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Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

• OOPMan 4y ago
  They dropped the passing grade in South African high schools a decade or so back (maybe a bit more or less, longer after I exited the system in 2001). Wouldn't you know it, graduating more students with terrible grades didn't magically lead to more capable working or studying adults. It almost like pushing people through who are struggling to cope doesn't help them...
• steakscience 4y ago
  Doesn't this go against what we know about SATs — which is that rich people do better simply because they have the time and money to do practice tests? SATs don't measure much, they mostly measure how familiar you are with the structure of the test.
• known 4y ago
  [dead]
• djaouen 4y ago
  The only reason I was able to break into programming was because of high standardized test scores. The SAT and others like it really are a great equalizer. Dropping the requirement is a shame.
  • tomp 4y ago
    Sorry, but what do you mean? If you said any other career except programming I'd agree with this, but programming is literally the least gate-kept of the high-paying careers. Anyone can break into programming, all you need is the internet, interest and aptitude to understand code.
    • tkiolp4 4y ago
      And time. Don’t forget about time. Not everyone has the luxury of 24h/day.
      • tomp 4y ago
        that goes for any career. I'm talking about young people who have plenty of time to invest into their future. Doctor? Gatekeepers. Actor? Gatekeepers. Lawyer? Gatekeepers. Programmer? Just show up and be good! (The closest thing to a meritocracy there is.)
    • oofnik 4y ago
      In my country at least, having friends or family with a foot in the door is pretty essential to landing that first interview. You still need to demonstrate competence, though. I think the newness of software engineering relative to more traditional professions like medicine, law, and even other kinds of engineering is a large part of the reason why gatekeeping is less of a barrier. Given enough time, though, I'm sure this will change for the worse.
    • qsort 4y ago
      > Anyone can break into programming, all you need is the internet, interest and aptitude to understand code. If by "break into programming" you mean getting any decent paying job, it's even easier than that. I'd say it's closer to "show up on time having showered and be able to code yourself out of a paper bag".
    • i_am_toaster 4y ago
      I do think it’s hard to break into initially — if you are approaching it from any other industry (such as what I did), it can take a few jobs to make the leap into a high paying career. Edit: not trying to derail what you had said either, just a comment
    • hot_gril 4y ago
      It is the least gate-kept, but it's still gate-kept. The higher-paying SWE jobs all want a college degree and have an blatant preference for new college grads. You can get such a job without a degree, but it's much harder than getting into college in the first place.
  • ProjectArcturis 4y ago
    They're not banning it, it's just no longer a requirement. You could still have benefited.
• Zigurd 4y ago
  In principle, SAT scores enable people like me, who were very very good at such tests, to break into elite schools. In fact, test prep works well enough to enable a shockingly high percentage of legacies and donor brats in elite schools. Ending SAT use in admissions might enable a more balanced approach to admissions, but it does not broaden access to elite schools. They could increase class sizes, or they could get rid of legacies and donor admissions.
  • civilized 4y ago
    Standardized tests are designed to be as non-gameable as possible. They're definitely less gameable than the other admissions criteria still used in elite colleges: admissions essays, playing obscure sports, fancy extracurricular experiences, etc. Most studies find SAT prep confers very limited benefits to the average person. Having an essay essentially written for you by an expensive consultant with contacts in admissions departments is undetectable and widely practiced. But when it comes to standardized tests, many wealthy families get so desperate for good scores for their kids that they engage in criminal conspiracy (recall the Varsity Blues scandal in 2019). It's extremely hard for me to see how, when you remove the least gameable aspect of admissions, that it gives the rich less of an advantage. I'm almost certain it gives them more of an advantage instead.
    • Zigurd 4y ago
      14% of Harvard undergrads are legacies. It is exceedingly unlikely that SATs help a higher percentage of deserving but otherwise overlooked applicants. My point is, there is a way to have a far higher impact on opening seats for kids who should be getting an elite education than the question of whether SATs help or harm attaining that goal. They're not really serious until they don't preference legacies.
      • civilized 4y ago
        > 14% of Harvard undergrads are legacies. It is exceedingly unlikely that SATs help a higher percentage of deserving but otherwise overlooked applicants. I don't follow. Are you implying that the first sentence is evidence for the second? Do you think legacies are getting in via high standardized test scores? I don't think that's true. If standardized test scores were a major determinant of admission, these schools would be 2-3x more East Asian than they currently are. And virtually none of those students would be legacies. The Harvard admissions case showed all this with evidence from Harvard's own admissions data. Additionally, the article cites a study saying that SATs do in fact help "deserving but otherwise overlooked" applicants. > My point is, there is a way to have a far higher impact on opening seats for kids who should be getting an elite education than the question of whether SATs help or harm attaining that goal. They're not really serious until they don't preference legacies. I agree with you that elite schools do not explicitly prioritize the talented poor. My impression is they prioritize (1) the powerful, (2) those who possess or can afford expensive class signals, (3) those who will donate money, (4) racial balance, (5) high achievers. Standardized tests allow students who can't get in via Categories 1-4 to sneak in via Category 5. Even these students tend to be of higher socioeconomic class, but to a lesser extent than Categories 1-4. In my opinion, the only way to do better than standardized tests would be (standardized tests) - (all the non-academic mechanisms that privilege the rich) + (explicit priority for the talented poor). But these second and third terms will never happen, so standardized tests are better than nothing. It is hard for me to understand those who support standardized tests being discarded along the way to a more fair admissions process. As you point out, there are much more obvious ways to achieve that first.
