4 ms·

As a high school student I find the hating on the SAT/ACT a little concerning, since once you remove standardized testing, admissions is primarily based on GPA(

As a high school student I find the hating on the SAT/ACT a little concerning, since once you remove standardized testing, admissions is primarily based on GPA(which imo has massive flaws the most important flaw being lack of consistency across schools). Also this article doesn't sound all that "scientific" to me.

oculusthrift 9y ago
honestly it seems to me that many that bash them are just insecure they didn't do well and therefore claim that it isn't a valid measure.
- deepnotderp 9y ago
  Well it stands to reason that if a test isn't a valid measure then those who are hurt most by it will be the most vocal complainers. That doesn't invalidate what the complainers have to say. There are numerous studies showing the poor validity of these standardized tests.
  - oculusthrift 9y ago
    depends what you mean by validity. they have been shown to strongly correlate with IQ.
- majormajor 9y ago
  There studies that seem legitimate that have found that a certain amount of prep can boost your score multiple tens of points. This is problematic if you want it to be a valid measure because it lets people artificially close the gap. Do you want the student with such a well-rounded education throughout their life that they got a >=99.9% score without needing to study, or the one who caught up by grinding for a few weeks without that same broad underlying fundamental base? If your test can't tell that apart, it's flawed, because access to the right prep is going to become a significant part of what you're measuring, and that access is (for obvious economic reasons) distributed along unequal lines, reinforcing the already-fortunate. My suspicion, since I doubt we can come up with a test to prep, is that the best answer is either (a) nobody preps or (b) everyone gets access to a lot of prep. The former seems impossible to enforce, plus is the sort of "individual liberty"-constraining thing that the politically dominant swathes of America hate. They want to be able to make their kids the best, they "earned it." The latter would be easier, but isn't without some complications, and of course is time that could be better spent on something other than maximizing a single metric.
jrochkind1 9y ago
What makes you think basing admissions on SAT/ACT does not also have 'major flaws'?
- Jach 9y ago
  I imagine because being nationally standardized, the SAT/ACT more reliably correlate to IQ. A 4.0 GPA means nothing but an A in all classes, which may give some insight into Conscientiousness, but it says nothing about what the classes covered, what the school averages at, and is thus harder to correlate with IQ. Since IQ+Conscientiousness is better than either alone, of course they'll want to consider both.
  - jrochkind1 9y ago
    IQ has "major flaws" too.
lightsighter 9y ago
I agree with you, but if I were an admissions officer I would also like to see the SAT/ACT be two different numbers: one being your score when you took it as a freshman and a second from late in your junior year so I can see the delta. If you're a great test taker and both scores are equally high I can see that, but I can also see the case where someone with a very low initial score might have improved it greatly to an average score and I can infer that they might not have the best IQ, but that they are at least working hard at improving, which is also a valuable signal from an admissions perspective. Maybe we should standardize when the tests are given and that there be multiple scores recorded over time.
- watwut 9y ago
  Or maybe they have high IQ, but were unmotivated to study for or perform during the test the first time. Maybe they had just bad studying strategy for the first time and wised up second time. Low IQ would mean that studying wont help you - leading to low results consistently. High IQ means you are capable of good results. The rest is down to a lot of factors that are not IQ.
watwut 9y ago
In addition, admissions based on GPA means that students are motivated to choose easy classes and lenient teachers whenever they have choice. IMO, system should not punish students for choosing out hard classes - if anything it should reward that.
- sjg007 9y ago
  Nope. Some classes are weighted higher to prevent this.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    I don't remember my high school report card having a difficulty rating on the class. I would be very interested in data on the number of high schools that do this weighting.
    - sjg007 9y ago
      AP classes graded at 5.0
      - protomyth 9y ago
        Ok, we didn't have (and they still don't) have AP classes at my old high school. How many school districts have AP classes that go to 5.0?
    - majormajor 9y ago
      When I was in high school in the Dallas area, AP classes were all weighted one-step-up-the-scale. A's were 5, B's were 4, etc. I forget the max GPA in our class, it was somewhere between 4 and 5, but I don't think it was the theoretical max you could get if you took as many AP classes as possible and got A's in all of them. Colleges weren't stupid about it, either, though. My brother had a lower GPA since he went to a smaller school with very few AP classes available, but did better relative to that curriculum than I did relevant to mine's, and he got more scholarship offers and quicker admission offers at the schools we both applied to. Even though my SAT was 10 points higher.
sjg007 9y ago
It's a game.. basically you have to prep for the test.

