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My problem with SAT/ACT actually has nothing to do with the test itself. I grew up very poor in suburban middle of nowhere and even with a waiver for the fee, I

My problem with SAT/ACT actually has nothing to do with the test itself. I grew up very poor in suburban middle of nowhere and even with a waiver for the fee, I had no way of actually getting to a testing center. Parents worked 24/7 to make ends meet, no real public transport and this was before Uber and Lyft. The real culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure.

avs733 5y ago
this is a perfect example of why governmental services are so important - even if they are often run poorly. Without them, dis-equities inherently perpetuate due to external incentives. The SAT is treated as a standardized test but it, as you note, is inaccessible to many. It is not government run or organized. I've found, from teaching undergraduates, that most of the students who go to college presume that everyone takes the SATs, that it is government administered, and that it is free. compare this to the, still far from perfect and problematic in other ways, centralized university admissions testing system in many other countries.
- verve_rat 5y ago
  Wow. As someone that isn't in the US, but grew up watching a lot of US TV, I had this same assumption. How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Wow. As you say, contrast that to my experience where everyone took University Entrance exams in their final year of school. Score over X and you have the right to go to a university. Don't score high enough? The university can still choose to admit you at their discretion.
  - orangepurple 5y ago
    > How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Wow. Probably the same reason that the Federal Reserve Bank is not a government entity (they only have a meaningless government "oversight board") even though it loans all money to the US Government with interest and has never been audited.
    - d110af5ccf 5y ago
      I really hate this meme. The federal reserve is very much under the purview of the legislature. If the legislature isn't choosing to act in the way you would like, well, then that's a completely separate complaint. Implying that the federal reserve is somehow independent from the government is dishonest.
    - achandlerwhite 5y ago
      You think the Board of Governors is meaningless? Do you realize the Fed turns over interest it earns to the US Treasury? What an odd thing to bring up in this context.
    - mikestew 5y ago
      Now that we know that you have a dislike of the Federal Reserve system, you didn't actually answer the question by stating a reason. What would "the same reason" be?
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      How can you seriously believe the Fed isn't a government entity? I'm legitimately struggling to understand how you came to such a misguided conclusion.
      - tonguez 5y ago
        How can you believe it is? I'm legitimately struggling to understand how you came to such a misguided conclusion.
        Hasu 5y ago
        Because it: - was created by the US government - is ran by US government appointees, who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate - has to make annual reports to Congress - returns all its profits to the US government - describes itself as a government agency. [0] Does the Fed have more independence than, say, the Department of Agriculture? Yes, but an independent government agency is still a government entity. [0] "The Federal Reserve, like many other central banks, is an independent government agency..." https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12799.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12799.htm
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    > How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Because it's only de facto the primary method, as evidenced by MIT dropping it for a while there. They didn't need government permission to do that. Even public universities here generally have a high degree of autonomy regarding such things.
    - cma 5y ago
      MIT is private unlike most of the other land-grant schools.
  - cyberpunk 5y ago
    > How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Well, I mean.. America is experimental capitalism. Why run anything government when it can be for profit and 'the market' will solve any and all issues with it? It turns out 'the market' will skew in favor of making a small amount of people rich over actually improving the lives of anyone, but hey, that's freedom baby! They're really precious about it though, so don't criticise this system out loud.
    - Anon1096 5y ago
      That's nice and all but the College Board is nonprofit and they administer the SAT.
      - avs733 5y ago
        It’s a multibillion dollar nonprofit who’s ceo makes over a million a year. Do with that what you will.
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    College Board is a nonprofit organization[0] and thus is partially funded by the government to say nothing of any other grants they may have received. ACT Inc is the same way. Instead of funding The One True Test, the US government partially funds every test competing to be the best college placement test. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Board https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Board
    - mypalmike 5y ago
      How does being a nonprofit imply "partially funded by the government"?
      - jimbob45 5y ago
        Tax exemptions.
        mypalmike 5y ago
        Assuming you claim tax exemptions annually, are you partially funded by the government? :-P
        jimbob45 5y ago
        To a much, much lesser degree, yes.
  - wiredfool 5y ago
    Uk qualification exams (GCSE and ALevels) are run by private boards. (Cambridge and Edexcel are the two big ones). These are effectively entrance exams, in that university offers are strongly dependent on them.