• jacknews 4y ago
  'Disguising self-interest as virtue' Indeed, and this seems like a prime example. I'm a fan of a level playing-field, and measuring, rather than judging, ability. But lets face it the putative victim described by the author is actually up against the kids of quite privileged, or dedicated families, who will be hiring private tutors, sending their kids to evening cram schools, or doing the 'tiger-mom' thing. Some flexibility might give a leg-up to talented kids who haven't had one before (although there is that danger that it could go woke).
  • ryan93 4y ago
    Legacy acceptances rates at Princeton are close to ten percent. Kids who get in to those schools often have high GPAs and test scores without tutors.
• sandworm101 4y ago
  Standardized tests remain the only criteria totally in the control of the student. You can study for them and objectively do better, become a better applicant. Everthing else is either circumstantial or based in the opinion of others, mostly highschool teachers. If i had to rely on my highschool teachers' opinion of me i would not have ever gone to university let alone have won scholarships. Standardized testing allowed me to overcome thier base opinions. Want to be a lawyer but are not sure about law school and do ot know any lawyers? Look to the LSAT. Do well and where you went to university/highschool doesnt matter. Do really well and scholarships will appear. That is the freedom of good standardized testing.
  • 1letterunixname 4y ago
    Make it 100% achievement. Any differences in background must be supplemented with aggressive college prep programs so the bar isn't weakened for some. It's the only way to remain globally competitive. And abolish legacy. (Don't get a JD unless set on a particular practice because the field is overflowing. Consider MD or DDS first.)
    • mrangle 4y ago
      Magnet programs operating from kindergarten on are one possible solution. The problem is that these programs are being effectively phased out because less-astute normals are insulted that everyone doesn't qualify. Which is the inverse precise equivalent of eliminating special ed programs.
      • earlyam 4y ago
        Most criticism I've heard of them is that they suck up a disproportionate amount of funding.
        • 1letterunixname 4y ago
          "Suck up"? I went to magnet elementary school. There were more art and music teachers. The average additional expenditure per pupil for magnet schools is $200/year out of $12.5k.
• 1letterunixname 4y ago
  Maybe I'm old or insufficiently woke, but I don't see legacy or identity as substitutes for demonstrated learning. I see the decay of rigor and achievement as signals of decline of excellence and the crumbling of knowledge. The mythology of "everyone needs degrees" created a wealth transfer scam and a lowering of standards to sell more student loan debt for sheepskins. Maybe we need to throw away arbitrary employment requirements and make universities run on merit. Oh and there's a gender imbalance in most undergraduate programs where the bar is effectively higher for women because men aren't keeping up or have been left behind.
  • baremetal 4y ago
    If everyone must be equitable, then the most expedient way to achieve that is to reduce the standard.
    • hedora 4y ago
      Of course, there will always be a way for well off people to buy their way into higher standard systems. We need a word for this. “Separate but equitable”?
      • baremetal 4y ago
        Perhaps we can ask the Soviets what they called it.
  • CJefferson 4y ago
    “Legacy” applicants is the opposite of woke, it’s been how the “old boys network” has run for hundreds of years, getting under qualified students into top Universities.
    • mrangle 4y ago
      That's an urban myth perpetuated by people interested in generalized grievance. At least from the period I attended prep school, and beyond. From the mid-1990's. Almost in-total, the "old boys" applicants are not under-qualified. When compared to almost any kid that attended lesser secondary schools than the privileged kid attended, on average. These kids have almost always proven themselves in elite educational environments. Most of those who skate by in such environments don't go Ivy. They will instead attend one of the many more numerous elite Liberal Arts colleges that most others ignore but that carry almost equivalent cache. There are no Stuyvesant valedictorians missing Ivy admissions. In the same vein, there are plenty of prep school kids who do. I've only rarely seen underqualified kids go Ivy, and the only one that I can actually think of was a poor kid. Today, Ivy's are skipping qualified lesser privileged kids for diversity. In eliminating the SAT/ACT, they are essentially gambling that their reputation rather than their student body will continue to qualify them as Elite. Over time, I have doubts. The curriculums will have to be adjusted so as to avoid the pall of racism or classism that will occur when wildly divergent grades become apparent.
• paulsutter 4y ago
  Employers should embrace standardize testing: we're on the cusp of a revolution in education driven by the tireless personalized tutoring and feedback of LLMs Of course not all schools are ending testing, MIT for example: "We are reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles" https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-requirement-for-future-admissions-cycles/ https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our...
  • ec109685 4y ago
    As an aside, that is so well written, and I love the use of inline citations that expand right where the reader is versus jumping to the bottom. It feels so natural that I wish all publications did that.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    I had a professor in grad school who had studied how admissions inputs correlated to various measures of success (which is of course a fraught subject of uts own). This was a while back though I assume not much as changed. As I recall, standardized tests followed by some sort of adjusted class rank were the best predictors while a lot of the softer stuff like interviews and letters of recommendation were pretty close to worthless. I expect schools could drop some of the more time-consuming softer stuff with very little impact on the admissions process. In MIT's case it probably is especially important to assess certain types of skills, because someone who doesn't have a reasonable math background for example is going to have a bad time. (Though problems doing math is a surprisingly common theme in higher ed including at the grad level--even with programs you wouldn't think were especially quantitative.)
    • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > while a lot of the softer stuff like interviews and letters of recommendation were pretty close to worthless It’s telling we’re seeing testing attacked while these are preserved.
      • lumb63 4y ago
• nemo44x 4y ago
  When universities drop standardized testing but keep legacy admissions it tells you all you need to know.
  • baremetal 4y ago
    did you think they weren't gonna protect their own?
  • mrangle 4y ago
    There are no bottom-barrel legacy admissions. The "club", which includes the assurance of giving legacies a hard look, is largely why these Universities are desirable for non-legacy candidates. In general, but also University depending, the education itself is nothing that can't be attained at many liberal arts colleges.
    • nemo44x 4y ago
      It’s about the connections, not the content. It’s about being with a cohort of people that can play at your level and share ambitions. Rubbing shoulders with rich kids who are average isn’t as useful as you make it out. Rich people will invest in smart kids that have the prestige of a top university with or without their own kids being connected to them.
• ec109685 4y ago
  The key part that is glossed over is that Columbia is making SATs optional, so if a candidate is amazing in all ways except they are a poor test taker, they do not have to submit a test score. And the author also tries to correlate SATs with the Armed Forces aptitude tests, the latter which weeds out those at the far bottom end of aptitude versus making hitting a high bar a requirement for entry. Once in, recruits are judged by other means. And while what he says is true about how poorly those low scoring recruits faired, a big reason they died at a higher rate was that they were assigned to infantry at a higher rate, so were more often put in harms way. Finally, why do we assume the SATs are fair? I was fairly good at the SATs, but would have been awful if they had required spelling, grammar or were fill in the blank versus multiple choice. Should I have a leg up over everyone because I am good at what it tested? I chose not to submit SAT 2’s for writing for that reason (timed essay writing for an hour in pen was a truly awful experience).
  • prepend 4y ago
    > Should I have a leg up over everyone because I am good at what it tested? Yes, that’s a feature not a bug. The SAT doesn’t test randomly. It is designed to test for specific subjects and knowledge in those subjects. I’ve SAT is not fun but I think it’s purpose is to fairly test all takers and rank them to assist with allocating educational resources. It’s such an odd question to ask “should I get a leg up because I got an A in chemistry and someone else got a C?” There are many reasons that make trades hard to get. But the idea is to compensate for them as best as possible and not dwell on the fact that any merit system will not be completely fair.
    • Brian_K_White 4y ago
      I think the point might have been, you can be excellent at chemistryy, a real value to society with your ingenuity and rigor, and be no good at all at writing about chemistry. A test like that would be fair if it were testing for journalists. Maybe every job needs at least a little bit of rounded basic skills like that, and so it's fair for the test to include some the same way. In that case I see no problem there either. But I don't know how out of balance the commenter is talking about. Was the test they are thinking of totally wrong or did it just include the appropriate portion of basic rounded literacy/competency, and if they sucked at it, then that was exactly the job the test is there to do is to guage those weaknesses?
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
  As one of the comments to the article mentions, a lot of this dropping of standardized tests is likely being driven by the fact that the Supreme Court will likely rule against affirmative action for college admissions. The colleges want to remove as many objective measures of student achievement as possible to allow them to pick and choose they type of students they want.
• Overtonwindow 4y ago
  I finished high school with a 2.2 GPA and my SAT score was 1380. I was a terrible student, and I hated being in school, but somehow I did really well on the standardized test. That got me into the community college. Standardized tests equalize things. It's everything else that should be banned, because all of those steaks get manipulated.
• wunderland 4y ago
  All of this debate about what measures should be used to gatekeep higher education ignore that the US system is only loosely about teaching students; the goal of an American university degree is class differentiation. There is not a shortage of textbooks or qualified teachers who could explain calculus or history or economics. As a society, the could easily produce far more educated people (and for a lower cost), but that is not the goal of a degree. The diploma -- especially from an elite school like Columbia -- first and foremost is a signifier that you deserve entrance into an upper middle managerial class. Unless the goals of higher education are teaching (or god forbid actual job training), the entrance requirements will always be arbitrary enough that class lines can be sufficiently preserved.
  • freework 4y ago
    I feel the same way. Imagine if Harvard had the ability to enroll one billion students per year. There would be no need to use either grades, SAT score, personal essays or anything else to reject students. They would be able to accept everybody, and then everybody could get an elite education and society would be so much better off. But that would never happen. The whole point of ivy league is that they are exclusive. Companies get to feel special when they hire an ivy league grad so they can feel special for having one of the special chosen ones. If everyone gets to have an ivy league degree, then the ivy league degree becomes worthless.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • Dylan16807 4y ago
      The ivy leagues combined are half a percent of college students. They are not representative of the system as a whole.
  • vgatherps 4y ago
    In a loose sense this is the accepted purpose of a degree, not just as an education center (theoretically motivated peers in addition to the teachers), but as a stamp of "we have given you education in X and deemed that you learned/retained enough of it". I don't know that many school do it well, but some universities can claim that they have much more rigorous programs than others and so students going there will come out better educated (I studied abroad and the mathematics standards at my host school were just nonexistent). Anyone can pick up a math book and start teaching themselves, there's no doubt about it - but any form of third-party verification of this is very high effort on a case-by-case basis.
