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MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

78 points by jchernan 5y ago

chrisseaton 5y ago
Seems like at the moment high-school students in the US have to do two sets of exams - their normal high-school graduation exams, and also the SAT or ACT. Is that right? Why don't they use the results from one for the other? Use SAT for high-school graduation, or use high-school graduation results for university admission.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  High school graduation results are definitely not standardized nationwide and could potentially be easier to rig. Of course, the effect of eliminating SAT/ACT could mean that other factors (like social connections, reported grades like your high school graduation test, etc) will end up being more heavily relied upon, and these could possibly be easier to rig or be more dependent on a wealthy family. Hard to tell, but the play dough squishes out somewhere, right?
- __palo_alto__ 5y ago
  Most high schools in the US don't have graduation exams. Even for ones that do, there's no standardized high school graduation exam nationwide.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Most high schools in the US don't have graduation exams. So how do people fail to graduate high-school?
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Either by failing the individual classes, or by dropping out.
    - vsef 5y ago
      In the US system you pass/fail each class based on exams and coursework and there is a minimum set of classes required to pass to graduate. The pass/fail is at the class level, there is no separate set of final overall exams as in other systems.
    - mattnewton 5y ago
      They fail to complete a minimum number of classes with passing grades. If the bar sounds low and subjective, that’s because it often is, and as such I think it’s mostly useless for colleges looking to measure students against each other to choose who to admit.
      - jcims 5y ago
        My brother passed 12th grade but didn’t have enough English credits to get his diploma. I always thought that was a weird situation to be in, congrats you’re done with school.
    - CrazyStat 5y ago
      By failing to pass required classes, for example because they didn't turn in any homework.
    - crysin 5y ago
      By failing your courses and or dropping out. High Schools in the US don't have a static curriculum. Not all students graduating will have taken Algebra 2, Pre-Calc, trig. They also may not have taken Physics or a lot of the other sciences. Most public High Schools in the US are honestly extremely hard to fail out of. As long as you get C's in all your classes you'll graduate.
    - OldManAndTheCpp 5y ago
      The class grades are made up of some mix of: * Graded homework * Papers/Project/Labs * Midterm/Final Exam The teacher chooses the exact mix per class, so it's possible you fail even if you ace the exams, or pass even if you fail the exams. This variability is why the standardized tests exist.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        I guess it makes sense to do as little as possible to scrape a C or whatever the passing grade is while at high-school and spend all your time optimising for the SAT then instead? Or not that simple?
        OldManAndTheCpp 5y ago
        College admissions are similarly a blend of different criteria: race, high school grades, did one of your parents go to that school (legacy), did your family donate to the school, are you a good athlete, are you a good musician, and of course what is your ACT or SAT score. The exact weightings are not known to the students applying, but it's safe to say you can't just minmax on the standardized test. I don't know if you've picked up the tone of some of the other comments in this thread, but people feel very strongly about what factors should be considered in college admissions. Almost no people will defend legacy admissions, few will defend athletic admissions, some will defend musicians, many will defend GPA and standardized testing. College admissions are zero sum, and different weightings benefit one group over another. For example, "Asians" (the US does not differentiate South Asian [India, etc] from East Asians [China, Korea, Japan]) have very high test scores in the US. If you base your college admissions just on taking the people with the highest test scores, you would get a massive over-representation of Asians. Schools have decided that isn't what they want, so they take people with worse test scores in order to "balance" the student population. This infuriates the people passed over in the name of "balance", naturally.
    - btkramer9 5y ago
      I believe at age 16 the government can't force you to go to school anymore. So one would just stop going to class, putting in the "butts in seats" time and never finish the required classes to graduate. I guess that's basically what dropping out means
- mattnewton 5y ago
  High schools typically do not have graduation exams in the sense that there are standard exams that are required for your degree. It depends on the state; some states may have standardized tests, some may have much looser requirements. The standards for graduation across schools are massively different and the SAT/ACT is a private “solution” to the problem of measuring students across regions, for college admissions.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > High schools typically do not have graduation exams in the sense that there are standard exams that are required for your degree. Nor do other schools...?
    - mattnewton 5y ago
      US high schools that is. There are definitely countries that require an exam score for a diploma and some fields where you have to pass a test to get your degree.
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- krapht 5y ago
  Most students do not have a normal high-school graduation exam. Neither is there a national US school curriculum. Therefore, it is difficult to compare GPAs between students from different school systems. The SAT is also a thinly disguised IQ test, so it serves a different purpose anyway compared to high school grade records. A lot of people have strong feelings against the SAT, but I actually think it's somewhat egalitarian. Before the SAT, prestigious colleges would only recruit from well-known feeder high schools whose curriculum was known to be rigorous. Since there is no unifying national curriculum, something like it is necessary so students from worse high-schools have a shot at getting into the nicer universities.
- bullfightonmars 5y ago
  US students don't have graduation exams per-se, there are no standardized tests for graduating. The final exams High School seniors take are dependent on the curriculum they have chosen and are written/defined by their teachers. The outcome of these tests is reflected in the student's course grades and is reflected in their GPA (Grade Point Average) for their entire High School career. The SAT or ACT are only used for College/University applications.
- gkolli 5y ago
  note: graduated in 2018 at a public high school in California we didn't have any "graduation exams" as many other countries do - just needed to pass the required courses to gain the high school diploma. Our state testing exams were mainly to address progress, as the Exit Exam was suspended in 2015. Even if we had these graduation exams, they also may vary depending on school, district, and state.
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- easton 5y ago