  - annexrichmond 5y ago
    many schools are not public as with the SAT which is also "not-for-profit" I wonder how one could codify a regulation for schools requiring entrance test to provide "reasonable" accommodations for prospective students to take it; like some parent comments mentioned not everyone can feasibly get to a testing center
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pishpash 5y ago
That's not the political argument being made against them though.
- QuikAccount 5y ago
  Yes, I'm aware. That's why I'm giving a different perspective.
satthesat 5y ago
> The real culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure. What was your area like? I grew up similarly poor but in a wealthy area and would walk several miles to a public library for early computer access, biked to school, etc. Even then, our school offered SAT, etc.
- QuikAccount 5y ago
  Not sure I would call the area I lived in wealthy. Probably middle-class suburban area. My high school at the time did not offer SAT/ACT testing on campus. If I recall correctly, and it's been a while so I might be misremembering, the closest SAT/ACT testing location was at the community college in the next city over.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  My SAT's weren't on campus. It was on some other campus I never heard of on the other side of town. I biked the school but without a parent would have needed to trek across town on a saturday morning (easily 20+ miles, in the mid 00's right before smartphones would just provide a GPS, so I'd be juggling printed MapQuest directions on a bike) to get there. I'd be cutting it if I took a bus since they ran hourly and I believe the weekend buses started at 8Am for a 9AM test time. Also note that I could drive by this time but we only had one car between my mother and I.
matheweis 5y ago
It’s not just the getting to a testing center, it’s awareness (and cost) of the process. Was a long time ago now, but parents weren’t really worried about or involved in my college prep process, so I had to figure it out for myself. It wasn’t until later I realized it would have been better to start taking the test way before graduation. To say nothing of the benefits of test prep..
beamatronic 5y ago
I took AP classes in high school, but couldn't afford to pay $65 per exam (at the time) to take the AP test for college credit.
- whoisburbansky 5y ago
  How were you able to afford taking the classes for credit instead, at a cost of over two orders of magnitude more per class?
  - johnnyanmac 5y ago
    I imagine through either scholarships or taking on bunches of debt. I was nowhere near as aggressive as some other classmates, but I managed to grab ~20k of total scholarships that helped me out immensely for college. Still a small chunk of what was needed for college, but it was an option I had compared to high school just making me eat the admissions and AP test costs wholesale. Fortunately my parent did cover these costs, but I know others weren't so fortunate.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - QuikAccount 5y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like you assuming they took the class for credit at university. Community college is also a possibility where it would be cheaper or around the same price. That also comes with the benefit of financial aid.
    - whoisburbansky 5y ago
      Community college is cheap, but isn't $65 for four credits cheap. Most financial aid I've seen has been in the form of loans, which also won't be as cheap as getting credit for those classes from testing out.
- kbelder 5y ago
  That was my situation, also. It sucked because in general, all the other kids in school who were academically gifted were from well-to-do families, and I think I was the only one taking AP calc or physics whose family couldn't afford the test.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gpt5 5y ago
It's really weird to see this as the top comment. Is there evidence physical access to the test center still a problem today (small or large)? Is SAT worse than other criteria (such as extra-curriculum achievements) when looking at those poor suburbun middle of nowhere students? i.e. even in this example, did SAT actually made thing worse for those people when comparing against the alternative.
- jounker 5y ago
  Is there evidence that physical access has improved? The idea that you’re espousing, that things must have gotten better, is a belief that needs to be backed up.
- QuikAccount 5y ago
  Sorry buddy, I can't give you anything other than my anecdata. No knowledge on whether anyone has done any studies on this specifically but lack of public infrastructure contributing to the income disparity has been widely studied.
- asdff 5y ago
  It was hard enough for me to take the GRE when I went to a uni of 50,000 in a city of around 1 million. The testing center on campus naturally was booked out long in advance. Nearest center was 35 mins away in the outerbelt suburbs in another county at that point I believe, in some huge office park on a stroad without sidewalks nowhere near any bus lines. If I didn't have a car to borrow, there would have been zero way for me as a college student to get to this student testing center short of reserving three hours per leg to bike on de facto highways, which is baffling, but that was the reality.
duckhelmet 5y ago
Have you ever tried using a bicycle?
- munk-a 5y ago
  I heard bicycles works great with bootstraps. Maybe you should suggest bootstraps as well - they'd probably do the trick!
- thewebcount 5y ago
  Have you ever been to the rural US? Things are very far apart (often 10s of miles) and riding a bike may not be practical for things in the same way as in an urban or suburban area.
  - teirce 5y ago
    Yep - this. I wasn't even in /that/ rural of an area, but I was still ~20 miles (32 Kilometers) away from the nearest testing center. No vehicle to take myself.