• ryzvonusef 4y ago
  As an Asian person, I think it's a cultural thing. There is this old joke about how even if you are a one-in-a-million person, there are still 8000 of "you"s to choose from; how does one chose who to pick, if there aren't positions for all of them? So how do you make it "fair"? Since of the number of seats are limited, so imagine if the cut-off for the last seat is for someone who is in the 90.3765335th percentile, look at how many significant digits that is! (Yes, that's how specific it can get, when population sizes grow large enough.) Yes, you can argue about having a "bad day", but there are thousands of other people ALSO in the same percentile as you, and you all didn't have a "bad day", at some point it's about resource limitation. There are two and a half billion Asians of different varieties, that means MILLIONS of people at each economic/social strata. You simply CAN'T provide the same resource to all of them, some of them will have to vie for a lower-ranked resource. If there are limited number of seats, and your economy cannot afford to fund more seats, then a standardized test is the only fair way, at least it allows you to have SOME sort of control at your luck. ---- That same thinking applies to Asians who move to the US. It's patently unfair, from their PoV, to give weightage to things they CAN'T control for (race/wealth etc.) and not give weightage to a thing they CAN control for; a standardized test.
  • zozbot234 4y ago
    > You simply CAN'T provide the same resource to all of them, some of them will have to vie for a lower-ranked resource. It depends what the "resource" is. If it's the mix of prestige and the individualized attention of highly impressive scholars that you get at elite colleges, then of course not. If it's simply high-quality educational content plus some average-quality tutoring, that's a scalable resource that could be provided to many more people at very low cost.
    • ryzvonusef 4y ago
      I get the gist of your comment, but isn't prestige kind of the point (at least partially)? If education was the point, you don't even need to spend money for cheap local community colleges, you can get a very good education from MOOCs like Coursera (I am doing one right now, in fact), edX, heck youtube even. But the whole point is that an organization is staking their prestige against your qualification. There wouldn't be a barrier to entry in the first place for the MOOCs, so the point wouldn't even arise. ---- I know the HN commenter base prides itself of favoring "experience" over "qualifications", but let's be honest here. When they are both starting from fresh, a "traditionally qualified" person would have access to more opportunities, because the barriers are lower, which is what parents are aiming for, and the more prestigious the qualifying authority, the lower the barrier.
• i_am_toaster 4y ago
  Whenever I see articles like this one, I imagine this is the kind of PR that US colleges would use to deflect conversational topics they don’t want happening. Get people talking about “how do we get into college?” (with the assumption that college is where we want to be) instead of “why is the US college system broken?” Not saying this is that, but just a thought and I’d be curious to see if this is a trend that continues.
• alphanullmeric 4y ago
  Interesting how many people try using inequality of outcomes as evidence for inequality of opportunities
  • kenjackson 4y ago
    Especially since evidence of inequality of opportunity is so prevalent.
    • alphanullmeric 4y ago
      Would you like to provide an example then? Government inequality please, I’m not interested in hearing why you believe a private party should be obligated to give you anything.
      • kenjackson 4y ago
        It’s not about being obligated or private parties. It’s just simply pointing out that not everyone has equal opportunity. You can start with access to prenatal health care, which literally starts before birth. And then you can find inequality of opportunity all the way up through life — from differences in water quality, school quality, access to money through inequality in banking access, access to high quality foods, etc…. This isn’t about the causes of these issues. But it’s obvious that not everyone has the same opportunities in childhood. It seems odd that you’d even question this.
        • alphanullmeric 4y ago
          Like I said, I’m not interested in hearing why you believe other individuals should be forced to pay more money to things that would benefit you. Do you have any examples of government inequality? For instance, does the law require that a white student with the same SAT as a black student be prioritized?
          • kenjackson 4y ago
• lapcat 4y ago
  I think the author is missing an important point: like many young people, he was smart but undisciplined. If he had gone directly to college from high school, instead of into the military, he probably would have performed as badly in college as he did in high school. He needed more time to grow up and mature. The SAT is irrelevant to that natural fact. If you're not self-disciplined, then college can be even worse than high school, because you have more personal freedom in college. For example, if you skip classes in high school, you're in big trouble, but if you skip classes in college, they just shrug, cash your tuition check, and give you an F. In college, the adult supervision is largely absent. You're expected to be an adult and supervise yourself. The military accepts smart underachievers because the military is going to force you to work whether you like it or not. I didn't join the military myself, but it took me until age 24 to become self-disciplined. Although I was smart enough to get into college, I wasn't psychologically ready for it at 18, and I dropped out at age 20. I had a great time partying for the first 2 years though. ;-)
  • rflrob 4y ago
    > if you skip classes in college, they just shrug, cash your tuition check, and give you an F. Depends on the college. A friend of mine who went to an “elite institution“ struggled to supervise themselves and got set up with a counselor to keep them on track. I’m not certain this was actually in their best interests, since they’ve spent most of their late 20s and early 30s struggling to apply to med school but missing deadlines.
• sct202 4y ago
  The SATs may not be fully fair, but they are definitely more fair than any other means of judging college applicants. Extracurriculars can make a very mediocre student look amazing, and if you pour enough money into sports, student organizations, community organizing, arts, etc, eventually one of them might pan out as sounding impressive. Middle class and poor kids won't have opportunities like that, while rich people can keep spending until their child seems unique and interesting.
