5 ms·

I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores (as done in India, Russia, maybe China?), and nothing else, might be the least unfair

I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores (as done in India, Russia, maybe China?), and nothing else, might be the least unfair way to judge applicants. Every admission system is unfair in some way but tests are a yardstick everyone understands and can optimize for. In India they publicly post the list of admitted students and their marks. Richer students may benefit from higher-quality test coaching but a) that happens today anyway and b) the Internet will ensure rapid dissemination of test-prep strategies for cheap or free The other downside is it might give you a more, for lack of a better word, boring student body at the higher levels. Fewer non-academic interests and achievements because every bit of spare time in high school was spent on studying. I thought the American system sounded better when I was a high-schooler in India with not good but not great marks ("surely they'd recognize my specialness despite my lower scores, even if these hidebound colleges in India won't!") but it does leave more room for implicit bias.

tlholaday 8y ago
Single-gate protocols reward investment in gate-deception.
- johan_larson 8y ago
  Multi-gate protocols do that too. The investment just gets more complicated.
- ksk 8y ago
  Any examples that are applicable here?
- jogjayr 8y ago
  Multi-gate protocols increase amount of gate-deception investment required, making it harder only for economically- or socially-disadvantaged students to subvert them. With a single-gate protocol gate-deception investments have diminishing returns, which could (I'm not an expert) put participants on a more level playing field.
acomjean 8y ago
The supreme court ruled that you can use a variety of metrics for admissions. Like hiring you have to try and make a transparent decision, not just "I feel like this person would work well", so everything gets measured and quantified. Harvard hired an analysis of their admissions: 196 page analysis of the admissions process. It seems like they rank 4 things: Academics/ extracurricular/ personality / athletics. You can see some comparison rankings on page 36 of Harvard's report - https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/files/expert_report_-_2017-12-15_dr._david_card_expert_report_updated_confid_desigs_redacted.pdf https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/file... From https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education I didn't go to harvard, but I work there.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  Thanks for providing that information. I respect that the admissions office at Harvard have a tough job and they've made it tougher, for the worthwhile goal of increasing diversity of student life experiences, for themselves by taking into account all these extra factors. And I know that the admissions office at every college is 100% committed to doing their jobs to the very best of their ability. But extracurricular activities and personality seem like things that are fundamentally incomparable. What's better, 3 years at a local soup kitchen or 2 summers in a developing nation teaching arts and crafts? Cello or acting? Public speaking skills or organizational ability? Ambitious go-getter or diplomatic consensus-builder? For all I know Harvard has a rubric for judging what's better or worse but at some level they all seem like subjective judgments prone to some sort of bias. My mental model of the implementation details of this system is most likely flawed but I don't see how you can get around this problem. Happy to learn more though.
perpetualpatzer 8y ago
> I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores [...] might be the least unfair way to judge applicants. Intentionally provocative question: is "least unfair" the right goal to solve for in college admissions? If a change to an admissions system makes it less "single-input->single-output" from the perspective of an applicant, but produces a positive effect elsewhere, what is the right standard to decide whether it was a good or bad change?
- jogjayr 8y ago
  I think optimizing for the lowest total unfairness in the system is a worthwhile goal. Fairness is the ideal that we strive for in every other part of society. The second part of your question is pretty vague so I don't know how to answer it.
johan_larson 8y ago
The more I read about the contortions US colleges go through in the name of social justice, the better scores-only admission looks to me.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  I'm genuinely curious to know if scores-only admission would deliver a more economically-diverse student population. I don't know how you'd investigate that though. My hypothesis is, if there's no benefit to doing expensive extracurricular activities, hiring a personal essay coach or college counselors, getting recommendation letters, and all the other ceremony, elite colleges might become more accessible to students of limited means. There's only so much of an advantage that expensive test coaching can give you, right?
  - johan_larson 8y ago
    The case where it might help is the bright kid from a working class background; you know, the kind who works part-time and therefore doesn't have time for extracurricular activities.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  My undergrad was basically scores only (gpa/SAT grid) and I’m in America. This is only an issue at the very elite schools.
  - jogjayr 8y ago
    Interesting. Thanks for providing that additional viewpoint. My impression, based on my experience navigating the American grad school admissions process, was that the undergrad process was the same thing turned up to 11. I read about personal essay writers and interview coaches and the right set of extracurricular activities.
    - akhilcacharya 8y ago
      Not at all, only for the top schools. I got into 2 of my state schools (1 of which is also being sued for this) and I was a very average student (#2 in class, 1500/1600, 66 college credits). You only need a fancy resume if you apply to the T20 schools, some of which are more selective if you’re from out of state.
dhruvarora013 8y ago