avs733 5y ago

this is a perfect example of why governmental services are so important - even if they are often run poorly. Without them, dis-equities inherently perpetuate due to external incentives. The SAT is treated as a standardized test but it, as you note, is inaccessible to many. It is not government run or organized. I've found, from teaching undergraduates, that most of the students who go to college presume that everyone takes the SATs, that it is government administered, and that it is free. compare this to the, still far from perfect and problematic in other ways, centralized university admissions testing system in many other countries.

verve_rat 5y ago
Wow. As someone that isn't in the US, but grew up watching a lot of US TV, I had this same assumption. How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Wow. As you say, contrast that to my experience where everyone took University Entrance exams in their final year of school. Score over X and you have the right to go to a university. Don't score high enough? The university can still choose to admit you at their discretion.
- orangepurple 5y ago
  > How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Wow. Probably the same reason that the Federal Reserve Bank is not a government entity (they only have a meaningless government "oversight board") even though it loans all money to the US Government with interest and has never been audited.
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    I really hate this meme. The federal reserve is very much under the purview of the legislature. If the legislature isn't choosing to act in the way you would like, well, then that's a completely separate complaint. Implying that the federal reserve is somehow independent from the government is dishonest.
  - achandlerwhite 5y ago
    You think the Board of Governors is meaningless? Do you realize the Fed turns over interest it earns to the US Treasury? What an odd thing to bring up in this context.
  - mikestew 5y ago
    Now that we know that you have a dislike of the Federal Reserve system, you didn't actually answer the question by stating a reason. What would "the same reason" be?
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    How can you seriously believe the Fed isn't a government entity? I'm legitimately struggling to understand how you came to such a misguided conclusion.
    - tonguez 5y ago
      How can you believe it is? I'm legitimately struggling to understand how you came to such a misguided conclusion.
      - Hasu 5y ago
        Because it: - was created by the US government - is ran by US government appointees, who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate - has to make annual reports to Congress - returns all its profits to the US government - describes itself as a government agency. [0] Does the Fed have more independence than, say, the Department of Agriculture? Yes, but an independent government agency is still a government entity. [0] "The Federal Reserve, like many other central banks, is an independent government agency..." https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12799.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12799.htm
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  > How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Because it's only de facto the primary method, as evidenced by MIT dropping it for a while there. They didn't need government permission to do that. Even public universities here generally have a high degree of autonomy regarding such things.
  - cma 5y ago
    MIT is private unlike most of the other land-grant schools.
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  > How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Well, I mean.. America is experimental capitalism. Why run anything government when it can be for profit and 'the market' will solve any and all issues with it? It turns out 'the market' will skew in favor of making a small amount of people rich over actually improving the lives of anyone, but hey, that's freedom baby! They're really precious about it though, so don't criticise this system out loud.
  - Anon1096 5y ago
    That's nice and all but the College Board is nonprofit and they administer the SAT.
    - avs733 5y ago
      It’s a multibillion dollar nonprofit who’s ceo makes over a million a year. Do with that what you will.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  College Board is a nonprofit organization[0] and thus is partially funded by the government to say nothing of any other grants they may have received. ACT Inc is the same way. Instead of funding The One True Test, the US government partially funds every test competing to be the best college placement test. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Board https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Board
  - mypalmike 5y ago
    How does being a nonprofit imply "partially funded by the government"?
    - jimbob45 5y ago
      Tax exemptions.
      - mypalmike 5y ago
        Assuming you claim tax exemptions annually, are you partially funded by the government? :-P
        jimbob45 5y ago
        To a much, much lesser degree, yes.
- wiredfool 5y ago
  Uk qualification exams (GCSE and ALevels) are run by private boards. (Cambridge and Edexcel are the two big ones). These are effectively entrance exams, in that university offers are strongly dependent on them.
- annexrichmond 5y ago
  many schools are not public as with the SAT which is also "not-for-profit" I wonder how one could codify a regulation for schools requiring entrance test to provide "reasonable" accommodations for prospective students to take it; like some parent comments mentioned not everyone can feasibly get to a testing center

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pishpash 5y ago

That's not the political argument being made against them though.