• tokey 4y ago
  Isn't this patently obvious that dropping the SAT is entirely about creating pretext for continued discrimination against Asian applicants? In 1996, California repealed affirmative action via Prop 209. At the UC Berkeley and UCLA, considered the 'best' of the UC system, Asians represented 25-30% of the student base. Studies and fear-mongering at the time showed that a repeal of affirmative action would imply that Asians would become 90% of the enrollment based on the admissions factors used. The UC system dismantled its admissions framework, and yet despite moving to a 'softer' framework, Asian enrollment at UC Berkeley rose to 65-70%, which is the case today. Now the ithe same thing happening, but on a national scale, 27 years later. It's about time! The reality is on any quantifiable, OBJECTIVE framework, Asians and to a lesser extent, whites, have been shown to be discriminated against. The only way to sustain this, especially in light of the pending ruling from SCOTUS likely banning affirmative action policies at Harvard et al... is to dismantle any external, objective framework for measuring applicants. Chief Justice Roberts said it plainly: "the only way to end discrimination is to end discrimination." My question is, if you eliminated race - 'banned the box' on applications, what would the outcomes be? Answer is self-evident and that's the true reason the SAT and test scores in general are going away. "a rose by any other name".
  • kenjackson 4y ago
    How could whites be discriminated against if Asians would rise to 90% of the accepted population? There aren’t enough underrepresented minorities at selective all combined to get Asians to 90%. That is most of the pool that Asians would take is from White students. From a pure counting perspective, more whites get in over “more deserving” Asians than any other group (assuming your numbers are accurate). Based on this Whites are the greatest beneficiaries of affirmative action (by numbers), even if blacks are by ratio. There just aren’t enough blacks at these schools to make that much of a difference of scale.
    • tokey 4y ago
      I was incorrect about the 65% of Berkeley as Asian. It's 30.6%. Note this is double the percentage as the Ivy League schools - and it's based on a framework that was specifically developed as a way to get around the 1996 ban on affirmative action. I still believe the only explanation for eliminating clear, measurable and quantifiable metrics for university admissions is because universities are looking for discrete ways to continue discriminatory tactics against Asians and to a lesser extent, whites. This is not about legacy admissions practices. "Berkeley diversity statistics show that the enrolled student population at the University of California, Berkeley is composed of individuals who identify as Asian (30.6%), White (25.4%), Hispanic or Latino (16.3%), Two or More Races (5.5%), Black or African American (2.42%), American Indian or Alaska Native (0.139%), Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders (0.132%), and Other Pacific Islanders (0.132%)."
• jeffrallen 4y ago
  I live in a society with free education for all, up to and including university. To make that possible, there are a limited number of seats, and the number is based on the needs of society, and on our government's budget. The seats are allocated based on testing, but there are multiple ways to "test into" a seat, i.e. "you missed it this time, but go do another two years of pre-university and you might get in later". This is the best we can hope for: a transparent system, with clearly defined multiple pathways, and a limited number of completely free seats at the education table. Also: one thing which other systems miss is different maturity. If someone is bright but at 15 does not see the point of studying and prefers to smoke with the stoners, fine. At 18, get a job in retail, and perhaps at 20 the light will go on and they will realize that there's a way put of retail hell and they are smart enough to test into university with night prep classes.
  • zozbot234 4y ago
    If there's a limited number of seats, it's not "free for all". (Of course, there's no way around inherent class size limits under any system, other than MOOC's which are quite different from actual real-world college classes.)
    • jeffrallen 4y ago
      All education at all levels is free for all. If what you are capable of contributing to society to support your family is plastering, your plastering training is free.
  • jeffrallen 4y ago
    Forgot to mention: I suppose this only works in high trust societies. Citizens are sometimes dissatisfied with individual outcomes, but there is no groundswell of resistance to it because people generally believe the system (both the educational system, but also the entire economic system) is fair.
  • hijghula 4y ago
    Sounds like the French system. Largely free (taxpayer-funded) at all levels but if you want to go into the best schools you better bring in your A-game because entrance requirements it to sit series of 4 hour long tests graded anonymously. You don't have to pretend to be a native American competitive rower who plays the trombone, but you need to know how to calculate Fourier series by hand.
• ltbarcly3 4y ago
  Rich people feel less guilty ("black people do bad on tests", they say) and also don't have to pay for years of SAT tutoring so their average IQ kids overperform and qualify for prestigious colleges. Gifted underprivileged kids pay the price. Sounds about right.
• euroderf 4y ago
  If you're going to discuss standardized testing, you should at least mention that it's totally a racket: Educational Testing Service.
• tarotuser 4y ago
  I think people are missing the bigger picture, that's related directly to the SAT. In the USA, public education funds are directly derived from the local tax base as a percentage of that revenue. If you live in a rich area, it means your family is also rich. The tax base, although it may be the rough same percentage, is much higher actual dollars than a small non-rich community. I even see that locally in my nearby college town. There's definitely a "rich district". Homes go from $750k up to $5m. Their elementary has teachers and aides to cover students at 7:1, and flush with a wealthy technology budget. The other schools, or in particular, the "subsidized housing and trailer parks area's schools" have student coverage around 25:1, no teacher aides, and very limited tech budget. This should be of little surprise given how our education system by default teaches the wealthy to be wealthy. And that starts as early as preschool and easily onwards through public school. And naturally, I didn't even touch upon private schools. And in my state, vouchers can be used from public schools on private and even religious schools. That too is an even higher rung on elitism. Unless you're a genius from a poor family, you're likely going to stay in the "dumb and low paying" jobs for most of your lives.