  High schools vary wildly in how rigorous they are, one high school you could get a 4.0 by taking four years of underwater basket weaving, another school you could get a 3.4 because you took AP Calculus/Bio/Physics your senior year and they were tough. Not to mention that sometimes your school weighs your GPA differently and that makes those numbers not make sense. The SAT is administered by a private "not-for-profit" corporation (College Board) and doesn't test anything like history or science that most schools try to teach kids (well, probably all schools have a requirement). And every time someone wants to put together a national test as a replacement, it gets shot down (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for not good reasons). I did AP all four years of high school because I found the normal classes too boring, and my GPA probably would've been higher if I hadn't, but I got into college.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    Even worse, grade inflation is going in the other direction. Not only do most schools have broad requirements for A and B level grades, but some give a 5 for an A if an honors course and a 6 for an AP or college level class.
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- OldManAndTheCpp 5y ago
  The purpose of standardized testing is the standardized part. It's a convenient way to compare students from different schools. The per school graduation exams have the benefit of allowing customization on a per school (per class, even) basis. This customization is one of the good things about the US education system, IMO. We are not like Germany, with the track set for the student (Gymnasium vs trade school) at middle school age, nor are we like India, China, and Japan (single extremely high stakes test). US schooling is uneven. Some of the schools are very good (well funded private, religious schools with a focus on schooling instead of dogma, public schools in wealthy areas). Some are terrible (public schools in poor areas, public schools in cities). Standardized testing, when viewed from one angle, makes the world more even: the test "doesn't care" (debated) what race you are, the wealth of your parents, etc. It "objectively" (debated) measures aptitude, giving equal opportunity to all. I'm fairly sympathetic to that view, and I'm also skeptical that removing the standardized testing requirements will lead to more equality. Standardized testing seems like the method least susceptible to rigging by rich parents, what will they replace it with that is fairer?
- thrower123 5y ago
  Many US high schools have all kinds of weird, nebulous graduation requirements. I had to come up with forty or fifty hours of volunteer work and put together a giant 3" binder of work examples, extra-curricular awards, and other garbage that I had to present to a tribunal of teachers. Complete waste of time.
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easton 5y ago
Did SAT/ACT scores ever make a difference in applications here? I know they probably cut off around 1300-1400 (as do plenty of schools), but my understanding was that MIT wanted you to be doing tons of extracurriculars and other stuff that wasn't represented by standardized tests anyway.
- jeremyis 5y ago
  IMO high scores were a necessary but not sufficient condition. It was definitely a data point used
  - ghaff 5y ago
    The system when I was familiar with it basically used SAT/GPA as one axis and other stuff on another axis. So you needed to hit some cutoff but if all you had was a perfect SAT, that wasn't enough.
Google234 5y ago
This will definitely help make it easier for admissions to discriminate against Asian students.
- chaps 5y ago
  Out of ignorance - how so?
  - adpirz 5y ago
    https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171
- refraincomment 5y ago
  From a business perspective it must be more lucrative to select candidates by their cultural projection and the money connections than on the basis of academic potential. I suppose that is true for MIT, for mainstream media, and for US corporations.
- refraincomment 5y ago
  We can compare the audience of an flamewar post about racism in US, vs the readership of a paper on fixed point theorems, and it makes sense that organizations that don't care about science like US universities choose to favor the former.
- tzs 5y ago
  MIT undergraduates in the class of 2024 are 42% Asian. White is 39%. What makes you think MIT discriminates against Asian students?
  - underpand 5y ago
    It's low compared to some base rates. 60% of 750 - 800 math SAT scorers are Asian https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ccf_20170201_reeves_2.png?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C9999px&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/... I looked through the list of USAMO finalists in recent years and > 80% have Asian surnames.
porb121 5y ago
> we do expect to return to requiring the SAT/ACT once it is possible for everyone to take them safely Fine with this being temporary. Much less fine with the schools who have completely abandoned the SAT/ACT in the name of equality while still considering things like personal essays and extracurriculars, which are way more liable to be gamed by the wealthy than the SAT.
- pmiller2 5y ago
  You know test prep courses are a thing, and that the wealthy are the primary consumers of them, right? Pretty much everything in the USA is pay to win.
  - porb121 5y ago
    I'd rather have people paying for test prep services than essay ghostwriters or fraudulent extracurriculars.
  - kansface 5y ago
    Test prep has a more or less negligible effect size. Extra curriculars and paying someone to write your essay for you on the other hand are all about privilege.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I know the test prep industry is bigger today than it used to be- but I assume you can still just buy a test prep book(s) and study like I did.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        Or even check out a test prep book from the library.
  - paconbork 5y ago
    Yes, and high-quality free prep solutions exist: https://www.khanacademy.org/SAT https://www.khanacademy.org/SAT Spending 10k on a prep class isn't going to cause your dimwitted child to outperform a bright kid from a disadvantaged background, but it can probably buy a better essay
whack 5y ago
On the one hand, it is ridiculous that one of the main metrics used in admissions is a glorified IQ test. On the other hand, it is ridiculous that we don't have a single commonly used standardized-exam that evaluates proficiency and expertise in the core curriculum. I know America has a serious NIH syndrome, but the situation could be improved overnight if every single public school adopted the GCSE/A levels or IB curriculum and exams. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCE_Advanced_Level_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCE_Advanced_Level_(United_Kin... https://www.ibo.org/about-the-ib/ https://www.ibo.org/about-the-ib/
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > On the one hand, it is ridiculous that one of the main metrics used in admissions is a glorified IQ test. On the other hand, it is ridiculous that we don't have a single commonly used standardized-exam that evaluates proficiency and expertise in the core curriculum. You don't like the use of an IQ test in school admissions, and you want to establish an IQ test instead?
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Standardized national exams on proficiency in math, languages, science, etc... are very different from IQ tests and only somewhat correlated with IQ, being instead much more strongly correlated with consciensciousness, and generally how good of a student you are and will be.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      This is completely untrue.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10212-011-0099-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10212-011-0099-9 Personality traits are much more strongly correlated with academic aptitude than IQ is. If you disagree, you should provide a source.