QuikAccount 5y ago
Yes, I'm aware. That's why I'm giving a different perspective.

satthesat 5y ago

> The real culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure. What was your area like? I grew up similarly poor but in a wealthy area and would walk several miles to a public library for early computer access, biked to school, etc. Even then, our school offered SAT, etc.

QuikAccount 5y ago
Not sure I would call the area I lived in wealthy. Probably middle-class suburban area. My high school at the time did not offer SAT/ACT testing on campus. If I recall correctly, and it's been a while so I might be misremembering, the closest SAT/ACT testing location was at the community college in the next city over.
johnnyanmac 5y ago
My SAT's weren't on campus. It was on some other campus I never heard of on the other side of town. I biked the school but without a parent would have needed to trek across town on a saturday morning (easily 20+ miles, in the mid 00's right before smartphones would just provide a GPS, so I'd be juggling printed MapQuest directions on a bike) to get there. I'd be cutting it if I took a bus since they ran hourly and I believe the weekend buses started at 8Am for a 9AM test time. Also note that I could drive by this time but we only had one car between my mother and I.

matheweis 5y ago

It’s not just the getting to a testing center, it’s awareness (and cost) of the process. Was a long time ago now, but parents weren’t really worried about or involved in my college prep process, so I had to figure it out for myself. It wasn’t until later I realized it would have been better to start taking the test way before graduation. To say nothing of the benefits of test prep..

beamatronic 5y ago

I took AP classes in high school, but couldn't afford to pay $65 per exam (at the time) to take the AP test for college credit.

whoisburbansky 5y ago
How were you able to afford taking the classes for credit instead, at a cost of over two orders of magnitude more per class?
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  I imagine through either scholarships or taking on bunches of debt. I was nowhere near as aggressive as some other classmates, but I managed to grab ~20k of total scholarships that helped me out immensely for college. Still a small chunk of what was needed for college, but it was an option I had compared to high school just making me eat the admissions and AP test costs wholesale. Fortunately my parent did cover these costs, but I know others weren't so fortunate.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- QuikAccount 5y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like you assuming they took the class for credit at university. Community college is also a possibility where it would be cheaper or around the same price. That also comes with the benefit of financial aid.
  - whoisburbansky 5y ago
    Community college is cheap, but isn't $65 for four credits cheap. Most financial aid I've seen has been in the form of loans, which also won't be as cheap as getting credit for those classes from testing out.
kbelder 5y ago
That was my situation, also. It sucked because in general, all the other kids in school who were academically gifted were from well-to-do families, and I think I was the only one taking AP calc or physics whose family couldn't afford the test.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gpt5 5y ago

It's really weird to see this as the top comment. Is there evidence physical access to the test center still a problem today (small or large)? Is SAT worse than other criteria (such as extra-curriculum achievements) when looking at those poor suburbun middle of nowhere students? i.e. even in this example, did SAT actually made thing worse for those people when comparing against the alternative.

jounker 5y ago
Is there evidence that physical access has improved? The idea that you’re espousing, that things must have gotten better, is a belief that needs to be backed up.
QuikAccount 5y ago
Sorry buddy, I can't give you anything other than my anecdata. No knowledge on whether anyone has done any studies on this specifically but lack of public infrastructure contributing to the income disparity has been widely studied.
asdff 5y ago
It was hard enough for me to take the GRE when I went to a uni of 50,000 in a city of around 1 million. The testing center on campus naturally was booked out long in advance. Nearest center was 35 mins away in the outerbelt suburbs in another county at that point I believe, in some huge office park on a stroad without sidewalks nowhere near any bus lines. If I didn't have a car to borrow, there would have been zero way for me as a college student to get to this student testing center short of reserving three hours per leg to bike on de facto highways, which is baffling, but that was the reality.

duckhelmet 5y ago

Have you ever tried using a bicycle?

munk-a 5y ago
I heard bicycles works great with bootstraps. Maybe you should suggest bootstraps as well - they'd probably do the trick!
thewebcount 5y ago
Have you ever been to the rural US? Things are very far apart (often 10s of miles) and riding a bike may not be practical for things in the same way as in an urban or suburban area.
- teirce 5y ago
  Yep - this. I wasn't even in /that/ rural of an area, but I was still ~20 miles (32 Kilometers) away from the nearest testing center. No vehicle to take myself.