  • mrangle 4y ago
    Even the most expensive prep schools tend to do limited SAT test prep, if any. Poor kids can technically access the same private test prep as rich kids, and whether they actually can or not, financially speaking, has nothing to do with the tax base and the school itself. That being said, better schools do provide for better child development. This can be compensated for, to a degree, by enhanced parental interaction with the child from an early age.
    • DubiousPusher 4y ago
      > This can be compensated for, to a degree, by enhanced parental interaction with the child from an early age. Which, as this article points out, is exactly the kind of thing that wealthier parents are able to provide their kids and which less wealthy parents often cannot, even when they would like to.
• throwawaymaths 4y ago
  I think an important thing to note is that the university of California Academic Senate (not exactly a body that is seeking to overthrow liberal narratives) conducted a review on the effects of eliminating the SAT, and concluded that eliminating the SAT would disadvantage non-asian minorities. They then voted unanimously to keep standardized testing, but were overruled by the UC regents, who made their decision based on no evidence at all, resulting in UC dropping standardized tests. https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/committees/sttf/ https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/committees/sttf/
• lr4444lr 4y ago
  Sigh... Isn't it obvious? The affirmative action wall is about to be breached by the conservative court, for better or for worse. If not by the current two cases brought by SFFA, then it's only a matter of time. The dropping of the SAT is the same reason Princeton et al. pulled out of the USNews rankings: they fully intend to continue AA, and they need to cover as much of their tracks as possible by not requiring people submit incriminating data that can be demanded in court once the policy is declared illegal.
• whack 4y ago
  The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” > Applicants from the most affluent families excel at these games. A study at Stanford found that family income is more highly correlated with admissions essay content than with SAT scores. Applicants from well-to-do backgrounds are especially adept at crafting their essays in ways that please admissions committees. If equity is so important, why not grant preferential treatment to all children coming from families that aren't upper-middle-class? Or ban legacy preferences at the very least? This is a simple and effective way of achieving the goals they claim to be championing. The author hit the nail on the head. Every other metric used for admissions is far more easily gamed by rich families. Hence why they are being preserved. Standardized test scores are the hardest metric to game, and hence, are most under attack. All this talk about equity is the most convenient and cost-effective way to eliminate the one barrier that most vexes rich parents.
  • tikiman163 4y ago
    A big part of the problem is that means testing is largely a waste of time. If you boost people based on income you end up wasting a huge amount of time trying to figure out where the income line should be. Even if you can find a good point to put that line, the "rich kids who just didn't test well enough" will sue because they think college admissions should be a meritocracy, and bossing anyone for any reasons is somehow descrimination. They recently won a significant court case with that exact logic. My next statement will be controversial, and is largely anecdotal, but there is very little to no research that contradicts my opinion, so I'm going to say it anyway. Smart, capable people who simply "don't test well" are almost non-existent. Even if they did, you can't accurately identify who doesn't test well except by giving them a job and letting them prove they were capable when they aren't under testing pressure. I have met hundreds of people who claimed they simply didn't test well, and only one of them later proved it by being genuinely capable and competent. The thing that pisses me off the most about this whole debate, is that it only really matters if you think it matters whether you went to one of the top 10 universities available to you. Frankly, most employers will throw out your application if it says Harvard School of Business. The number of management jobs that want Harvard graduates is less than half the graduating class, and Business majors have it easier than most of the engineering degrees in that respect. If you're an electrical engineer, there are fewer than 100 jobs Nation wide, and they are already occupied. If you want to be a civil engineer, straight up forget about it. The medical and legal schools are the only exception, and those are graduate schools only. There is far too much focus on whether the top 10 university admissions are fair and equitable, and far too little focus on whether we have affordable universities that meet decent educational standards for everyone who could reasonably earn a useful degree. We definitely shouldn't be trying to get rid of standardized tests. There are arguments that can be made about their content, especially historically, but they have merit in showing whether a student is ready for certain classes. At a normal university, they use SAT and ACT scores to decide if you can skip algebra and go straight to calculus, or if you need to take even more basic classes before algebra, and they do this for science and English courses as well. Having such a laser focus on how the top 10 or top 50 schools that actually turn away applicants because they're at capacity is a massive failure to see the actual big picture when it comes to education.
• ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  > Our ruling class is doing all they can to prevent this possibility. HN gets bizarrely left-wing when wokeness comes up. Ruling classes keeping the poor down? You simply don't see that kind of talk here unless affirmative action or similar is discussed. It'll be a double win if these attempts to undermine wokeness lead to a society that truly provides equality of opportunity for all.
• jmugan 4y ago
  "Elite colleges are eliminating standardized tests before they eliminate legacy admissions. Tells you all you need to know."
• gchallen 4y ago
  Related reading which I didn't see posted yet: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/mit-admissions-reinstates-sat-act-tests/629455/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/mit-admiss... Lot of great stuff in there, but here's one quote: > Richer students don’t just get better SAT scores. They also tend to outperform on everything else that an admissions committee would use to select students. Personal essays? Their style and content are more strongly correlated with family income than SAT scores are. Recommendation letters? They are subject to teachers’ classist and racist biases, and even knowing how to request the letters requires significant social capital.
• mchusma 4y ago
  I'd be curious to see a good school most the opposite direction. Admit ONLY based on SAT or SAT+ACT or something. Effectively allow students an "instant acceptance" option. I highly suspect that this "SAT-Only" group would be competitive across most or all metrics.