austincheney 5y ago
So many university recruiters at that level just suggest a minimum application criteria after which a lottery is applied to select acceptable applicants. A truly randomized lottery would ensure no bias in student selection. If you have, let’s say, 3000 open positions and 15,000 applications of which all are academically qualified does it really matter who they pick for admission? It’s not like there is going to be any real world performance difference between candidate 1200 and 12000 if they are valedictorians with 4.0 GPAs.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > It’s not like there is going to be any real world performance difference between candidate 1200 and 12000 if they are valedictorians with 4.0 GPAs. It's fun to say things! On the other hand, it's not like people haven't thought of this before. https://sci-hub.se/10.1037/0021-9010.86.4.718 https://sci-hub.se/10.1037/0021-9010.86.4.718
  - paconbork 5y ago
    That was a really interesting paper, thank you for posting it
  - austincheney 5y ago
    Is 180 IQ the baseline of admission into schools like Harvard or MIT? No, its not. Apples and oranges. Most biased comments about college admission always get hung up on one of two irrelevant qualities: * illusory perceptions that childhood genius far outside even their selective populations somehow equate to real world adult performance * a selection bias that schools must supremely optimize some precise quality during admissions that they don't nurture or measure Instead of you just look at the data, remove all the emotional nonsense, and assign everybody a number with a set of performance metrics most of what people care about are things the schools care nothing about and ultimately don't matter.
- pooper 5y ago
  > valedictorians with 4.0 GPAs Not trying to say you are wrong and not trying to claim any kind of authority as I have zero insider knowledge of college admissions process but just thinking out loud as a student, there can be a world of difference between an A from one teacher to an A from another teacher from the same school. Now if we extrapolate it across schools throughout the nation (we have not even gotten into international students), there is a wide gulf. I like your solution though and this is probably very easily feasible without much protest assuming we reserve a small portion of the seats for donors and/or "legacy". Although, probably would be better just auctioning off those seats to the highest bidder now that I think about it. We will still treat everyone equally after students are admitted (and all auctions are nonrefundable) but we don't have to leave money on the table with an auction system for a small portion of the available seats.
rabbits77 5y ago
So the next freshman class won’t have to pay someone to take the test for them? What a relief!
- deleted 5y ago
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ericmay 5y ago
One question on my mind (as someone who has a master's degree and engineering degree and has never taken the ACT/SAT) is how kids will go about showing pure intellectual merit? Like let's say you grow up ok but you can't really afford to join the ski club or for a tutor and maybe you work in the evenings but you crush the SAT/ACT because you're incredibly intelligent. How will universities like MIT take that into account? If we're talking about merit - boy that sure speaks of merit to me compared to a laundry list of clubs, activities, and organizations that the kids with hyper-dedicated parents or lots of money have on their applications. I'll also say, I didn't take either of these tests and came from a family where to this day I'm still the only one to attend college, but if I had taken the SAT or ACT and scored remarkably well - I think that would have opened doors I didn't even know exist. High school counselor ideally would have noticed a high score and helped with applications. I don't like these tests but I have to imagine a subset of the population uses them to great effect. Like many things, it seems, I bet that removal of these tests will result in bifurcation in the education system, or will wind up hurting poorer students (while making the middle extremely competitive). Anyway. There are so many problems with the university system, starting with using universities to train workers, that it's difficult to feel emotion anymore around the issue because it's so overwhelming. -edit- For what it's worth I don't know if the SAT/ACT are a good show of intellect. And these tests can be effectively gamed - not just illegally as we saw with the recent scandal but with tutors and test prep. -edit 2- Many students who are intelligent but grow up poor have a difficult time in universities, especially when they don't get to take the same classes as their peers did in high school. I know I'm probably an average student, but when I went to my calculus classes after being out of high school for around 5 years I could grasp how to do derivatives and their meaning, but couldn't understand the log functions or trigonometry. So I'd do most of the homework and take the quizzes, then bomb the exams when these concepts came into play. I felt miserable and I didn't know how to study or how to even really get help - I didn't even have a concept of what I didn't know. I just thought I was dumb. It took 3 tries but I eventually got enough help and practice (thanks Khan Academy and others) to make it through, graduate, and go on to do other things. Fortunately I had training in resilience from the military. What about that kid who grows up crushes a standardized test and fails a class and then thinks that they're stupid and they don't know how to ask for help or can't afford tutoring? Those kids maybe they fail out, or maybe they have mediocre grades so when they go to try and get a job they're competing against 3.8s with tons of on-campus activities. Yet again perpetuating the cycle of getting dumped on. Needs lots of luck or persistence to break the cycle.
currymj 5y ago
The 25th percentile student at MIT gets a 790 math SAT, it's 730 for language. Difference between 790 and 800 is basically luck. It's at the point where the test can only hurt you not help you. There's no upside, but if you don't prepare, or happen to have a bad day, it can ruin your chances. For students applying to MIT-caliber schools it's a hoop to jump through, not an opportunity to distinguish themselves. I am honestly curious how the MIT admissions office is able to use the SAT to predict anything about student success, given a huge majority of the students got a nearly perfect score. It seems like there should be almost no signal.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > I am honestly curious how the MIT admissions office is able to use the SAT to predict anything about student success, given a huge majority of the students got a nearly perfect score. A huge majority of the students who got accepted (since those are the only ones you're looking at) got a nearly perfect score. But only about 7% of students who apply to MIT get accepted. SAT scores, back when they were required to be provided, were one of the primary filters on applicants. (Not to mention the "filter" of many kids not even applying because they knew their scores were too low for them to be considered.)
nickysielicki 5y ago
