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This was going so well until the pivot in the last two paragraphs. Is admitting the most capable students unfair? It is inherently discriminatory based on thei

This was going so well until the pivot in the last two paragraphs. Is admitting the most capable students unfair? It is inherently discriminatory based on their knowledge and ability, which seems is what people want, but it also means that having more resources to be better equipped aka better nurture, which tends to positively influence individual's prospects, is suddenly something many are not okay with? Obviously, the SAT tests are flawed one way or another. But then again, they don't care for students' superficial characteristics. If not that, then implied statement is very reminiscent to slogans used in USSR or during cultural revolution in China.

jedberg 4y ago
> Is admitting the most capable students unfair? Are they actually the most capable students, or did they just have a better chance of getting higher scores on the arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they have a higher chance? There is a difference between better nurture and lack of opportunity. It's true, we shouldn't be correcting for lack of opportunity at the college admissions level, we should be doing it at the elementary level and younger. But it's a lot easier to correct it at the college admissions level, which is a good choke point in one's life path, so for now, that is where the focus is.
- Telemakhos 4y ago
  Would different test-based or merit-based metrics radically change the result? After all, isn't the purpose of a holistic approach to college admissions basically to make the criterion not one of any measurement of quality merit, but of belonging to the right demographic mix that the college seeks to attain? Further, why should colleges try to correct for lack of opportunity? Their job is to educate people, and not everyone is apt for higher education. Admitting a student with poor mathematical abilities into a rigorous engineering program is just setting that student up for failure, not recompensing him for opportunities lost or squandered earlier.
  - jedberg 4y ago
    > Further, why should colleges try to correct for lack of opportunity? Public schools should do it because they are part of the education system that needs correction. Private schools arguably are still part of the public education system since they all get Federal dollars, and thus the same argument applies. If they're getting tax dollars, that makes them a public good, and therefore they should be doing things that help all people, not just some people.
    - yterdy 4y ago
      Additionally, if we are to expect that much of our political, economic, and technical elite are to pass through these institutions - and, further, that such institutions will trade explicitly on their ability to produce this elite - then there is an inherent public interest in the character of their operations. It's simply a matter of accountability.
  - danheskett 4y ago
    You've accidental confused achievement and ability. A student who goes to a poor school who offers zero AP classes will always achieve lower weighted GPAs than students who go to wealthy schools that offer many AP classes. No amount of individual achievement will overcome that mathematical disadvatnage. Racism comes into when, because of racism, it just so happens that schools who are well funded and can give that advantage are overwhelmingly white, and schools who are are poorly funded and cannot give that advantage are overwhelmingly non-white. Suggesting that a student who is "placed above his or her station" into an elite program is setup for failure is a favorite of a few SCOTUS Justices, but in fact is not supported by evidence. Graduation and other metrics of success are not strongly correlated to past attainment, primarily because most programs have already had to deal with achievement inequities, and the most successful programs already have mechanisms to even out unequal prior achievement. Virtually all programs that have elite programs already have a substantial apparatus dedicated to filling achievement gaps between incoming students. The larger question of "what is the purpose of college" and "is it to educate people" is bigger than this thread, but shouldn't be overlooked. For schools that are publicly funded in whole or part, there should be a larger mission than sending young adults through an educational meat grinder. The public mission of public universities should absolutely have a social justice component. There is absolutely no doubt that we could design an education system which, at an early age, divides and tracks students towards a successful and high level of attainment. By ruthlessly focusing resources on those children with the best chances of success, and minimizing resources expended on those with lower changes of success, the system could produce many multiples of positive outcomes than we do now, but at the cost of many more left with almost no attainment. Our present distribution of resources, in the US, is haphazardly assembled and produces a balance of outcomes, but is by no means optimized for any particular set of outcomes.
