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Yes, that's the plan. Ever notice that it's always upper middle class people bitching about the SAT's? That's because they're too poor for legacy / donor adva
by fallingknife 5y ago
Yes, that's the plan. Ever notice that it's always upper middle class people bitching about the SAT's? That's because they're too poor for legacy / donor advantage, and they can't stand that poor people would have a fair shot through a standardized test.
- TchoBeer 5y agoSo what do they stand to gain by eliminating standardized testing, if they also don't benefit from legacy advantage?
- baggy_trough 5y agoExtracurriculars and essays.
- TchoBeer 5y agoI suppose poor people can't write essays? And if the argument is "wealthier students can afford help for writing essays" then the same could be said of the SATs too.
- munk-a 5y agoEssays for admission are never (at least when I went through the system) done under observation - they're take home assignments which makes them really easy to game. Interviews by alumni honestly seems like a pretty good evaluation metric - it is quite susceptible to legacy favorship though.
- dhruvrrp 5y agoThink the problem is more with extracurricular activities. If you are well off, it easier to let your kid go to piano lessons, do some volunteer work, join a social mission to Africa during summers, etc.
- mig39 5y agoWell, then they're judged on their extra-curricular, volunteering and community activities, rather than their SATs. I'm willing to bet poorer people don't do so well on those.
- TchoBeer 5y agoI'm willing to bet poorer people don't do as well on the SATs either.
- jostmey 5y agoTry participating in extra-curricular, volunteering and community activities while working a minimum wage job 20+ hours a week and going to school. Have you worked in a restaurant? It is fu##ing exhausting. At least testing tries to achieve standardized results. It is not perfect but it is better than the current alternative
- Jcowell 5y agoBut the question is , is it better ? From my experience the test all come down to if a student is lucky enough to have caring parents and test prep. Wouldn’t a better metric be to have that minimum wage job count as a extra curricular activity?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- monetus 5y agoWhy are you trying to improve the world rather than choose between two bad choices? /s Applying data from other complex systems besides our own might not be easy, but surely other countries have some studies we could compare with our own. I'm going to go look. Hope you're having a nice day.
- whoooooo123 5y agoMy wife is from a fairly poor background and had few advantages growing up, but her country rigourously uses standardised testing for university admissions. She didn't have any extra curriculars or after school activities to brag about in her personal essay, but she aced the standardised test and got into the best university in her country and now she has a successful career and lives a lifestyle far more affluent than anything her parents could have dreamed of. Without standardised testing she wouldn't have had a chance. The drive to eliminate standardised testing is insane, and it can only hurt minorities and the already-disadvantaged, to the benefit of the elite. But then that's the whole point.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoEntrance by subjective determination. Might as well make it a lottery. Apply, get ticket, random number generator makes selection.
- tolbish 5y agoIf this were clearly a bad thing, wouldn't the schools that don't do this produce much higher quality graduates?
- toomuchtodo 5y agoHonestly, I have no idea. I think everyone is seeking signal when a lot of life is luck. Smart people will overcome except when they can’t (smart people fail despite their best efforts all the time) and those who might be unable to achieve (whether because of lack of intelligence or because of life circumstances) might still stumble into success. It’s a crapshoot, but pulling levers makes everyone look like they’re trying to fix whatever they want to fix. We’re optimizing for the wrong problems (selective admissions for limited slots), versus working towards universal access to high quality instruction regardless of location.
- tolbish 5y agoYou make it sound like it's not something that should be fixed. Any alternative ways of enabling lower-middle class kids with fewer resources to achieve opportunities at success?
- toomuchtodo 5y agoUniversal access (free) to community colleges, remote learning MOOCs from those top in their fields. Commodify higher education and distribute widely, don’t reward artificial scarcity. Existing colleges do not have incentives to do this. They are incentivized to protect the value of their brand and their institution, and to preserve scarcity and gated access to credentials.
- fallingknife 5y agoIf you can't compete in intelligence, you want to compete in bullshit (essays / "activities") because you have a much better chance of winning that than someone who can't afford it.
- neom 5y agoIs the SAT or ACT a particularly good test of intelligence? Smarts, maybe, but I've met a lot of extremely intelligent, talented people who are not particularly "smart" by these measures.
- moftz 5y agoYou can practice and take classes that teach you how to do well on the SAT/ACT. No guarantee that you'll ace it but you'll do much better if you know the strategy behind a perfect score.
- neom 5y agoI don't understand what that has to do with intelligence? Rote learning doesn't make you intelligent. Again, OP specifically said "if you can't complete on intelligence" and then went on to draw a link to "activities" being bullshit, and therefore a not a measure of intelligence. That makes no sense at all.
- mechagodzilla 5y agoThis is one of the reasons people with more resources do much better on these tests - getting test-specific tutoring, taking prep classes, etc. will significantly raise most people's scores. The tests are much closer to measuring "How good are you at taking the SAT/ACT?" than some kind of unbiased "How brilliant are you?" measurement.
- whoooooo123 5y agoAs opposed to all those other academic tests where resources and preparation make no difference?