> Students who have not already taken the SAT/ACT, and cannot find a forthcoming opportunity to do so safely are discouraged from taking the test, in order to protect their personal health, as well as the health of their family and community. We will not make any negative presumptions regarding academic preparation based solely on the absence of SAT/ACT scores, but will instead make the best, most informed decision we can by rigorously assessing other academic aspects of their application (such as grades, coursework, and other examinations). This is getting ridiculous. Imagine if your kid puts in the hours and hours of studying and pulls off a 35 on their ACT -- at a school like MIT, that's not enough (considered alone) to get in. How are you and your kid going to feel when they give her spot to someone who didn't even submit a standardized test score?
- kirykl 5y ago
  Loving that full scholarship at a competing school
  - nickysielicki 5y ago
    That option existed regardless -- being forced to take it isn't exactly a silver lining.
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    But not loving that lower salary over the course of a lifetime as much.
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  That's never been enough by itself to get into MIT. This just gives them more cover to be even more biased.
ffggvv 5y ago
Help me reconcile this: 1. Asking for voter id is racist because it disproportionately effects black voters. 2. Making this move that disproportionately effects Asian students is not racist?
beebmam 5y ago
I'd like to point out that there's an egalitarian approach to college admissions that I found interesting. Every single time I've brought it up with people, no matter their politics, they got angry about it, but I think it would be interesting to see it implemented and then compare the outcomes. A lottery system of admissions, with a guarantee of admission to at least some universities. It's described here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/admit-everybody/ https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/admit-everybody/
- porb121 5y ago
  I've heard of similar proposals for funding grants; have a first pass to make sure the grant proposals aren't total BS, then lottery among those that pass.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  That assumes that the primary purpose of higher education is education, instead of maintaining social stratification under the auspices of meritocracy.
option 5y ago
So there will be no “standard” tests (with all their pros and cons) but there still will be “essays”, and “extracurricular clubs/activities” preparing for which (and joining the clubs) are far more expensive.
trentnix 5y ago
Well that's one way to hide your discrimination against Asian kids.
rychco 5y ago
Most people have already mentioned that this change could result in discrimination, but I think it's also extremely important to note that these high school students are extremely overworked. If a student is a top-tier applicant that has good grades, plays a sport, participates in a club or two, volunteers, & has a part-time job, they are easily working a minimum of 60+ hours per week. There is absolutely no way this can continue. I was pissed about this when I was in high school ~8 years ago, and it's only gotten worse since. EDIT: Downvoted because I'm advocating for teens to not have to spend all of their waking hours preparing for college & instead get enough sleep or do something enjoyable?
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Selecting for students who have a track record of success in spite of 60-hours of time being "spoken for" is a not unreasonable selection process for students who will succeed at MIT.
  - rychco 5y ago
    The 60h/week figure is what I observed ~8 years ago for my peers to be competitive for our state university that was not MIT or an Ivy. My point is that I think students are being overworked because the requirements are too subjective. A student has to be involved in everything on top of having great grades and scores because the SAT/ACT was the only thing that was even close to being an objective requirement.
- souprock 5y ago
  For schools and scholarships, I often see the requirement for volunteer hours. (not really "volunteer" if required though) This is discrimination against people who need employment. It's a luxury to get transportation to a volunteer location, and then spend hours there, without any income earned.
Arubis 5y ago
Am I the only one surprised it was still required? I'd gathered that many high- and top-tiered US uni's had swapped to "accepted, not required" over a decade ago. Perhaps the momentum here swung back in light of conversations around the way this applies towards different races/ethnicities?
TechBro8615 5y ago
MIT already has enough applicants with close to perfect SAT scores that they could fill their class multiple times over. So this is a bit of a meaningless differentiator and tbh might even negatively affect someone who e.g. has below average grades but tests well.
specialist 5y ago
Like a lot of things, the pandemic will be used as cover to stop (or change) stuff everyone hates, but otherwise don't have the courage to discontinue otherwise. -- Is anyone using lotteries as part of admissions? My interest in lotteries comes thru 1) warming up to the notion of sortition, 2) tired of the food fight over affirmative action, and 3) rejection of ever increasing bureaucracy and credentialing. As a mental model, I'm starting to think of lotteries as an optimization technique. -- I briefly worked on some student facing stuff in higher ed. The course registration stuff is insane. There's got to be more fair, easier to administrate systems. Something like an auction. Release some fraction of courses every time interval. Figure out some rational way to prioritize bids. Like add weight for seniority, students in program, declared major. Or whatever. Then administrators can add or remove courses, sections, labs, whatever as needed. -- Now that our university monopolies have been privatized, why hasn't Freedom Markets™ logic prevailed? Raise supply to meet demand. Higher ed loves government pork. But are completely unaccountable. If we are states are no longer willing to adjudicate bottom up, they must now impose some kind of top down pressure. The most simple idea I can think of is raid (radical cashectomies) the endowments. Use it or lose. Compel places like MIT and Harvard to spend down their hoard. Increase slots. Add campuses. Adopt other universities and invest in them, like scholastic version of sport farm teams. Let Freedom Markets™ sing!
boucher 5y ago
I recommend this episode of This American Life if you're interested in hearing more about the current debate over the SATs and schools choosing not to use them: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/734/the-campus-tour-has-been-cancelled https://www.thisamericanlife.org/734/the-campus-tour-has-bee...
mariksolo 5y ago
Anecdotal evidence, but I did well on the SAT and spent very little money. I bought a few books, but easily could have pirated them online (like I did for all of my AP tests previously). I think the SAT is likely more egalitarian than extracurriculars, although I cannot comment on its effectiveness as an indicator for college performance. Someone who has to work after high school to support their family would not have the time or energy to play sports, do choir, run clubs, etc. But they could go to the library, pirate some books, print out the pages and practice 20 minutes a day starting 10-12 months ahead of time. It would be more difficult, of course, but I still think studying for a test is easier and cheaper than having extensive extracurriculars. Anecdotally, I've also always heard SAT test prep is a waste of money.

