriters often had several lines of buffer memory and an | LCD display so that you could store and edit text before | printing it, and higher end models were essentially specialized | laptops that only ran a word processor and a printer driver. At | my school if it had two or more lines of text storage it was | considered to be a word processor or computer and not allowed. | | I had to drive all over Seattle before finding a place that | still sold typewriters plain enough to be allowed. | jordanpg wrote: | Law schools put so much energy into these exam procedures! | And all under the banner of preventing cheating and producing | a nice curve. | | Now the technological arms race faced by law schools is how | to get students to read anything in a world where case | summaries (eg. Quimbee) and _all_ hornbooks are freely, | trivially available. | | I suspect the schools will continue defend the case method | for a long time to come, even as the vast majority of | students don't read cases any more and even practitioners | rely heavily on headnotes and other electronic research | tools. | TulliusCicero wrote: | > Nothing about these high pressure situations really reflects | anything important in the real world. | | Then why do the rest scores correlate better with college | performance than other factors? | | If SAT scores also correlate well with, say, income, would you | then accept that they actually reflect something important in | the real world? | jordanpg wrote: | I'm not saying that these tests are not effective predictors | of something. In fact, I'm sure they are. | | I'm saying that it's certain that they way they are | administered leave a lot of people behind, and I don't think | it has to be that way. There are many objections to these | kinds of metrics, often involving disabilities or | socioeconomic issues. I guess I'm just wondering out loud how | much of that has to do with the physical way in which the | tests are administered. | | As to reflecting the real world, all I can do is point to my | own experiences: military, academic, legal, and corporate, | and say being good at high stakes, infrequent, timed, | standardized tests is not very important in those contexts. | | Here are 2 Malcolm Gladwell podcasts on the startling | disconnect between the skills required to succeed on the LSAT | and the skills required to succeed as a high-prestige lawyer: | | https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/puzzle-rush/ | | https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/the-tortoise-and-the-hare/ | | While the LSAT does predict success in those jobs, the skills | needed to succeed on the LSAT have nothing to do with being a | good Supreme Court clerk -- _especially_ the going super fast | part. | paulpauper wrote: | _our ability to accurately predict student academic success at | MIT 02 Our research shows this predictive validity holds even | when you control for socioeconomic factors that correlate with | testing. It also shows that good grades in high school do not | themselves necessarily translate to academic success at MIT if | you cannot account for testing. Of course, we can never be fully | certain how any given applicant will do: we 're predicting the | development of people, not the movement of planets, and people | always surprise you. However, our research does help us establish | bands of confidence that hold true in the aggregate, while | allowing us, as admissions officers, to exercise individual | contextual discretion in each case. The word 'significantly' in | this bullet point is accurate both statistically and | idiomatically.is significantly improved by considering | standardized testing -- especially in mathematics -- alongside | other factors_ | | So much for that common, popular notion that standardized tests | do not predict anything of value. | globuous wrote: | What's surprising though, is that APs and similar exams are not | enough. In the UK, I though they essentially looked at A Level | results, which are much more representative of what you'll | actually study at uni. But I guess both SAT/ACTs & APs must be | a better measure that just APs. I just remember fucking hating | studying for the SATs though. So boring. SAT IIs were somewhat | fun to study for though. In France for instance, they mostly | just look at the baccalaureat to get into prep schools / first | year at uni. Then exams to get into engr/business/vet schools | are actually very interesting topics and very close to what | you'll actually study. Same with exams at the end of the first | year of med school (which you get into right after 12th grade, | unlike in the US where it's after your bachelors). | | That being said, they seem to have backed up their numbers, and | MIT knows how to count, so they must be right! I just always | hoped SAT/ACTs weren't that conclusive so that we didn't have | to go through them anymore and could focus on the funner AP/A | Level stuff :) | JustLurking2022 wrote: | AP scores and SAT II's are highly subject to the quality of | instruction. I had several teachers who treated it as a more | advanced class than honors, but felt no need to teach to the | rubric for the test specifically. | | I aced the SAT and ACT but had a decent number of mediocre AP | scores because I was seeing the material for the first time | when I opened the test. Got to college and after a single 45 | minute lecture covering the gap material, I'm pretty sure I | could have scored a 5. Ended up making for several easy A's | freshman year. | JamesBarney wrote: | There are a lot of highschools where AP classes aren't really | available, or are taught with varying degrees of rigor. | amalcon wrote: | The boringness could actually be a big part of the | effectiveness. Efficient study habits and ability to work | through boredom certainly help with some undergrad classes. | The test would have some predictive power even if it's just | measuring those. | baja_blast wrote: | Also it's hard to standardize something that is not boring. | paulmd wrote: | tbh I thought APs were generally more difficult than actual | classes at a high-level university (USAFA). And my high | school's regular courses (granted a fantastic high school) | were actually much more difficult than a state school's | courses. | | That said, outside of admissions, I don't think I got | academic value out of them. They were hard for the sake of | being hard. I'd rather have taken the SAT or ACT any day. | | (also apropos of nothing but I don't think much of the | writing section on the SAT either, which was a hot topic 15 | or so years ago... a huge amount is dependent on the graders, | and it's fundamentally a "blackboard programming" type | scenario where the student is separated from basic resources | like word processing and graded on the resulting product... | that's not how you would actually work in an academic | setting.) | brimble wrote: | > And my high school's regular courses (granted a fantastic | high school) were actually much more difficult than a state | school's courses. | | I went to a barely-known state university and was very | surprised when some of my intro-level gen ed requirement | classes mostly covered material I'd already seen in, and | with a similar level of rigor to, _junior high school_. And | my junior high and high schools were nothing special at all | --at the higher end of performance in the state (so far as | those measures are helpful, anyway) but just regular public | schools in a state with overall mediocre-bordering-on-poor | schools. | | If I'd known that the first couple years of college weren't | going to be harder than high school, and would have a | _lower_ total time commitment, hell, I 'd have probably | tried to go the drop out -> GED -> start college at 16 or | 17 route. I wasn't gonna get into top-tier universities, | anyway. | adfgadfgaery wrote: | >What's surprising though, is that APs and similar exams are | not enough. | | That isn't what they said. They said that access to those | tests is not universal. Students from high schools that don't | offer AP classes would have a hard time taking AP exams. This | would exclude people from rural or impoverished areas. | | This is why the SAT and ACT are useful: they are meant to be | _aptitude_ tests. They are IQ tests in disguise. If properly | designed, they will measure intelligence with minimal | influence from education or cultural background. | Theoretically something like these tests could be | administered to elementary school students and still be | useful for predicting success in college a decade later. | kragen wrote: | I passed the AP calc exam without a class. But that had a | lot more to do with motivation and interest and a sense of | entitlement than with aptitude. I wish everyone had my | sense of entitlement, but they don't, and classes do seem | to make a passable substitute. | floren wrote: | > They said that access to those tests is not universal. | Students from high schools that don't offer AP classes | would have a hard time taking AP exams. | | Yeah, I wish they'd just flat out told me "we expect AP | courses" _before_ I applied for MIT back in the day. Would | have saved me a lot of hassle that just resulted in | "sorry, we wanted AP credits" in the end. | paulpauper wrote: | I practiced the math part several time to make sure I had it | down pat, never the writing part though. Reading those long | essays is a chore. I think the reading/verbal part is less | coachable than the math part. | [deleted] | LewisVerstappen wrote: | It's _far_ easier for rich students to game GPA, college essays | and extracurriculars than it is for them to game the SAT. | | For GPA, they can hire a private tutor in the subject they're | struggling with. There are services out there that will | basically write your english essay for you / do your | math/science homework. | | For college essays, they can hire college counselors to help | them draft a compelling essay. | | For extra curriculars, they can hire a private coach, etc. | | However, there is very limited evidence that SAT coaching | actually increases your SAT score. The NACAC did a study on | this and they found that average gains of test-prep students is | ~30 points (this was when the SAT was 2400 points). | | A 30 point increase out of 2400 points is not material to | college admissions. | | Out of the college essay, gpa, extracurriculars, etc. the SAT | is the _least_ influenced by your socioeconomic status. There | obviously is an influence, but removing the SAT means more | reliance on even more skewed factors. | | Here's the study -> | https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED505529.pdf | Spooky23 wrote: | Kids who aren't coached on the test strategy do worse. My | high school did no SAT prep, and my parents weren't really | aware of it. I was lucky in that I had an AP History teacher | whose goal was for every kid to get a "5", that meant | incorporating test strategy into the flow. | | You needed to know stuff as the ante, but knowing the magic | bullshit that would give you a good essay score was the key | to get the top score. I increased my score ~120 points from | taking the PSAT blind in 10th grade to the SAT because I | understood at that point that strategy was key and found out | about it. | | All of this stuff is a red herring though. The nut of the | controversy is that standardized tests correlate to IQ. IQ, | rightly or wrongly, is perceived to be culturally biased. | synergy20 wrote: | Being a poor student myself, the EC is way more expensive and | challenging for poor families(can not afford those at all), | comparatively, SAT/ACT is actually much easier, a few books | and keep bugging teachers can carry a long way at extremely | low-cost. Comparing to EC's cost(and time), SAT/ACT | mentor(online or offline) is still fairly affordable. | | Living in internet era, I am jealous that nowadays 'poor' | students can find so much resources online, most for free, | even MIT courses! All you need is an ordinary computer and | maybe internet access, which are quite affordable for nearly | all families in US. | | I will vote up for SAT/ACT and vote down on those EC from a | socioeconomic perspective if I have to pick one. | mathattack wrote: | I am all for reinstating the SATs, but it's a stretch to say | that it's not impacted by socioeconomics. While test prep may | have limited value, a lifetime of wealth provides more | educational opportunities. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | I used to take the ACT for people, they'd pay me in beer | (which I wasn't old enough to buy for myself). You'd get ID'd | at the entrance, but nobody kept track of whether the name on | your test was the name on your ID, so you'd just take each | other's tests. | | It might be harder now, I don't know. | bena wrote: | But they also wouldn't be old enough to buy you beer. | | Unless you are suggesting adults would buy you beer for you | to take the ACT on behalf of a minor they knew. Which seems | odd. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | No this was my older co-workers. My academics were fresh | because I was still in high school, theirs was rusty | because they had graduated several years prior without | bothering to take the ACT. | 8note wrote: | Non-adults are capable of getting alcohol, without buying | directly from a store. | | Typically they know somebody who knows an adult that will | to the transaction with the store and provide the id. | | Otherwise, some stores accept good fake ids, or squint to | believe that the person buying actually matches the | picture on the card | bena wrote: | In which case, he would be able to get beer in the same | manner. | | The issue is that the people he claims are getting him | alcohol would be in the same situation as him. | tiahura wrote: | He's old. You used to be able to buy beer at 18. | | This country used to be a lot less uptight. | bena wrote: | And 18 year olds aren't taking the ACT. Or if they are, | there are other reasons why they aren't getting into | certain schools and they aren't as concerned with getting | good ACT scores. | | Not to mention, the drinking age being 18 was for a | window of about 14 years in the 70s and 80s. (Unless he's | from Louisiana) | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | This was in 2004. I was 17, they were in their mid 20's. | | I know that one was training to be a dental hygienist, or | at least wanted to be training for that. The other few | didn't share as much, but they all knew each other so | maybe it was the same thing? | | I highly doubt I've harmed anyone by enabling their | hygienist to get where she was without knowing the | formula for the volume of a cone. As far as I'm concerned | the gumption necessary to hack your way in is worth just | as much as the gumption needed to pass authentically. | rsync wrote: | My instant moral judgement on your having taken tests for | others dissipated fully upon learning that they paid you in | beer. | | I will smile all day thinking about this. | skissane wrote: | > The NACAC did a study on this and they found that average | gains of test-prep students is ~30 points (this was when the | SAT was 2400 points). | | > A 30 point increase out of 2400 points is not material to | college admissions. | | There must be some subset of students who gain much more from | "test prep" than others? Even if its benefits for the average | student are marginal, maybe there is a certain type of | student for whom it is much more beneficial? | | Not American so never did the SAT, but I honestly think I | would have done much better in high school if I had one-on- | one private tutoring. I struggled with focus and one-on-one | attention helps keep me focused. Our son is similar - he's | gifted and demonstrates his giftedness when the teacher | focuses on him one-on-one, but then the teacher has to go | spend time on the rest of the class, and as soon as that | happens he stops doing any work. | tester756 wrote: | >However, there is very limited evidence that SAT coaching | actually increases your SAT score. The NACAC did a study on | this and they found that average gains of test-prep students | is ~30 points (this was when the SAT was 2400 points). | | IIRC SAT's equivalent of Matura in Poland, so I'll be talking | about my case | | I've been taking advanced math exam and I had some time + | some money (like 10% of minimal wage) during winter break and | I decided to buy 3 lessons on analytical geometry cuz I've | been terrible at geometry, but since that was analytical, | then I've seen a chance to get into that | | I've attended those 3 lessons, did some exercises and guess | what | | on official exam there actually was a task from analytical | geometry and I managed to do it and receive full points, | which basically increased my score by 10 percentage points | (that's a lot, I'd say) | | Saying that 10% of minimal wage spent was equal to 10 perc. | points is naive, but you get the point | | What if I were attending those for whole year? 2? 3? hard to | say. | MiroF wrote: | The SAT doesn't testing anything as high level as that. | spywaregorilla wrote: | Anecdotally I think it raised my scores by maybe 100 points. | Not coaching so much as just doing practice tests to learn | that, especially for the reading, the questions were actually | pretty dumb. Lots of them are asking for the most basic | insights. This is surprisingly non obvious or at least was | not to me at the time. Many questions were filled with | "traps" of answers that felt more insightful and more broadly | relevant; but less relevant to the specific passages being | questioned on. | ar_lan wrote: | For anecdotal/lived experience, to your point: | | The rich kids in my (public) school were the ones afforded | not only tutors, but also just the insight into extra- | curriculars. They were the ones who had parents who knew to | sign them up for college courses at ~15-16 years old to | ensure they could maximize their GPA (5.0 scale, so getting a | 5.0 was literally impossible unless you did this). This | created a competitive disadvantage for kids who just really | didn't realize these resources existed (plus, having parents | that would support it + take you to the local college to take | additional courses). | | Not to mention that, but there were sports our school didn't | participate in, but the richer kids had levels of access to | that looked great on college applications - rowing and | lacrosse specifically come to mind. | | So, essentially - rich kids have many _easier_ ways to pad | their college applications. It 's not that they aren't | working hard(er) - they are. But they have easily acccessible | opportunities that middle-to-lower-class students (like | myself) did not have access to. | | -- | | Coming to the SAT, I'm not surprised by that study. I wasn't | afforded the same opportunities as these richer kids, but my | SAT score was highly competitive with them. I was ranked 50th | in my class with a 4.55 GPA (my 4.0s were gym each year, and | I think one or two electives that weren't AP), but my SAT | score was a 2300, which was relatively similar to most of the | hyper-performant, wealthier kids. | | -- | | This is all super anecdotal. I was definitely upset by all of | this at the time - but it didn't affect my life very | negatively. I still was able to get into a great school, and | have a great career now. But these disadvantages certainly | persist against others, and re-adding standardized tests | likely will help level the playing field in my mind. | WalterBright wrote: | As far as extra-curricular activities go, like sports, | etc., those aren't really the point. The point is for the | candidate to demonstrate that they can accomplish | significant things other than academics. | | This can be anything. For me, I didn't do sports, or any | school extracurriculars. What I did do was run a small | business (paper route), used the money to fund my | hotrodding efforts, was an Eagle scout (back in the days | when that was something), etc. | | Basically, you just gotta find something non-trivial to do | that demonstrates motivation. | KMag wrote: | I went to MIT 20 years ago. Plenty of people smarter than | me failed out. MIT seems to do a pretty good job of | screening out people who won't pick up the material fast | enough. In my experience, the ones who failed out were | the ones who were plenty smart but didn't adjust fast | enough to having to work hard for the first time in their | lives. If you get into MIT, you've probably gotten | special treatment from teachers your whole life, and not | really had to work hard before. | | My high school had just shy of 4,000 students in 4 | grades. My senior year, I took slightly over a "full | course load" at the local state university, plus went to | high school 1/4 time. Technically, that wasn't supposed | to happen, but administrators look the other way for | smart kids. I wasn't really competing against others in | my grade. People asked if I was smarter than the girl a | year ahead of me who went to Harvard. She was my | competition. I'm sure something similar happened with a | kid a year behind me. | | I knew that at MIT, I'd probably just be an average | student. However, I really underestimated how hard it is | to learn to work hard when you've been able to coast | through your first 18 years, despite taking honors | courses at the nearby state university, etc. I think the | SATs are probably generally pretty good at measuring how | quickly students learn, but there's a certain grit it | takes to succeed at MIT that the SATs don't cover at all. | | Edit: I'm also an Eagle Scout, but I came through after | it became significantly easier. It seemed to me that | probably at least 10% of the men at MIT were Eagle | Scouts. If nothing else, it shows an ability to stick | with something for at least a few years, despite it being | uncool for most of your peer group. | varenc wrote: | MIT has a ~95% graduation rate, so most students really | do graduate. And for the 5% that don't it's unclear how | many dropped out due to the workload vs dropped out to | found a company, etc. MIT has tons of internal resources | to help you if you're struggling. | | The shock for entering freshman is very real. I really | like the practice of making your first semester Pass/No | Record so that there's less pressure to try and get an A, | and if you do fail it won't even be on your transcript. | Second semester still treats F as No Record as well. | KMag wrote: | There's a certain subtle ego disorder that creeps up on | you slowly when you're used to regularly being introduced | as the smartest person someone has met, and you let that | slowly become part of your identity. The people I knew | who failed out had too big of an ego to seek help, and | even were afraid to work too hard, because that made them | feel less smart. They didn't outright brag, but were used | to others doing their bragging for them, and had a kind | of false modesty about them. | WalterBright wrote: | I, too, had a disastrous freshman year due to my attempts | to laze through it like I had all through public school. | Fortunately, I was able to change before I was forced | out. | | I also got my comeuppance about being "smart". | | At the time, being an Eagle wasn't cool anymore, either, | and I never talked about it. I was reluctant to even | mention it here. Also, these days, it seems that being an | Eagle is a project for dad, while the kid is along for | the ride. My parents had zero involvement with scouting. | runarberg wrote: | Intention is irrelevant, the outcome is the same. A | parent driving a kid to lacrosse practice every | Wednesdays and Fridays shows as much potential to | accomplishments as a parent asking their kid to help them | with their under the table car mechanic job every | weekend. Yet I bet only the former is evaluated as | significant. I wonder why that is. | pishpash wrote: | Your bet is based on anything? The second story is a | potential sob story that plays better, barring subjective | classist biases counteracting. That only points to | objective test scores being a better measure. | WalterBright wrote: | > Yet I bet only the former is evaluated as significant. | | Are you sure about that, especially for an engineering | school like Caltech or MIT? | | I didn't play lacrosse, football, row, track, baseball, | swimming, yachting, nope nope nope. | jancsika wrote: | > What I did do was run a small business (paper route), | used the money to fund my hotrodding efforts, was an | Eagle scout (back in the days when that was something), | etc. | | If I were a college admissions officer strapped for time, | I'd let the app through on proof of "Eagle Scout" and | ignore the other two. | | The only easier bet would be seeing the words "I'm | Hungarian" on an app for a secret world-saving advanced | math project. | zozbot234 wrote: | There's also a lot of room to disagree as to whether | playing sports counts as a meaningful accomplishment. | Professional sports are pure entertainment, and | succeeding even at that is extremely rare. The best | argument for caring about it is that it's better than | nothing, and it's something that ensures more average | people have a chance to get to MIT too, even if they | aren't all that intellectually minded. | WalterBright wrote: | Succeeding in sports means you have put out focused | effort over a period of time to accomplish something that | nobody made you do. | | This is worth something. | airstrike wrote: | > something that nobody made you do | | Uhh, that is definitely not a given | tmitech wrote: | I disagree completely. You could literally give zero | effort, focused or not, and sit on the bench of a winning | team. On top of that, your parents could have 100% made | you do those things. | Spooky23 wrote: | You could. You can just phone it in at work too, but most | people don't. Sports are _a_ place where kids figure out | who they are. Not the only place, but an important one to | many. | | My son is 11 and loves baseball, I've coached a few times | as well and it's been a great shared experience. There | are definitely kids in Little League / Cal Ripkin who are | there because mom & dad said so. But... I've gotten to | see my son and a few of his teammates build friendships | and mentor relationships with the kids ahead of and | behind him that are difficult to do in a school setting. | | It's a big deal. When a ten year old stops and is there | to help teach an eight year old how to do something, etc | those are valuable skills/processes/habits to build. They | learn to lose and how to practice. | | Part of the "package" a student brings to an application | is how they apply those experiences. You can send a | laundry list of things, or use your essay/interview to | tie it together. | whimsicalism wrote: | This rings true with my Gen Z high school experience as of | ~7 years ago. | Spooky23 wrote: | > Not to mention that, but there were sports our school | didn't participate in, but the richer kids had levels of | access to that looked great on college applications - | rowing and lacrosse specifically come to mind. | | Exactly. I went to smallish rural school. We had soccer, | basketball, baseball. Youth soccer in my area was a rigged | game where only people who were enrolled in the coaches | summer camp would make the varsity team. Basketball had 75 | kids try out for 12 spots. Baseball is ruthlessly | competitive, and while I was a really good little league | player, I had no chance against kids who were in multiple | travel leagues, etc. I probably played 50 baseball games | from age 9-12. The best players played at least 500. | | My cousins went to a fancy private school. Everyone played | on a varsity team; it was how they did gym. My older cousin | did fencing, the middle one did basketball, the younger | twins played squash. The squash guys sold themselves as a | package and ended up getting a couple of ivy league places | fighting for them. | | I think we have a similar outlook on this. For me, getting | good SAT/ACT scores let me "punch higher", and got me into | some really good schools that I would not have be admitted | to. Ultimately, I went to a state school, but was able to | parlay the competitive nature of things to get a better | grant package. | brimble wrote: | > Baseball is ruthlessly competitive, and while I was a | really good little league player, I had no chance against | kids who were in multiple travel leagues, etc. I probably | played 50 baseball games from age 9-12. The best players | played at least 500. | | Same thing drove me out of baseball after age 12 or so. I | had more than a little natural talent and put in some | time drilling with my parents, so I could keep up with | the kids doing the traveling leagues and such until (a | little before) then. After that it became clear that my | parents and I were gonna have to devote hundreds more | hours per year (plus not a small amount of money), | realistically, for me to keep playing. The gap was just | growing way too fast, otherwise. What was left were bad | teams/leagues where few players were really trying, so | that's no fun, and ones for which I couldn't make the | cut. Someone who liked it but just wanted to put in a | high-side-of-normal amount of time and effort for a youth | sport, had no place. | parkingrift wrote: | >It's far easier for rich students to game GPA, college | essays and extracurriculars than it is for them to game the | SAT. | | Disagree. I worked for the Princeton Review while in college | back in the day. We would outright guarantee 99th percentile | for one on one tutoring. If you didn't get 99th percentile | the course was refunded or you could take it again. For | classroom tutoring we would guarantee some improvement of I | believe 200 (out of 1600) with the same refund or take it | again option. Candidly, no one would pay for a prep course | for a 30 point gain. These course are expensive. Some of them | hundreds of dollars per hour. | | The cited research is pretty fundamentally flawed. | | "Although extensive, the academic research base does have | limitations. Most notably, few published studies have been | conducted on students taking admission tests since 2000. Only | two studies have been published on the effects for ACT | scores, and no studies have been published since the 2005 | change to the SAT, which added the Writ- ing section among | other changes." | | This position also doesn't pass the sniff test. GPA is | accumulated over four years of study. SAT/ACT is a single | test. You can't retroactively improve your GPA by doing | better in the past. But you can dramatically improve your | SAT/ACT results. | mgh2 wrote: | Maybe there was another variable at play: language. SATs | are in English. | | If English is not a student's primary language and fluency | improves as they advance academically, up to a plateau with | age. | | Not sure if this was properly controlled in SAT studies. | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11007/ | hn_user82179 wrote: | Glad you mentioned this. I went to a strong wealthy | public high school with a high asian population (~50%?). | When I was there, a lot of my friends were 2nd generation | immigrants and their parents still spoke their native | language at home. Their kids (my friends) were perfectly | fluent/native in English but didn't do as well in the | "edge vocabulary" parts of the SAT and I always figured | that was why (in comparison to me and my english-at-home | parents). | nullc wrote: | > If you didn't get 99th percentile the course was refunded | or you could take it again | | Plenty of other domains have study programs with similar | guarantees where the program has little to no effect-- it's | a simple economic calculation: Set your rates so you make a | good profit even if the program has no effect (even if you | allow retaking the course, students won't be willing to | waste their time and yours forever). | | It would be more informative if you knew the actual | before/after performance for the