- fortran77 5y agoWithout SATs, upper income parents can put their kids in private schools with inflated grades and pay top dollar for high-end extracurriculars, sports and music coaches, etc. While I won't get into whether the SATs also "discriminate" in some way against students who are disadvantaged by poverty, etc., eliminating the SAT won't solve the problem. It will just make things worse! They are, for all their problems, a great equalizer.
- xyzzy_plugh 5y agoIn my country, universities don't compare school grades apples-to-apples. Usually if a school gives out inflated grades, that is taken into consideration.
- handrous 5y agoIt's my understanding that, at least for elite private college admissions, the extremely high quality of college admissions counsellors at decent-or-better prep high schools is a major advantage. They know admissions officers by name at several schools, they know which rules are firm and must be followed and which can be bent or ignored to the applicant's advantage, they write excellent recommendation letters, they give highly tailored and accurate advice on getting into specific schools, the do a good job of focusing their and the students' efforts on schools they actually do have a good chance of getting in to (and also not aiming too low) and ruling out long-shots early to improve chances (because more, better-focused effort) at the remaining options, that kind of thing. Probably less of a factor at (most) state schools, though.
- naturalauction 5y agoIt's much worse than that - there is whole industry around college admissions consulting. Why depend on your high-school counselor when you can hire an expert? In the worst cases the expert even helps students effectively pre-plan their whole high school experience to increase students' chances of getting in to elite schools.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tryonenow 5y agoThe modern argument is that SAT and ACT tests discriminate against minorities. The reasoning is that minorities score lower because of socioeconomic factors.
- alephnan 5y agoBecause minorities may not have English as their first language.
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoThis is what TOEFL is for
- alephnan 5y agoThe reading passages include cultural elements from history and social sciences that are Western / US centric. Compared to American students, I expect that Chinese student would have volumes more knowledge on Chinese literature and European students more knowledge on the renaissance. Is it a measure of aptitude that Americans know more about the story of Benjamin Franklin flying a kite ( that was literally my SAT question ) ? Even without direct exposure in school, it is embedded throughout our society and media. Additionally, you presume all people whose first language is not English is an international student. If that was the case, American public schools would not have ESL courses. Then there are natural born American students whose first language is English but with ethnic or regional variations. Those students may have a much more comprehensive lexicon from Urban Dictionary than the SAT developers, but the SAT developers cannot avoid projecting the set of vocabulary from their own middle-class upbringing thru academia. It would be to entertaining to see the SAT include "deadass" on the vocabulary item when every New Yorker knows the term and, with the help of meme culture, youth on the West Coast knows it too. To the point of academia, the ethnic distribution of academia is not representative of the general population. Finally, this expectation of English and normalized American cultural knowledge involves the forced assimilation and white-washing of indigenous Americans.
- 5y ago
- alephnan 5y agoIt’s not quite fair. SAT scores are strongly correlated to your parent’s income level.
- trentnix 5y agoWell yes, aptitude generally correlates to one's ability ability to provide value that demands more money. But that doesn't mean it's unfair.
- alephnan 5y agoIf you're white with English being your first and only language.
- frockington1 5y agoTwo high income parents probably both went to college. This alone will set their kids up for success due to genetics and educational values
- wyager 5y agoThis is mediated by the fact that SAT basically measures g, g is heritable, and g predicts income level. It does not imply SAT unfairly favors rich people.
- alephnan 5y agoDoes that mean minorities inherited lower aptitude?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- aantix 5y agoWhy would "they" argue against it? "Socioeconomic status (SES) and SAT scores are positively correlated: Students from higher income backgrounds generally achieve higher scores, and “21.2% of variance in SAT scores is shared with SES, as measured here as a composite of mother’s education, father’s education, and parental income.” The researchers note that the “source of the SAT-SES relationship is likely due to some combination of educational opportunity, school quality, peer effects and other social factors.” https://journalistsresource.org/economics/ses-socioeconomic-status-sat-grade-relationships-and-in-college-admissions-decisions/ https://journalistsresource.org/economics/ses-socioeconomic-...
- fallingknife 5y agoHard to take seriously any researchers who don't list genetic inheritance of intelligence as one of the likely causes of the SAT-SES relationship.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoIf they brought it up, they might not be employed as researchers for long. So your heuristic will end up selecting for cranks.
- fallingknife 5y agoBetter a crank scientist than a stable religious official. Because that's what it's called when there are possibilities you are not allowed to examine.
- teawrecks 5y agoAre you aware of any research supporting genetic inheritance of intelligence. The psychologists I know have told me that there is very little evidence to support that.
- fallingknife 5y agoThe alternative hypothesis is completely stupid. Chimps and humans have different intelligence. Are you saying that this isn't genetic?
- OldGoodNewBad 5y agoNah they removed it because BIPOC+ tend to score much worse on standardized tests which reduces the number of showcase minorities.
- gher-shyu3i 5y ago> and they can't stand that poor people would have a fair shot through a standardized test. That's quite the accusation. Citation needed.
- read_if_gay_ 5y agoSame for > it's always upper middle class people bitching about the SAT's in the first place. This is a mainstream reddit tier comment.