78 points by jchernan 5y ago

Seems like at the moment high-school students in the US have to do two sets of exams - their normal high-school graduation exams, and also the SAT or ACT. Is that right? Why don't they use the results from one for the other? Use SAT for high-school graduation, or use high-school graduation results for university admission.

Robotbeat 5y ago
High school graduation results are definitely not standardized nationwide and could potentially be easier to rig. Of course, the effect of eliminating SAT/ACT could mean that other factors (like social connections, reported grades like your high school graduation test, etc) will end up being more heavily relied upon, and these could possibly be easier to rig or be more dependent on a wealthy family. Hard to tell, but the play dough squishes out somewhere, right?
__palo_alto__ 5y ago
Most high schools in the US don't have graduation exams. Even for ones that do, there's no standardized high school graduation exam nationwide.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Most high schools in the US don't have graduation exams. So how do people fail to graduate high-school?
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Either by failing the individual classes, or by dropping out.
  - vsef 5y ago
    In the US system you pass/fail each class based on exams and coursework and there is a minimum set of classes required to pass to graduate. The pass/fail is at the class level, there is no separate set of final overall exams as in other systems.
  - mattnewton 5y ago
    They fail to complete a minimum number of classes with passing grades. If the bar sounds low and subjective, that’s because it often is, and as such I think it’s mostly useless for colleges looking to measure students against each other to choose who to admit.
    - jcims 5y ago
      My brother passed 12th grade but didn’t have enough English credits to get his diploma. I always thought that was a weird situation to be in, congrats you’re done with school.
  - CrazyStat 5y ago
    By failing to pass required classes, for example because they didn't turn in any homework.
  - crysin 5y ago
    By failing your courses and or dropping out. High Schools in the US don't have a static curriculum. Not all students graduating will have taken Algebra 2, Pre-Calc, trig. They also may not have taken Physics or a lot of the other sciences. Most public High Schools in the US are honestly extremely hard to fail out of. As long as you get C's in all your classes you'll graduate.
  - OldManAndTheCpp 5y ago
    The class grades are made up of some mix of: * Graded homework * Papers/Project/Labs * Midterm/Final Exam The teacher chooses the exact mix per class, so it's possible you fail even if you ace the exams, or pass even if you fail the exams. This variability is why the standardized tests exist.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      I guess it makes sense to do as little as possible to scrape a C or whatever the passing grade is while at high-school and spend all your time optimising for the SAT then instead? Or not that simple?
      - OldManAndTheCpp 5y ago
        College admissions are similarly a blend of different criteria: race, high school grades, did one of your parents go to that school (legacy), did your family donate to the school, are you a good athlete, are you a good musician, and of course what is your ACT or SAT score. The exact weightings are not known to the students applying, but it's safe to say you can't just minmax on the standardized test. I don't know if you've picked up the tone of some of the other comments in this thread, but people feel very strongly about what factors should be considered in college admissions. Almost no people will defend legacy admissions, few will defend athletic admissions, some will defend musicians, many will defend GPA and standardized testing. College admissions are zero sum, and different weightings benefit one group over another. For example, "Asians" (the US does not differentiate South Asian [India, etc] from East Asians [China, Korea, Japan]) have very high test scores in the US. If you base your college admissions just on taking the people with the highest test scores, you would get a massive over-representation of Asians. Schools have decided that isn't what they want, so they take people with worse test scores in order to "balance" the student population. This infuriates the people passed over in the name of "balance", naturally.
  - btkramer9 5y ago
    I believe at age 16 the government can't force you to go to school anymore. So one would just stop going to class, putting in the "butts in seats" time and never finish the required classes to graduate. I guess that's basically what dropping out means
mattnewton 5y ago
High schools typically do not have graduation exams in the sense that there are standard exams that are required for your degree. It depends on the state; some states may have standardized tests, some may have much looser requirements. The standards for graduation across schools are massively different and the SAT/ACT is a private “solution” to the problem of measuring students across regions, for college admissions.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > High schools typically do not have graduation exams in the sense that there are standard exams that are required for your degree. Nor do other schools...?
  - mattnewton 5y ago
    US high schools that is. There are definitely countries that require an exam score for a diploma and some fields where you have to pass a test to get your degree.
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krapht 5y ago
Most students do not have a normal high-school graduation exam. Neither is there a national US school curriculum. Therefore, it is difficult to compare GPAs between students from different school systems. The SAT is also a thinly disguised IQ test, so it serves a different purpose anyway compared to high school grade records. A lot of people have strong feelings against the SAT, but I actually think it's somewhat egalitarian. Before the SAT, prestigious colleges would only recruit from well-known feeder high schools whose curriculum was known to be rigorous. Since there is no unifying national curriculum, something like it is necessary so students from worse high-schools have a shot at getting into the nicer universities.
bullfightonmars 5y ago
US students don't have graduation exams per-se, there are no standardized tests for graduating. The final exams High School seniors take are dependent on the curriculum they have chosen and are written/defined by their teachers. The outcome of these tests is reflected in the student's course grades and is reflected in their GPA (Grade Point Average) for their entire High School career. The SAT or ACT are only used for College/University applications.
gkolli 5y ago
note: graduated in 2018 at a public high school in California we didn't have any "graduation exams" as many other countries do - just needed to pass the required courses to gain the high school diploma. Our state testing exams were mainly to address progress, as the Exit Exam was suspended in 2015. Even if we had these graduation exams, they also may vary depending on school, district, and state.
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easton 5y ago
High schools vary wildly in how rigorous they are, one high school you could get a 4.0 by taking four years of underwater basket weaving, another school you could get a 3.4 because you took AP Calculus/Bio/Physics your senior year and they were tough. Not to mention that sometimes your school weighs your GPA differently and that makes those numbers not make sense. The SAT is administered by a private "not-for-profit" corporation (College Board) and doesn't test anything like history or science that most schools try to teach kids (well, probably all schools have a requirement). And every time someone wants to put together a national test as a replacement, it gets shot down (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for not good reasons). I did AP all four years of high school because I found the normal classes too boring, and my GPA probably would've been higher if I hadn't, but I got into college.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Even worse, grade inflation is going in the other direction. Not only do most schools have broad requirements for A and B level grades, but some give a 5 for an A if an honors course and a 6 for an AP or college level class.
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OldManAndTheCpp 5y ago
The purpose of standardized testing is the standardized part. It's a convenient way to compare students from different schools. The per school graduation exams have the benefit of allowing customization on a per school (per class, even) basis. This customization is one of the good things about the US education system, IMO. We are not like Germany, with the track set for the student (Gymnasium vs trade school) at middle school age, nor are we like India, China, and Japan (single extremely high stakes test). US schooling is uneven. Some of the schools are very good (well funded private, religious schools with a focus on schooling instead of dogma, public schools in wealthy areas). Some are terrible (public schools in poor areas, public schools in cities). Standardized testing, when viewed from one angle, makes the world more even: the test "doesn't care" (debated) what race you are, the wealth of your parents, etc. It "objectively" (debated) measures aptitude, giving equal opportunity to all. I'm fairly sympathetic to that view, and I'm also skeptical that removing the standardized testing requirements will lead to more equality. Standardized testing seems like the method least susceptible to rigging by rich parents, what will they replace it with that is fairer?
thrower123 5y ago
Many US high schools have all kinds of weird, nebulous graduation requirements. I had to come up with forty or fifty hours of volunteer work and put together a giant 3" binder of work examples, extra-curricular awards, and other garbage that I had to present to a tribunal of teachers. Complete waste of time.