- neonsunset 4y ago
  A student with a full family and access to tutors, with better mental health and social situation will be able to score significantly better. However, the downside to "solving" this is significantly worse. By giving a headstart to students based on their superficial or socioeconomical characteristics creates perverse incentives in the system and disconnects it from a selection process. Usually, countries that are not US solve this by providing free tutorships or lectures to aspiring students, scholarships and a fixed quota of free placements in the admission for top performing students (each country may have their own flavour of the policy, but the main thing they !fortunately! did not use to be based on race or gender). It is usually much better, in my personal opinion, to provide the "help" to those who seek it rather than trying to equalize for outcome. Poor upbringing can and usually does damage and incapacitates individuals to an extent. But any movement among the lines of "not having issues or being better prepared means you have to do more work" explicitly discourages the optimal behaviour, incentivizing victim-hood and demoralizes individuals which did use the opportunities available to them or managed to create ones. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, communism is bad.
  - jedberg 4y ago
    I agree with you. This should not be solved at the college admissions level. Resources should be provided to younger students with potential to equalize there. But it's still better than doing nothing at all. > Again, and I cannot stress this enough, communism is bad. Again I agree with you. But I'm not sure how that's relevant. Changing the way we do college admissions isn't communism. In fact, admitting students purely based on test scores is something that happens in communist countries.
    - gigibec 4y ago
      [dead]
- graphe 4y ago
  > Are they actually the most capable students, or did they just have a better chance of getting higher scores on the arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they have a higher chance? They are the most capable. You call them abitrary, without stating what makes them arbitrary. Until you prove they're arbitrary, your opinion isn't worth addressing.
janalsncm 4y ago
Ironically present-day Chinese college admissions are arguably far more meritocratic than American college admissions. The main factor is performance on the Gaokao exam, an 8 hour test which dwarfs the SAT’s 3 hours.
- cm2187 4y ago
  I am too remote from this system to have strong opinions but I also heard all the princelings are doing great at those exams!
- ironSkillet 4y ago
  The problem with any standardized test is that it can be gamed with enough practice/resources that poor people are way less likely to be able to access. So it's not a cure-all, there are tradeoffs.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Standardized tests are the least game-able metric. In NYC poor Chinese immigrants manage to scrounge together $900 for an SAT prep class. It is much harder for them to figure out what some white college administrator wants to hear in a diversity essay. Or to get a job at some non-profit in China working on some social justice effort appealing to white college administrators. Standardized testing isn’t perfectly meritocratic, but everything else is worse.
    - janalsncm 4y ago
      Absolutely. The cost of SAT prep courses are very small in comparison to the immeasurable cost of a lifetime of culture and experience that are necessary to impress an admissions board during an essay or interview. This is why it’s so absolutely disgusting to me to find that schools tended to rate Asian students so low on “personality scores”. As a side note, I haven’t found any more detailed breakdown of the personality scoring results. Asia is a very diverse place and Asian ethnic groups in the US range from the very richest to some of the poorest.
  - 4y ago
csa 4y ago
> Is admitting the most capable students unfair? Grades and standardized test scores might be one of the least interesting and almost definitely one of the less effective ways to classify the “most capable” students. If I’m optimizing for students who do cool stuff, force marching them into relatively banal optimization tasks is counterproductive.
- neonsunset 4y ago
  Strongly agree with the sentiment. In fact, I alluded to this in the parent response by mentioning that SAT and most other testing systems will be always flawed. The question itself was posed with testing criteria issues notwithstanding. With that said, I think modern education system can no longer scale and has outlived its usefulness. The future is with LLM-driven tutors which can somewhat alleviate the scaling issues inherent to "apprenticeship". Personally, as an ADHD individual it was always drastically easier to study under a person who gives you dedicated attention that for any of my peers. By a wide margin. And yet, studying for local SAT equivalent was an insurmountable task involving acquiring a lot of knowledge and skills that were useless outside of passing the test.