• petilon 4y ago
  There is this belief among some, that the wealthy have an advantage when it comes to standardized tests such as SAT. This isn't true. Correlation isn't causation. You can't use your wealth to buy SAT scores. The best SAT tutoring available is Khan Academy, and it is free.
• __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  I realize that the argument here is isolated to testing, so perhaps instruction is out of scope, but it reeks of a sickness I see all over education: so often we don't bother teach, we merely filter.
• TimPC 4y ago
  The US is the only country in the world where standardized testing improves the performance of low-income students. In most parts of the world standardized testing is unfair to the poor. But in the US the rest of the system is so unfair to the poor that standardized testing helps rather than hurts. It’s basically a consequence of funding schools by property tax and having GPA requirements above the maximum possible at certain schools because the bonus points courses aren’t offered everywhere.
• deleted 4y ago
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• analog31 4y ago
  In my view it might be possible to distribute resources to a greater extent by making it explicitly a lottery. For instance, a college could assign a "score" to each applicant, using their existing process, but then deliberately add a certain amount of random noise to the score. Socially, everybody would know that acceptance was decided by a combination of "merit" (by whatever measure) and luck. The degree of randomness could depend on the school. For instance, community colleges accept virtually 100% of applicants anyway, and a random factor would not change anything.
• bannedbybros 4y ago
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• paulpauper 4y ago
  How is it a luxury belief? A luxury would imply that it's hard to obtain and rare/uncommon, yet this is a view that is widely held by a lot of people, and it's not like there is any barrier to believing in something, unlike having enough money to buy a luxury car. It's more like a trendy belief than a luxury one.
• dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Now that chatGPT breaks the college essay, proctored standardized tests seem like one of the only ways to assess kids.
• wirrbel 4y ago
  When I studied physics it was almost “free admittance” (essentially a high school diploma with at least P-Level courses is what I think would be an equivalent in California). Within the first semester everyone was weeded out who wouldn’t make it to the degree with theoretical physics and math courses. It was pretty fair in retrospect. Everyone had their chance and a bad grade in English didn’t prevent anyone from pursuing physics. Since there was only an administrative fee of ~500€ for the semester it also didn’t ruin people’s finances
• projektfu 4y ago
  Is this coming from a different place by the sort of person who has good-but-but-top grades and top standardized test scores, but thinks they deserve a look by elite universities? However, they can't say that so they point to a theoretical disadvantaged student who is somehow elevated by taking the test? Fundamentally, the question is whether the SAT does what ETS wants you to believe it does, that it provides an objective assessment of a high schooler for college admissions. The claim is a correlation to the first year grades. Beyond that, it's mainly correlated to IQ and social class (professional class scores best IIRC). Contrast this with the situation in other countries that rely heavily on testing, such as Ireland. As I understand it, the subjects are tested and the test grade is used instead of subjective markers of academic performance. Students are allowed to choose their university course based on priority derived from these test scores. This seems like a much more likely way for a poor Irish kid to arrive at Trinity college than for Harvard to notice and pluck out a poor American kid, if they even bothered applying.
• tester756 4y ago
  I've been thinking about this for long time On one hand I'm fan of standardized exams because they feel very very fair, are transparent and allow you to bootstrap yourself. On the other hand I see the pros of taking people's traits into consideration because you know, it's not always that the top scorers are actually top people. Unfortunately how to decide which traits are desirable? who decides that? etc etc. And just because of that I'd default to first option - pure exams, because they're fair and transparent, rules are clear - just be the best. But I do agree that in some cases there may be better ways to pick top people - just like during job interview.
• jrm4 4y ago
  Nassim Taleb's idea (not sure if he came up with it first) is instructive here: "Education doesn't create wealth. Wealth creates education."
• nothrowaways 4y ago
  If you want to help poor kids let them take the SAT exams for free.
• 1-KB-OK 4y ago
  I agree with the article. The SAT is a chance for any student, regardless of background, to demonstrate academic skills and the ability to succeed. I was one of those students -- my SAT score got me a full merit scholarship. I wasn't as polished or accomplished as other students around me, but I was able to show that yes, I am smart, and that I can succeed academically at the college level. I did go to a korean after-school program to help study for it though. I feel like instead of dropping the test they could provide free resources to students to prepare for it. At least get them familiar with the structure of the test and encourage them to do the best they can. A lot of kids like those in the article would stand to benefit. The only winner from getting rid of the test is rich, stupid kids that don't do well regardless of how much prep they get. They then go on to cheat and BS their way through college and use their network to land jobs. Poor and disenfranchised students will continue to be marginalized.
  • gqcwwjtg 4y ago
    Maybe I'm missing something because you and the author seem to agree, but I think schools are moving toward test-optional applications, not test-ignored. So it still could show that a student is excelling. Right?
    • raincom 4y ago
      One can't file a lawsuit against test-optional schools for discrimination. In the end, test-optional = test-ignored
  • deleted 4y ago
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• zenta 4y ago
  Probably the most common pro-SAT take I see is: "I wouldn't be where I was today without the SAT, so therefore it must be a good thing." Which is fine. What _is_ narrow sighted is extending that to "Everyone will benefit from the SAT" and "the system must remain the same because it worked for me". This article unfortunately drops into the latter category.