oculusthrift 9y ago

honestly it seems to me that many that bash them are just insecure they didn't do well and therefore claim that it isn't a valid measure.

deepnotderp 9y ago
Well it stands to reason that if a test isn't a valid measure then those who are hurt most by it will be the most vocal complainers. That doesn't invalidate what the complainers have to say. There are numerous studies showing the poor validity of these standardized tests.
- oculusthrift 9y ago
  depends what you mean by validity. they have been shown to strongly correlate with IQ.
majormajor 9y ago
There studies that seem legitimate that have found that a certain amount of prep can boost your score multiple tens of points. This is problematic if you want it to be a valid measure because it lets people artificially close the gap. Do you want the student with such a well-rounded education throughout their life that they got a >=99.9% score without needing to study, or the one who caught up by grinding for a few weeks without that same broad underlying fundamental base? If your test can't tell that apart, it's flawed, because access to the right prep is going to become a significant part of what you're measuring, and that access is (for obvious economic reasons) distributed along unequal lines, reinforcing the already-fortunate. My suspicion, since I doubt we can come up with a test to prep, is that the best answer is either (a) nobody preps or (b) everyone gets access to a lot of prep. The former seems impossible to enforce, plus is the sort of "individual liberty"-constraining thing that the politically dominant swathes of America hate. They want to be able to make their kids the best, they "earned it." The latter would be easier, but isn't without some complications, and of course is time that could be better spent on something other than maximizing a single metric.

jrochkind1 9y ago

What makes you think basing admissions on SAT/ACT does not also have 'major flaws'?

Jach 9y ago
I imagine because being nationally standardized, the SAT/ACT more reliably correlate to IQ. A 4.0 GPA means nothing but an A in all classes, which may give some insight into Conscientiousness, but it says nothing about what the classes covered, what the school averages at, and is thus harder to correlate with IQ. Since IQ+Conscientiousness is better than either alone, of course they'll want to consider both.
- jrochkind1 9y ago
  IQ has "major flaws" too.

lightsighter 9y ago

I agree with you, but if I were an admissions officer I would also like to see the SAT/ACT be two different numbers: one being your score when you took it as a freshman and a second from late in your junior year so I can see the delta. If you're a great test taker and both scores are equally high I can see that, but I can also see the case where someone with a very low initial score might have improved it greatly to an average score and I can infer that they might not have the best IQ, but that they are at least working hard at improving, which is also a valuable signal from an admissions perspective. Maybe we should standardize when the tests are given and that there be multiple scores recorded over time.

watwut 9y ago
Or maybe they have high IQ, but were unmotivated to study for or perform during the test the first time. Maybe they had just bad studying strategy for the first time and wised up second time. Low IQ would mean that studying wont help you - leading to low results consistently. High IQ means you are capable of good results. The rest is down to a lot of factors that are not IQ.

watwut 9y ago

In addition, admissions based on GPA means that students are motivated to choose easy classes and lenient teachers whenever they have choice. IMO, system should not punish students for choosing out hard classes - if anything it should reward that.

sjg007 9y ago
Nope. Some classes are weighted higher to prevent this.
- protomyth 9y ago
  I don't remember my high school report card having a difficulty rating on the class. I would be very interested in data on the number of high schools that do this weighting.
  - sjg007 9y ago
    AP classes graded at 5.0
    - protomyth 9y ago
      Ok, we didn't have (and they still don't) have AP classes at my old high school. How many school districts have AP classes that go to 5.0?
  - majormajor 9y ago
    When I was in high school in the Dallas area, AP classes were all weighted one-step-up-the-scale. A's were 5, B's were 4, etc. I forget the max GPA in our class, it was somewhere between 4 and 5, but I don't think it was the theoretical max you could get if you took as many AP classes as possible and got A's in all of them. Colleges weren't stupid about it, either, though. My brother had a lower GPA since he went to a smaller school with very few AP classes available, but did better relative to that curriculum than I did relevant to mine's, and he got more scholarship offers and quicker admission offers at the schools we both applied to. Even though my SAT was 10 points higher.

sjg007 9y ago

It's a game.. basically you have to prep for the test.