I think the Indian system seems fairer on the outset and more merit-based but there are definitely conditions attached to the entrance examinations. For instance, - It’s more than just a Boolean to get into the right school. Your score dictates what major you’ll study for the next 3-4 years. This idea single-handedly ruins it for most students as they try and game the system because they want to study what they’re interested in. On the flip side you’re training students in majors that they personally may have no interest in - The Indian system adds “quotas” for minorities but these percentages are fixed and don’t fluctuate over time. To make it worse they very publicly lower the bar for admissions since there’s two different scores that can now get you into the same university. This again leads a lot of students to try and game the system and forces the general populace to think of the system as unfair. - There is no age barrier and combined with the above reasons, you’ll see a lot of students take the entrance exams many years in a row after graduating high school to land the right school and major. A lot that don’t succeed settle for a major/school or worse - commit suicide. I think there’s a midpoint somewhere between the West’s opaque approach to college admissions and the East’s transparent yet rigid approach.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  > Your score dictates what major you’ll study for the next 3-4 years. Do you have more info available on that? That sounds really bizarre to me.
  - jogjayr 8y ago
    Unlike in American colleges, students in India apply to both a college and a major at that college. So competition for desirable majors in the top schools is cutthroat. If you don't get enough marks you don't get to study that major at that college - either go to a different college or (in the case of really high reputation institutes like the IITs) study something else at that college. Generally you can't change your major without changing your college and starting over (or at least from year 2) so it's almost never done. I saw a thread on Reddit the other day where someone explained the Russian system and it sounds similar to what we have in India: "Majors/minors. It's such a big deal in a lot of fiction, for example. But even though I read about it a lot of times, I still don't quite get it, along with class selection. In Russia, you choose a specialization when you enroll (e.g. Applied Math), and from the day one to the end, all students in your group will attend the same classes and take the same tests and exams. American system seems like a computer game's research tree to me - "you must unlock A, B and C before studying D", and somehow, it's your burden to keep track of what classes you attended and got grades in. WTF. Here, you just get a ready-made complete curriculum, no need to do anything but study. If you feel you chose a wrong specialization in the beginning, you might change it, and then things become a bit complicated, but it only happens rarely, and usually only right after the first semester." [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8qrh78/nonamericans_of_reddit_which_issues_frequently/e0lixeh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8qrh78/nonameric...
cascom 8y ago
I don't know much about the Indian system but what is missed in the discussion is that Harvard is NOT a technical university - it is a liberal arts program, and as such, one would expect a broader set of admission criteria than some other institutions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education
- jogjayr 8y ago
  Most Indian technical and medical colleges have common entrance exams administered at the state or national level. Other specialized degrees - film & TV, fashion design, advertising & journalism - have their own entrance procedures which take into account high school final marks (a state-level common examination that all high-schoolers take) and possibly aptitude tests and interviews. Arts, commerce, and science (non-engineering and technical) students (all of which sort of map to a liberal arts education in the US, albeit with different specializations) are admitted solely on the basis of high school final marks. Since a high school education is already pretty broad, wouldn't performance there be predictive of performance in a liberal arts institution? Obviously this is more of a problem in the US because you don't have common high-school final exams at a state or national level so it's hard to compare an A from High School Foo and an A- from High School Bar.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
>I thought the American system sounded better when I was a high-schooler in India with not good but not great marks You would probably have been lumped in and compared to the other Asian high-performers and would not have even gotten an interview.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  I wasn't a "high-performer" though. My high school marks were top 20%, my entrance exam scores were maybe 70th percentile if I'm generous with myself (I honestly don't remember). I was academically good, but not a standout performer. Like teenagers everywhere else I rationalized my laziness and underachievement by saying to myself "Oh but I have other hobbies, and I write well, and I'm not like those swotty scholars with their noses in schoolbooks all the time. An enlightened education system like America's with their personal essays would take all those other intangibles into account and therefore value me just as much!". Now that I'm older I'm starting to see the dark side of an admissions system with squishier, more malleable standards. I think it's possible that the current system, even with all its evils, is the most corruption- and bias-proof system possible in India. The only way to "hack" it is by outright fraud or other crimes - fake documents, leaking exam papers or otherwise tampering with the examination process. Otherwise everyone has to write the same exams, and study whatever their marks earn them (let's leave the additional complication of reservations out of this for now).
gspetr 8y ago
> I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores (as done in India, Russia, maybe China?) Russian here, this is not entirely correct. Instead of race you have region and when that region is 80-90%+ single ethnicity then a region division serves as "race-by-proxy". You can also get a certain region overrepresented (with regards to it's total population) and by extension certain ethnicity as well.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  I'm sorry I don't think I understood. I didn't mention race anywhere in my comment. You're saying that students from certain regions in Russia do better on tests and are therefore overrepresented in colleges?
  - gspetr 8y ago
    No, I'm saying that certain regions have a mandatory representation "floor", i.e. you can't have < X students of region Y in college Z.