program. Elsewhere this | has been studied (see links in the thread) and the | improvement wasn't that substantial. | | > You can't retroactively improve your GPA by doing better | in the past. | | Indeed, which means that people who's families have been | carefully shepherding their education since they were much | younger have an _insurmountable_ advantage in the GPA game. | For people people who don't come from highly educated | families, they only learn about the GPA boosting games as | they start thinking about college years to late to take | full advantage of them. | parkingrift wrote: | >Plenty of other domains have study programs with similar | guarantees where the program has little to no effect-- | it's a simple economic calculation: Set your rates so you | make a good profit even if the program has no effect | (even if you allow retaking the course, students won't be | willing to waste their time and yours forever). | | They offer a refund or to retake the course. It is indeed | a simple economic calculation. The company would quickly | go bankrupt if a sizable percentage of students were | refunding. The company itself, and the location I worked, | had excellent reviews. Even today it has a 4.9 star | rating on Google Maps. Quite a high rating for a service | that people in this comment section proclaim has no | impact. | | Intuitively, how could it be correct that people pay | thousands of dollars on these courses and receive zero or | near to zero benefit from them? If this were true no one | would take the courses, the courses would be rated | poorly, and the underlying business would fail. | | >Indeed, which means that people who's families have been | carefully shepherding their education since they were | much younger have an _insurmountable_ advantage in the | GPA game. | | Sure, but the context is "which is easier to game." To | game the GPA takes four years of study and prep and you | must start doing it at the beginning of grade 9. Tens of | thousands of dollars and preparation+work over multiple | years. To game the SAT or ACT you must spend a few | thousand dollars during grade 11 or grade 12. | nullc wrote: | > To game the SAT or ACT you must spend a few thousand | dollars during grade 11 or grade 12. | | "Or check out a SAT book or two for free from the | library.", says my partner from an extremely poor family | who got into college on the basis of her perfect SAT | score and whom never would have qualified to a | prestigious school on a GPA basis. (And whom was also | admitted to law school on the basis of a nearly perfect | LSAT, which she studied for only with free and extremely | low cost used materials) | | > Intuitively, how could it be correct that people pay | thousands of dollars on these courses | | People, particularly those to whom a thousand dollars | isn't a big deal, spend all kinds of money on speculative | and outright ineffective treatments. Including mystical | mumbojumbo, quack medical treatments, and products and | services which accomplish nothing except contributing to | the 'identity' they present to themselves and others. ("I | am a parent who cares, look I spent $zillions getting Jr | the best opportunities!"). | | > To game the GPA takes four years of study and prep and | you must start doing it at the beginning of grade 9. Tens | of thousands of dollars and preparation+work over | multiple years. To game the SAT or ACT you must spend a | few thousand dollars during grade 11 or grade 12. | | I think on this point we're agreeing to a great extent | but we're drawing opposite conclusions. I agree SAT | improves with focused study, though I believe that | improvement is available for free (other than time and | knowing you should do it). | | You seem to agree with me that it is very expensive to | hyper-optimize GPAs, requiring costs and actions | extremely early and on a sustained basis. | | My conclusion from this is GPA optimization relatively | more available to students with more affluent families, | because it takes more time, more money, and requires it | earlier and more speculatively. -- we don't have an | option where you can't improve your performance with the | input of time,money, care but we can choose metrics where | the available improvement is available to more people. | BadCookie wrote: | I vaguely recall a question on the Duke University | application about what assistance you received with your | college application efforts. (I can't remember if test prep | was included specifically.) I'm sure that some people lie | by omission, but maybe asking this question is better than | not asking it. | micromacrofoot wrote: | It's been decades, but back when I was in high school rich | kids paid people to fake their identity to take the tests | (with fake IDs). I heard rumors that it was a dozen kids in | my graduating class, and witnessed 2 myself. 1 was caught. | | Does anyone know if they have better checks for this now? | qubitcoder wrote: | I'm not so sure about that. About 20 years ago, counselors | advised taking the SAT/ACT only once, since your score | wouldn't really change. | | I took the SAT several times. Each time my score went up | significantly. My high school ended up creating a new award | category for "greatest score increase", or something to that | effect. I believe it was ~200 points. | | I'd taken a prep course being offered by a local instructor. | However, the biggest benefit was from dedicated self-study | (Kaplan books, as I recall). | paulpauper wrote: | This times 10. GPAs have been rendered close to useless, | especially at identifying above average ability, due to grade | inflation, and also extreme variability between schools. Same | for valedictorian and other appellations. | david38 wrote: | Exactly. What teacher is going to fight for the B when the | parents are complaining to the administration she's keeping | their precious angel from Harvard? | paulmd wrote: | yeah this is a really hard problem and I don't see a fix | outside of standardized testing. Every school is | individually incentivized to use every trick - grading out | of 5.0, grading loosely, giving a bonus score for AP/IB | courses "because of difficulty", etc and teachers are | obviously very sympathetic to the future of their students | and the impact that being a Grading Nazi could have. And | parents are obviously incentivized to find the school | that's going to make Little Billy look best (best educated | is great but not sufficient, that's why we're discussing | testing). | | You need a uniform grading system, which means a uniform | material and a uniform grading process, which is... | standardized testing, or at least AP/IB courses. | satsuma wrote: | i came from a rural high school that didn't have any | ap/ib courses. i wonder how much that affected my college | applications. | | i still got to go to the college of my choice (fire up | chips!) but i have to wonder -- if i was able to boost my | gpa using ap/ib courses, would i have received more | scholarship opportunities/better offers from other | schools? | mason55 wrote: | That assumes the AP classes would have boosted your GPA. | If the harder class knocked you from an A to a B then it | would have been a net negative, at least at my high | school (AP counted as a 1.2 weighting, so an A in a | regular class is 4.0 and a B in an AP class is 3.0 * 1.2 | = 3.6). | jacobsenscott wrote: | Admissions officers will tell you they are aware of what | programs schools have, and take that into account. If | your school has no AP with GPA inflation your 3.x is the | same as a 4.x at some bigger high school. How true that | is idk. | paulmd wrote: | that may be true for colleges looking at local feeder | schools ("northwestern knows that my high school doesn't | have grade inflation"), but I don't know how that idea | scales nationwide or internationally. To steal an | example, how does a college in Seattle know that a high | school in Illinois has grade inflation or not? is that | tracked anywhere centralized? | | you could certainly look at past performance of students | from that school but that turns into a "legacy system | with more steps"... | colinmhayes wrote: | Anecdotal, but it seems universities have solved this by | figuring out which schools have grade inflation. I went | to a gifted school in Chicago that was quite competitive | and did not have grade inflation. 20% of the school went | to Northwestern every year because they'd accept every B | student. | JJMcJ wrote: | I've met people from elite private day schools. Their | education in a different world than 99.99% of public high | schools, except maybe a few like Stuyvesant in NYC and | Lowell in SF, or the fortunate few where 3/4 of the kids | have parents who are doctors or college professors (why | not both?). | michaelt wrote: | That method has its own problems, though. | | For one thing, if a school has grade inflation so bad | that even an A+ from that school isn't enough to get into | Yale - is that a problem? | | For another example, if adjustment for grade inflation | means Yale will ask for an A+ from Martin Luther King | High, Detroit while they'll accept a B from Phillips | Academy, Andover - is that a problem? | colinmhayes wrote: | Well the thing is I went to an inner city public high | school. It was much closer to "Martin Luther King High, | Detroit" than it was to a prep school. Majority of | students were below the poverty line, yet almost half | were accepted to Northwestern every year, many with full | rides. | Invictus0 wrote: | I took one of those expensive SAT prep courses and yes, I | agree that those don't increase scores very much, the program | I took was awful. | | However, I totally disagree that rich people can't game the | SAT. I used to be a moderator at /r/SAT and /r/ACT on reddit. | All of the questions and answers for all of the exams, | including subject tests are known and published online. Both | SAT and ACT routinely reuse exams from prior years, and | anyone who puts in enough time to study the old exams can do | well on the exams. And rich people have the luxury of more | time to study, because they don't have to work second jobs or | cook for their families or clean the house after school and | have more services that can save them time. | diebeforei485 wrote: | What's great is /r/SAT and /r/ACT are available to | basically everyone, even with a very slow internet | connection. Extracurriculars, not so much. | visarga wrote: | > And rich people have the luxury of more time to study | | Those rich students, they cheat by studying harder! | | Btw, I don't actually think being rich correlates with | better academic achievements. It's better to be in the | middle, not rich, not poor. To keep motivated. | cm2012 wrote: | Nah, there is a straight linear correlation between | parental income and sat score. | | https://static01.nyt.com/images/2009/08/27/business/econo | my/... | aliston wrote: | Did you bother to read the letter? This is directly | addressed: | | "This may seem like a counterintuitive claim to some, | given the widespread understanding that performance on | the SAT/ACT is correlated with socioeconomic status. | Research indeed shows some correlation, but | unfortunately, research also shows correlations hold for | just about every other factor admissions officers can | consider, including essays, grades, access to advanced | coursework (as well as opportunities to actually take | notionally available coursework), and letters of | recommendations, among others. Meanwhile, research has | shown widespread testing can identify subaltern students | who would be missed by these other measures." | MaximumYComb wrote: | Why do you say rich kids have more time? I grew up in an | underprivileged area and I very much disagree that poorer | kids are getting their free time hammered. | scarmig wrote: | > And rich people have the luxury of more time to study, | because they don't have to work second jobs or cook for | their families or clean the house after school and have | more services that can save them time. | | Unlike tricks for getting into university like studying | after school for classes, hiring private tutors, or taking | extracurriculars like lacrosse or rowing, which are great | levelers equally accessible to the rich and the poor. | david38 wrote: | I live in a very rich town, like super rich. I work in tech | so am rich by the standards of general population, but by the | standards of Silicon Valley. | | My child did very well on the ACT. All she did was buy a $35 | practice book, which almost anyone can do. Literally this was | it. Furthermore, she doesn't know of a single friend or | acquaintance that hired a private tutor. | | All the nay-sayers belly-ache about this but for most | children, even the "rich" ones, this simply isn't true. It's | most definitely not necessary. | | Considering the weight of the SATs/ACTs you would figure a | student would at least buy a cheap book and put in two hours | per week for a few weeks in practice. In practice, the vast | majority of students who do this do quite well. The | improvement is dramatic. | | Everyone wants to always blame "the system" which yes, has an | influence, but nobody wants to put ANY responsibility on the | student themselves. | dayvid wrote: | I agree. I spent some time as a Kaplan tutor. The students | in my experience fell into a few buckets: | | 1. They already know the material/are serious and would do | fine without tutoring (maybe some small help here and | there) 2. They kind of care, but need structure to study. | They probably wouldn't study or study effectively without | being in a class or having someone for accountability. 3. | They don't care and their parents are paying for someone to | babysit them to study | | Most students were in camps 2 and 3. | ProfessorLayton wrote: | >I live in a very rich town, like super rich. | | >My child did very well on the ACT. All she did was buy a | $35 practice book, which almost anyone can do. | | I don't intend to belittle anyone's accomplishments, but | there's _a lot_ more to high ACT scores than a $35 book, | no? | david38 wrote: | Indeed, and primary among them are parents. | heavyset_go wrote: | You aren't rich if you have to work and you're relying on | what a high school student tells you who doesn't know all | the details of the lives of other students, just what they | tell her. In my experience as a student, other students | will keep their tutoring and hand-ups under wraps. | david38 wrote: | I talk to a lot of parents. Most are quite open with | their tactics. | caffeine wrote: | The $250k to put a totally unqualified student through | school would pay for a lot of test prep hours at some | impoverished schools. | | It would likely take about 10 contact hours (1h/week, 10 | weeks), basically enough coaching so that the result is not | artificially low through under-preparation. | | Let's say it costs $100/hr all-in to coach 10 kids. So for | $1k you can get 10 applications from motivated, | underprivileged kids whose SATs are representative of their | ability. | | For one $50k annual ride you could run this in 50 low | income schools and get 500 underprivileged applicants and | then actually admit some of them who might _benefit_. | | Rather than refusing to test, and wasting those resources | supporting some kid who obviously won't hack it. | mbesto wrote: | > All the nay-sayers belly-ache about this but for most | children, even the "rich" ones, this simply isn't true. | It's most definitely not necessary. | | I'd rather trust studies than your anecdote. Just saying. | david38 wrote: | Of course. Show me a study that compares motivated self- | study with classes. | | Two SAT tutors have responded to the thread and supported | me. | MaximumYComb wrote: | IQ is quite heritible. This is especially so when | upbringing is not neglectful. People who land very high | paying tech roles are probably average higher in IQ than | the general population. | | Your daughter likely has the benefit of strong academic | genetics. A child like that who puts in effort (i.e. works | through a book) is going to do amazingly well. I'd also | argue that families who value academics are also more | likely to buy the books to do a couple hours per week in. | david38 wrote: | IQ also fluctuates a lot, but yes, she is a lot like me | (reads, thinks math/science is interesting, etc). | | She bought only one prep book, for $35, with her own | money. I guarantee the very poorest can get that one | book, even from the library. | | Parents absolutely influence children, otherwise what's | the point of parenting? This is a good thing. I'm just | saying the $$ part is way overblown. | scarecrw wrote: | As one of those private tutors that the ultra-rich hire, I | can definitely support most of what you've said here. | | The greatest service that private tutoring provides is | structure, accountability, and guidance. A dedicated | student working independently through quality practice | materials (many of which are cheap or free) can absolutely | attain most if not all of the beneficial outcomes of | preparing with a tutor/service. | | I think when people look at inequity in college admissions, | standardized testing ends up being an easy, tangible | target, but not a particularly important one. If you want | to look at how wealth impacts standardized test scores, | focusing on paid preparation programs is missing the larger | picture. | | Wealthy students have had literate parents who can afford | books and have the time to read to them when they're | toddlers. They've gone to safe schools where the teachers | can focus on teaching rather than making sure the students | are well fed. They are surrounded by adults who have gone | to college and can serve as role models for positive | academic behavior. They have friends who are all taking the | same tests and applying to the same schools to provide | emotional and thoughtful support. | | The collegeboard markets the SAT as measuring preparedness | for secondary education. These students have been preparing | for college their entire lives; is it any wonder that they | score higher? | david38 wrote: | Thank you. You absolutely validate my own observations. | | I went to college. My parents did, as did my extended | family on one side. I saw both sides and chose this one. | | I picked a town where my children would be surrounded by | an environment where cool was defined as "good at | school". I didn't want external influences contradicting | my influence. | | My child is dedicated, but I taught that dedication. | | A parent doesn't have to be rich to understand the | importance of a good education. My mother came from a | dirt poor background. | | People never say it's an advantage to have parents that | care about education. They always put the blame somewhere | else. The parents worked too hard, whatever. For | different traits, some parents are just better than | others. Academics is just one trait. Is the most | important? No, but it's one that's easy to measure. | [deleted] | hooande wrote: | Do you honestly believe that if you were from a very poor | town, poor by the standards of african american | neighborhoods in Detroit, that giving your child a $35 | practice book would have a similar outcome? | zozbot234 wrote: | Those places are sadly lacking even in the most basic | standards of education, so their potential ACT scores are | frankly irrelevant as is admission to MIT. You gotta | learn to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you | can run. | runarberg wrote: | Not only is this analogy wrong (there are plenty of | animals that run the moment they are born) but it is also | deeply insensitive. | | The reason people do worse from underprivileged is not | only the lack of quality education, but a fundamental | difference in the quality of life. Everything from the | diet, to available time, and noise pollution, all makes a | difference on education level. Our education system | relies heavily on outside help, and poorer neighborhoods | often don't have the time and energy to give their kids | even the most basic help with their homework. | david38 wrote: | The analogy is correct because we're talking about | people. | | Parents are the primary educators. When they aren't | educating, or need to educate on too many other things, | academics suffer. This is news to nobody. It would be | highly suspicious if environment had no influence on | educational outcomes. | zozbot234 wrote: | > Everything from the diet, to available time, and noise | pollution, all makes a difference on education level. Our | education system relies heavily on outside help, and | poorer neighborhoods often don't have the time and energy | to give their kids even the most basic help with their | homework. | | Well said. Thanks for elaborating on my point. | david38 wrote: | My mother was an orphan at 15 in Honduras. When she had | me, she shared a 400 square foot house with six of her | sisters. | | Look up the crime stats for Honduras and try again. | | Also, looking at the very worst situations is not a valid | argument. By that rational, what about the poor girl who | is kept a sex slave in her basement by her father for | twenty years? | | Do you think sending your African American example to SAT | prep will make a difference? Coming from the poorest and | sketchiest towns in America? Such a child would likely be | better served by starting at a community college. After | that, SATs are not accepted. | AtlasBarfed wrote: | My experience with "10 Sample SATs" which was my only | prep was about 500 points of improvement. IIRC I was | about a 1050-1100 on my first, and my best V/M combo was | 1450 (back in early 90s, so pre-recentering). I actually | did about 1380, I had a so-so actual one. | | It probably is the best bang for the buck, if you're | already 1-2 standard deviations on general intelligence. | Because the test is a game like admissions is a game, so | if you're smart enough to see the game, it's easier and | most effective to practice with that. | | For the "normals", I have no idea if it will work. But | we're specifically discussing MIT, who do NOT want | normals, I'm not good enough. They want 2-3 standard | deviations people. | | MIT should be able to weight for socioeconomic and | location/environment given the amount of information | required for financial aid and "the internet". | | If this becomes ubiquitous, I can see suburbanites | getting ghetto apartments for the address to game the | weights :-) | pvarangot wrote: | As a middle class going poorer higschool student (dad lost | his desk job, mom had to start working again to keep the | house, tried moving to cheaper city and it didn't work out, | had to apply for scholarships for stuff, never had money to | go out weekends, etc, etc) I think the thing resourceful | people overlook that "rich" kids have in higschool and | "poor" kids don't, is a space to study. Just a personal | quiet space where you can deploy your book or laptop and | write some stuff maybe with headphones maybe not but | definitely without your parents screaming or the TV | blasting stuff about social protests or whatever. | | In college most of my other "poor" friends that made it | either also had a space like that or were taught by their | parents to study in public libraries or other spaces | designed for concentration. | azinman2 wrote: | I personally went up 300 points with tutoring, and that was | when it was out of 1600. | | n=1 | sokoloff wrote: | I went up 240 points by taking the test an additional time | and a grade later, without any tutoring in between. | | Also n=1. | paulmd wrote: | I don't really have evidence for this, but it's always felt | like SAT/ACT coaching doesn't improve scores so much as get | rid of some of the "dumb mistakes" that cost you score. | | It's gonna help you when the test writer was playing some | gotcha tricks with phrasing or whatever, but if you don't | understand the material, even narrowing it down to a 50/50 | isn't going to get you a good score, and if you truly don't | understand the material you probably won't be able to | eliminate half the answers anyway. And they are absolutely | aware of the "answer b/c if you don't know" nugget, that's | nothing special either. | | Also "adaptive difficulty" systems where the system throws | harder questions at you after successfully answering the | easier ones are basically the "elo rating" of academics. | Everyone hates elo but... it slots you into a very | statistically accurate ranking. If you score highly on Level | 600 questions but you are failing on the Level 700 questions, | odds are good you are somewhere between 600 and 700. My | understanding is that's what SAT/ACT were moving towards | about 10 years ago, that it would be computerized and | "everyone's test is personalized" by the elo system probing | your exact knowledge level from a bank of questions with | difficulty scores dynamically based on how "similar ranked" | students performed on that question. | screye wrote: | Yeah, I have found that it improves 3 things. (this is for | GRE, which is similar) | | 1. Basics: If you don't know standard permutations and | combinations then knowing those formulae off the top of | your head is nice to have. The language portions in | particular, take a lot of preparation for non-native | speakers. | | 2. Speed: Giving a decent number of sample tests helps put | you in game mode for the real thing. It also acquaints you | to the manner in which questions are phrased and their | intended meanings. (big deal for non-native speakers) | Lastly, it helps ease anxiety. | | 3. Gotcha-proofing: Every examination has some familiar | gotcha patterns. Some training helps in looking out for | them helps. | WalterBright wrote: | The gotchas are answers that match common student | mistakes. | | What I'd do is solve the problem without looking at the | answers so they wouldn't bias me. Then look for a match | of mine with one of the answers. | scarecrw wrote: | > My understanding is that's what SAT/ACT were moving | towards about 10 years ago, that it would be computerized | and "everyone's test is personalized" by the elo system | probing your exact knowledge level from a bank of questions | with difficulty scores dynamically based on how "similar | ranked" students performed on that question. | | That is indeed where they're moving. They've recently | announced that the SAT will be transitioning to a digital, | adaptive test in the next 1-2 years. [1] | | Notably, the upcoming iteration of the test will only be | semi-adaptive, adjusting the version of the second half of | the test based on your performance on the first half, | rather than adapting to your performance on a question-by- | question basis. | | I suspect overall this will be an improvement in the | accuracy of the results. As it stands, for students with a | strong math background, a majority of the math questions on | the current test are far too easy and cloud their results | on the rest. With the recent removal of the CollegeBoard's | math subject tests, high-level math students have very few | opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge using a | standardized metric. | | [1]: https://newsroom.collegeboard.org/digital-sat-brings- | student... | caffeine wrote: | > high-level math students have very few opportunities to | demonstrate their knowledge using a standardized metric. | | AP math and physics exams? Or IB? | | True that these are not accessible to everyone though.. | MaximumYComb wrote: | I think that is great. Once you get past a certain | threshold, the test loses prediction value. Giving the | kids in the top 5% a way to differentiate is great. | commandlinefan wrote: | > SAT/ACT coaching doesn't improve scores so much as get | rid of some of the "dumb mistakes" | | If so, that still doesn't imply that rich kids with access | to private tutors will necessarily do better on these tests | than poor kids - just that anybody with the motivation to | read a test-prep book will. | sjg007 wrote: | Coaching and studying improves SAT scores. People learn the | type of questions they do poorly on and can study to | improve. The SAT is a test you can study for. | ghaff wrote: | And there are books available to help with a lot of that. | (And I actually agree with the point that doing _some_ | amount of test prep /sample tests is helpful. But it | doesn't need to be super-expensive/time-consuming. I do | understand that the playing field has probably upleveled | over the decades but it's still probably as democratized | as any such thing is. | MengerSponge wrote: | The SAT is a test of your academic preparation, not | Raven's progressive matrices. That you can study for it | is not inherently a bad thing. Portions that are highly | susceptible to coaching _are_ bad, and that 's why there | aren't analogies any more. | | If students learn the vocabulary and practice the math to | do better on the test, at some point it just becomes the | Key and Peele Heist sketch: "That's called a job!" | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYYOUC10aM | selimthegrim wrote: | Unfortunately for a lot of people it seems to be the Rick | and Morty heist sketch at this point | GCA10 wrote: | Agreed. I spent a bunch of time a few years ago doing | home-coaching for our two teenagers as they rolled into | SAT time. The way you get better at the math section is | to genuinely fix whatever gaps might exist in your | knowledge of algebra and geometry. As OP says, that "is | not an inherently bad thing." | | There's probably another 20 points that can be picked up | by learning to read the questions very carefully -- so | that you don't race to show how quickly you can spin-up | an off-task answer that precisely matches the wrong | question. Getting that right also "is not an inherently | bad thing." | | The verbal section is a bit more of a swamp, and there | might be a larger element of gamesmanship there. But for | schools like MIT, where math aptitude is the main event, | I think keeping a math-focused role for the SAT can help | a lot. | | It identifies not just the elite-school wizards with lots | of AP and math SAT 800s -- but also the teens from | humbler public schools that didn't have an AP track, but | whose 790s on the (pre-calc focused) math SATs speak to | their ability to play at a higher level. | | Apropos of analogies, I think the test-takers got rid of | those because they can be ridiculously skewed to | particular (affluent) cultures. For some people, it's | obvious if yacht-to-dingy is akin to symphony-to-quartet. | For people who grew up with less money, it is a total WTF | moment. | WalterBright wrote: | I remember an analogy question that required knowledge of | alcoholic drink formulations. I was way under drinking | age, and had no idea what went into a martini. | MengerSponge wrote: | You might be under drinking age, but you should have | years of practice making mummy and daddy martinis at the | end of their work days if you want any chance of | succeeding at $PRESTIGIOUS_OLD_INSTITUTION | likpok wrote: | The top link is a study that shows that the improvement | is pretty marginal in practice. | | It does miss something: in specific ethnic enclaves SAT | coaching is much more effective, perhaps because of a | culture of out-of-school schoolwork and teaching beyond | SAT prep. Those enclaves aren't particularly wealthy | either (if I recall correctly it was a Korean enclave). | Even then we're talking 70 points -- not nothing, but | also not a radical transformation. | hhs wrote: | > Even then we're talking 70 points -- not nothing, but | also not a radical transformation. | | That would depend on the baseline score. For instance, if | it was a 1510 baseline and then went up +70, then it | would be useful. | whimsicalism wrote: | I think it's usually not improvement at the highest | levels. | chernevik wrote: | I wouldn't be surprised if those improvements were mostly | moving below-average scores toward the average, by giving | deprived students basic skills that their "education" | didn't. | boringg wrote: | I don't know many tests you can't study for especially | tests that are run on an annual basis. | msdrigg wrote: | My own anecdotal experience confirms that sat and act | tests are very studiable. Honestly even more than average | tests just because there is so much material available to | study with. | pooper wrote: | In my personal experience, about seventeen years ago, | retaking the test raised my score some 90 points (iirc) | out of 1600, excluding writing section. | someguydave wrote: | the relevant question in that in that case is: what would | your average score be with and without prep over say 10 | tests | TuringNYC wrote: | >> I don't really have evidence for this, but it's always | felt like SAT/ACT coaching doesn't improve scores so much | as get rid of some of the "dumb mistakes" that cost you | score. | | As i learned in college, the real "coaching" was rich | parents getting rich kids more time on the SAT by getting | psychiatric diagnostic classifications that give you more | time. | | Time has been the real challenge on SATs for most people | beyond a certain score threshold, and money can buy time. | fhood wrote: | From my, albeit rather distant, recollection, if you | desperately needed more time on the SAT you are probably | already screwed. | TuringNYC wrote: | For students in the category of "exam easy. finished the | exam w/o any time issues", the whole sub-thread is | irrelevant. You're going to ace the exam rich, or poor. | | The sub-thread and discussion is about wealth bias for | exam scores. | WalterBright wrote: | I finished the SAT early, and used the extra time to go | back to the beginning and verify each answer. More time | wouldn't have done much. If you can answer the questions, | there's enough time to complete the test. | mlyle wrote: | I understand your perspective-- my test memories were all | breezing through tests with copious extra time... But as | an educator I've noticed that there is a _wide_ variation | in the amount of time needed for a test between students. | For some tasks it is _nearly an order of magnitude_. | | The students who are quick and on the competitive math | team finish something in 6-7 minutes and some other | students are doing correct work but not quite done in 45 | minutes. More practice doesn't seem to make them much | quicker, either. | | And this is in students without a formal diagnosis that | allows them to spend extra time. | | [There _was_ one time I crashed and burned on a test and | ran out of time... where I didn 't memorize enough of a | big table of identities for a trig test and ended up | having to derive everything from scratch] | WalterBright wrote: | I hypothesize that the student who took 8 times longer | isn't going to do so well at MIT. | | A typical exam at Caltech would be 4 problems and 2 | hours. | | I never memorized the trig identities. I simply knew them | from using them a lot. And having worked enough | algebra/trig problems, you can just see the answer in | your head as you read the problem. (This turns out to be | a big timesaver at Caltech, where every course was a math | course. When you're dealing with calculus, you really | need to have moved past struggling with trig.) | | At some point in the last 40 years, however, they've | slipped my mind. | stillsut wrote: | I'd say one of the valuable things an SAT tutor could teach | is an attitude: to take initiative, and reject resignment | to failure. | | The biggest difference I noticed in how I would take a test | versus other people I tried to coach is that I viewed the | test as a fun game like a challenging video game level. And | those who struggled on the test viewed it as dreadful | judgement being rendered on them. | | It's like when you can tell someone is extremely self- | conscious while dancing: Beyond teaching them any actual | dance moves, you have to turn off the part of their brain | which is blocking their natural mental resources for | problem solving, and that's often the fear they are | inadequate to the task, will disappoint their supporters, | and that it will hurt their future prospects. | JJMcJ wrote: | The SAT, ACT, and even IQ tests, were originally created in | part to help identity promising students who weren't from | upscale backgrounds. | | I'm not 100% sure that the tests can't be coached, but | certainly not like the "leadership", etc. | | And even if they can't be raised by coaching, the scores can | certainly be lowered by poor education and a chaotic living | situation. | | EDIT: Most people who can pay for coaching are already | sending their kids to the kind of high schools that serve to | get them ready, so they are close to their peak already. | | Even things like summer public service, there are consultants | who can tell you, based on your target school, the best one | for that school, like is it better to work on a clinic | project in Honduras, or teach basic literacy in Burkina Faso. | | Never mind that the plane fare to get your youth group to | Burkina Faso would pay the school fees for an entire village, | with enough left over to pay 1/2 the teacher's salary for a | year. | hatsunearu wrote: | Anecdotally I improved 600 to 400 points from test prep, | depending on what you count as my "first SAT test" and my | last SAT test. | balls187 wrote: | > The NACAC did a study on this and they found that average | gains of test-prep students is ~30 points (this was when the | SAT was 2400 points). | | When I took the SAT it was only 1600 (pre 2400), and SAT prep | did in fact help scores significantly. | | Back than, the test was designed not for scholastic aptitude | (as it's name suggests) but instead to guarantee a standard | distribution of scores. | | It's been a long time since I cared about the SAT's so I | assume once the word got out that the test could be gamed, | the people behind it updated it. | | > It's far easier for rich students to game GPA, college | essays and extracurriculars than it is for them to game the | SAT. | | Rich students don't need to game anything. They simply get | admitted because their family name is on a building. | paulpauper wrote: | >Rich students don't need to game anything. They simply get | admitted because their family name is on a building. | | The mean parental income for Ivy League students is 170k, | which is above middle class, but not Bezos-level rich. | | What is considered to be rich is a huge spectrum. The | difference between 7 figure rich vs. 9 figure rich..is up | to a factor of 1000. Those whose parents can donate enough | to be commemorated on a building, is an outlier even for | the rich. Unless your parents are dynastically rich, being | rich is not that much of an advantage for admissions. | samatman wrote: | > _instead to guarantee a standard distribution of scores_ | | Which is precisely what you want in an assessment test. Any | assessment test. | | You only want a normal distribution if the quality under | assessment is normally distributed, but you do want a test | where the worst candidate does better than chance, and | exactly one candidate gets a perfect score. That's an ideal | which is only approximated, but it is the ideal. | balls187 wrote: | For context I graduated high school in the late nighties | (I took the paper/scantron test). | | At the time, the SAT was purported to provide a score | that predict ability to perform academically at higher | learning institutions. | | Along with other factors such as GPA, and participation | in extra curricular activities, a school could reasonably | determine how well a student would do. | | In practice, the normal distribution for scores | correlated with the distribution of college performance. | It was a reasonable predictor of success, but it did | penalize students from certain backgrounds. | | Because the test was devised by psychologists and | statisticians, uncovering the pattern to the types of | questions and the expected answered allowed test prep | people to devise tricks to improve scores beyond the | expected deviation. | samatman wrote: | Your first post claims it isn't a test of scholastic | aptitude, and then this one says that it does predict | scholastic success, and what could reliably predict | scholastic success other than a test of scholastic | aptitude? | | Sure, a big donation by the student's dad, but that's a | known quantity. I took the same SAT you did if it | matters. | | Which certain backgrounds are you referring to? I'd ask | you for the references to show the supposed boost that | test prep gives to SAT scores, but then I'd have to find | the papers that fail to reproduce it... | thescriptkiddie wrote: | I wonder how much taking the SAT multiple times plays a role. | Personally I took it at least three times, and my score | improved each time (don't remember by how much). | Loughla wrote: | Which is also tied to socioeconomic status. If you can pay, | your score will go up the more you take it, according to my | experience, and the college board. | | If you can't pay, you take it the one time it's offered for | free if your school offers that. Then you get what you get. | whimsicalism wrote: | I think we should learn from the gaokao and only test | once a year. The fact that you can pay for more tests | (and pay more for "score choice") is the most unjust part | of the whole thing. | ericd wrote: | Counterpoint, you don't want being sick or having a bad | day to ruin your chances at what you've been working for | for years. Also, being under pressure is generally not | good for people's ability to reason calmly - another | reason not to make it so high stakes. So I really hope | what you're suggesting doesn't come to pass. | | We should probably make the SAT nearly free, though, if | that price actually keeps people who'd otherwise go to | college from taking it more than once. | logifail wrote: | > being under pressure is generally not good for people's | ability to reason calmly - another reason not to make it | so high stakes | | Q: Could be that being able to "reason calmly under | pressure" is something that a future employer might well | be interested in? | Loughla wrote: | A: Should your entire future job prospects be dictated by | something that an abstract employer in the future might | want? Or should the test we use try to get at what is | really important; actual knowledge and skill? | erdos4d wrote: | As a counterargument, a fake ID is all that a rich person | needs to put a smart kid in their place at the testing | center. Those places are usually huge, nobody knows anyone, | and if you flash a legit looking ID, you will have no trouble | sitting the test. GPA and such require effort over years to | game (and maybe the kid actually learns something from all | that tutoring, who knows). | LewisVerstappen wrote: | Sure. So, 2 things. | | 1) The solution to that is to improve security measures. | Not to remove the SAT entirely. | | 2) It is significantly harder to find someone who can score | well on the SAT and is willing to take the test for you | compared to gaming GPA, extra curriculars, etc. | | I've heard of tons of instances of people hiring homework- | help services, their dad paying $5k to get their extra- | curricular club going, private tennis lessons, etc. | | But I've never personally heard of someone paying someone | else to take the SAT for them. | | I'm sure it occasionally happens, but it's a lot harder to | pull off compared to manipulating GPA, extracurriculars, | college essay. | colinmhayes wrote: | > It is significantly harder to find someone who can | score well on the SAT and is willing to take the test for | you compared to gaming GPA, extra curriculars, etc. | | Idk about that. I found people to pay me for taking the | ACT for them through my alma mater's subreddit. Top | schools are full of people who got 35/36, I'm sure there | are plenty of other people who scored there and would be | willing to take the standardized test for 10k too. In | fact, in some ways it's easier to find someone to take | the test for you than it is to find someone to boost your | extracurriculars because you can structure the payout | around the score obtained. I got 10k for a 36, 7k for a | 35... no guarantees with tutors and coaches. | sct202 wrote: | If the parents/students are willing to cheat on the SAT, | they're probably going to have no issue manufacturing | extracurriculars. The schools for the most part aren't | auditing run of the mill activities (student org | leadership, fundraisers, mission trips, local awards), | and a lot of local newspapers basically let you write | your own articles for them so cheaters can build up | documentation if they're really motivated. | azinman2 wrote: | How common is this? I would guess not very. | | Either way, if you cheated your way into MIT, expect to | fail out. The hand holding stops there. | erdos4d wrote: | Well, Trump did it, that's one data point. Also, he did | fine at U Penn, an Ivy, so why should we assume MIT is so | awesome that another rich kid couldn't cheat his way | through there? | azinman2 wrote: | Technically MIT isn't an ivy league school. But either | way, what makes you think all Ivy's are the same? | erdos4d wrote: | I'm just saying that U Penn, being an Ivy, has as much | "reputation" as MIT, CalTech, etc. Until someone pipes up | with some sort of proof that it is actually better (which | I doubt it is), then why should U Penn's reputation allow | a Trump to go through, but at MIT such a thing could | never occur? I'm not seeing it frankly. | jjitz wrote: | As an MIT grad with many friends at other Ivies, I can | tell you that it is more rigorous than pretty much all of | them. Princeton is probably the closest. | scarmig wrote: | MIT is absolutely harder and more rigorous than UPenn | (and, for that matter, HYP). If you compare the GPAs of | people from those schools and e.g. MCAT scores, MIT | students exhibit a much stronger positive correlation. | | This is pretty common knowledge, in the same way people | know that Berkeley and CalTech have tougher classes than | Stanford. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | The man is functionally illiterate so it's likely someone | else did it in his name. | paulpauper wrote: | But saying you got into MIT, plus the connections there, | probably would still help | azinman2 wrote: | If you fail out, it doesn't look so good, and everyone | will know. I wouldn't expect many connections to last if | you're not someone people respect. | spywaregorilla wrote: | MIT is one of the more rigorous schools but I expect its | still pretty easy to avoid failing out. | azinman2 wrote: | Do you speak from experience? I attended it for grad | school and not undergrad, but there was the expectation | that you stand on your own. I was in one of the rare | programs that was a terminal masters and you had to | reapply for the PhD, and only 50% were accepted to the | PhD. | | I think there probably aren't too many failing out of | undergrad simply because they do a great job of filtering | in the first place. But I know people who attended that | certainly struggled... one who came a C student and still | want on to a great medical school and a successful | career. There isn't grade inflation. | KMag wrote: | > There isn't grade inflation. | | That depends on your definition of grade inflation. I | think most of my undergrad classes at MIT had a median | grade somewhere in the B range, maybe B-. Edit: I know | some people consider a non-inflated grade curve to be | C-centered. | | I came to MIT with more than a year's worth of credits | from the U of MN, including 6 trimesters of honors level | math[0] (multivariable calc, linear algebra, diff. eq.). | I had all As, except a B in my Intro to World Politics | class. My senior year of HS, I was actually taking a bit | over a "full course load" at the U of MN, plus 1/4 time | at my HS. | | I could sleepwalk through nearly straight A's at a pretty | well regarded school's honors program. I was a B/C | student at MIT. I like to think that a lot of it was that | some "wise" uperclassmen had sat me down my freshman year | and explained that once you had a degree from MIT, nobody | would ask for your GPA. (The were wrong, BTW. Work for | those grades.) I taught myself most of a CS degree while | earning a degree in Mechanical Engineering. However, I | was also too slow to put my ego in check and admit to | myself that I really needed to work hard. | | [0] https://cse.umn.edu/mathcep/about-umtymp | azinman2 wrote: | Sounds like you're effectively saying there wasn't grade | inflation. You were an A student elsewhere and then | become a B/C student at MIT despite working hard. That's | my point -- now imagine you were only an A student | because you were rich and somehow swindled those good | grades in high school. Imagine what would happen at MIT. | | Note that Harvard undergrad has something like an A- | average. That's grade inflation. | KMag wrote: | I certainly agree with your broader point: nobody is | handed a degree from MIT. If they have a degree, they've | put in the work and have a good grasp of the subject | matter. (Also, MIT doesn't give out honorary degrees.) | nradov wrote: | Some years ago in high school others offered me significant | amounts of money to take the SAT for them. I didn't do it, | but based on the security arrangements at the time I'm | pretty sure I could have done it without getting caught. So | I have to assume there has been some of that cheating going | on. | dayvid wrote: | I have a family friend who does consulting for rich kids w/ | college admissions. | | You basically have someone who's on the board of an elite | university coaching kids on their essay, clueing them into | extra-curriculars, etc. They get paid pretty well. | | I also had a dinner conversation from a lady with two | children in Ivy league universities who said she emphasized | with the parents who went to jail for bribing schools to get | their childrens admitted and would do it herself if her | children couldn't get in the school. She also personally | knows one of the people doing jail time for bribery. | | I had basically no adult academic/university guidance growing | up. I just liked reading books in the library and studying | things I liked. I was able to receive a scholarship to my | university through my SAT scores. I'm not sure how I would | square up in the current academic environment when I see the | sheer amount of parent involvement in the application | process. I also went to a smaller university where the level | of tactics and skullduggery is limited. | bikenaga wrote: | Thanks for the interesting link. However, based on the paper, | it seems like a "30 point increase out of 2400 points" | _could_ be significant. The study says: | | "A survey of NACAC-member colleges unexpectedly revealed that | in a substantial minority of cases, colleges report either | that they use a cut-off test score in the admission process | or that a small increase in test score could have a | significant impact on an applicant's chances of being | admitted." (p. 2) | | The paper later notes: | | "These results indicate that in some cases more than one | third of postsecondary institutions agreed that a score | increase on the SAT-M of 20 points, or a score increase on | the SAT-CR of 10 points, would 'significantly improve | student's likelihood of admission.' This proportion tends to | rise as the base level of the SAT score before the 20 or 10 | point score improvement rises. This is especially true for | the more selective institutions. At lower scores on the SAT | scale, a small score increase does the most to improve a | student's chances of admission at less selective | institutions; at higher scores, the same increase appears to | have an equally large or even larger impact at more selective | institutions." (p. 19) | | The graphs on pages 18 and 19 give more detail. | | The paper also notes that "The College Board gives a specific | example of a use that should be avoided: 'Making decisions | about otherwise qualified students based only on small | differences in test scores'." So it appears that up to a | third of the institutions surveyed are _not_ following this | guideline. It would be interesting to know who they are. | | I agree with your comment about rich kids gaming GPA, essays, | and extracurriculars. Daniel Markovits addresses many of | these points in "The Meritocracy Trap". Since I don't see how | you can prevent gaming GPA, essays, or extracurriculars, | given the alternatives, you're probably right that the tests | may be better in this respect. | foobarian wrote: | > A 30 point increase out of 2400 points is not material to | college admissions. | | Not so sure about that. Beyond the fact that that number is | an average, the question is from where to where. So many kids | get perfect 2400 scores that going from 2370 to 2400 might be | the difference of getting eliminated from competitive | admission pools altogether. Whereas nobody will care about | you going from 1850 to 1880. | | P.s. I am dating myself a bit with the 2400 range, which | seems to have changed at some point. Transform accordingly | :-) | paulpauper wrote: | But test prep is marketed to people who are average or | below average. Saying you can gain hundreds of points is | clearly misleading/deceptive advertising. | giantg2 wrote: | Are there really that many kids getting perfect scores? | | I got a pretty low/average score, but took the test early | in junior year so I hadn't taken some of the more advanced | math courses yet. I never took it again since I got into | everywhere I applied to (didn't apply to ivy league, | obviously). Seemed like most other kids I knew did | similarly with the smartest kids maybe 150 points higher | (2400 time-frame). Nobody I know got a perfect score, or | even close to it. | | Edit: man, after talking about this I want to see what my | score was exactly. No way am I paying $30 for an archived | score though. I want to say it was only 1200/1600 (the | schools only wanted 2 of the sections). But I'm not sure I | trust my memory for something so inconsequential from that | long ago. | | Extra edit: found my old score report. It's worse than I | thought. The writing was 570 (74th percentile) and math was | 510 (47th percentile). I'm a lot dumber than I remember. | foobarian wrote: | I guess not exactly. But still looks pretty crowded at | the top end: | https://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/colleges/Harvard-SAT- | score... | giantg2 wrote: | Looks like it's 1% between 1550-1600. I couldn't find | stats for an actual perfect score. Saying it's crowded I | guess is ok, but is a matter of perspective. Like the top | 1% of income earners saying their yacht club is crowded. | Maybe true, but only for a very small number of people | who could choose to go somewhere else if they actually | wanted to. | | http://go.collegewise.com/how-many-people-get-a-perfect- | sat-... | LewisVerstappen wrote: | Yeah no the study was definitely not about test prep | getting people from 2370 to 2400 lmao. There is no test | prep service in the world that will claim they can get you | from a 2370 - 2400. | | The mean SAT score is ~1600, so it's a 30 point increase | for students scoring in that range. | | If you're already capable of getting a 2350+, that means | you know everything and it's just down to variance and not | making a silly mistake. | | A perfect 2400 score is actually really rare. From a stat | in 2009, the collegeboard reported that 1 student out of | every 5,000 taking the SAT gets a 2400. | bombcar wrote: | I took it back when it was out of 1600 and missed a | perfect by one question; however I don't think I was | exceptionally brilliant or anything. | | The SAT does _not_ operate in the way the LSAT or some | other computerized tests work where it keeps giving you | harder and harder questions until you start getting them | wrong. | | I suspect more people could get a 2400 if those who get | really close bother retaking it. | whimsicalism wrote: | > So many kids get perfect 2400 scores | | "So many" being ~500 out of a population of ~7 million or | so | umanwizard wrote: | > So much for that common, popular notion that standardized | tests do not predict anything of value. | | It was always an example of people refusing to believe | something because it would be nicer if it weren't true. | tharne wrote: | > So much for that common, popular notion that standardized | tests do not predict anything of value. | | To be fair, I don't think the debate was ever about the quality | or predictive value of the tests. There is a small, but well- | organized and vocal subset of the population that hates the | idea of excellence and differentiation. They want, and have | been quite successful in, the replacement of standards of | excellence with vaguely defined (defined by them, of course) | buzzwords like "equity" and "diversity". | danShumway wrote: | I've pushed back against standardized testing at certain | points of my life, and I don't think this comment even | remotely summarizes my views. | | If anything, I would say that my views are the opposite -- | homogenization creates a lack of differentiation around skill | and aptitude based on questionable science (and sometimes | outright pseudoscience) and often leads to an | oversimplification of human intelligence in general. It | always feels very strange to me that people trying to | compress aptitude into a single number say that they're | defending differentiation or diversity of talent. | | MIT's findings here don't really change my view of the value | of SATs, although the findings are interesting and I think | they're worth looking into further. I'm not sure "they're | more predictive than GPAs" is the glowing recommendation that | SAT proponents think it is. You can agree or disagree with me | on that point, I'm not here to debate the entire idea of | testing or IQ or whatever -- I just want to point out the | above comment is a pretty big oversimplification and (in my | mind) a borderline complete misrepresentation (I assume | unintentionally) of what people like me believe. I can only | speak for myself though, maybe there are people out there who | do hate the idea of excellence. | LudwigNagasena wrote: | Well, what you have written just feels like a more | favorable to your side explanation of the same thing. | | Colleges are not trying to compress aptitude into a single | number. It's even worse. They are trying to compress | aptitude into a single Boolean variable, you are either | admitted or not. That's it. And it seems that subject tests | and general aptitude tests are very good indicators of | college fit. I don't know what system you envision, but | alternatives I have seen always seem far worse. | danShumway wrote: | I'm not sure I understand what you mean. GP writes: | | > There is a small, but well-organized and vocal subset | of the population that hates the idea of excellence and | differentiation. | | I don't see how that applies to my comment above, and I | don't see how saying: | | > They are trying to compress aptitude into a single | Boolean variable, you are either admitted or not. That's | it. | | is doing anything other than backing up what I said. At | the point where you are dividing a subset of the | population into binary "in or out" groups, you are in | fact advocating for homogenization, for less | differentiation between students, and for fewer | levels/categories of excellence or exceptionalism. | | I'm not here to tell you that's wrong, you do whatever | you want. MIT is trying to decide who gets into their | specific college, fine. But if you're arguing that the | point of SATs is to make a binary determination about | students, then it's just strictly inaccurate to say that | it's the SAT critics who are all trying to cut down tall | poppies. | LudwigNagasena wrote: | You conflate vertical differentiation with horizontal | differentiation. Horizontal differentiation is what is | usually understood as "diversity" and considered good | among certain groups of people. Vertical differentiation | is what is usually understood as "hierarchy" and | considered bad among those groups of people. | | MIT like many American universities does only general | admission and that's indeed would be considered weird in | other countries, but it seems like a whole nother issue. | danShumway wrote: | > You conflate vertical differentiation with horizontal | differentiation. | | A binary admissions model reduces both. That's not to say | a binary admissions model is _wrong_ , but it does reduce | vertical differentiation. Of course compressing an | integer value into a binary result reduces | differentiation, a boolean represents fewer states than a | number. | | To go a step further, even if that wasn't the case, | vertical and horizontal differentiation still can't ever | be completely decoupled from each other. Horizontal | differentiation allows for greater vertical | differentiation by allowing people to vertically | differentiate based on their strengths rather than on a | questionably representative average of all of their | qualities. And I don't think that's a solely Progressive | or Left-wing idea, it's a big part of the reasoning | behind why economic specialization leads to more advanced | societies. | zaidf wrote: | What's a _better_ alternative in your view? | danShumway wrote: | I'm not completely sure. I think MIT's conclusions might | be correct, they might be preferable to GPAs. I also | think there might be other alternatives that aren't easy | to implement, that require either a restructuring of how | we do school or a better distribution of resources than | we currently have. | | One conclusion that MIT hints at (although it doesn't say | it outright) is that SATs might be a better indicator of | success across economic levels in part because it's | harder to buy a better SAT score with money. Looking at | things like extracurricular activity runs into many of | the same problems as looking at Github repos during | hiring processes -- a lot of people don't have time to do | a bunch of extracurricular activities, and access to | those extracurricular activities is likely highly | correlated with socioeconomic status. It might be | difficult to move in that direction when access to school | resources varies so much between areas. | | I do think the SAT could be improved -- I think one | really easy way would be to change how it's administered | so that it optimizes less for formal test-taking skill. | The really good thing about the SAT is that it's a less | school-specific measure than GPA. So a better alternative | might be a version of the SAT that kept a standardized | metric but that either widened its scope significantly or | was administered differently. | | I also want to put forward the idea that admissions might | just be really hard, period, and there might not be an | easy way to assess potential, and trying to figure out | the easiest way to do it might be like asking, "what's | the best way to teach a child to play an instrument in a | single day?" | | ---- | | One really important point that I want to get across: | there is a difference between a measure being good and a | measure being "the least terrible option we have at the | moment" -- and confusing the two can cause real harm. | | At the top of this thread I see the quote, "so much for | that common, popular notion that standardized tests do | not predict anything of value." And if that's somebody's | attitude, then they're never going to find a better | option because the whole thing is being approached | through the lens of "see, we were right, this _is_ a good | metric. " | | I think a lot of criticism of standardized testing, IQ, | coding tests for hiring, etc... is not necessarily trying | to destroy everything, it's just trying to point out that | many of these measures are really bad and they shouldn't | be treated with the respect they're often given. I think | that someone can very easily both have the position, | "yeah, MIT probably should