jedberg 4y ago

> Is admitting the most capable students unfair? Are they actually the most capable students, or did they just have a better chance of getting higher scores on the arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they have a higher chance? There is a difference between better nurture and lack of opportunity. It's true, we shouldn't be correcting for lack of opportunity at the college admissions level, we should be doing it at the elementary level and younger. But it's a lot easier to correct it at the college admissions level, which is a good choke point in one's life path, so for now, that is where the focus is.

Telemakhos 4y ago
Would different test-based or merit-based metrics radically change the result? After all, isn't the purpose of a holistic approach to college admissions basically to make the criterion not one of any measurement of quality merit, but of belonging to the right demographic mix that the college seeks to attain? Further, why should colleges try to correct for lack of opportunity? Their job is to educate people, and not everyone is apt for higher education. Admitting a student with poor mathematical abilities into a rigorous engineering program is just setting that student up for failure, not recompensing him for opportunities lost or squandered earlier.
- jedberg 4y ago
  > Further, why should colleges try to correct for lack of opportunity? Public schools should do it because they are part of the education system that needs correction. Private schools arguably are still part of the public education system since they all get Federal dollars, and thus the same argument applies. If they're getting tax dollars, that makes them a public good, and therefore they should be doing things that help all people, not just some people.
  - yterdy 4y ago
    Additionally, if we are to expect that much of our political, economic, and technical elite are to pass through these institutions - and, further, that such institutions will trade explicitly on their ability to produce this elite - then there is an inherent public interest in the character of their operations. It's simply a matter of accountability.
- danheskett 4y ago
  You've accidental confused achievement and ability. A student who goes to a poor school who offers zero AP classes will always achieve lower weighted GPAs than students who go to wealthy schools that offer many AP classes. No amount of individual achievement will overcome that mathematical disadvatnage. Racism comes into when, because of racism, it just so happens that schools who are well funded and can give that advantage are overwhelmingly white, and schools who are are poorly funded and cannot give that advantage are overwhelmingly non-white. Suggesting that a student who is "placed above his or her station" into an elite program is setup for failure is a favorite of a few SCOTUS Justices, but in fact is not supported by evidence. Graduation and other metrics of success are not strongly correlated to past attainment, primarily because most programs have already had to deal with achievement inequities, and the most successful programs already have mechanisms to even out unequal prior achievement. Virtually all programs that have elite programs already have a substantial apparatus dedicated to filling achievement gaps between incoming students. The larger question of "what is the purpose of college" and "is it to educate people" is bigger than this thread, but shouldn't be overlooked. For schools that are publicly funded in whole or part, there should be a larger mission than sending young adults through an educational meat grinder. The public mission of public universities should absolutely have a social justice component. There is absolutely no doubt that we could design an education system which, at an early age, divides and tracks students towards a successful and high level of attainment. By ruthlessly focusing resources on those children with the best chances of success, and minimizing resources expended on those with lower changes of success, the system could produce many multiples of positive outcomes than we do now, but at the cost of many more left with almost no attainment. Our present distribution of resources, in the US, is haphazardly assembled and produces a balance of outcomes, but is by no means optimized for any particular set of outcomes.
neonsunset 4y ago
A student with a full family and access to tutors, with better mental health and social situation will be able to score significantly better. However, the downside to "solving" this is significantly worse. By giving a headstart to students based on their superficial or socioeconomical characteristics creates perverse incentives in the system and disconnects it from a selection process. Usually, countries that are not US solve this by providing free tutorships or lectures to aspiring students, scholarships and a fixed quota of free placements in the admission for top performing students (each country may have their own flavour of the policy, but the main thing they !fortunately! did not use to be based on race or gender). It is usually much better, in my personal opinion, to provide the "help" to those who seek it rather than trying to equalize for outcome. Poor upbringing can and usually does damage and incapacitates individuals to an extent. But any movement among the lines of "not having issues or being better prepared means you have to do more work" explicitly discourages the optimal behaviour, incentivizing victim-hood and demoralizes individuals which did use the opportunities available to them or managed to create ones. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, communism is bad.
- jedberg 4y ago
  I agree with you. This should not be solved at the college admissions level. Resources should be provided to younger students with potential to equalize there. But it's still better than doing nothing at all. > Again, and I cannot stress this enough, communism is bad. Again I agree with you. But I'm not sure how that's relevant. Changing the way we do college admissions isn't communism. In fact, admitting students purely based on test scores is something that happens in communist countries.
  - gigibec 4y ago
    [dead]
graphe 4y ago
> Are they actually the most capable students, or did they just have a better chance of getting higher scores on the arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they have a higher chance? They are the most capable. You call them abitrary, without stating what makes them arbitrary. Until you prove they're arbitrary, your opinion isn't worth addressing.

janalsncm 4y ago

Ironically present-day Chinese college admissions are arguably far more meritocratic than American college admissions. The main factor is performance on the Gaokao exam, an 8 hour test which dwarfs the SAT’s 3 hours.

cm2187 4y ago
I am too remote from this system to have strong opinions but I also heard all the princelings are doing great at those exams!
ironSkillet 4y ago
The problem with any standardized test is that it can be gamed with enough practice/resources that poor people are way less likely to be able to access. So it's not a cure-all, there are tradeoffs.
- rayiner 4y ago
  Standardized tests are the least game-able metric. In NYC poor Chinese immigrants manage to scrounge together $900 for an SAT prep class. It is much harder for them to figure out what some white college administrator wants to hear in a diversity essay. Or to get a job at some non-profit in China working on some social justice effort appealing to white college administrators. Standardized testing isn’t perfectly meritocratic, but everything else is worse.
  - janalsncm 4y ago
    Absolutely. The cost of SAT prep courses are very small in comparison to the immeasurable cost of a lifetime of culture and experience that are necessary to impress an admissions board during an essay or interview. This is why it’s so absolutely disgusting to me to find that schools tended to rate Asian students so low on “personality scores”. As a side note, I haven’t found any more detailed breakdown of the personality scoring results. Asia is a very diverse place and Asian ethnic groups in the US range from the very richest to some of the poorest.
- 4y ago

csa 4y ago

> Is admitting the most capable students unfair? Grades and standardized test scores might be one of the least interesting and almost definitely one of the less effective ways to classify the “most capable” students. If I’m optimizing for students who do cool stuff, force marching them into relatively banal optimization tasks is counterproductive.

neonsunset 4y ago
Strongly agree with the sentiment. In fact, I alluded to this in the parent response by mentioning that SAT and most other testing systems will be always flawed. The question itself was posed with testing criteria issues notwithstanding. With that said, I think modern education system can no longer scale and has outlived its usefulness. The future is with LLM-driven tutors which can somewhat alleviate the scaling issues inherent to "apprenticeship". Personally, as an ADHD individual it was always drastically easier to study under a person who gives you dedicated attention that for any of my peers. By a wide margin. And yet, studying for local SAT equivalent was an insurmountable task involving acquiring a lot of knowledge and skills that were useless outside of passing the test.