tlholaday 8y ago

Single-gate protocols reward investment in gate-deception.

johan_larson 8y ago
Multi-gate protocols do that too. The investment just gets more complicated.
ksk 8y ago
Any examples that are applicable here?
jogjayr 8y ago
Multi-gate protocols increase amount of gate-deception investment required, making it harder only for economically- or socially-disadvantaged students to subvert them. With a single-gate protocol gate-deception investments have diminishing returns, which could (I'm not an expert) put participants on a more level playing field.

acomjean 8y ago

The supreme court ruled that you can use a variety of metrics for admissions. Like hiring you have to try and make a transparent decision, not just "I feel like this person would work well", so everything gets measured and quantified. Harvard hired an analysis of their admissions: 196 page analysis of the admissions process. It seems like they rank 4 things: Academics/ extracurricular/ personality / athletics. You can see some comparison rankings on page 36 of Harvard's report - https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/files/expert_report_-_2017-12-15_dr._david_card_expert_report_updated_confid_desigs_redacted.pdf https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/file... From https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education I didn't go to harvard, but I work there.

jogjayr 8y ago
Thanks for providing that information. I respect that the admissions office at Harvard have a tough job and they've made it tougher, for the worthwhile goal of increasing diversity of student life experiences, for themselves by taking into account all these extra factors. And I know that the admissions office at every college is 100% committed to doing their jobs to the very best of their ability. But extracurricular activities and personality seem like things that are fundamentally incomparable. What's better, 3 years at a local soup kitchen or 2 summers in a developing nation teaching arts and crafts? Cello or acting? Public speaking skills or organizational ability? Ambitious go-getter or diplomatic consensus-builder? For all I know Harvard has a rubric for judging what's better or worse but at some level they all seem like subjective judgments prone to some sort of bias. My mental model of the implementation details of this system is most likely flawed but I don't see how you can get around this problem. Happy to learn more though.

perpetualpatzer 8y ago

> I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores [...] might be the least unfair way to judge applicants. Intentionally provocative question: is "least unfair" the right goal to solve for in college admissions? If a change to an admissions system makes it less "single-input->single-output" from the perspective of an applicant, but produces a positive effect elsewhere, what is the right standard to decide whether it was a good or bad change?

jogjayr 8y ago
I think optimizing for the lowest total unfairness in the system is a worthwhile goal. Fairness is the ideal that we strive for in every other part of society. The second part of your question is pretty vague so I don't know how to answer it.

johan_larson 8y ago

The more I read about the contortions US colleges go through in the name of social justice, the better scores-only admission looks to me.

jogjayr 8y ago
I'm genuinely curious to know if scores-only admission would deliver a more economically-diverse student population. I don't know how you'd investigate that though. My hypothesis is, if there's no benefit to doing expensive extracurricular activities, hiring a personal essay coach or college counselors, getting recommendation letters, and all the other ceremony, elite colleges might become more accessible to students of limited means. There's only so much of an advantage that expensive test coaching can give you, right?
- johan_larson 8y ago
  The case where it might help is the bright kid from a working class background; you know, the kind who works part-time and therefore doesn't have time for extracurricular activities.
akhilcacharya 8y ago
My undergrad was basically scores only (gpa/SAT grid) and I’m in America. This is only an issue at the very elite schools.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  Interesting. Thanks for providing that additional viewpoint. My impression, based on my experience navigating the American grad school admissions process, was that the undergrad process was the same thing turned up to 11. I read about personal essay writers and interview coaches and the right set of extracurricular activities.
  - akhilcacharya 8y ago
    Not at all, only for the top schools. I got into 2 of my state schools (1 of which is also being sued for this) and I was a very average student (#2 in class, 1500/1600, 66 college credits). You only need a fancy resume if you apply to the T20 schools, some of which are more selective if you’re from out of state.