use SAT scores alongside GPAs" | and the position, "people place _way_ too much confidence | in these things as an indicator of success. " | tharne wrote: | > If anything, I would say that my views are the opposite | -- homogenization creates a lack of differentiation around | skill and aptitude based on questionable science | | If that were true, you'd expect countries like South Korea, | Japan, and German to perform poorly in science and | engineering, among other things. | | Diversity may be a worthy goal for societal reasons, but it | certainly is not a perquisite for excellence, seeing as | there are many highly successful countries that are very | homogeneous. | danShumway wrote: | > If that were true, you'd expect countries like South | Korea, Japan, and German to perform poorly in science and | engineering, among other things. | | It's wild to me that someone can have the view that the | existence of other countries settles the debate over | whether or not our school systems encourage well- | rounded/successful students given that comparisons to | more homogenized schooling environments like China is | still one of the more contentious high-level debates | about educational quality we have today. Again, I'm not | here to convince you one way or another, but that is not | a debate that I think most of society considers settled. | | > Diversity may be a worthy goal for societal reasons, | but it certainly is not a perquisite for excellence | | If that's the argument you want to make, then fine, go | for it. But then don't say that you're opposing a group | that "hates the idea of excellence and differentiation." | You are arguing for removing differentiation between | different kinds of intelligence and skillsets and | compressing that spectrum into an objectively less | descriptive metric. | | Make up your mind whether I'm arguing for more diversity | and more differentiation between people or for less of | it. | gameswithgo wrote: | Is the current push back against coding tests in job hiring | perhaps similar to this push back against the SAT? | adfgadfgaery wrote: | The SAT has been demonstrated to be effective at predicting | success in university. We have almost no evidence about the | computer industry's hiring practices. It is completely | unscientific. Interviews operate on folklore, not | statistics. | bluGill wrote: | This is something your HR department should be very | concerned about. If the questions you ask during your | interview are not useful in finding a good candidate why | are you asking. This isn't just about time either, | interviews have some strong laws around them so asking | the wrong question could get you in court. | | I know when we wanted to do a coding test they told use | we need to spend 6 months of giving everyone a coding | test, have it independently graded by someone not | involved in the hiring process. Then after people have | worked here for 6 months we examine our actual results | from those we hired and see if the tests at all predicted | something useful. (or something like that - there is room | in the scientific process for some variation) | alecbz wrote: | The bar below which HR has to be worried is not "we've | scientifically determined that our interview questions | lead to good on-the-job performance". There has to be | some reasonable sense in which you could argue the | interview filters for good candidates, but no one is | requiring you run studies. | | Google once did a retrospective study and found that | interview scores for people we ended up hiring were not | correlated at all with people's on-the-job performance. | I'm pretty sure nothing really changed as a result of | this. I think it's a combination of the industry, | especially FAANG, being kind of "stuck" on these kinds of | interviews, and a lack of clearly better alternatives (I | think there are better alternatives but it's not like I | can point to studies backing me up). | | > I know when we wanted to do a coding test they told use | we need to spend 6 months of giving everyone a coding | test, have it independently graded by someone not | involved in the hiring process. Then after people have | worked here for 6 months we examine our actual results | from those we hired and see if the tests at all predicted | something useful. | | This is interesting but also way heavier weight than | anything I've ever heard of. OOC where do you work? (Like | vague description of kind of company, if you're not | comfortable sharing the specific name). | nullc wrote: | > Google once did a retrospective study and found that | interview scores for people we ended up hiring were not | correlated at all with people's on-the-job performance. | | This sounds like an unsound result. If you select based | on a criteria the correlation with the criteria is | usually diminished and sometimes even reversed in the | selected sub-population. | | Like if you select only very strong people to move | furniture then measure their performance. Because they're | all strong, you won't observe that weak people are bad at | it-- plus you'll still have some people who were | otherwise inferior candidates who were only selected | because they were very strong, resulting in a reverse | result. But if you dropped the strength test you'd get | many unsuitable hires (and suddenly find strength was | strongly correlated to performance in the people you | hired). | alecbz wrote: | > This sounds like an unsound result. If you select based | on a criteria the correlation with the criteria is | usually diminished and sometimes even reversed in the | selected sub-population. | | Yeah that's very true and I think was part of why they | maybe didn't react to it too much. What you really want | is to find the people you rejected and see how well | they're doing, but we don't have that data. | | Still though, naively I think I would have thought that | someone who gets great marks across the board should be | able to be more successful at Google than someone who | barely squeezes by, and I do think it's kinda telling | that that's not the case. But I'm maybe just injecting my | own biases around the interview process. | | edit: This reminds me a lot of this informal study that | found that verbal and math scores on SATs were inversely | correlated, which seemed surprising, until people | realized they were only ever looking at samples all from | a single school. Since people at any given school | generally probably had ~similar SAT scores (if they were | lower they wouldn't have gotten in, if they were higher | they would have gone to a more selective school), the | variation you see within a given school will be inverse | (the higher you do on math, the lower you must have had | to do on verbal to have gotten the "target" score for | that school). | nullc wrote: | At google's scale, if they had an alternative basis for | hiring people they could judge candidates by both and | hire randomly use one method or the other method to make | some of their hires, then compare their performance over | time and at least say if there is a significant | difference or not. | | But as you note, the lack of obvious good alternatives is | an issue... and we can't pretend that there isn't an | enormous difference among candidates. If we though that | unfiltered candidates were broadly similar then "hire at | random, dismiss after N months based on performance" | would be a great criteria, but I don't think anyone who | has done much interviewing thinks that would be remotely | viable. | | (Though perhaps the differences between candidates are | less than we might assume based on interviewing since | interviewees should be _worse_ than employment pool in | general, since bad candidates interview more due to | leaving jobs more often and taking longer to get hired) | stillsut wrote: | This is actually confirmed with real world data on this | for professional football with player weight and | professional basketball with player height. | | For Offensive Linemen in the NFL, there is no correlation | between weight (which range from 300-360 pounds) and | overall performance. A "heavy" 350 pound player is not | more likely to do better than a "light" 310 player. But | nobody who weighs a mere 250 pounds could realistically | make the cut or perform well at the highest level. | | For basketball players there is no correlation between | height and performance, and there _are_ several standouts | examples of players below six feet so there 's no cutoff. | But if you compare the distribution of the subpopulation | versus the general population, you'll see an extremely | strong height bias. | bluGill wrote: | > OOC where do you work | | Big tractor. | hiq wrote: | > Is the current push back against coding tests in job | hiring | | Is there such a pushback? As in, is the percentage of the | workforce refusing to take such tests increasing? | neon_electro wrote: | It very much depends on the style of coding test - | personally, I'm more than happy to do take-home style | tests where I prepare something in a matter of a few | hours, but I can't stand "leetcode" interviews or | anything where I'm pressured to produce in 30 minutes or | less; perhaps that's because that's typically not how I | work in the real world and in my experience, they do a | really poor job of demonstrating my skill set and | experience. | | I have terminated interviews before they even got started | because of poor interview loop design from employers. | isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: | From the other part of the table - we'd lose more | candidates if we did take-homes. People in general prefer | to study once and use that knowledge for multiple | companies at once, you can't optimize take-homes like | that. | hiepph wrote: | I recently failed a CS coding test. I was asked to solve | a problem in 10m. I solved it in 20m and was rejected. I | came up with a solution and communicate it right from the | start. My solution was totally clear and readable. I just | needed time to warm up and attentive to my code. I love | CS. I love solving problems and reading books about | Algorithm and Data Structure. I implemented them from | scratch as a hobby. But the interviewer guy is not caring | about that and said process is process. I felt | disappointed at first but felt lucky after that since I | wouldn't want to work with those people in the future. | smilekzs wrote: | 10 mins per problem sounds extreme except for something | that can be answered in no more than 5 lines of python | (no code golf of course). Even then its signal-to-noise | ratio (from an interviewer's perspective) can't possibly | be too high. Most places would ask you to solve a | moderately nontrivial problem in 30-50 minutes | alecbz wrote: | I don't know if there's a _rising_ pushback but you | definitely do hear a not-small amount of complaining | about coding interviews on HN. | hkt wrote: | I refuse now and didn't two years ago. Anecdotal, I | realise. But I think lots of people have decided that the | message heavily test oriented recruitment processes send | out indicates a bad work culture and sense of entitlement | from employers. I subscribe to this view and vote with my | feet. | yeahwhatever10 wrote: | I think that is more about the disconnect between coding | tests and the actual day to day work and skills required to | do the job. Example: I could have a high level of | competency in software engineering and also not care how a | mouse gets out of a bucket. | alecbz wrote: | Those "mouse getting out of a blender" brain-teasers or | whatever are pretty unheard of at this point I think. | Most people complain about coding questions, generally | leetcode-style questions I think. | artful-hacker wrote: | It's similar but it also brings in a challenging problem: | coding tests costs candidates far more than it costs | employers in terms of time. I am currently interviewing and | two of the companies I am otherwise excited for sent take- | home tests that just exhaust me, especially after a long | day of otherwise productive work. I've got 12 years of | experience under my belt but somehow great references and a | killer resume aren't enough to convince them I can find a | security vulnerability. | smilekzs wrote: | I respectfully disagree. Any decent interviewer spends | the same man-hour as the candidate does. | geraldwhen wrote: | I do coding tests for the first interview. Nothing hard, | just enough to do basic data modeling and writing a unit | test. I also time cap to under an hour, and the internet | is available as a resource. | | This filters out most people. | nradov wrote: | It's more about labor market dynamics and supply versus | demand. If there are plenty of developers available to hire | then employers will insert extra hurdles in the process to | filter out weak candidates (with the understanding that | there will be some "false negatives"). But when the labor | market is tight then employers will take a chance on any | candidate who seems minimally competent because they need | to fill the req. | sgustard wrote: | The MIT article literally says "diversity" is one of their | goals. Seems like you're arguing against yourself. | tharne wrote: | > The MIT article literally says "diversity" is one of | their goals. Seems like you're arguing against yourself. | | Except no one goes to MIT because it's "diverse", whatever | that even means anymore. They go there because it is one of | the best schools in the world. | sgustard wrote: | We're talking about the school's goals in forming a | class, not the applicants' goals. Most schools that are | among the "best in the world" find they can weigh | multiple factors to decide who to admit, and there's no | single magic number that does that job for them. | crackercrews wrote: | It is actually possible that some people go to MIT | because it has more diversity [1] than its very close | competitor, Caltech. [2] But it's true that the first | filter for these students is undoubtedly world-leading- | technical-program. | | 1: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/massachusetts- | instit... | | 2: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/california- | institute... | dijit wrote: | Unsure if I buy this. | | I'm definitely not the person you describe, but the idea of | standardised testing being equivalent across all factors just | strikes me as being fundamentally untrue. | | Personally I am very lucky to test well; and I definitely buy | the notion that people who test well in SATs may go on to do | better in University, but the reasons are probably the same: | freedom from worry about financial circumstances will affect | grades. 10 times in every 10. | MaximumYComb wrote: | I grew up poor and I achieved some of the highest scores | state wide in my country's standardised tests as a child | (we get tested at ~8,10,12,14). A lot of my peers at my | school were from social housing. My assessment is that | their biggest issue wasn't money but their homelife. | Parents who didn't value education, or even a basic respect | for rules/authority. The kids were wild because their | parents were kind of wild themselves. Money wouldn't fix | scores for these kids. | | If you wish to make a political correct stance, I wouldn't | go the money route. I'd say that these kids are victims of | intergenerational poverty cycles. | psyc wrote: | Same. My family was below the US poverty line, but my | parents were college educated and most of the extended | family placed tremendous emphasis on education, academic | performance, and college prep. I always get very annoyed | with modern discourse that reduces all successes, even | staying out of prison, to family income and nothing else. | Most of the people I went to school with were from poor | or working class families, and I guess a "normal" | proportion went to college, and a "normal" proportion | were "smart kids." Based on my observations, a large | factor that I never see discussed is religion. Although | I'm an atheist, I think the religiosity of the | communities I grew up in was a highly effective mitigator | of common social ills. | MaximumYComb wrote: | I think the benefit of religion is that a religious | mother/father is less likely to be off on 3-day meth | binge compared to a non-religious one. There's a social | network to help support people. The social network also | encourages a reduction/removal of typical vices that are | going to affect a families children (alcohol, drugs, | etc). | throwawayboise wrote: | I agree, and it's not the job of MIT to fix these kids. | Psyladine wrote: | >but the idea of standardised testing being equivalent | across all factors just strikes me as being fundamentally | untrue. | | What's your take on MIT's stance? | | _our ability to accurately predict student academic | success at MIT 02 Our research shows this predictive | validity holds even when you control for socioeconomic | factors that correlate with testing._ | dijit wrote: | My take is exactly what I said. | | The same factors that lead to success for SATs can lead | to further academic success. | | I believe that MIT is probably right, in fact, I'm quite | certain of it. Many people will drop out of university or | perform poorly than their peers for socio-economic | reasons, the person working while studying will probably | do worse than the person who just studies. | | MIT wants the most graduates and especially the most | _successful_ graduates, so the institution is right to do | this, but I do still think it 's more inhumane than I'm | personally comfortable with -- but this is part of why I | live in Europe where university students in general are | seen as an investment by the state and not _so much_ a | business to be optimised. | tsimionescu wrote: | Doesn't most of Europe also rely on standardized testing | for university admissions? My country definitely does so, | and has for decades, both ore and post communist times. I | also know France has the famous Bacalaureat at the end of | high school. | tharne wrote: | > Doesn't most of Europe also rely on standardized | testing for university admissions? | | They sure do. So does India. In fact, a lot of other | countries rely on testing a whole lot more than the U.S. | which has interviews, essays, sports, teacher | recommendations, etc. | tharne wrote: | > this is part of why I live in Europe where university | students in general are seen as an investment by the | state and not so much a business to be optimised | | In this specific case, though, I don't think these two | things are in conflict at all. By selecting the best | candidates on the basis of merit, MIT is doing what's | best for both MIT as well as the broader society. | | We all benefit from living in a country that produces | top-tier scientists and engineers, and MIT benefits from | being a place that is known for producing top-tier | scientists and engineers. | LudwigNagasena wrote: | Funny that you bring up Europe. As far as I know European | countries don't rely on extracurriculars and other | nebulous measures as much as US colleges do. | chernevik wrote: | What's "inhumane" about trying to select those who will | benefit most from your program? | danShumway wrote: | Not GP, but you should approach this using Bayes' Theorem | just like anything else. If one study from MIT causes you | to completely flip on any of your beliefs, you need to | rethink how you form these kinds of opinions. | | MIT's conclusions should cause you to adjust your priors | by a certain amount, but they should not cause you to | completely flip by themselves -- particularly if you're | not in the camp that thinks literally every decision MIT | makes is correct by virtue of it being MIT. | | If you wouldn't have looked at MIT's original plan of | abandoning SAT scores as proof that they didn't matter, | you probably also shouldn't look at them picking up SAT | scores again as proof that they do matter. MIT's | conclusions should lead you to update your priors by some | amount dependent on how much you trust you currently have | in the accuracy of college admissions processes when they | assess student qualifications and outcomes. | | ---- | | My personal take on this is that I do absolutely buy that | SAT scores could be a leveling factor between kids from | different socioeconomic backgrounds and that they could | be a better metric than GPA for determining admission. | But of course, that's a pretty low barrier of entry to | clear, GPA scores are probably close to meaningless when | compared across schools. It seems to me that there's a | lot of room here for SAT scores to be simultaneously | mostly meaningless and at the same time also a reliably | better predictor of school success than GPAs. | | It's also important to ask what exactly MIT is measuring | -- what does it mean by academic success and how much | does that definition overlap with "fits in when placed in | an environment optimized for people who are good at | standardized testing?" And again, even if they are kind | of circular or if they're measuring the wrong things, | it's still plausible that they're more reliable than | GPAs; it's a low bar to clear. | mbesto wrote: | We have to read the sentence very carefully. It's saying | that regardless of socioeconomic factors, the number | correlates with graduate success rate. This seems like a | very easy "duh". The way I read that is "if a student | gets in the 99th percentile regardless of whether they | grow up rich or poor, they are likely to do well at MIT". | This doesn't talk about acceptance rates based on | socioeconomic factors. | | The point in question is whether the students in a lower | socioeconomic situation even has a chance to get _into_ | MIT. | adfgadfgaery wrote: | The debate is about the quality and predictive value of the | tests. Opponents claimed that the tests had a cultural bias | so students from some backgrounds would do better than | others, that students who had a good education before | university would be better prepared, and that studying for | tests or taking tests repeatedly has been shown to improve | scores but is only accessible to people who can afford it. | These are all claims that the tests are not good at | predicting aptitude. | | The arguments against these tests are, of course, awful. | Objective tests are the best way we know of to remove human | bias. Aptitude tests (basically IQ tests) are the best way we | know of to measure someone's natural ability (determined in | early childhood) with little influence from their experience. | Since their arguments make so little sense, it is reasonable | to wonder about the psychology of opponents of standardized | testing. But their arguments are, at least on the surface, | about predictive value. | hkt wrote: | > it is reasonable to wonder about the psychology of | opponents of standardized testing | | It is, at its core, a fear that testing largely reproduces | the status quo. If one accepts the idea that there is an | intellectual elite who constitute the highest strata of | society, and that their gifts are innate and heritable | rather than trained, it follows that social mobility is | pretty much dead. It is a bleak vision. | | Personally I think there are different problems that are | much bigger and woollier which keep people from non-elite | backgrounds down, regardless of test outcomes. The | structure of the education sector and employment more | widely. Expectations about life and the distribution of | rewards etc. We rarely have good quality, nonpartisan | discussions about these things which I think pushes people | to take views which are instrumental rather than informed. | adfgadfgaery wrote: | >it follows that social mobility is pretty much dead. It | is a bleak vision. | | I have always found the idea of social mobility | depressing. It assumes that we will always have a | hierarchy, with some people who are powerful and | prestigious and others who are poor and always feel | inadequate. It assumes that we will always have an | underclass but at least people can leave it. | zozbot234 wrote: | The kind of social mobility that SAT has some influence | on is not really about "power and prestige", which I also | think of as generally pathological dynamics. It's | literally about how competent and professional you want | to be, and how well you can perform your work duties. | It's social mobility _within_ the 'working' class, not | really away from it. | hkt wrote: | Yes. The old saying among Labour party socialists in the | UK was "rise with your class, not above it". They were in | favour of a high floor on living standards and a low | ceiling on wealth. It isn't a stretch to think that a | more even playing field would be a better substitute for | mobility. | paulpauper wrote: | >To be fair, I don't think the debate was ever about the | quality or predictive value of the tests. | | It is. The common argument is that GPAs are as predictive as | SATs. MIT says it is not. I think the problem is you only | need average ability to a good GPA, but a top 1-5% SAT score | confers a higher ceiling of ability. MIT wants to admit | exceptional students, not just average or above average ones. | nkrisc wrote: | Just an interesting anecdote on the predictive power of | standardized tests: | | When I took the ACT in 2006, I scored around a 24 or 26 for | composite score. Not very good. I didn't prep nor study for it | because I was pretty apathetic about school and did my best to | coast on whatever natural talent I could muster. Since my score | wasn't very good, I retook it several weeks later. About | halfway through I realized I was given the exact same question | set as the first time I took it. I had of course not studied | nor prepped for the second time, being the apathetic teenager I | was. However this time I score around 32 or 34 or so. I don't | remember exactly. | | What was different? Why did my score go up about 8 points? | Better mood that day? Which score was the "real" one that best | represented my abilities? | | Did I eat a better breakfast beforehand? I recognized some of | the questions but of course I never expected to see the same | questions a second time so I didn't prep for that. I didn't | prep for anything about it. | | I wonder how many kid's college admissions results are | ultimately because of one bad or good day? I suppose the other | lesson is if you get a bad score, try again. You only need one | good score. | fortran77 wrote: | > So much for that common, popular notion that standardized | tests do not predict anything of value. | | To people with a particular agenda -- that society will be | improved if equal outcomes are mandated -- I suppose | standardized tests aren't "valuable" to them. | | I am very grateful for the SAT. I wasn't a good student. I was | unable to do any work outside of school because of a bad home | (my brother did hours long "hand-clapping/stimming" and | chanting rituals, my mother drank, and my father was violent). | But I did well on the SAT -- enough to get a national merit | scholarship and a scholarship from Hofstra University where I | got my BA in Math in the early 80s. | | If it wasn't for the SAT I don't know what I would have done. | Standardized tests are the only answer, and I was very upset | when I read of schools getting rid of using them for admission. | | SATs are also a great predictor of a person's ability to | complete college. That was one of their original uses. So | without SATs, you'll get more people doing poorly, and more | people with no degrees and a lot of debt. And if these people | are members of what's considered an "under-represented | minority" then there will be even more remedial action required | elsewhere to fix the problem of the high failure rate (like | giving them degrees anyway, etc). | sgustard wrote: | > common, popular notion that standardized tests do not predict | anything of value | | It's backed up by research, for example: | https://news.uchicago.edu/story/test-scores-dont-stack-gpas-... | | I don't doubt that MIT's study showed otherwise for their | needs. But UChicago is also a top-tier school and is not | requiring standardized tests, for educational not political | reasons. | smrtinsert wrote: | The current discussion I thought focuses around the idea that | higher scores should just about guarantee acceptance due some | fantasy notion of objective merit, and here they pretty much | say that's not the case here: | | > To be clear, performance on standardized tests is not the | central focus of our holistic admissions process. We do not | prefer people with perfect scores; indeed, despite what some | people infer from our statistics, we do not consider an | applicant's scores at all beyond the point where preparedness | has been established as part of a multifactor analysis | JustLurking2022 wrote: | Seems like semantics - maybe they don't explicitly prefer | perfect scores but it sounds like they're filtering out using | a minimum bar, and I'd bet it isn't too far off perfect. | screye wrote: | MIT and Caltech have always held a 'number-oriented | universities' perception in my mind. This is in contrast to a | 'prestige-oriented or identity-oriented' perception that I hold | for Ivies. | | It is nice to see MIT do justice to those priors. | hintymad wrote: | I wonder why we can't hire more teachers to grade word problems | in tests like SAT, like Asian countries do. Those problems are | much harder to game or cram. | tptacek wrote: | It's important to keep in mind that the context here is the | SAT/ACT versus the _currently available alternatives_. They 're | not saying that the SAT/ACT is good, but simply that it's | better than other options. Some of those options, like | alternative standard tests, may be significantly better, but in | the world as it is today, it doesn't matter if they are, | because lower-income candidates don't have access to them. | hooande wrote: | The problem with testing isn't that it's inaccurate, but that | it's a poor tool for the problem that it's being used to solve. | You can't express "likelihood of success in college" in one | number. Looking back on my time in college, the idea that my | success could be predicted by my knowledge of geometry and | vocabulary words is laughable. | | If there was a test that could accurately predict someone's | chances of "success", be it SAT or IQ test, it would be used by | everyone for everything. Billion dollar companies would be | giving CEOs a version of that test before hiring them. A near | perfect SAT score is noteworthy personal trivia, but other than | that it loses all meaning as soon as someone steps on campus. | | Schools with strong brands use tests because they have way more | applicants than they can properly review. Standardized testing | is made necessary by scale, not predictive accuracy. I'm sure | that anyone who has worked in college admissions for years has | a very clear picture of what a successful student looks like. | But there doesn't seem to be a way to quantify and codify that | knowledge. And there likely wouldn't be time to apply it to | tens of thousands of people in a few months anyway. So, | standardized testing is what we have until someone comes up | with something better. | toomim wrote: | > the idea that my success could be predicted by my knowledge | of geometry and vocabulary words is laughable. | | You really should look into the g-factor research. This isn't | about _knowledge_ , but rather _performance_. It turns out | that your performance on geometry and vocabulary tests _is_ | highly correlated with your performance on tests in such | disparate fields as Classics and Music: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)#Cogni. | .. | | The crazy result in general intelligence is that your | performance in all these areas is highly correlated, and | incredibly correlated with career success: | | > "Research indicates that tests of g are the best single | predictors of job performance, with an average validity | coefficient of .55 across several meta-analyses of studies | based on supervisor ratings