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easton 5y ago

Did SAT/ACT scores ever make a difference in applications here? I know they probably cut off around 1300-1400 (as do plenty of schools), but my understanding was that MIT wanted you to be doing tons of extracurriculars and other stuff that wasn't represented by standardized tests anyway.

jeremyis 5y ago
IMO high scores were a necessary but not sufficient condition. It was definitely a data point used
- ghaff 5y ago
  The system when I was familiar with it basically used SAT/GPA as one axis and other stuff on another axis. So you needed to hit some cutoff but if all you had was a perfect SAT, that wasn't enough.

Google234 5y ago

This will definitely help make it easier for admissions to discriminate against Asian students.

chaps 5y ago
Out of ignorance - how so?
- adpirz 5y ago
  https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171
refraincomment 5y ago
From a business perspective it must be more lucrative to select candidates by their cultural projection and the money connections than on the basis of academic potential. I suppose that is true for MIT, for mainstream media, and for US corporations.
refraincomment 5y ago
We can compare the audience of an flamewar post about racism in US, vs the readership of a paper on fixed point theorems, and it makes sense that organizations that don't care about science like US universities choose to favor the former.
tzs 5y ago
MIT undergraduates in the class of 2024 are 42% Asian. White is 39%. What makes you think MIT discriminates against Asian students?
- underpand 5y ago
  It's low compared to some base rates. 60% of 750 - 800 math SAT scorers are Asian https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ccf_20170201_reeves_2.png?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C9999px&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/... I looked through the list of USAMO finalists in recent years and > 80% have Asian surnames.

porb121 5y ago

> we do expect to return to requiring the SAT/ACT once it is possible for everyone to take them safely Fine with this being temporary. Much less fine with the schools who have completely abandoned the SAT/ACT in the name of equality while still considering things like personal essays and extracurriculars, which are way more liable to be gamed by the wealthy than the SAT.

pmiller2 5y ago
You know test prep courses are a thing, and that the wealthy are the primary consumers of them, right? Pretty much everything in the USA is pay to win.
- porb121 5y ago
  I'd rather have people paying for test prep services than essay ghostwriters or fraudulent extracurriculars.
- kansface 5y ago
  Test prep has a more or less negligible effect size. Extra curriculars and paying someone to write your essay for you on the other hand are all about privilege.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I know the test prep industry is bigger today than it used to be- but I assume you can still just buy a test prep book(s) and study like I did.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Or even check out a test prep book from the library.
- paconbork 5y ago
  Yes, and high-quality free prep solutions exist: https://www.khanacademy.org/SAT https://www.khanacademy.org/SAT Spending 10k on a prep class isn't going to cause your dimwitted child to outperform a bright kid from a disadvantaged background, but it can probably buy a better essay

whack 5y ago

On the one hand, it is ridiculous that one of the main metrics used in admissions is a glorified IQ test. On the other hand, it is ridiculous that we don't have a single commonly used standardized-exam that evaluates proficiency and expertise in the core curriculum. I know America has a serious NIH syndrome, but the situation could be improved overnight if every single public school adopted the GCSE/A levels or IB curriculum and exams. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCE_Advanced_Level_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCE_Advanced_Level_(United_Kin... https://www.ibo.org/about-the-ib/ https://www.ibo.org/about-the-ib/

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> On the one hand, it is ridiculous that one of the main metrics used in admissions is a glorified IQ test. On the other hand, it is ridiculous that we don't have a single commonly used standardized-exam that evaluates proficiency and expertise in the core curriculum. You don't like the use of an IQ test in school admissions, and you want to establish an IQ test instead?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Standardized national exams on proficiency in math, languages, science, etc... are very different from IQ tests and only somewhat correlated with IQ, being instead much more strongly correlated with consciensciousness, and generally how good of a student you are and will be.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    This is completely untrue.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10212-011-0099-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10212-011-0099-9 Personality traits are much more strongly correlated with academic aptitude than IQ is. If you disagree, you should provide a source.