dhruvarora013 8y ago

I think the Indian system seems fairer on the outset and more merit-based but there are definitely conditions attached to the entrance examinations. For instance, - It’s more than just a Boolean to get into the right school. Your score dictates what major you’ll study for the next 3-4 years. This idea single-handedly ruins it for most students as they try and game the system because they want to study what they’re interested in. On the flip side you’re training students in majors that they personally may have no interest in - The Indian system adds “quotas” for minorities but these percentages are fixed and don’t fluctuate over time. To make it worse they very publicly lower the bar for admissions since there’s two different scores that can now get you into the same university. This again leads a lot of students to try and game the system and forces the general populace to think of the system as unfair. - There is no age barrier and combined with the above reasons, you’ll see a lot of students take the entrance exams many years in a row after graduating high school to land the right school and major. A lot that don’t succeed settle for a major/school or worse - commit suicide. I think there’s a midpoint somewhere between the West’s opaque approach to college admissions and the East’s transparent yet rigid approach.

crooked-v 8y ago
> Your score dictates what major you’ll study for the next 3-4 years. Do you have more info available on that? That sounds really bizarre to me.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  Unlike in American colleges, students in India apply to both a college and a major at that college. So competition for desirable majors in the top schools is cutthroat. If you don't get enough marks you don't get to study that major at that college - either go to a different college or (in the case of really high reputation institutes like the IITs) study something else at that college. Generally you can't change your major without changing your college and starting over (or at least from year 2) so it's almost never done. I saw a thread on Reddit the other day where someone explained the Russian system and it sounds similar to what we have in India: "Majors/minors. It's such a big deal in a lot of fiction, for example. But even though I read about it a lot of times, I still don't quite get it, along with class selection. In Russia, you choose a specialization when you enroll (e.g. Applied Math), and from the day one to the end, all students in your group will attend the same classes and take the same tests and exams. American system seems like a computer game's research tree to me - "you must unlock A, B and C before studying D", and somehow, it's your burden to keep track of what classes you attended and got grades in. WTF. Here, you just get a ready-made complete curriculum, no need to do anything but study. If you feel you chose a wrong specialization in the beginning, you might change it, and then things become a bit complicated, but it only happens rarely, and usually only right after the first semester." [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8qrh78/nonamericans_of_reddit_which_issues_frequently/e0lixeh/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8qrh78/nonameric...

cascom 8y ago

I don't know much about the Indian system but what is missed in the discussion is that Harvard is NOT a technical university - it is a liberal arts program, and as such, one would expect a broader set of admission criteria than some other institutions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

jogjayr 8y ago
Most Indian technical and medical colleges have common entrance exams administered at the state or national level. Other specialized degrees - film & TV, fashion design, advertising & journalism - have their own entrance procedures which take into account high school final marks (a state-level common examination that all high-schoolers take) and possibly aptitude tests and interviews. Arts, commerce, and science (non-engineering and technical) students (all of which sort of map to a liberal arts education in the US, albeit with different specializations) are admitted solely on the basis of high school final marks. Since a high school education is already pretty broad, wouldn't performance there be predictive of performance in a liberal arts institution? Obviously this is more of a problem in the US because you don't have common high-school final exams at a state or national level so it's hard to compare an A from High School Foo and an A- from High School Bar.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

>I thought the American system sounded better when I was a high-schooler in India with not good but not great marks You would probably have been lumped in and compared to the other Asian high-performers and would not have even gotten an interview.

jogjayr 8y ago
I wasn't a "high-performer" though. My high school marks were top 20%, my entrance exam scores were maybe 70th percentile if I'm generous with myself (I honestly don't remember). I was academically good, but not a standout performer. Like teenagers everywhere else I rationalized my laziness and underachievement by saying to myself "Oh but I have other hobbies, and I write well, and I'm not like those swotty scholars with their noses in schoolbooks all the time. An enlightened education system like America's with their personal essays would take all those other intangibles into account and therefore value me just as much!". Now that I'm older I'm starting to see the dark side of an admissions system with squishier, more malleable standards. I think it's possible that the current system, even with all its evils, is the most corruption- and bias-proof system possible in India. The only way to "hack" it is by outright fraud or other crimes - fake documents, leaking exam papers or otherwise tampering with the examination process. Otherwise everyone has to write the same exams, and study whatever their marks earn them (let's leave the additional complication of reservations out of this for now).

gspetr 8y ago

> I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores (as done in India, Russia, maybe China?) Russian here, this is not entirely correct. Instead of race you have region and when that region is 80-90%+ single ethnicity then a region division serves as "race-by-proxy". You can also get a certain region overrepresented (with regards to it's total population) and by extension certain ethnicity as well.

jogjayr 8y ago
I'm sorry I don't think I understood. I didn't mention race anywhere in my comment. You're saying that students from certain regions in Russia do better on tests and are therefore overrepresented in colleges?
- gspetr 8y ago
  No, I'm saying that certain regions have a mandatory representation "floor", i.e. you can't have < X students of region Y in college Z.