and job samples." | didibus wrote: | I guess the issue in their analysis is that they are trying to | predict MIT grade success, which is possibly another flawed | metric. If say exams at MIT resembled SAT, it seems more | logical that you'd find a correlation between SAT success and | MIT academic success. | | What would be a more interesting measure of real value is to | study for academic innovation and invention (valuable to | society), as well as future success on the job market or at new | business ventures (valuable to the student and economy). | | I'm making the assumption here that since we have limited | educational resources, we'd want to provide the best education | to those most likely to advance an academic field through new | discovery or insight or invention, as well as those who'd best | innovate or provide for existing business and services to | society. | | And I'm curious if we've ever had any study looking into that? | Or if this one did? | macrolocal wrote: | Don't underestimate the value of the kind of conscientiousness | it takes to do well on these tests! I found grit much more | useful than cleverness when I was an academic researcher. | [deleted] | [deleted] | ghaff wrote: | Many years ago--business grad school--one of the professors | (forecasting?) had done research into GMATs and various post- | school success metrics. Like it or not, the standardized test | scores were a better predictor (by far) than anything else. | | In terms of gaming scores on standardized tests generally, yes | people with more money can take prep classes and the like, but | there are also test prep books available--presumably even from | the library--that probably get you a lot of the way there. | WalterBright wrote: | The University of California commissioned a study to determine | the predictive value of SATs for college success. A strong | positive correlation was found. The test requirement was | dropped anyway. | tomkat0789 wrote: | I hated taking the SAT/ACT, but holy cow are we in the US in a | better situation than Chinese students dealing with the Gaokao. A | Chinese pen-pal once showed me some calculus problems from the | Gaokao and the example I saw (a bunch of integrals) looked like a | math test a sadist would create: long, complicated expressions | just for the sake of complexity, "ugly" numbers that turned into | messy fractions you have to carry around. I (a graduate | engineering student at the time) couldn't identify any trick or | educational point to the complexity, only the malice of the | people giving the test. | | EDIT: wording | jxramos wrote: | sounds painful, the only thing I could think of would be to | test the precision of transcribing step by step. Sounds like | the surface area for loss of precision is wider when you just | add the noise of messy figures into a problem. A clever student | could just replace the messy figures with constant variables | that are shorter to write of course and at the very end | substitute everything back to evaluate what comes out in the | end. | gime_tree_fiddy wrote: | I am not sure how it compares but India suffers through the | same problem. It is essentially a rat race. A lot of those | problems could be trick questions, but to be able to identify | it, especially on a regular basis takes longer(when the | question has less than a minute dedicated to it). | shmde wrote: | Yes exactly, I remember our Physics teacher in 11-12th grade | used to just solve trick questions and asked us to remember | shortcuts and rote memorise formulae. I completely fucked up | the physics portion of entrance exam and got a mere 7 out of | 120 on a national test. I fucking hate physics now. | jp0d wrote: | The Indian education system doesn't care about learning at | all. It's all about scoring good grades and getting a job | at the end. It's quite important as every individual needs | to be able support themselves. However, it's really bad for | learning. I'm a product of that. I've been struggling a lot | with an online course from MIT but at least I'm enjoying | learning a lot of stuff as I'm employed now. Physics and | Mathematics are the most beautiful things if done right and | not under stress. Good luck, man! | fdgsdfogijq wrote: | Yeah, a lot of tests like that are actually testing for | memorization, and not problem solving ability. | frankchn wrote: | I don't think the math part of the Gaokao tests memorization. | | Looking at a sample paper | (https://medium.com/@yujia_jo/2016-jiangsu-gaokao-national- | hi...), it seems like the examination really tests for the | ability to do math and problem solve under fairly heavy time | pressure (150 minutes total for all questions if you are in | the science stream). | justconfirming wrote: | PaulHoule wrote: | I would point to | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Webb | | as somebody who came from an underprivileged background, showed | talent in standardized testing and had an outstanding career as a | military officer, author and politician. | bluenose69 wrote: | Footnote 21 (containing " _the most important components to | demonstrate academic readiness in the absence of SAT /ACT scores | would be other standardized exams_") is quite telling. | Robotbeat wrote: | How so? Things other than standardized tests are easier to | game. Letters of recommendation, extracurriculars, GPA, etc. | bluenose69 wrote: | You're right. That's what I meant by "telling"; MIT are | making it clear that standardized tests are valuable. | gmadsen wrote: | I think that is the implied meaning of "quite telling". Many | institutions hastily removed SAT scores due to social | pressure that standardized tests weren't effective or | equitable, while the data shows the opposite | danans wrote: | > due to social pressure that standardized tests weren't | effective or equitable | | Effectiveness and equity shouldn't be confused. | | The tests are effective for assessing academic | preparedness. | | However, there is a strong argument that they aren't | equitable. | | MIT isn't claiming here that SAT/ACT are equitable. They | are just claiming that they are a valuable data point in | addition to other factors that they consider to deal with | equity. | QuikAccount wrote: | My problem with SAT/ACT actually has nothing to do with the test | itself. I grew up very poor in suburban middle of nowhere and | even with a waiver for the fee, I had no way of actually getting | to a testing center. Parents worked 24/7 to make ends meet, no | real public transport and this was before Uber and Lyft. The real | culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure. | beamatronic wrote: | I took AP classes in high school, but couldn't afford to pay | $65 per exam (at the time) to take the AP test for college | credit. | whoisburbansky wrote: | How were you able to afford taking the classes for credit | instead, at a cost of over two orders of magnitude more per | class? | johnnyanmac wrote: | I imagine through either scholarships or taking on bunches | of debt. I was nowhere near as aggressive as some other | classmates, but I managed to grab ~20k of total | scholarships that helped me out immensely for college. | Still a small chunk of what was needed for college, but it | was an option I had compared to high school just making me | eat the admissions and AP test costs wholesale. | | Fortunately my parent did cover these costs, but I know | others weren't so fortunate. | [deleted] | QuikAccount wrote: | Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like you assuming they | took the class for credit at university. Community college | is also a possibility where it would be cheaper or around | the same price. That also comes with the benefit of | financial aid. | kbelder wrote: | That was my situation, also. It sucked because in general, | all the other kids in school who were academically gifted | were from well-to-do families, and I think I was the only one | taking AP calc or physics whose family couldn't afford the | test. | duckhelmet wrote: | Have you ever tried using a bicycle? | munk-a wrote: | I heard bicycles works great with bootstraps. Maybe you | should suggest bootstraps as well - they'd probably do the | trick! | thewebcount wrote: | Have you ever been to the rural US? Things are very far apart | (often 10s of miles) and riding a bike may not be practical | for things in the same way as in an urban or suburban area. | teirce wrote: | Yep - this. I wasn't even in /that/ rural of an area, but I | was still ~20 miles (32 Kilometers) away from the nearest | testing center. No vehicle to take myself. | avs733 wrote: | this is a perfect example of why governmental services are so | important - even if they are often run poorly. Without them, | dis-equities inherently perpetuate due to external incentives. | | The SAT is treated as a standardized test but it, as you note, | is inaccessible to many. It is not government run or organized. | I've found, from teaching undergraduates, that most of the | students who go to college _presume_ that everyone takes the | SATs, that it is government administered, and that it is free. | | compare this to the, still far from perfect and problematic in | other ways, centralized university admissions testing system in | many other countries. | verve_rat wrote: | Wow. As someone that isn't in the US, but grew up watching a | lot of US TV, I had this same assumption. How the fuck is the | primary method of judging student admission to University not | a government run service? Wow. | | As you say, contrast that to my experience where everyone | took University Entrance exams in their final year of school. | Score over X and you have the right to go to a university. | Don't score high enough? The university can still choose to | admit you at their discretion. | annexrichmond wrote: | many schools are not public as with the SAT which is also | "not-for-profit" | | I wonder how one could codify a regulation for schools | requiring entrance test to provide "reasonable" | accommodations for prospective students to take it; like | some parent comments mentioned not everyone can feasibly | get to a testing center | jimbob45 wrote: | College Board is a nonprofit organization[0] and thus is | partially funded by the government to say nothing of any | other grants they may have received. ACT Inc is the same | way. | | Instead of funding The One True Test, the US government | partially funds every test competing to be the best college | placement test. | | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Board | mypalmike wrote: | How does being a nonprofit imply "partially funded by the | government"? | jimbob45 wrote: | Tax exemptions. | mypalmike wrote: | Assuming you claim tax exemptions annually, are you | partially funded by the government? :-P | cyberpunk wrote: | > How the fuck is the primary method of judging student | admission to University not a government run service? | | Well, I mean.. America is experimental capitalism. Why run | anything government when it can be for profit and 'the | market' will solve any and all issues with it? | | It turns out 'the market' will skew in favor of making a | small amount of people rich over actually improving the | lives of anyone, but hey, that's freedom baby! | | They're really precious about it though, so don't criticise | this system out loud. | Anon1096 wrote: | That's nice and all but the College Board is nonprofit | and they administer the SAT. | wiredfool wrote: | Uk qualification exams (GCSE and ALevels) are run by | private boards. (Cambridge and Edexcel are the two big | ones). These are effectively entrance exams, in that | university offers are strongly dependent on them. | orangepurple wrote: | > How the fuck is the primary method of judging student | admission to University not a government run service? Wow. | | Probably the same reason that the Federal Reserve Bank is | not a government entity (they only have a meaningless | government "oversight board") even though it loans all | money to the US Government with interest and has never been | audited. | achandlerwhite wrote: | You think the Board of Governors is meaningless? Do you | realize the Fed turns over interest it earns to the US | Treasury? What an odd thing to bring up in this context. | mikestew wrote: | Now that we know that you have a dislike of the Federal | Reserve system, you didn't actually answer the question | by stating a reason. What would "the same reason" be? | colinmhayes wrote: | How can you seriously believe the Fed isn't a government | entity? I'm legitimately struggling to understand how you | came to such a misguided conclusion. | mypalmike wrote: | The ownership structure of the Federal Reserve's 12 | constituent reserve banks makes the Fed a mix of private | and public banking. Commercial banks hold shares in each | of the reserve banks. As shareholders, they elect 6 of | the 9 regional directors. So while it's largely a | governmental organization, ownership and influence from | private banking is certainly present. | tonguez wrote: | How can you believe it is? I'm legitimately struggling to | understand how you came to such a misguided conclusion. | Hasu wrote: | Because it: | | - was created by the US government | | - is ran by US government appointees, who are nominated | by the President and confirmed by the Senate | | - has to make annual reports to Congress | | - returns all its profits to the US government | | - describes itself as a government agency. [0] | | Does the Fed have more independence than, say, the | Department of Agriculture? Yes, but an independent | government agency is still a government entity. | | [0] "The Federal Reserve, like many other central banks, | is an independent government agency..." | https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12799.htm | d110af5ccf wrote: | I really hate this meme. The federal reserve is very much | under the purview of the legislature. If the legislature | isn't choosing to act in the way you would like, well, | then that's a completely separate complaint. Implying | that the federal reserve is somehow independent from the | government is dishonest. | d110af5ccf wrote: | > How the fuck is the primary method of judging student | admission to University not a government run service? | | Because it's only de facto the primary method, as evidenced | by MIT dropping it for a while there. They didn't need | government permission to do that. Even public universities | here generally have a high degree of autonomy regarding | such things. | cma wrote: | MIT is private unlike most of the other land-grant | schools. | satthesat wrote: | > The real culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure. | | What was your area like? I grew up similarly poor but in a | wealthy area and would walk several miles to a public library | for early computer access, biked to school, etc. | | Even then, our school offered SAT, etc. | johnnyanmac wrote: | My SAT's weren't on campus. It was on some other campus I | never heard of on the other side of town. I biked the school | but without a parent would have needed to trek across town on | a saturday morning (easily 20+ miles, in the mid 00's right | before smartphones would just provide a GPS, so I'd be | juggling printed MapQuest directions on a bike) to get there. | I'd be cutting it if I took a bus since they ran hourly and I | believe the weekend buses started at 8Am for a 9AM test time. | | Also note that I could drive by this time but we only had one | car between my mother and I. | QuikAccount wrote: | Not sure I would call the area I lived in wealthy. Probably | middle-class suburban area. My high school at the time did | not offer SAT/ACT testing on campus. If I recall correctly, | and it's been a while so I might be misremembering, the | closest SAT/ACT testing location was at the community college | in the next city over. | matheweis wrote: | It's not just the getting to a testing center, it's awareness | (and cost) of the process. | | Was a long time ago now, but parents weren't really worried | about or involved in my college prep process, so I had to | figure it out for myself. | | It wasn't until later I realized it would have been better to | start taking the test way before graduation. To say nothing of | the benefits of test prep.. | [deleted] | pishpash wrote: | That's not the political argument being made against them | though. | QuikAccount wrote: | Yes, I'm aware. That's why I'm giving a different | perspective. | [deleted] | gpt5 wrote: | It's really weird to see this as the top comment. | | Is there evidence physical access to the test center still a | problem today (small or large)? | | Is SAT worse than other criteria (such as extra-curriculum | achievements) when looking at those poor suburbun middle of | nowhere students? i.e. even in this example, did SAT actually | made thing worse for those people when comparing against the | alternative. | QuikAccount wrote: | Sorry buddy, I can't give you anything other than my | anecdata. No knowledge on whether anyone has done any studies | on this specifically but lack of public infrastructure | contributing to the income disparity has been widely studied. | timcavel wrote: | lliamander wrote: | > Our research can't explain why these tests are so predictive of | academic preparedness for MIT | | Can't explain why an IQ test predicts success in cognitively | demanding work? | meepmorp wrote: | The SAT/ACT aren't IQ tests. | lliamander wrote: | Yes they are: | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/ | ralmidani wrote: | I would like to know how much of an "improvement" in outcomes | these tests bring. | | From another article linked in the one from this discussion: | | "In short: Our research has shown that, in most cases, we cannot | reliably predict students will do well at MIT unless we consider | standardized test results alongside grades, coursework, and other | factors. These findings are statistically robust and stable over | time, and hold when you control for socioeconomic factors and | look across demographic groups. And the math component of the | testing turns out to be most important." | | There seems to be a lot of hand-waving in that quote. | | If the improvement is only marginal, we really need to ask, as a | society, if the improvement is worth all the money, potential for | cheating, angst, and outright conflict that come with maintaining | these tests. | | If we want better talent, we can invest more money and energy | into building better schools and paying better salaries to | teachers. If we want more diversity, we can target vulnerable | communities specifically. | | The test prep industry is milking families that care about (and | might even be obsessed with) education. It encourages folks to | think of the whole system as a rat race, and leads to selfishness | and hoarding of knowledge. | | If we did away with standardized testing and spent more money on | schools and teachers, we could cultivate a perception of | education as a public good. It would be less about who has more | resources and more about raising the tide and giving more people | a fair shot. | dom96 wrote: | As someone from the UK I am confused by this. What were they | using to decide who to admit without SAT/ACT tests? | | In the UK all students pick at least 3 A levels at the end of | their high school. Each degree and university then has different | requirements like 3 As in Math, Physics, IT (with some | alternative subjects) for Computer Science. So my understanding | of SAT/ACT testing is limited. | lightup wrote: | Feelings and "demographics" and surnames. | tomatowurst wrote: | because certain demographics performed poorly at it, that was | grounds to label it systematic racism and justifying | affirmative action vs. meritocracy by _discriminating other | demographics in favor of ones that were perceived to be victims | of systematic racism_ | | if you are confused so am I. I still don't understand how they | can discriminate against americans of asian descent who do well | on standardized tests but not call it for what it is. | jackblemming wrote: | Have they considered trying leetcode instead? It seems to work | for FANG. | renewiltord wrote: | You want to do a calc test instead? I wouldn't even complain. | If the average leetcode is hard for someone they're probably | going to _suck_ at even just integration e^z over the unit | circle showing your work. | peter303 wrote: | MIT grad here. The achievement tests are more of a counter- | indicator If you score under 700 on either test, you probably | cant handle the coursework. The tests only test a 10th grade | level. | | I likely would not get into MIT this decade this decade with my | test score 1480. | pcurve wrote: | While acceptance rates have gotten lower, some of it is due to | more people applying. | | Average scores are higher because more people are studying for | exams than 20 years ago. | | But I don't think the course work has necessarily gotten any | more difficult. | | So while it's true that 1480 wouldn't get you in MIT these | days, if the same exact "You" were born amongst the kids | applying to college these days, your score would likely be | higher. | jmole wrote: | I doubt it - 1480 could easily be indicative of stress-related | or attentional mistakes, rather than lack of mastery. | opportune wrote: | I am so happy to see this. | | I went to high school in a bit of a backwater in the US. People | don't really go to selective colleges or care much about | applying. It was only doing very well on standardized tests and | spending time on the internet looking for info about colleges | that led me to believe I could go to one of these places. I got | into several and attended one, and I believe it greatly | positively changed my life. (For the record, I had more going for | me than just tests, but having a more objective way to compare | myself to people across the country was very helpful, since I | could easily attribute things to my area being backwards). | | Removing admission tests was a huge slap in the face to social | mobility out of the middle class. To reiterate other commenters, | admission tests are the hardest part of the process to game and | the least biased towards things like having a tiger parent, while | being the most predictive indicator of success in college. | Wealthy and well connected people can easily game | extracurriculars and essays, and HS grades are vastly inflated at | this point across the country. That pretty much only leaves | standardized tests for your average kid who isn't being | deliberately primed by their environment to stand out for | selective college admissions. | | I hope more colleges are brave enough to reinstitute standardized | test requirements. I know they want to do "class building" by | hitting minimum representations across many groups (including | legacy, but I don't think that's as big at MIT), and not | requiring test scores makes it easier, but for institutions to | keep up high standards and continue to give opportunities to | kids, I really think it's most beneficial to require scores. | lern_too_spel wrote: | I am also happy to see this, but requiring test scores and | class building are not mutually exclusive. Test scores are a | useful input to good class building. How else are you going to | choose which student from a backwater school to put in the | class if these students don't have access to the advanced | classwork and research support that the rest of the class had? | ceeplusplus wrote: | > huge slap in the face to social mobility out of the middle | class | | No, it was an intentional move to restrict the number of Asians | admitted because despite their best efforts to hide it, | prestigious universities' data showed systemic discrimination | against Asians in the admissions process (see: SFFA vs | Harvard). Removing the SAT removes some of the data that | opponents can use to sue them. One of the reasons the UC | removed the SAT was to "diversify" their admit pool because | Asians disproportionately did really well on the SAT and they | aren't allowed to discriminate based on race by state law. | | My hope is that the Supreme Court, now that it's a 6/3 | conservative majority, finally strikes down race based | "affirmative action". | opportune wrote: | Sure, I think that's in many ways covered by what I mean | about middle class mobility. Given that Asians are less | likely to be legacies and dont benefit from Affirmative | Action, pretty much all their "slots" come out of the high- | achieving-middle-class bucket | [deleted] | charlieyu1 wrote: | And this benefit the rich kids who can spend thousands of | dollars per year to hire someone to plan a good resume for | them | kenjackson wrote: | > No, it was an intentional move to restrict the number of | Asians admitted | | This always seemed short-sighted to me. I think standardized | tests provide one of the clearest opportunities for less | advantaged students to make inroads. And while certain groups | do better now, I don't think there is a better way than this | clear metric for other groups to improve their standing. | | Also, I think we simply overvalue going to Harvard. So | instead you go to UVa or Puget Sound University. You "can" | learn a great deal at these other places as well -- and maybe | learn more given your existing level of achievement. | | If we think long game on this, we will see that this is one | of the best things to lift all boats. | Bahamut wrote: | As an American born Asian myself, the "unofficial" quota | system process colleges use is painful to me - I was an | extremely academic high performing student before college, | netting national level recognition in some areas with a lot | of extracurriculars & came from a very poor background, yet | my ethnicity worked against me. | | At the same time, I recognize that this is also some of the | challenge that underrepresented minorities face in general in | American society where there are others who have more closed | doors than I (I went to a high school with over 70% | minorities, mostly African-Americans + hispanics). I don't | pretend to know what the solution to the problem is, but | given that high prestige colleges have created a high risk | high reward situation with how they handle admissions, I feel | like a lot of the problem is how academia has created this | artificial situation - maybe this is by design, I don't know, | but if we truly value diversity & equity in higher | educational opportunities, there needs to be a significant | change. | david927 wrote: | Similar opinion and story. We live in Boise, Idaho and my | daughter does a hybrid model of home school and high school. | She knew she got top grades and 5's on all her APs but it | didn't give her any idea of where she sat, nationally. She was | planning on going to art school until a year ago, when she sat | for her first standardized test, the PSAT. She saw the score, | which was national merit range and realized that she should | have higher ambitions. She took the SAT last October (she's a | Junior) and got a great score. So now she's considering top | schools. She wasn't before. | | Without these types of tests, you could end up being biased | toward a measure of "how hard did the parents push." | vxNsr wrote: | Arguably 5s on her APs tells her where she sat nationally, I | was under the impression that AP tests were the same across | the board, while they don't rank you against other students | the test is made to be just as difficult for the top elite | college prep private school students as it is for the inner | city public school students. The assumption being the AP | class material is the same. | kragen wrote: | Sure but 38% of AP Calculus BC takers get a 5 so it doesn't | give you much information. | colinmhayes wrote: | Taking the Calculus BC test already puts you in the upper | echelon of high school math students though. According to | a quick google only 15% of high schoolers will take the | BC exam, so getting a 5 is something only 5% of students | achieve. | kragen wrote: | That's the student providing 2.7 bits of information ("I | want to take this exam") and getting an additional 1.4 | bits from the result. By contrast, being valedictorian is | about 10 bits of information, and being in the 99th | percentile on a test (1510+ on the SAT) is 6.6 bits. | Scoring 1600 on the SAT is 12 bits. | | So the SAT can easily give you 7 times as much info as | the AP BC, and it's more about your aptitude than your | achievement. | doetoe wrote: | If I understand you correctly you are assuming that being | valedictorian, scoring 1510+ and scoring 1600 are all | independent events. | colinmhayes wrote: | You don't need information theory to tell me that 1% is | less than 5%. Obviously scoring in the top 1% of a test | everyone takes provides more information than getting a 5 | on an AP test. But that 5 still provides, as you put it, | 4ish bits of information, which is a lot more than the 0 | you have without it or other standardized tests. | | How many bits do you really need to know that you're a | good candidate for continued education? Is being in the | top 5% really not enough? | crdrost wrote: | They might be the least gameable, but this is kind of a "bare | minimum" for diversity/equity practices. It is the cheapest way | to get little bit of reliable signal. | | Because let's be clear about the standardized test situation. | Test takers had _time_ to take the test, they weren 't doing | work on the side for their parents instead to make ends meet. | They had _transportation_ to the test location, they were able | to pay the fees, and they were not being discouraged from | college as "we can never afford that, I'm sorry." | | Standardized tests themselves have mostly tested not IQ or | domain knowledge, but how anxious you are taking tests. This | _does_ predict later academic performance, sure, but to say | that this anxiety is _disconnected from demographics_ sounds | like a rather strong claim. Instead you have that it is _more | disconnected than GPA and essays and extracurriculars_ which is | not saying much. | | If you want to be serious about diversity and equity, you | invest some actual cash into it... The easiest way is talent | scouting, you send people (trained, you can reduce bias) to | underrepresented communities and allow folks there to interview | with them. My wife worked at place that did this, it sounds | financially intractable at first but it scales to whatever | budget you want to put into it... Her place would send folks | out to like Singapore as well as to inner city schools. But the | point is that you have to leave the door open to the people who | _can_ come to you, but you also go to the people who cannot. | | (This is also a startup idea... The reason the schools don't | send out their best is that there are too many colleges, the | reason the colleges don't canvas the schools that there are too | many schools, these are obviously inverse problems that could | cancel each other out in the appropriate sort of network, the | recruiters just need to be common to both. The problem is | getting people to pay for it--the schools who you want most are | precisely the underfunded ones that cannot pay you, the | colleges meanwhile are less willing to go in on these sorts of | weird experiments, they, they have an admissions department | already. So the idea has a dangerous scope creep where you want | to also start a college so that you can dogfood... Not a | degree-granting educational institution in itself, maybe, but | just a "first year at college" school which sells its students | to other top colleges. Obviously that's a much riskier | investment for VCs.) | vxNsr wrote: | > _Because let 's be clear about the standardized test | situation. Test takers had time to take the test, they | weren't doing work on the side for their parents instead to | make ends meet. They had transportation to the test location, | they were able to pay the fees, and they were not being | discouraged from college as "we can never afford that, I'm | sorry."