austincheney 5y ago

So many university recruiters at that level just suggest a minimum application criteria after which a lottery is applied to select acceptable applicants. A truly randomized lottery would ensure no bias in student selection. If you have, let’s say, 3000 open positions and 15,000 applications of which all are academically qualified does it really matter who they pick for admission? It’s not like there is going to be any real world performance difference between candidate 1200 and 12000 if they are valedictorians with 4.0 GPAs.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> It’s not like there is going to be any real world performance difference between candidate 1200 and 12000 if they are valedictorians with 4.0 GPAs. It's fun to say things! On the other hand, it's not like people haven't thought of this before. https://sci-hub.se/10.1037/0021-9010.86.4.718 https://sci-hub.se/10.1037/0021-9010.86.4.718
- paconbork 5y ago
  That was a really interesting paper, thank you for posting it
- austincheney 5y ago
  Is 180 IQ the baseline of admission into schools like Harvard or MIT? No, its not. Apples and oranges. Most biased comments about college admission always get hung up on one of two irrelevant qualities: * illusory perceptions that childhood genius far outside even their selective populations somehow equate to real world adult performance * a selection bias that schools must supremely optimize some precise quality during admissions that they don't nurture or measure Instead of you just look at the data, remove all the emotional nonsense, and assign everybody a number with a set of performance metrics most of what people care about are things the schools care nothing about and ultimately don't matter.
pooper 5y ago
> valedictorians with 4.0 GPAs Not trying to say you are wrong and not trying to claim any kind of authority as I have zero insider knowledge of college admissions process but just thinking out loud as a student, there can be a world of difference between an A from one teacher to an A from another teacher from the same school. Now if we extrapolate it across schools throughout the nation (we have not even gotten into international students), there is a wide gulf. I like your solution though and this is probably very easily feasible without much protest assuming we reserve a small portion of the seats for donors and/or "legacy". Although, probably would be better just auctioning off those seats to the highest bidder now that I think about it. We will still treat everyone equally after students are admitted (and all auctions are nonrefundable) but we don't have to leave money on the table with an auction system for a small portion of the available seats.

rabbits77 5y ago

So the next freshman class won’t have to pay someone to take the test for them? What a relief!

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ericmay 5y ago

One question on my mind (as someone who has a master's degree and engineering degree and has never taken the ACT/SAT) is how kids will go about showing pure intellectual merit? Like let's say you grow up ok but you can't really afford to join the ski club or for a tutor and maybe you work in the evenings but you crush the SAT/ACT because you're incredibly intelligent. How will universities like MIT take that into account? If we're talking about merit - boy that sure speaks of merit to me compared to a laundry list of clubs, activities, and organizations that the kids with hyper-dedicated parents or lots of money have on their applications. I'll also say, I didn't take either of these tests and came from a family where to this day I'm still the only one to attend college, but if I had taken the SAT or ACT and scored remarkably well - I think that would have opened doors I didn't even know exist. High school counselor ideally would have noticed a high score and helped with applications. I don't like these tests but I have to imagine a subset of the population uses them to great effect. Like many things, it seems, I bet that removal of these tests will result in bifurcation in the education system, or will wind up hurting poorer students (while making the middle extremely competitive). Anyway. There are so many problems with the university system, starting with using universities to train workers, that it's difficult to feel emotion anymore around the issue because it's so overwhelming. -edit- For what it's worth I don't know if the SAT/ACT are a good show of intellect. And these tests can be effectively gamed - not just illegally as we saw with the recent scandal but with tutors and test prep. -edit 2- Many students who are intelligent but grow up poor have a difficult time in universities, especially when they don't get to take the same classes as their peers did in high school. I know I'm probably an average student, but when I went to my calculus classes after being out of high school for around 5 years I could grasp how to do derivatives and their meaning, but couldn't understand the log functions or trigonometry. So I'd do most of the homework and take the quizzes, then bomb the exams when these concepts came into play. I felt miserable and I didn't know how to study or how to even really get help - I didn't even have a concept of what I didn't know. I just thought I was dumb. It took 3 tries but I eventually got enough help and practice (thanks Khan Academy and others) to make it through, graduate, and go on to do other things. Fortunately I had training in resilience from the military. What about that kid who grows up crushes a standardized test and fails a class and then thinks that they're stupid and they don't know how to ask for help or can't afford tutoring? Those kids maybe they fail out, or maybe they have mediocre grades so when they go to try and get a job they're competing against 3.8s with tons of on-campus activities. Yet again perpetuating the cycle of getting dumped on. Needs lots of luck or persistence to break the cycle.

currymj 5y ago

The 25th percentile student at MIT gets a 790 math SAT, it's 730 for language. Difference between 790 and 800 is basically luck. It's at the point where the test can only hurt you not help you. There's no upside, but if you don't prepare, or happen to have a bad day, it can ruin your chances. For students applying to MIT-caliber schools it's a hoop to jump through, not an opportunity to distinguish themselves. I am honestly curious how the MIT admissions office is able to use the SAT to predict anything about student success, given a huge majority of the students got a nearly perfect score. It seems like there should be almost no signal.

pdonis 5y ago
> I am honestly curious how the MIT admissions office is able to use the SAT to predict anything about student success, given a huge majority of the students got a nearly perfect score. A huge majority of the students who got accepted (since those are the only ones you're looking at) got a nearly perfect score. But only about 7% of students who apply to MIT get accepted. SAT scores, back when they were required to be provided, were one of the primary filters on applicants. (Not to mention the "filter" of many kids not even applying because they knew their scores were too low for them to be considered.)