_ | | This argument can be used to argue against public school, | against any sort of consequences for anti-social behavior, | etc. it's a bad argument. Instead find ways to get the kids | to the test instead of arguing against the test in general. | fn-mote wrote: | > Test takers had time to take the test, they weren't doing | work on the side for their parents instead to make ends meet. | They had transportation to the test location, they were able | to pay the fees, and they were not being discouraged from | college as "we can never afford that, I'm sorry." | | In Chicago, the taking the SAT is required to graduate from | high school. The school district pays for it. It is taken at | school, during the school day. | | Some of these barriers are not the same as they used to be. | whynotminot wrote: | > Because let's be clear about the standardized test | situation. Test takers had time to take the test, they | weren't doing work on the side for their parents instead to | make ends meet. They had transportation to the test location, | they were able to pay the fees, and they were not being | discouraged from college as "we can never afford that, I'm | sorry." | | How big a proportion of the population is this that we throw | out our most objective standard? Kids that don't have time to | take a test? I would wager the vast majority of kids have | time for an exam. | | Seems like we figure out how to get kids to the bus stop | before we just decide that objective measurement is | irresponsible as long as there's a kid who doesn't have the | time for it. | | Just to build on this even further, a kid who doesn't have | time for an exam also probably hasn't had the time to build | the educational foundation necessary to succeed at a | university. | | I can't imagine some kid who didn't have time for high school | math succeeding in my engineering program, for instance. It | might seem charitable to throw out the SAT and admit that | kid, but you'd just be setting them up for failure. | | What you're describing is a different problem that needs to | be solved. Throwing out the SAT does not solve it. | jobs_throwaway wrote: | >Standardized tests themselves have mostly tested not IQ or | domain knowledge, but how anxious you are taking tests. This | does predict later academic performance, sure, but to say | that this anxiety is disconnected from demographics sounds | like a rather strong claim. Instead you have that it is more | disconnected than GPA and essays and extracurriculars which | is not saying much. | | saying 'tests are better than the other primary indicators we | use to admit students to colleges' isn't saying much? this is | nonsense | jimmaswell wrote: | > Standardized tests themselves have mostly tested not IQ or | domain knowledge, but how anxious you are taking tests. | | So you really think a completely unstudied person off the | street with a sedative would get a better score than someone | who does KhanAcademy in their free time? | lliamander wrote: | > Removing admission tests was a huge slap in the face to | social mobility out of the middle class. | | I agree, but arguably the benefits of the SAT with regard to | class mobility is less than it was when it was introduced. | | The heritability of IQ, combined with assortative mating, means | that increasingly class divides are forming around differences | in IQ. I think many people are rightly concerned that this will | eventually result in simply a different entrenched class | hierarchy. | | I still think MIT should use the SAT, but the problem of | maintaining class mobility is one we should continue to assess. | whynotminot wrote: | > The heritability of IQ, combined with assortative mating, | means that increasingly class divides are forming around | differences in IQ. | | Do you have a citation for this? | notservile wrote: | The research on IQ heritability is abundant. You'll get | death threats if you point out the research though. | | It's inconvenient and correlates with SAT performance. | Hence the big push to get rid of the SAT to try to hide the | disparities in general cognition within groups and between | groups. | | https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of- | biosocial... | whynotminot wrote: | I was asking more about class divides becoming IQ based. | Do you have a citation for that. | lliamander wrote: | That's the whole thesis of _The Bell Curve_ and also | _Coming Apart_ , both works by Charles Murray. There's | plenty of citations in those works as well. | | Edit: but beyond that, IQ-based class divides seems like | a rather logical consequence of the following: | | 1. The heritability of IQ | | 2. Assortative mating | | 3. IQ being a significant determining factor of success | in a given society | whynotminot wrote: | Maybe. I'm just more than a little skeptical given that | GP has a scant post history, and spends his other posts | railing on about CRT being marxism. | | There's a lot of people pedaling this kind of IQ stuff to | justify blatant racism, so you'll forgive me for wanting | to see the data and not just let statements like that fly | by unchallenged. | notservile wrote: | Class divides have always been around IQ in every society. | | Which is why CRT being pushed on children is so sick. They're | literally teaching children race Marxism. They've replaced | the idea of class with race and now demand equity not between | classes, but between races. | lliamander wrote: | > Class divides have always been around IQ in every | society. | | Given by the positive effects of SAT testing on social | mobility in the mid 20th century, I rather doubt that. | | And to be honest, if we are going to have a class system | one way or the other, IQ might be the better approach. But | IQ is not wisdom, and I worry that the elites of such a | society would be disposed to unprecedented levels of ego | and hubris. | selimthegrim wrote: | CRT is an outgrowth of critical _legal_ theory, which upon | examination of the career of | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Bean has ample | justification for existing. | notservile wrote: | Cool story bruh. I escaped communism under threat of | death. CRT is carefully repackaged Marxist garbage. | | And I'll take a stand with other Americans to make sure | our children don't die slaves in America when the time | comes. | torginus wrote: | The heritability of wealth, combined with assortative mating, | means that increasingly class divides are forming around | differences in wealth. I think many people are rightly | concerned that this will eventually result in simply a | different entrenched class hierarchy. | lliamander wrote: | That's how class divides have historically worked, yes. | Previously those differences were also enforced through | explicit class-based laws (the actually meaning of | _privilege_ ). | | The introduction of free markets, and later IQ testing, | disrupted a great deal of the entrenched social class | structure within western societies and allowed many people | of rather humble backgrounds to achieve great things. | | The concern I express is about whether IQ testing will | continue provide the same level of social mobility in the | future. | com2kid wrote: | > The heritability of IQ, | | For better or for worse, regression to the mean is a thing. | lliamander wrote: | That's a fair point. | thehappypm wrote: | This wasn't my path, but many of my peers where I went to | college had a similar type of story. They came from very poor | areas like rural Texas or rural Georgia, and they got into | engineering after getting into things like Lego sets and video | games. They got great at math because it intrigued them even in | their subpar schools. Aced the math SAT and then doors opened | for them. I'd hate to see that door close. | ryandrake wrote: | I grew up in a very rural, working class community. There was | a mill in town, and a factory two towns over, and all the | kids in my high school were pretty much expected to either | work for those two businesses or go into the military after | school. That's what probably 80 out of the 100 kids in my | graduating class did. We didn't have AP classes and Rowing | Club and Mock United Nations and all that upper-middle-class | qualitative stuff people jam into their college admissions. | But we did have access to the SAT and I crammed for it and | knocked it out of the park. If it wasn't for the SAT I | probably would still be slummin it in that same town (minus | the mill and factory which have long since closed) and would | not be here on the west coast working in tech. | [deleted] | adamsmith143 wrote: | >Removing admission tests was a huge slap in the face to social | mobility out of the middle class. To reiterate other | commenters, admission tests are the hardest part of the process | to game and the least biased towards things like having a tiger | parent, while being the most predictive indicator of success in | college. Wealthy and well connected people can easily game | extracurriculars and essays, and HS grades are vastly inflated | at this point across the country. That pretty much only leaves | standardized tests for your average kid who isn't being | deliberately primed by their environment to stand out for | selective college admissions. | | I agree with most of this but Exams are absolutely gameable. | There's a reason there is a multibillion dollar industry | focused on them. There's a reason why Cram School exists across | Asia and there's a reason why parents will pay thousands for | ACT/SAT tutoring. Because it flat out works. You can increase | your scores substantially by paying for these services. All | else being equal I would expect that between 2 students with | identical aptitudes where one has paid thousands of dollars for | tutoring that the student with tutoring will score higher than | the other. This can't be ignored. Can you mitigate this with | self motivated preparation? Sure. But again, all else being | equal and between 2 equally talented and motivated testers the | one whose parents paid for a tutor that achieved a perfect | score is almost always going to score higher. | opportune wrote: | IMO there is a difference between gaming a test and just | getting better at what a test means to cover. For example, | programs like Kumon allow students to learn math more | rigorously/at a higher level than what they may get exposed | to in a classroom. That doesn't mean they're gaming the test, | they're just getting a better education. While it's perhaps | unfair that some students don't get this opportunity, I don't | think giving children legitimately better educations is | something to discourage. | | There was another near-top comment when I posted that pointed | out that test prep classes only conferred a 30 point benefit. | Likely because it's just familiarizing students with the test | and covering basic testing strategies (like skipping a hard | section and coming back to it last). I agree the benefit | should ideally be 0 but 30/2400 is not much. That's what I | meant in my post. | | Also, I've heard that in the past the SAT in particular was | much more gameable due to the vocabulary/analogy sections, | which incentivized students to study specific known topics or | cram vocab terms. I'm not sure if they added it back but | they'd been removed by the time I took the exam. | jobs_throwaway wrote: | you're refuting a strawman. The claim wasn't that tests are | impossible to game, only that they're harder to game than the | other components used in the admissions process | jmole wrote: | meta comment here, but I _love_ the presentation of these | interactive footnotes. | vmception wrote: | Major factor reduced to a bullet point: they acknowledge the | existence of other testing and evaluation frameworks, but that | those are even worse distributed in socioeconomic access than the | SAT | | Thats pragmatic, and sobering, since people hoping for more | diverse representation in admissions are faulting the SAT | pipeline itself (access to study prep, study materials, wording | of questions in the test) but the known alternatives are more | niche exacerbating the outcome | grego61 wrote: | One way that rich parents can game SAT/ACT is through aggressive | seeking of test accommodations for disabilities. There was common | knowledge of up to 50% of test takers having extended time in | some affluent private schools in the SF Bay Area prior to the | Covid pause. | tzs wrote: | In the case of students trying to get into MIT I wonder if | there is actually much point in gaming the test? | | The article says they are using the tests as a threshold. It | sounds like they don't care by how much you pass the threshold, | just that you have passed it. | | I'd expect that most students who will be able to survive at | MIT can make the SAT threshold with no gaming of the test and | no test prep other than maybe doing one or two free sample | tests. | | Someone who could not easily make the threshold on their own | who games their way in is just going to find that the | coursework crushes them. All that gaming their way in gains | them is the ability to in a year or two add "flunked out of | MIT" to their bio. | MiroF wrote: | > I'd expect that most students who will be able to survive | at MIT can make the SAT threshold with no gaming of the test | and no test prep other than maybe doing one or two free | sample tests. | | Eh, not so sure. The "threshold", if we really trust that | they do threshold and don't consider overperformance beyond | that threshold (something I am skeptical of), is likely quite | high. | SamReidHughes wrote: | The MIT threshold is 800 minus noise. So MIT can't consider | overperformance on the SAT (math section) because the test | is designed to make students indistinguishable at the top. | All it does is help them weed out the chaff who won't be | able to handle the mandatory math and physics classes that | all students have to pass. | MiroF wrote: | I don't know what "800 minus noise" means. All 800s is | something only about 500 people achieve a year, and not | all of them are going to MIT. | SamReidHughes wrote: | 800 on the math section is something a ton of people get. | Way way more than 500. More like ten thousand per year, | maybe more. | MiroF wrote: | I thought you meant 800 across the categories. | KMag wrote: | Roughly nobody at MIT brags about SAT scores (at least when I | was there 20 years ago). Any test is most sensitive around a | given range. I think most MIT students are performing well | enough in math that most of their mistakes in the SAT I and | SAT II math subject tests are roughly statistical noise. I | happened to get 800 on the math sections of both the SAT I | and SAT II, and I got the impression most of the other | students at MIT did similarly. I'm sure there are plenty of | people with better mathematical ability than me who got 760s | because of a loud neighbor or a bad breakfast burrito. | jobs_throwaway wrote: | Very good point, and explains exactly why there should be no | extra time on these tests. Give everyone the same time, same | test, see how they do on the curve, and then you can make | accommodations for disabilities ie 'how do you do among | students with your disability or disabilities. | artful-hacker wrote: | SAT scores correlate with IQ test scores. SAT is just a 'legal' | thinly veiled version of IQ test. | jsnodlin wrote: | [deleted] | xanaxagoras wrote: | So let's cut the shit then and just do IQ tests. | | This is the best technical university in the world offering the | best technical education in history. It's where the smartest | minds learn foundational knowledge that will enable them to | make amazing technological contributions to mankind. | | Not everything needs to be a battleground for the boring | diversity of skin color. It's actually important that we get | the most qualified people in these seats. | MiroF wrote: | But shouldn't starting points be taken into consideration | when you are judging someone's merit? | xanaxagoras wrote: | No, not here. 100% of MIT admissions should go to pupils | who are the most capable of succeeding and who are already | the best prepared to succeed before they arrive. Utopia | aside, as a society we require elite science and | engineering ability. If we don't have it we lose out to | another society that doesn't do this incessant navel | gazing, simple as that. To whatever extent "starting point" | is a problem it should be remediated entirely upstream from | admission into the world's most prestigious technical | university. | MiroF wrote: | If someone has "elite science and engineering" ability | and came from a background where they were raised by a | family with a household wealth of $5, and someone has a | slightly more "elite science and engineering" ability and | was raised by a family with a household wealth of | $1,000,000, I am not confident that long term the second | person will be the greater innovator. | xanaxagoras wrote: | I agree with you completely, and a lot of talent surely | goes to waste. I'm not sure what difference you think | that makes. If the kid from the poor family isn't well | prepared by the time he gets to MIT on day one, all of | the natural talent in the world isn't going to change | that. | | One of two things will happen: He'll fail out; this is | common for diversity admits. Or, he may require a | remedial curriculum to develop these natural talents he | is believed to have, but may not, nobody's really sure | yet because he can't demonstrate them as well as the | other students from richer households. Either way, a | prestigious university is not the proper forum for that. | commandlinefan wrote: | I've never seen somebody who opposes meritocracy actual | suggest taking starting points into consideration - | instead, they demand that easily observable, intrinsic | physical characteristics be used as a proxy for "starting | point". | MiroF wrote: | But there are a number of studies demonstrating how race | & class impact things (when controlled for other factors) | like teacher perception, grading, letters of | recommendation, not to mention just the fact that if you | are growing up in a black (or white) household that has | $5 in wealth, you'll have less access to educational | opportunity than the white (or black, albeit far more | rarely) household with $200,000 in wealth. | | We shouldn't seek to control for these factors? | pishpash wrote: | No. That only tells you to fix those factors but the | outcome is what they are. By the time of the ACT/SAT test | it's too late to fix those things. Fix those upstream. | MiroF wrote: | > By the time of the ACT/SAT test it's too late to fix | those things. Fix those upstream. | | Based on?? If someone is smart, but denied opportunity, | often times this can be resolved by exposure to things - | even for an 18 year old. | | Indeed, environmental factors become less important for | intelligence starting precisely at this age. | rosmax_1337 wrote: | Why are IQ tests controversial? | throwaway7033 wrote: | The Griggs v. Duke Power Co. decision | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.) | makes them legally problematic. | slavboj wrote: | Because blacks have lower average scores on them. | sin7 wrote: | Whites also have lower average scores on them. Lower than | Asians and Jews. | | At the elite level this would make a huge difference. At | the state level not at all. | nafix wrote: | What do you mean by "whites". American "whites"? The last | IQ report has many Asian countries at the top followed by | "white" European countries. Whites and blacks are such | generic terms. There are many different types of white, | black, asian, etc peoples that have different cultures | and phenotypes based on the region. | | https://worldpopulationreview.com/country- | rankings/average-i... | grumple wrote: | That site is a mess. Shows a chart where the average IQ | is 82, links to a page saying the average IQ is 100 | (which is the original design). Also cites a eugenicist | and thinks that worthy of a passing footnote. Frankly, I | wouldn't trust anything I read there. | car_analogy wrote: | Can we somehow blame this on oppression? | sin7 wrote: | No need. Just attribute an unmeasurable quality such as | creativity to your racial group. | icelancer wrote: | Because they're largely accurate in the aggregate and project | outcomes quite well, and no one likes this. | [deleted] | [deleted] | shakezula wrote: | > SAT scores correlate with IQ test scores. | | Do you have a source on this? | hiq wrote: | You can look for "intelligence" on | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT. From memory, Human | Intelligence by Earl Hunt has plenty of references as well if | you're into this topic. | artful-hacker wrote: | Howard Gardner's "Intelligence Reframed" (1999) | Someone1234 wrote: | IQ Tests aren't illegal though? If colleges wanted to | administer IQ tests they absolutely could. | artful-hacker wrote: | Maybe "more politically correct" or "easier to get away with" | would be a better way to phrase what I meant. | thedougd wrote: | A is for aptitude. | WaitWaitWha wrote: | To deal with socioeconomic issues in STEM, start early; very | early like K-12. | | In a vague fantasy world in the USA, I would reduce the | Department of Education to a fraction, shift education to the | States, take the best parts of the winning systems fom all | States, and make Federal recommendations accordingly. Rinse, | repeat. | | I am saddened that most of the children I come across in first- | world nations, lack the ability to rationally think through a | real-world problem. | r00fus wrote: | It seems like a good approach but the funding of things like | special needs education (FAPE) is federal in nature; cutting | those would likely nuke special needs programs nationwide. | | You would need to start with your 2nd or 3rd "approximation" of | your iterative approach (ie, pre-calc which programs are | already popular/effective and keep those) unless your goal is | to cause maximum disruption and possibly jeopardize your | ability to do the "make Federal recommendations" effectively. | davidgay wrote: | I'm always mildly assumed that Switzerland has 26 widely- | different (far more variety than found in the US) school | systems with only ~8 million people. And a high-school degree | that guarantees entrance into any university in any subject. | | Their are federal standards for said high-school degree (also | for earlier education stages). And it's a relatively hard | degree to get (22% of students get it). | 8bitsrule wrote: | My brother-in-law was ill-prepared for technical coursework | because he had no choice but to attend a shitty (undemanding, | backwoods, rubber-stamp) high school in Minnesota. He got talked | into vo-tech training for transmission repair. | | Years later, his weaknesses were evaluated at a Community | College. He went to work on a one-year remedial skills plan. Then | he was admitted to a state University. Four years later got a | chemistry degree with honors. IMO it's likely he'd have succeeded | at MIT as well. The man was a born techie. | | Moral: shitty schools are everybody's loss. And we've continued | to _lose a lot_ because some of them are _designed that way_. | Slyly, deliberately, officially sanctioned sly. | Strilanc wrote: | I was kind of hoping that the inline citations would lead to how | they reached their conclusions. But it's just more "our research | shows" conclusions without the meat underneath. Do they publish | their methodology anywhere? | | (It's pretty funny that the first red highlight hover is | explaining that you can hover over red highlights to see more | information. The only people reading it are the ones who no | longer need to be told.) | ffggvv wrote: | As a minority, i think those pushing for removing the SAT/ACT are | racist in that they think certain minorities cannot perform as | well as others. The whole point is that the SAT is the only | objective piece of an application that can be easily compared | between applicants. They want to reduce to only subjective | qualifications which they can easily manipulate to benefit groups | they deem under-represented. Its the bigotry of low expectations. | | Their problem isnt that the SAT can be gamed, its that it has an | objective score which cant be manipulated to benefit who they | deem worthy. | ok123456 wrote: | This explanation could have benefited from histograms showing the | distribution of grades pre-and-post making the test optional, and | then showing statistical tests that the null-hypothesis, that the | grades are the same, could be rejected. | slackfan wrote: | Good. | crackercrews wrote: | Why is MIT Admissions on a domain other than MIT.edu? | tech234a wrote: | https://mitadmissions.org/about/about-web/ | gumby wrote: | This would have been good news for me were I planning to apply | today. I got very poor grades in high school and if they had | ranked the students or calculated a gpa I doubt anyone would have | looked at my application at all. | | I'm really glad to see this part; I hope it's true: | | > At the same time, standardized tests also help us identify | academically prepared, socioeconomically disadvantaged students | who could not otherwise demonstrate readiness | | When I was at MIT I felt that the institute was working hard on | this area and took it seriously (for undergrads at least), though | how well I could not tell -- I was most definitely not of any | cohort that deserved _any_ special treatment. | [deleted] | TimPC wrote: | The SAT being a help to low-income students shows how messed up | the US high school system is. Normally standardized tests hurt | low-income students because they require extra-curricular | resources to do well on. In the US they hurt poor students less | because the GPA system is so badly broken. AP courses are not | offered in the poorest schools but offer such large bonuses to | GPA that a 4.0 GPA is considered very poor for applying to | university. A student can literally have a perfect GPA in the | best courses offered by their school and be considered a very | poor applicant academically. | xyst wrote: | aatharuv wrote: | The page states pretty much the opposite. If you read the link, | they state how, amongst other things: | | Good SAT scores can help find students from poorer high schools | who didn't have the opportunity to take as many advanced | classes in high school. | | Also, to quote the paper "College admission protocols should | attend to how social class is...encoded in non-numerical | components of applications" | | Like admissions essays touched up by educational counsellors, | who can also get children of rich parents into "volunteering | programs" that touch up experience, while poorer kids have to | work after school. | 0x20cowboy wrote: | I grew up poor, and from my anecdotal experience people do better | on the SAT if they "are rich". You can also pay people to take | the test for you. | | Maybe it's because they don't have to spend their days worry | about getting shot, stabbed or beaten to the ground by gangs. | Maybe it's because they get to eat every day. I guess, perhaps, | they get more quality study time. Or, heck maybe you're all | right, random questions - your ability to regurgitate the points | on the unit circle at will - indicates the level of education you | are qualified to attempt. Thank goodness these tests will let you | know what you are capable of. | | To be fair, I tried to get into several universities (over the | pandemic) to round out my self taught education, but I was | rejected everywhere I applied. So, I guess for some people - | tests or no tests - it doesn't really matter. Apparently, I am | too stupid to get an education. Good to know. | | For anyone who is salty about this (I used to be quite angry | about this and the "Google style" hiring process (which is | essentially the same thing)), this realization helped me get over | this: | | _These tests are designed to filter out people like you. You have | a qualities they do not want. That's why they are used. The tests | are working from their point of view. They wont stop using them. | Your life will be much easier if you just accept it, let it go, | and go do something else._ | lucidbee wrote: | If I were you I wouldn't apply right away to a 4 year college. | Do community college in your chosen field and then transfer. | | In California if can do 2 years in a community college you are | guaranteed a spot in a school in the UC system. Not UC | Berkeley, but still some place great. I think to qualify for | this transfer you need to have a 'C' or 'B' average. | | If you stay on the pity pot you won't get anywhere. Also, in | California, community college is very cheap. | 0x20cowboy wrote: | I don't live in the states any more, but thank you for the | suggestion! | | Also I am not on the pity pot, my life is awesome compared to | where I came from. I'd like others not to have to go though | it, but such is life. | | Although, I am realising that the way I say things might give | people the wrong impression... | tonymet wrote: | i grew up poor and SAT helped me escape poverty. are we forced | to only accept negative outcomes when sharing experiences ? | [deleted] | 0x20cowboy wrote: | Absolutely not! Good on ya! | | I'd rather everyone got a fair go, but mate, I am very happy | for you. Keep on keeping on. | adam_arthur wrote: | I do think the standard leetcode style interviews are often | administered poorly. | | But I also think that if you create a fairly complex mousetrap, | the profile of the average person who gets to the other side | will be decent enough. | | So likely many false negatives, but works at scale. | | I'd do it very differently for my own company. But I think some | of the bigger cos have actually gotten better, e.g. not asking | certain types of questions too far removed from 99% of | programming work. | namdnay wrote: | I think you're focusing your anger on the wrong target. Is it | Google's fault for performing blind objective skill tests? Or | is it your society's fault for not giving you the chance to | grow up fed and safe enough to study? | 0x20cowboy wrote: | Absolutely not! Sorry if you thought I was angry. I sometimes | have a funny way of expressing myself, but there is no anger | here at all. Just acceptance of the way the world works - | kind of my point actually :) | ceeplusplus wrote: | I grew up poor enough that I got a full need-based ride to a | state school. The SAT helped me differentiate myself from all | the kids with expensive summer camps, tutoring for | competitions, and expensive sports lessons that didn't actually | do that well in school. | | > Google style hiring process | | A couple leetcode questions is hardly a difficult task compared | to getting matched for residency as a doctor or accruing enough | volunteering experience as a poor college kid for law school. | Don't even get me started on investment banking. | | Sorry that reality has hit you I guess? My perspective has | always been that if you fail you should get up, evaluate what | went wrong, and try again. | | > but I was rejected everywhere I applied | | Did you try going to community college and transferring? | 0x20cowboy wrote: | Don't want to go too much into this, but thanks for the | thoughtful response. | | > A couple leetcode questions is hardly a difficult task | | I don't have a problem with data structures and the like. | I've been building software for >20 years. I can do pretty | much anything I want with a computer. However, and I can't | articulate this well, but where I come from "high pressure" | things mean people are getting killed - it's not fun. I don't | do hackathons either for the same reason. The whole | argumentative style of communication doesn't work so I just | stop answering. Like I said, they are filtering out people | like me on purpose, and it's fine. | | > Did you try going to community college and transferring? | | That is not something I could do at this stage. I tried to | get into a few online degrees which have a more flexible | schedule. | | Several years ago, I did try to go to a community college, | but none of my current bachelors credits would transfer (they | are from an online school which no institution apparently | counts as valid). So I'd have to start over from scratch. | | This is turning into a life story here. I have indeed tried - | for a very, very long time. I've given up on the idea of | going to school or working at some hip company now, and I've | made peace with it. | | Anyway, thanks for asking. | outlace wrote: | I used to be against standardized tests, but I grew up as a low- | income minority in a single-parent household and I ended up | getting into good schools pretty much only due to my high test | scores, which has been a life changer. Other than test scores, I | couldn't afford to do any fancy extra-curriculars. It felt a lot | more achievable to know I can change my life if I just focus and | do well on a test than it would if I had to somehow do a bunch of | random things to look competitive on paper. | sparrc wrote: | 100% agreed. I could also buy a test prep book on amazon plus | get a few others from the school and public libraries for a | grand total of $15 spent on test prep. | | That's a lot cheaper than dedicating my working summer to | smarmy volunteer/extra-curricular projects. | VWWHFSfQ wrote: | I went to high school in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and | almost all of the top academic students in my class were | first or second generation immigrants (mostly Indian) that | had no interest in extra-curricular activities like sports, | band, choir, or really anything. | | It's important that people, especially immigrants, can get | into these schools based solely on their test scores and not | have to do any of the other trivial stuff that demonstrates | that they can participate in the society in which they live. | linksnapzz wrote: | If you recast your civilization as simply the sum total of | the economic activity generated by fungible worker-units, | that's the sort of thing you get. A giant. somewhat | dilapidated luxury shopping mall with a military attached. | darth_avocado wrote: | >It's important that people, especially immigrants, can get | into these schools based solely on their test scores and | not have to do any of the other trivial stuff that | demonstrates that they can participate in the society in | which they live. | | So you're saying only studying and not doing anything else | to eventually become a doctor that serves a community in | Dallas doesn't demonstrate enough participation in society | as much as being able to play a sport? | | And don't get me wrong, extra curriculars are important, | but the simplistic reduction of immigrants studying hard | equates they don't participate in the society is a bit | much. | dangle1 wrote: | I can relate, and I appreciated the doors the PSAT and SAT | opened for me. | | OTOH, I test higher than my actual abilities in my opinion, and | that was a relatively unfair advantage the test gave me. | jacobr1 wrote: | What does testing higher than one's ability actually mean? | | I'm guessing either you think the test is an imperfect proxy | for a different (more important) skill, or otherwise you have | imposter syndrome. | DaiPlusPlus wrote: | There is no exam or test for work-ethic, or (in my case) an | inability to refrain from constant yak-shaving. | bombcar wrote: | I will say I'm of decent peer-inteligence (and the test | scores put me in the top 1% or higher) but that doesn't | account for other aspects of "ability". | | I feel my grades more accurately portrayed me _as a whole_ | but the test was accurate as to _potential_ if that makes | sense. | tomatowurst wrote: | what do you think about people who claim standardized test is | systematic racism? | | standardized test is the only way to measure somebody on their | aptitude for doing well like the LSAT. | | yet somehow asian americans being discriminated at ivy leagues | even with good standardized test score is not seen as | systematic racism. | freedomben wrote: | I think your question would have been a lot better if it was | just: | | > _What do you think about the argument that standardized | tests are systemically racist?_ | tomatowurst wrote: | how is it different? there are people that make that exact | argument, after all it isn't some tabloid paper claiming it | as such. | MichaelApproved wrote: | I'd say you've got more straw men in that loaded question | than farmers have in their field. | | You're taking poorly summarized opinions and pretending that | combination of opinions are held by a group of significant | size. | tomatowurst wrote: | I don't think so ivy league discrimination of asian | american applicants despite high standardized test scores | is very much a published statistic one that is often met | with emotional fervor by groups that seek to continue it. | | Just my observation as an outsider looking into America. | Often sensitive debates that don't follow a certain | mainstream narrative are brushed off as strawman or | whataboutism. | | I'm just seeing this from an objective data driven view and | puzzled why ppl would react so harshly. | Animats wrote: | _All MIT students, regardless of intended major, must pass two | semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based | physics, as part of our General Institute Requirements. ... There | is no path through MIT that does not rest on a rigorous | foundation in mathematics, and we need to be sure our students | are ready for that as soon as they arrive._ | | For a period in the 1980s-1990s, you could argue that calculus | was not essential in computer science. It was all discrete math | for a while. But then came machine learning, and it's all about | hill climbing and gradients now. | dan-robertson wrote: | I'm not sure that elementary calculus is particularly related | to machine learning (I have a similar opinion of linear algebra | which is fundamentally geometric in a way that machine learning | isn't). That doesn't mean that you don't need to know anything | about calculus or matrix multiplication to understand machine | learning but knowing eg Green's theorem won't help and neither | will understanding a tensor as a multi linear map or in the way | a general relativity physicist might. | | I also don't particularly know what goes into calculus (in the | U.K. we studied something called 'calculus' in high school | which included integrating/differentiating polynomials, some | trig functions, easy integration by parts and, in the 'further | maths' course, some second order linear ODEs with forcing, | first order ODEs via integrating factors, first order linear | systems of ODEs via the eigenvectors method, and I think some | integration by parts based recurrence relations. At university | things were divided into 'calculus', which contained practical | tools for applied maths like Green's theorem or partial | derivatives or contour integration or Sturm-Liouville theory, | and 'analysis' which had foundational things like epsilon-delta | stuff or Dedekind cuts or the definition of a limit or Riemann | integration or the conformal mapping theorem and so on. | | I think a first course in the thing I called analysis above is | very useful for building mathematical maturity (ie the ability | to not deduce false things but also playing with definitions | and thinking about counter-examples) but the calculus knowledge | can be useful for understanding the physical world. But I don't | know if that understanding should be _required_ for e.g. | computer scientists. | | A few calculus examples I can think of in computer science: | | - Some famous story of Feynman 'interning' at Thinking Machines | and solving some capacity management problem using bizarre | differential equations with terms representing e.g. 'bits per | second'. No sufficiently good solutions had been found using | discrete methods. | | - I was once asked an interview question which I suggested | solving with differential equations but I was quickly directed | towards not doing that. | | - Honestly I can't think of many more but maybe this is a lack | of imagination. I think there are a few things that are really | probability theory that you need some understanding of calculus | for, e.g. emergent behaviour of distributed systems, reasons to | prefer random cache eviction, some intuition to answer a | question like 'if the time X takes has some distribution, but | sometimes we have a gc pause for y milliseconds, how would that | affect the distribution? | kragen wrote: | It's "fundamentally geometric" to understand that the Fourier | transform diagonalizes a circulant matrix so you can estimate | the clock skew between two radios? | | I think you get into calculus very quickly once you start | dealing with uncertainty. A bit is 0 or 1, a discrete value. | A random or unknown bit has some probability of being 1, a | continuous value. A process that produces a random bit does | too. An _unknown_ such process has a distribution over such | probabilities. Things like that are fundamental for things | like communication or image classification. | | Also, though, a major application of computers is modeling | and controlling the calculus-based physical world, just | because they are so good at number crunching. Particularly | popular examples are ray tracing, music synthesis, and motor | control. | rossdavidh wrote: | True, but the usefulness of calculus to a working developer in | ML is pretty marginal. The difference between different ML | algorithms for hill climbing or gradients, is orders of | magnitude less than the effect of having the right training | data, formatted the right way. Statistics or data science is | far more applicable to nearly any field on real-world | programming. | | But, you know, like Latin in the 19th century was always still | useful to one's education, calculus is still useful. It is also | something a lot more people know how to teach, than know how to | teach statistics (or other more useful topics). I think the | latter is the primary reason it remains central to most | engineering programs. | deanCommie wrote: | > Latin in the 19th century was always still useful to one's | education, | | Was it? Or was it perpetuated by a community that happened to | already know it and so they leveraged it? | hkt wrote: | I suspect the answer is "both". | rossdavidh wrote: | Bingo. | nicknow wrote: | Yes, because learning Latin - as a written language - will | put your vocabulary far ahead of those who don't. My high | school had a general elective focused just on learning to | use Greek and Latin to enhance your vocabulary, it was | essentially a free SAT prep course for the language | section. | | So many terms can be quickly understood if you understand | Latin prefixes and suffixes, and the better you understand | Latin the better you'll understand its use in any of the | modern Western languages. | kragen wrote: | Latin is what almost the entire Western academic literature | prior to the 19th century was written in. You may or may | not know this, but Google Translate didn't exist. So, it | was essential to anyone undertaking academic studies at the | time (in the West) to read Latin, though not to write it. | Nowadays English holds that position, despite Google | Translate. | dontreact wrote: | I disagree with this. Being able to read and understand the | math in the paper of the algorithm you are implementing is | useful, and calculus is common in ML papers. | | You may have some short term success without understanding | the algorithms at all, but as the field changes and you are | no longer in school, being able to keep up at least somewhat | with papers is very useful. | | I agree that the day to day is mostly about formatting data | though! | rossdavidh wrote: | Well I took calculus, and I did a Master's thesis (much | smaller than Ph.D., obviously) on neural networks, and I | didn't find much application. Plus, the vast majority of | work on ML is not going to be taking an ML paper and | implementing it in code. It's going to be transforming this | raw data into a format that the existing ML library can | accept as input, selecting which cases are useful for | training (e.g. making sure each important sub-case is | adequately represented), and other things surrounding the | data and how it is fed into the (already existing) ML | library. Perhaps also playing with the options of the ML | library, as to what kind of model you build. | | But 99% of the alterations you can make to an ML library, | will not make nearly as much difference as what data you | feed into it and how. If it's the right data, many ML | models will work, and if it's not the right data, none of | them will. But regardless, none of this requires, or even | really benefits from, calculus. | dontreact wrote: | I agree with all of this, but ML will evolve a lot over | the next 30 years of your career. Being able to read the | papers as the field evolves is useful, and many of the | papers (especially the ones that shift the field) will | assume knowledge of calculus. | rawgabbit wrote: | Agree. Statistics > calculus for the software engineers. | Statistics > calculus for most people doing research as their | papers would need to interpret t-scores, z-scores, confidence | intervals etc. I don't understand this fetish about calculus. | rory wrote: | Well, you need at least some understanding of calculus to | meaningfully understand statistics, don't you? A basic | ability to intuit about integrals and derivatives seems | like table stakes. | peterhalburt33 wrote: | Teaching only statistics and no calculus is how you end up | with people such as Tai reinventing high-school calculus | and attempting to use statistical methods to validate their | "method". | | https://math.berkeley.edu/~ehallman/math1B/TaisMethod.pdf | rory wrote: | Oof. Tough look to name the model after yourself. Why is | this cited so many times? | uwuemu wrote: | I would argue exactly otherwise... with the advent of the web | platform and frameworks like .net, the vast majority (and I | mean like 95%) of developers will never touch anything ML | related in their careers. I mean, I get that this is MIT and | many of their students _will_ end up working with ML, but | applying that globally to CS is nonsense. Back when I was | studying CS (cze) more than a decade ago, we had to pass linear | algebra, graph theory and calculus, but honestly, that was like | in the first year and a half and then it completely tapered off | (later years were all about projects, algorithmization, i.e. | "doing the work" and very little about hardcore theory) and | guess what, I never needed it again. A bit of statistics and | some graph theory here and there, but that's about it. | | Contrary to popular belief, there are NOT that many ML jobs out | there and the ones that are there are more about data science | and messing with model zoo type of shit than actually coding | useful programs. Most programmers will be lucky if they get to | integrate inference of a prepared model into the apps they work | on. | NikolaNovak wrote: | I remember finding myself in 3rd year Calculus in a Computer | Science degree, and realizing: I don't _have_ to be here! | (only two years were mandatory) | | I've always enjoyed math and kept enrolling into it out of | habit, until it became so esoteric, and my actual interests | more solid and practical. | | I find a lot of my university career was fascinating and... | useless. Not just from "I will never use this directly | perspective", but also largely from "this will give me | broader understanding and framework and enable me to learn | faster" perspective. We can have wonderful philosophical | discussion on what University should be for - job prep or | educational enhancement for the sake of it - but truth of the | matter was that I envied those in Engineering fields who had | fun AND learned AND were doing practical things AND were | going to apply some of it. Whereas my 3rd and 4th year maths | were just maths for the sake of maths. | | I may be hanging out with uninteresting crowds, but same | experience is broadly true for my friends and co-workers - | Java developer, VMWare architect, Database Administrator, ERP | developer, etc. We all value education and love learning and | will go on our vacation with couple of technical books - but | university Computer Science degree seems very mistailored, or | at least, sold wrong. | matwood wrote: | > I find a lot of my university career was fascinating | and... useless. | | I was in college long ago and for my CS undergrad and | masters took the usual CS and math courses. When I needed | electives though I took courses like economics, finance and | accounting. Many years later, those electives ended up | being the most useful. | | The CS and math courses I wouldn't consider useless though. | I'm sure I lean on theory I learned without realizing. But, | at the time I couldn't have predicted working in small | companies or startups and how important basic finance and | accounting would end up. | selimthegrim wrote: | Good luck deriving matrix identities without Calc III. | gmadsen wrote: | interesting, I think almost the complete opposite. I am | happy where I'm at, but I most certainly would have | preferred doing a math/cs double major rather than all the | BS busy work of an engineering degree I went through. I | wouldn't call 60 hours a week of symbol manipulation | practical... | paxys wrote: | This is exactly why so many people (myself included) advocate | for a pure "software engineering" degree at more | universities. Let people who are interested study graph | theory, combinatorics, linear algebra, advanced probability | and statistics and whatever else. For the rest, provide a | path to be ready for an industry job building websites and | applications, which is what 90% of graduates will end up | doing. | | Every other discipline out there has a clear separation of | pure from applied science. Why can't we do the same for | software? What we end up with is borderline fraudulent coding | bootcamps to fill in the gap. | bob1029 wrote: | I have been saying for years that we need to treat software | developers like jedi when it comes to training. | | Practical, industry expert-led coursework has been by _far_ | the most outstanding education I have ever received. My DSP | professor was (is still) an adjunct to the university I | attended and works a normal job 9-5 during the day at some | engineering firm. He was easily the best educator I have | ever experienced because he brought reality into the | classroom every day. I still vividly recall the | 20-30-minute lecture /rant about making power point | presentations that don't suck. | | It's all the little things for me... The nuanced details | like "why are you holding it that way?" are impossible to | discover until you have a customer complaining at you for a | while or have someone who experienced it themselves giving | you a heads-up. | | For me, the future of practical software engineering | education looks a lot more like a machine shop than it does | a university campus. | mywittyname wrote: | I don't think a "pure" software engineering degree really | needs to be four years. | | What you're talking about sounds an awful lot like the | program I went into initially at a community college. They | taught you some coding in a few popular languages, some | database concepts and sent you on your way. I dropped out | after a year and found a job. | | I ended up going to a four year program after a while. | Turns out, a lot of the good jobs in software engineering | require understanding those peaky abstract fundamentals. | zozbot234 wrote: | Software engineering is based on applied mathematics too. | You'll need at least some basic calculus to make sense of | O(n) analysis, and Calc II as a prereq for probability. | Then add plenty of logic, discrete mathematics (needed for | algorithms and data structures), models of computation and | concurrency, category theory (which is becoming a shared | language of everything "compositional"), topology etc. etc. | | If you really want a "math free" intro to tech, look into | Business Information Systems. That tends to be more ad hoc, | at least for now. At some point, people will start to care | about software assurance even in that context, and the | standards will rise accordingly. | david38 wrote: | You don't. I've never been asked a O() that requires | calculus. The vast majority is just understanding if it's | log(n), n, nlog(n), n^2, etc. | | Discrete, sure, but Calc? Not for most. | fantod wrote: | You don't really need to know calculus (derivatives and | such) but it's true that big O notation requires some | sort of "asymptotic thinking" which is probably only | explicitly taught in a calculus course. | Retric wrote: | That's part of Pre-Calculus or general mathematics | coursework at most US high schools. | | Beyond that it's a very simple idea you can cover at the | same time as your doing Big O notation in the first | place. | jahewson wrote: | Discrete probability is probably adequate for most | software engineering. Almost everything we encounter in | our jobs is discrete. One thing I do think we need more | of is linear algebra. | vidarh wrote: | The thing is people with a maths heavy background tend to | think you need a much deeper understanding of math for | this than you actually do. | | You need very little beyond high school level math for | most CS. _Some_ areas, sure. | | I've done things in my career that touches on a lot of | different areas of math. But the number of times I've | regretted not having taken more math have been pretty | much non-existent. I wish I remembered a bit more of my | trig, mostly. | | Most software engineers come into contact with far less | CS subjects where math matters than I do. | | I don't have an issue with a place like MIT insisting on | lots of math, but this notion that you need to understand | so much math for software engineering is deeply flawed - | you don't need much even for a lot of theoretical | computer science. | zozbot234 wrote: | The point is that even a "shallow" understanding of math | is much deeper already than many, perhaps most realize. | Many high-schools don't seriously try to teach math at | all - there's no such thing as "high school math" in this | day and age. You need college to even have a chance of | being exposed to it properly. | | (Then there's the whole "learning to code" part, of | course. This is actually where middle and high school | math provides useful application domains for learning to | code, and people have tried to teach coding in schools | since the 1980s.) | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Not to mention relational calculus for a deeper | understanding of databases. | naniwaduni wrote: | The relational calculus has very little to do with the | calculus of infinitesimals. | justsocrateasin wrote: | I think this line of thinking fails to recognize what a | general math background does for your critical thinking | skills. | | I'm sure you and I both took plenty of math classes, and | therefore we won't ever really know what our computer | science skills would be like without a rigorous math | background. Even if I never touch anything more complex | than algebra II again, taking ~30 credits of applied math | allows me to think in a way that I wouldn't otherwise | without that background. | cwp wrote: | If all you're interested in is getting a good job, you | don't need a degree at all. The information is available | for free in a variety of presentations and formats. The | source code to just about all the software you'll use is | available for free as are all the tools. You don't even | need a bootcamp, just time and energy. | u2077 wrote: | You may not need a degree to _learn_ the material, but as | someone new to the field, there are plenty of jobs that | list a 2 year or 4 year degree as a _requirement_. Having | that degree will open more doors than just learning on | your own simply because that's what they're looking for. | paxys wrote: | Sure, but in the same vein everything you will ever learn | at MIT can be found for free online as well. Ultimately a | 4-year degree does have value, whether just for the | brand, or as a forcing function to learn, or the constant | help from teachers and peers or whatever else. | arcticfox wrote: | While I spend 99% of my time doing pure "software | engineering", I'm pretty grateful to have the advanced | probability / graph theory / combinatorics etc. background | because it helps me envision possibilities I wouldn't | otherwise be able to. | | That being said, there are probably lighter ways of | teaching that instinct than full-depth classes. I try to | listen to podcasts these days as a way of expanding my | horizons. | xxxtentachyon wrote: | Any recommendations for good podcasts in that vein? | londons_explore wrote: | If you just want to be a great web developer, MIT may not be | the best place for you. | | MIT best prepares people for those less well defined roles, | such as _designing the next era of web browsers_. For that, | you can never know exactly which skills will be needed, so it | 's probably best to have as many neighbouring skills as | possible so you don't hit problems you can't solve merely | because the knowledge required to see the best solution was | in that topic your course didn't cover. | | Who knows, maybe the next era of web browsers will browse the | web for you, and then condense everything they learned from | thousands of resources into a single paragraph for the user | to see. And for that, they might need ML. | whynotminot wrote: | Hmm I'm not sure I really agree with this. Does MIT (or any | university) teach the creativity needed to envision the | kind of thing you're talking about? Or like most | universities, is it just teaching some foundational skills | coupled with whatever has condensed into "required reading" | from industry over the last couple decades? Just with a | higher pedigree and ostensibly better prepared student | body. | fn-mote wrote: | > Does MIT [...] teach the creativity needed to envision | the kind of thing you're talking about? | | Absolutely. | | Explicitly. | | I have just been a bystander, but it's clear. | | I don't think that MIT grads are in this thread wasting | their breath, though. Which I think is a good decision. | | [1] https://lemelson.mit.edu/ [2] | https://innovation.mit.edu/resources/ | whynotminot wrote: | Alright. You seem to feel pretty confident about this. | | Having worked with quite a few MIT grads over the years, | at least in my anecdotal experience, they were smart | people who were no more or less likely than any of the | other smart people working around them to stumble upon | the next evolution of the web browser. | adamsmith143 wrote: | Of course if I browse linkedin MIT EECS grads, most are | probably just doing bug fixing at FAANG or the latest | unicorn and some small fraction are doing anything | revolutionary. It's also likely that they would have done | so without an MIT education. See e.g the Collison brothers. | pishpash wrote: | Learning about those things aren't necessary for those | jobs but they prove that you're capable of learning | _something_ , and as such is a part of the FAANG | acceptance process. | rcpt wrote: | Calculus was the first time in mathematics education where I | actually had to understand systems and how to derive results | from first principles. Prior to that everything was just | memorizing: "this is what logarithm is", "socatoah", | multiplication tables, etc etc. I straight up hated math | until calculus (now I have a math PhD). | | I'm sure the same could be accomplished with other fields of | math but I don't feel it's necessary to switch. Would be | extremely hard to find good teachers and course materials for | combinatorics or graph theory to. | simulate-me wrote: | Calculus underpins almost every scientific advancement since | its discovery. To exclude it from the curriculum at a school | focused on technology would be insane. | time_to_smile wrote: | Honestly every educated adult should understand calculus, and | certainly anyone with a technical degree should. Sure many | people will be unlikely to need to do the raw computation of | calculating derivatives and integrals (even people doing | machine learning are typically letting computers do that work), | but to understand the way these two concepts work together and | describe the world is really essential to understanding so many | problems. | david38 wrote: | This is hubris. I can think of many adults that know nothing | of Calc and do very in life and work. Knowing basic | accounting, being able to fix things around the house, being | pleasant to work with, etc are far more important. | simulate-me wrote: | > Knowing basic accounting, being able to fix things around | the house, being pleasant to work with, etc are far more | important. | | Those are totally useless skills. If you live in America | and your only contribution to society is being pleasant, | knowing how to fix things around the house, and basic | accounting, then expect your livelihood to be replaced by | someone willing to do your unskilled work overseas for a | fraction of the cost in the very near future. Not to be | harsh, but that's the reality. | jobs_throwaway wrote: | how are overseas workers going to able to fix things | around the house? | kragen wrote: | Seems like that trend will result in wages between | "America" (I guess you mean the US and don't know Bolivia | is in America) equalizing with the rest of the world. | | Also, fixing things is highly skilled work and very hard | to offshore. | simulate-me wrote: | > Bolivia | | Don't you mean the Plurinational State of Bolivia? | kragen wrote: | That's the one. Although Gran Bolivia is also in America, | parts of it have fairly high wages, and it hasn't been | the common meaning of the name "Bolivia" for 200 years. | lordnacho wrote: | The GP talked about being educated, not being pleasant or | productive. | | Everyone needs to learn calculus because it opens up a gate | into a form of beauty that no amount of work can ever | satisfy. | | The idea that people only need to learn what they need to | live their external lives, those of work and interpersonal | relations, is just wrong. | | You need to learn calculus as part of your own internal | life. | crmd wrote: | Calculus changed the way I look at the world. I suck at | math and had to repeat calc ii, but holy hell am I thankful | it was a core requirement at my school. I wish more liberal | arts kids could have the same opportunity. | time_to_smile wrote: | It maybe "idealistic" but I would hardly call it "hubris". | | My undergrad was in a non-technical area and so I never had | to take calc in undergrad. Having later learned it to solve | problems, it has become clear to me that it would be | preferable if everyone with a college degree knew calc. I | was, in retrospect, wrong to have tried to avoid it. | | I'm well aware we don't live in that world, unfortunately | many people with a college degree also don't know write | effectively, or perform critical analysis on texts, things | I also thing should be part of being college educated. | | > Knowing basic accounting, being able to fix things around | the house, being pleasant to work with, etc are far more | important. | | I'm not sure how knowing calculus reduces these things. | solveit wrote: | I would argue that calculus is essential in discrete maths, but | ML is not essential in Computer Science. | flatiron wrote: | professional developer for close to 20 years, never used | calculus. but i also a dumb java on the backend javascript on | the front end web jockey. | hkt wrote: | Some might say that's representative of the majority of the | field..! | bmc7505 wrote: | Calculus is not just about gradients. Fundamentally, calculus | is about calculation and symbolic logic, a much older concept | that predates its usage in gradient-based machine learning. In | this sense, calculus holds deep connections to logical | reasoning, proof theory and the foundations of computer | science. [1] | | [1]: https://compcalc.github.io/ | [deleted] | throwawayozy wrote: | [deleted] | sandgiant wrote: | This. The importance of learning calculus and model building | (physics) is all about learning to reason, making predictions | and quantify domain validity. It's not about calculating | derivatives or proving continuity. I think people take these | requirements too literally. | hwers wrote: | I'd like to see 1980s-1990s graphics programmers get away with | just discrete math for all the innovations they did in that | period. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | If we need calculus for CS, I wish we'd teach it under the CS | heading so that exposure to math didn't have to be so biased | towards real analysis. Students spend years achieving this | arbitrary (unless you're going to be an engineer) goal and end | up with the erroneous (and often harmful) intuition that all | spaces are continuous metric spaces. | hyperbovine wrote: | I don't get this take at all--learn _both_ real analysis and | discrete math. At MIT especially. Knowing calculus (the | precursor to RA) is essential for quantitatively | understanding the world in which we live, including the 99.9% | of it that is not computer science. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | I think we're in a circle: I'm objecting that we teach | people to map everything onto the real line and you're | saying that it's essential to quantitatively understanding | the world. But isn't that what "quantitatively" means? | | My point is that in the zoo of mathematics, the reals are | just one exhibit. Equally valid is to map phenomena onto | topological spaces, inner product spaces, sets, groups, | rings, fields, lattices, topoi, etc... People have been | standing on Newton's shoulders for so long that all they | can see from there is ground well worn by their colleagues | who stood on the same shoulders. | | I think we'd be much better off if you had to specialize in | _some_ part of math, but that different people specialized | in different parts of it without necessarily taking a major | in it. This would maximize the sort of happy accidents that | lead to discovery because for any given phenomena you now | have a wider variety of perspectives on it, rather than | just a classroom full of analysts. | | I'm against the reals in particular because I think they're | especially suited to zero sum games, and I wish we played | fewer of those. | johnnyanmac wrote: | I could agree with this. The one regret I had was burning | through all my math classes within my first two years while | my early CS classes barely seemed to use Algebra to begin | with. | | Then lo and behold, turns out I like computer graphics a few | years later, and all that linear algebra and multivariable | calculus I skimmed through slams me back in the face as I | find out that GPUS chew through such math for breakfast. I | could never find the application of such math to my career | track until long after I took those classes. | vmception wrote: | and this is why trade schools like coding bootcamps are | relevant at all | | people aren't going to school to learn computer science, they | are going to school to get a job and be effective in that | field, but the universities _shouldn 't_ feel obligated to | adjust to that since they've been for the privileged folks who | _are_ actually there to pursue education for the sake of higher | learning for nearly 200 years (or much longer). it is mere | coincidence that they have to put up with a few decades of | people needing the school for subsequent employment and the | school will exist after this phase as well | | so with that observation it really is useful to push for trade | schools again, for the people that actually need it | | for the people that are really going for that upper echelon of | access to other privileged people whether they get a wage-slave | job or not, yeah they should slog through MIT, but everyone | else should consider other things that more closely match the | lane they were born into | bee_rider wrote: | Also community colleges. We should fund community colleges to | the point where bootcamps cease to exist. | vmception wrote: | Maybe, I think they serve different niches | | But don't have to | | Community colleges should have electives and tracks that | are similar to trade schools: getting you up to speed on | whats relevant right now | | But as long as they are pushing towards associates degrees | and transferable credits to universities I think the | utility is less optimal for people looking to be efficient | at a job | | (Also employers should be training people for what they | actually need too, sparing us all from imagining that the | Computer Science major is necessary to synthesize better | outcomes in unknown situations) | mirker wrote: | There are discrete forms of "gradients" which generalize | classical CS concepts. Submodular optimization, for example, | covers many algorithms that search for optimal configurations | of discrete sets, and it does so by arguments that are | analogous to convex optimization. | kragen wrote: | Can it approach an optimum in time linear in the number of | dimensions like gradient descent does, rather than quadratic | or exponential or something? | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | I don't remember the details anymore, but my combinatorics | class required calculus. Something to do with Taylor series. | kevinventullo wrote: | Generating functions, perhaps? | pishpash wrote: | 90% of software engineers don't do algorithms, even in ML -- | nor are they capable of, besides rote memorization of interview | algorithms. Software engineering these days is mostly a job of | complexity management and automation, requiring little math and | more secretarial skills. That's just the ugly truth that nobody | wants to hear. | peter303 wrote: | Curiously, MIT does not have an university-wide computer | requirement, though some departments do. They have been | debating this requirement for decades. | SamReidHughes wrote: | Very few developers work in machine learning. | giardini wrote: | I'm grateful for the SAT/ACT being present when I was in high | school(HS). Without it I might not have a decent education, | mostly b/c I was drifting along and paying little attention to | life. | | Junior year I had high PSAT scores and received letters from | various universities expressing interest. Yet I hadn't even | _considered_ what I would do after HS. I was amazed to see anyone | expressing interest, decided it was a fluke and dropped it all in | the trash. | | Next year I scored high on the SAT and unexpectedly received | multiple offers for full scholarships, room and board _et al_ | from universities. I asked around and realized my peers had been | applying to colleges for months while I, the quintessential | apostle of Lao Tzu (OK, I 'm lazy!), had done absolutely nothing. | | I hesitated to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when | there were several. I picked one and was off to college. My Dad | was pleased to get off the hook for college costs, Mom was proud, | but I mostly felt sorry for friends who had to work hard to get | into university. | | tl;dr: PSAT and SAT made getting into college easy for me and I | am thankful. | apayan wrote: | The implementation of footnotes on the right side of the screen | is really cool, and not something I've seen before. Such a cool | idea. I think it would be interesting for news publications to | try that out in articles as well. It could allow for brevity in | the main article text, but still allow those who want to know the | source of a statement/fact or more detail the option to obtain | it. | temptemptemp111 wrote: | rafale wrote: | Unpopular opinion: SAT/ACT correlates with X where X = IQ x work | ethic | tomatowurst wrote: | Having a high IQ means you can probably retain information | better with less effort but for the vast majority of students, | its a question of consistent work ethic. | | Important to differentiate places like South Korea has a | massive privatized cram schools where it does a fantastic job | of creating high scorers but because it is scaled, it means if | you are not paying extra and spending ridiculous time in | privatized cram schools, you are almost certainly going to fail | unless you can rely on some innate genius. Here in this case, | it is truly discriminating students based on the economic | capacity of their parents and it has the highest houshold debt | not only from real estate but from debt to finance the young | into educational hell. | | Another unpopular opinion: Unhappiness correlates with high IQ | if a proper outlet is not met due to a variety of factors. | jdmichal wrote: | I had a high school teacher that liked to say the following: | | You can be smart and lazy and do fine. You can be dim and hard- | working and do fine. But smart and hard-working will always | beat them both. | | I was pretty clearly in the smart and lazy camp, and was OK | with that lot. And, as he said, I've done fine. | | EDIT: I should add, though, that I'm very happy the SAT did not | have the writing section when I took it. I severely doubt it | would have improved my relative score. | danans wrote: | That opinion is unpopular because it is incomplete. SAT/ACT | scores correlate with lots of things, not just IQ and work | ethic. | | Another huge correlation is with family income: | | https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2021/9/28/is- | in.... | rory wrote: | ~.2 isn't really "huge".. Your source shows that the SAT is | much more strongly correlated with other measures of | aptitude. | | The SAT does indeed correlate slightly more strongly with | income than the AFQT does, which could show the "gaming" of | the test. Only a ~.03 stronger correlation though. Not | particularly dramatic. | WalterBright wrote: | > I understand that this announcement may dismay some readers for | whom the tests can be a source of stress. | | Bluntly, if one can't handle the stress of the SAT, then the | stress of exams at a university like MIT is going to be | overwhelming. | | Exam week at Caltech was called "compression", and after the | exams was "decompression". The moniker is not a joke. | WalterBright wrote: | P.S. Many people dropped out of Caltech because of the stress | of exams. | [deleted] | mikkergp wrote: | I don't know that all stressors are alike. I don't feel stress | in exam situations, most of the stress I feel at work is around | social stressors. I don't think a university education should | be easy persay, but I do think that the stressors of education | should not be unique in the world. If success in the face of | stresses of examination in school don't predict success in the | face of stressors you face elsewhere in life, then maybe they | should be re-evaluated. | tedmiston wrote: | It's very difficult to read a webpage with huge red rectangles | covering up so much of the text that it looks like a redacted | document [1]. | | I imagine it must not look like this for everyone... -\\_(tsu)_/- | | Edit: It seems like this is an issue with the Dark Reader | extension. Here's an archived version that renders as expected | [2]. | | I wish they'd used an existing popular tool like Hypothes.is [3] | for annotations rather than rolling their own isolated system. | | [1]: https://imgur.com/a/jWkVFgd | | [2]: https://archive.ph/v1Rm1 | | [3]: https://web.hypothes.is/ | endisneigh wrote: | Did a quick skim - did they release the data? | | What does this mean: | | > when you control for socioeconomic factors that correlate with | testing. | | Which factors are these exactly? | TrinaryWorksToo wrote: | Buried in the details it says that MIT will be accepting anyone | over a (presumably secret) threshold, not using it as a ranking | tool as some people might indicate. | adamsmith143 wrote: | This seems a bit ridiculous. One would assume they could fill | their entire class with 1600 SAT scorers but they don't and I | think it's well known that isn't even sufficient. | fn-mote wrote: | I think the parent means "a score above a threshold gets the | rest of your application read." | | Certainly the article would not support reading "accepting" as | "admitting". | | "We do not prefer people with perfect scores" | | "our research shows students also need [...] the resilience to | rebound from its challenges, and the initiative to make use of | its resources. That's why we don't select students solely on | how well they score on the tests, but only consider scores to | the extent they help us feel more confident about an | applicant's preparedness ..." | | I read this as saying two extremely important traits are: | | * resilience | | * initiative | | Not test scores. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _MIT will be accepting anyone over a (presumably secret) | threshold_ | | I don't think it's a hard threshold. Some people are bad | standardised test takers. If the rest of their application | shows they won't flunk their math tests, a lower score could be | fine. If, on the other hand, it looks like a pattern, a | marginal score could be seen to not make the cut. | TrinaryWorksToo wrote: | Yeah that's probably right. It's not a ranking mechanism | which is what I think some people believe it is advocating. | More isn't necessarily better. | ShaveTheTurtles wrote: | A lot of folks focus on act/sat scores when talking about | diversity when really these ivy league schools shouldn't have an | express lane for legacy entrants. If you are trying to be | different than how it was previously, how can you expect that to | happen when you give preference to folks that benefited | previously? | raunak wrote: | Without legacy and the prestige and the entire shebang of old | English style college, the Ivy Leagues aren't the Ivy League. | | I agree with you that eliminating legacy would solve the issue | of making the school different - it's never gonna happen | though, so there's no point in talking about it honestly. | | Also yeah, MIT is not a legacy giving school | johnaspden wrote: | > shebang of old English style college, the Ivy Leagues | aren't the Ivy League | | I'm not quite sure what this legacy thing is, but I don't | think English universities do it. It sounds corrupt to me, | and I think it would be a national scandal. | musicale wrote: | Here's how "former MIT admissions director" McGreggor Crowley | justified providing preferences to children of alumni and | wealthy donors: | | "What about university donors, though? Don't they have an | unfair advantage in this process? In truth, for every office of | admissions there is a development office that builds a | university's endowment through donations from alumni and | wealthy individuals. And every year, regardless of what a | college or university says publicly, a number of children of | wealthy donors and alumni get a nod in their direction while | other applicants are rejected. | | The reality is, the money generated by admitting wealthy | students often serves to subsidize the financial aid of those | less fortunate. If one squints, one might see here a karmic | balance enabling many students to attend a college they | otherwise could never afford." | | Note he said "every office of admissions" and "regardless of | what a college or university says publicly." If MIT were an | exception, presumably he would have mentioned it. The | "regardless of what a college or university says publicly" | implies that MIT may be not stating the entire truth when they | claim "we don't do legacy"[2] or that MIT's internal behavior | may have changed since Crowley worked there. I'm not sure what | MIT has to say about providing admissions preferences to | children of wealthy donors the way many (most?)[3] universities | including Stanford[4] do. | | [1] | https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2019/03/13/co... | | [2] https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/just-to-be-clear-we- | do... | | [3] https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-college- | admissi... | | [4] https://provost.stanford.edu/2020/06/26/admissions- | considera... | spaetzleesser wrote: | This stuff allows for way too many back doors and | intentionally makes the process more opaque. If they were | honest they would just name an amount that guarantees | admission so rich guys could buy their way into the school | instead of hiding behind "charity". | tzs wrote: | MIT is not an Ivy League school, and does not give any | preference to legacy applicants. | icelancer wrote: | I agree, but MIT doesn't care about legacy admissions. They're | one of the few schools that doesn't. | icelancer wrote: | Quite surprising that they went back on their policy, but it's a | welcome change. Removing standardized tests and replacing them | with more subjective methods necessarily reduces outcomes | surrounding academic excellence, and almost always exacerbates | socioeconomic/racial inequity (with a strong anti-Asian bias, as | shown in almost all studies when test scores are | blinded/dropped). | femiagbabiaka wrote: | Definitely for the best. Standardized testing was pretty much the | only reason I and many other working class folks I know could get | into good schools -- I was never going to do a million side | activities, and my summers were spent working, not building my | academic resume. | | Of course the real tragedy is that we fixate so much on college, | even prestigious ones, at all given how unnecessary they are for | making people into productive and happy human beings. This change | is significant but affects less than one percent of the | population each year.. | rayiner wrote: | Also foreigners--a lot of these side activities and volunteer | opportunities depend on having social capital and connections. | | Same thing with essays. I've observed that working class | Americans are reticent to talk about diversity and adversity in | the way college admissions officers expect, and recall having a | similar experience. My wife's parents grew up so poor in rural | America that "store bought meat" was a phrase they used when | she was growing up. Meanwhile, my family left Bangladesh when I | was 5 under political circumstances where one day my mom's | brother (a military officer) showed up to our house in uniform | and my dad thought that he was coming to detain us (it was a | social call). But she would have been embarrassed to write | about how her father grew up poor or that she faced any | adversity, and I would have been embarrassed to write about how | I was a foreigner instead of a middle class kid from Virginia. | johnnyanmac wrote: | >Of course the real tragedy is that we fixate so much on | college, even prestigious ones, at all given how unnecessary | they are for making people into productive and happy human | beings. This change is significant but affects less than one | percent of the population each year.. | | I'm ambivalent because I sympathize with both sides of the | equation. One one hand, I have the hindsight now that I didn't | at 18 to realize that the world didn't end because I couldn't | get into Harvey Mudd. And in many ways it turned out 100x | better; instead of staying in LA-ish areas, I explored a whole | new area I never would have considered otherwise, still got a | great education for a small fraction of what Mudd woulda cost | me, and was exposed to a completely different flavor of | computer science that helped me decide my career. | | But on the other hand, college really does open a ton of doors | that for many non-upper class people would never open | otherwise. While I was still in tech and had many choices, I | imagine people at MIT or Mudd would be fighting off recruitment | at top companies with a stick, with many opportunities coming | from certain companies who only recruit at such universities. | It can accelerate your career on the order of 5-10 years if you | stick it out. And you'd likely be unparalleled in resources and | opportunities if your focus is on research. If your goal is as | lofty as being the next household name or to pivot into | creating your own business, there are oodles more oppurtunities | there. | | I wouldn't trade the education I got for an MIT one, but I can | understand why 18YO me (and many others) do feel that way. | aj7 wrote: | Yes, prestigious schools open a huge number of doors. But | more importantly, they teach elite mannerisms, standards and | beliefs, and prejudices. If you are not a true genius (true | geniuses can always make their way, but they are rare, even | at MIT et al), this knowledge is invaluable and | irreplaceable. | | I'll give you an example from my own career. I went to | MIT/Berkeley, SB/PhD. But I practically washed out of grad | school, not due to lack of ability, but because I hated it. | What I did like was making things and explaining things, and | had a successful career in the more business aspects of | science where successful scientists were the customers and | decision makers. I understood, in a fundamental way, how | these people thought and what they expected. This was | invaluable, and was conveyed, in an irreplaceablely | concentrated way, by my being a 30th percentile student in a | 95th percentile university. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | I live in slovenia, and the system is pretty much unchanged | from the socialist times.... standardized testing + grades are | used to get entry into colleges (and previously high schools). | No resumes, no diversity/affirmative actions, clubs, | volounteering etc... just grades+results. | lliamander wrote: | That sounds nice. | | Those other things are great, but have little value in terms | of academic success. I think that for people who do poorly in | academics but well in those other areas should have other | avenues of advancing themselves rather than being forced | through the college funnel. | jerojero wrote: | It could be nice if access to education is equitable. | | In chile we also have grades + standardized test + ranking | (your position versus your cohort). But the top | universities are filled with the top alumni from expensive | private schools because they are usually 1. given inflated | grades 2. trained to perform well on standardized tests (in | their own schools, theyre rich so they can afford this). | | If you look at OECD statistics with regards to quality of | education you will see that not everyone in the USA really | gets a good primary (and secondary) education and there are | gaps. This tends to not be the case in most of Europe... So | are standardized exams good for admissions in the USA? Not | sure. But obviously replacing it with curriculum might even | be worse. So what's really the answer? | charlieyu1 wrote: | School grades and ranking should never be used for | admission. Just standardised testing is good enough. It | brings everyone to the level field. | | I don't know the situation in Chile but surely even the | poor can buy books that tells you how to do standardised | tests right? | davesque wrote: | > Of course the real tragedy is that we fixate so much on | college | | This is what gets me. The whole concept of college, and | _especially_ selective, high profile colleges such as Harvard, | MIT, etc., seems antiquated and almost entirely manufactured at | this point. It 's artificially crafted scarcity designed to | create a market and brand. I feel the true, primary function of | these institutions is to give the rich and powerful a means to | identify each other and their respective pedigrees. Sure, they | throw the unwashed a few bones and let them take home some | degrees. But what do you actually get for your effort and | money? I can't believe the competitiveness is justified by an | actual difference in the quality of the experience or the | person that results from it. | aj7 wrote: | No no no. The thesis topics are in graduate schools are more | cutting edge, and the opportunity to interact with real | science as an undergraduate are invaluable. I would tend to | agree that excelling at a second tier university with a | comprehensive program is an acceptable start. It generally | gets you to a higher level. | | Competitiveness is about speed. Anyone can look something up. | It's about knowing things right off the bat, knowing what's | an unreasonable answer, estimating things, knowing what's | important. That takes years of education and practice. | | In the US, we have probably had 750,000 excess deaths in the | last two years because politicians do not have an intuition | about probability and statistics. This was generally true in | the West, but NOT in China and Asia in general, where the | leaders were more numerate. | ecshafer wrote: | College Admissions in the US is broken. This is a great move at | restoring normalcy though. The SAT or ACT are the best thing for | leveling the playing field between the rich and the poor. If | anything I would like to see more reliance on this. | | If I had my way the US would model the college admissions process | on the Chinese Gao Kao. Have everyone take the the exam, have | students list their preference for university, then sort from top | ranked to the bottom ranked filling open positions at | universities. This is fair, the only bias is ability, and it | removes all legacy, wealth and athletics factors. | vxNsr wrote: | This is kinda how medical residency is filled in the US, med | students rank their top choices, residency programs rank | their's. It's called The Match, and generally results in a very | fair equitable outcome. | 542458 wrote: | While the match isn't completely terrible, it still has some | pretty bad qualities. The most notable one is the "pay for | applications" issue. The odds of getting into your top picks | is constantly declining, and so the dominant strategy is to | apply to many residencies to maximize your chance of a | successful match - the number of picks the average applicant | submits has doubled in the past 15 years. But applying to | more programs can cost thousands of dollars, for no apparent | reason other than the enrichment of ERAS to the tune of about | $100 million per year. This obviously creates a system where | people with more money to burn can artificial create better | results for themselves. | | The simple answer here is to give each applicant a finite | number of picks regardless of means, but the ERAS admin has | no interest in this for obvious reasons. | | The other thing this pick arms race has done is produced far | more applicants for positions than makes any sense (the | average Otho placement gets 150 applicants). Not only does | this irritate program directors, this has also led to an | increase in automated filtering, and therefore an increase in | attempts to game automated filtering though things like bogus | publications (see: things like the stupid medbikini | publication which seemed like a poor attempt to add another | pub to somebody's resume). | 0000011111 wrote: | My dyslexia is so bad that these types of tests were/are a total | barrier to entry for me and folks like myself. | | Fortunately, tech is one high-paying industry where an IT degree | from a great university and certifications are not required to | get a job making good money. I was able to learn system | administration - network engineering at the community college and | use online resources. | | If there is one positive is that MIT has a very small | undergraduate class so the impact will be minimal across the | global cohorts of future college students. Perhaps perspective | students will stop applying to that school and focus their | application strategy on schools that do not have this | requirement. | lucidbee wrote: | I was a crappy student in HS and the only good thing about me was | my SAT scores. They got me into a good school. I ended up as a | highly ranked engineer at Microsoft. My heart sank when people | started not using the SAT. I hope this becomes a trend. | | I have also read that it is really really hard to show that | tutoring pays off for the SAT. I think the SAT is the fairest | part of the admissions package. | [deleted] | spoonjim wrote: | MIT stepping back from the insanity of the Current Thing. Will | anyone else follow? | gred wrote: | I suspect the engineering schools will be the least affected / | first to recover from this trend. | bradwschiller wrote: | It's clear the SAT/ACT has predictive power for highly-selective | colleges, such as MIT. And therefore, they are valuable for these | colleges - especially for the Math scores as MIT suggests. The | value of SAT/ACT scores decreases as selectivity decreases or as | math abilities matter less for admission (e.g., liberal arts | programs). | | Here are some related points: | | - Harvard considers roughly 4 in 5 applicants to be academically | capable of doing the work at Harvard (about 50,000 applicants of | which Harvard only accepts 2,000). This data is pulled from their | court documents, and my team wrote about it here: | https://writingcenter.prompt.com/posts/strong-essays-increas.... | | - This means that most applicants at highly-selective colleges | are very similar academically. Colleges are mostly just using | grades, academic rigor, and test scores to determine whether the | student will be able to succeed doing the work in college. Absent | other information on academic preparation (e.g., not having | access to AP/IB classes), the SAT/ACT score can be a critical | signal of whether the student can do the work. Students with | well-above-the-bar academics are admitted at a 3x clip to those | just above the academic bar. But other parts of the application | (e.g., essays, athletics) can have a much stronger effect on | admissions chances (e.g., a strong personal score, much of which | is essay-related, can have a 10x increase on admissions chances). | | - Math SAT really is highly predictive of math abilities. When I | was with McKinsey, we asked for applicants' SAT scores because it | was highly predictive of people succeeding at McKinsey. People | hired with scores below 700 struggled to succeed analytically. | So, McKinsey used 700 as a bar. MIT is roughly doing the same | thing here. Other colleges do this as well. | | - Outside of highly-selective institutions, the SAT/ACT can have | less predictive power in student success in college than other | factors (e.g., GPA). There are a bunch of great analyses at | fairtest.org that looks at these exams - e.g., breaking scores | down by race. | | So overall, we tend to give weight to what we know and what data | we're looking at. Most of the SAT/ACT analyses out there are | looking across all students. Here, MIT is looking at just their | proportion of students. So, both things can be true - the SAT/ACT | may not be a useful predictor for the vast majority of students. | But scores can (and do) matter for the highest performers, the | approximately 1% of high school graduates attending the most | selective colleges. | | And as MIT states, a perfect SAT/ACT score doesn't matter all | that much. All they're using the scores for is to provide an | indication of whether the student is above their bar for being | able to do the work (e.g., not failing multivariable calculus). | | Note: I did go to MIT - some of you may think this is relevant. I | also run the largest college essay coaching company globally, | Prompt.com. So I've spent a lot of time understanding college | admissions. | MiroF wrote: | > Harvard considers roughly 4 in 5 applicants to be | academically capable of doing the work at Harvard | | I have no doubt that this is true of Harvard. I mean, after | all, you can pick your own classes! That said, I think there | _is_ a difference between admitting just those capable of doing | the work vs. a set of some of the best of the best, in that | that second group will be the one filling the advanced physics | classes for first years or whatever. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-28 23:00 UTC)