nickysielicki 5y ago

> Students who have not already taken the SAT/ACT, and cannot find a forthcoming opportunity to do so safely are discouraged from taking the test, in order to protect their personal health, as well as the health of their family and community. We will not make any negative presumptions regarding academic preparation based solely on the absence of SAT/ACT scores, but will instead make the best, most informed decision we can by rigorously assessing other academic aspects of their application (such as grades, coursework, and other examinations). This is getting ridiculous. Imagine if your kid puts in the hours and hours of studying and pulls off a 35 on their ACT -- at a school like MIT, that's not enough (considered alone) to get in. How are you and your kid going to feel when they give her spot to someone who didn't even submit a standardized test score?

kirykl 5y ago
Loving that full scholarship at a competing school
- nickysielicki 5y ago
  That option existed regardless -- being forced to take it isn't exactly a silver lining.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  But not loving that lower salary over the course of a lifetime as much.
TechBro8615 5y ago
That's never been enough by itself to get into MIT. This just gives them more cover to be even more biased.

ffggvv 5y ago

Help me reconcile this: 1. Asking for voter id is racist because it disproportionately effects black voters. 2. Making this move that disproportionately effects Asian students is not racist?

beebmam 5y ago

I'd like to point out that there's an egalitarian approach to college admissions that I found interesting. Every single time I've brought it up with people, no matter their politics, they got angry about it, but I think it would be interesting to see it implemented and then compare the outcomes. A lottery system of admissions, with a guarantee of admission to at least some universities. It's described here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/admit-everybody/ https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/admit-everybody/

porb121 5y ago
I've heard of similar proposals for funding grants; have a first pass to make sure the grant proposals aren't total BS, then lottery among those that pass.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
That assumes that the primary purpose of higher education is education, instead of maintaining social stratification under the auspices of meritocracy.

option 5y ago

So there will be no “standard” tests (with all their pros and cons) but there still will be “essays”, and “extracurricular clubs/activities” preparing for which (and joining the clubs) are far more expensive.

trentnix 5y ago

Well that's one way to hide your discrimination against Asian kids.

rychco 5y ago

Most people have already mentioned that this change could result in discrimination, but I think it's also extremely important to note that these high school students are extremely overworked. If a student is a top-tier applicant that has good grades, plays a sport, participates in a club or two, volunteers, & has a part-time job, they are easily working a minimum of 60+ hours per week. There is absolutely no way this can continue. I was pissed about this when I was in high school ~8 years ago, and it's only gotten worse since. EDIT: Downvoted because I'm advocating for teens to not have to spend all of their waking hours preparing for college & instead get enough sleep or do something enjoyable?

sokoloff 5y ago
Selecting for students who have a track record of success in spite of 60-hours of time being "spoken for" is a not unreasonable selection process for students who will succeed at MIT.
- rychco 5y ago
  The 60h/week figure is what I observed ~8 years ago for my peers to be competitive for our state university that was not MIT or an Ivy. My point is that I think students are being overworked because the requirements are too subjective. A student has to be involved in everything on top of having great grades and scores because the SAT/ACT was the only thing that was even close to being an objective requirement.
souprock 5y ago
For schools and scholarships, I often see the requirement for volunteer hours. (not really "volunteer" if required though) This is discrimination against people who need employment. It's a luxury to get transportation to a volunteer location, and then spend hours there, without any income earned.

Arubis 5y ago

Am I the only one surprised it was still required? I'd gathered that many high- and top-tiered US uni's had swapped to "accepted, not required" over a decade ago. Perhaps the momentum here swung back in light of conversations around the way this applies towards different races/ethnicities?

TechBro8615 5y ago

MIT already has enough applicants with close to perfect SAT scores that they could fill their class multiple times over. So this is a bit of a meaningless differentiator and tbh might even negatively affect someone who e.g. has below average grades but tests well.

specialist 5y ago

Like a lot of things, the pandemic will be used as cover to stop (or change) stuff everyone hates, but otherwise don't have the courage to discontinue otherwise. -- Is anyone using lotteries as part of admissions? My interest in lotteries comes thru 1) warming up to the notion of sortition, 2) tired of the food fight over affirmative action, and 3) rejection of ever increasing bureaucracy and credentialing. As a mental model, I'm starting to think of lotteries as an optimization technique. -- I briefly worked on some student facing stuff in higher ed. The course registration stuff is insane. There's got to be more fair, easier to administrate systems. Something like an auction. Release some fraction of courses every time interval. Figure out some rational way to prioritize bids. Like add weight for seniority, students in program, declared major. Or whatever. Then administrators can add or remove courses, sections, labs, whatever as needed. -- Now that our university monopolies have been privatized, why hasn't Freedom Markets™ logic prevailed? Raise supply to meet demand. Higher ed loves government pork. But are completely unaccountable. If we are states are no longer willing to adjudicate bottom up, they must now impose some kind of top down pressure. The most simple idea I can think of is raid (radical cashectomies) the endowments. Use it or lose. Compel places like MIT and Harvard to spend down their hoard. Increase slots. Add campuses. Adopt other universities and invest in them, like scholastic version of sport farm teams. Let Freedom Markets™ sing!

boucher 5y ago

I recommend this episode of This American Life if you're interested in hearing more about the current debate over the SATs and schools choosing not to use them: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/734/the-campus-tour-has-been-cancelled https://www.thisamericanlife.org/734/the-campus-tour-has-bee...

mariksolo 5y ago

Anecdotal evidence, but I did well on the SAT and spent very little money. I bought a few books, but easily could have pirated them online (like I did for all of my AP tests previously). I think the SAT is likely more egalitarian than extracurriculars, although I cannot comment on its effectiveness as an indicator for college performance. Someone who has to work after high school to support their family would not have the time or energy to play sports, do choir, run clubs, etc. But they could go to the library, pirate some books, print out the pages and practice 20 minutes a day starting 10-12 months ahead of time. It would be more difficult, of course, but I still think studying for a test is easier and cheaper than having extensive extracurriculars. Anecdotally, I've also always heard SAT test prep is a waste of money.