• rflrob 4y ago
  One obvious difference between how the AVSAB and SAT are used is that the minimum score on the AVSAB is ~ 35th percentile (somewhere around a 980 on the SAT). That kind of score is likely all-but disqualifying at Columbia, where the 25th percentile is 1450, and only 5-6% of applicants are accepted. The question is not “does the SAT provide some globally useful measure of college performance,“ to which the answer is “very probably yes”; instead, Columbia is asking “does requiring it help them identify top tier talent from underrepresented backgrounds rather than filter out top talent from those backgrounds”, to which the answer is “quite possibly not”. They aren’t banning it as a factor, they are just permitting those with a low score to omit it. And lest I sound like I’m cheerleading elite universities here, I suspect there are enough people with >1500 SATs and family incomes <$50k that you could fill 2 whole Columbias. They’re obviously going to keep admitting legacies and other high donor value applicants because they’re mostly trying to maximize return on investment.
• Trevorwendy 4y ago
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• birdyrooster 4y ago
  Not sure I agree with Peter Hitchens, but he wrote a book (A Revolution Betrayed) about Modern, Grammar and Comprehensive secondary schools in Britain which digs into a lot of this as it feeds into the colleges systems in both countries. It’s a good book for getting your head around the problem.
• cleandreams 4y ago
  I totally agree. I was an SAT high tester in an unsupportive home. I was not a good student. I had actually flunked a grade in elementary school though they let me pass. BTW, I ended up as a principal level at Microsoft. When I tested 99.9 percentile in Verbal and 97 percentile in Math my father's only comment was, "Who ever thought you could test like that?" Snicker, snicker. I'm disgusted by this decision. You HAVE to let kids have a way of knowing they have capabilities when for some reason the environment blocks that.
  • thephyber 4y ago
    Your anecdote is that you weren’t a good student, but you tested well and you credit that as having unlocked success in your career. I have 2 anecdotes of high school students who earned near perfect SAT scores, were terrible students in high school, barely passed their undergraduate courses and are struggling to maintain careers in tech. My point is that standardized testing is a measure of potential. But a college must gamble on a bad-grades, high-scores student. The payoff for a college might be better if they target higher grades with slightly lower scores. Not every student lives up to their capacity and the transition away from home to college isn’t an easy one. My preference is to build more colleges and let them choose their own entrance criteria. Also, adults should do far more to help high school students understand how much social status, marketing, and press relations do to make some colleges appear far more prestigious than they are.
• Animats 4y ago
  Columbia University. Figures. Yeonmi Park's "While Time Remains" has a biting critique of Columbia University's "wokeness".[1] Park escaped from North Korea to China as a child. In China, she was an illegal alien, and if caught would be deported back to North Korea and executed, so she and her mother were kept as slaves. She managed to escape China and get to the US. So she knows about oppression. She ended up as a student at Columbia University. "What a load of crap" she writes. "The difference between a passing grade and a failing one lay in a refusal to criticize the usual targets (capitalism, Western civilization, white supremacy, systemic racism, oppression of minorities, colonialism, etc.) Worse than a bad grade was to be labelled by one's classmates as a 'SIX HIRB', a sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamaphobic, racist bigot." [1] https://www.amazon.com/While-Time-Remains-Defectors-Freedom/dp/1668003317 https://www.amazon.com/While-Time-Remains-Defectors-Freedom/...
• dougSF70 4y ago
  MIT brought the SAT back in because its they found it to be the least inequitable way to distinguish suitable candidates
• honkycat 4y ago
  I worked during high school at a restaurant and later as a pizza delivery person. In college I went to school at night and worked during the day. I basically didn't get an education but paid for two pieces of paper that for me a great career... Not as good as a CMU grad, but pretty good. The person OP is describing is me. I don't think standardized testing is the answer. Nothing good happens by accident and using the SAT to fight a proxy war for accessibility of high quality higher education is not a good strategy. I don't even know why people bother posting this stuff anymore. We are living with mass encampments of the unhoused in our major cities full of the mentally handicap and physically addicted and our government and private sector has decided to let them rot. 45% of bankruptcies are caused by medical debt. The rich have consolidated their power. The purse strings are closed. Nobody who matters gives a shit about the poor. To quote George Carlin: "But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners, the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking..."
• vbtemp 4y ago
  We have to remember that Rob Henderson is a performer running his shtick. At first I really liked him, and in general agree with his assessments of things. But he's just another guy that has to turn tricks with some new variant of "durr hurr liberal plan for X is elitist and a luxury belief." It's a little personal with him, because right before the 2020 election he posted something pretentious like "In 2016 I bet and won a lot of money on the outcome of the election, and I bet even more this time" (Implying his non-elitist background gave him the clairvoyance that Trump would win. I asked him who he bet on this time. Then the results came in and Trump was clearly losing in 2020, and then he blocked me. In the end, even if we agree with him, he's just another culture warrior that whose livelihood depends on feeding the angry masses outrage at whatever Team Blue/Team Red is doing.
• Waterluvian 4y ago
  As a Canadian I never took anything like the SAT. I don’t quite get why it exists. Or why people are convinced it needs to exist. Most of the world does fine without it. That being said, I support whatever helps empower the diminished classes and helps quash the undeserved power of those born into money. …And in that case, the SAT might make a lot of sense now that I think of it. Even if your teenage years were a quagmire and you have no grades to show for it, a single test can still open you up to academic opportunities.
  • pjscott 4y ago
    Yes, that's exactly the historical rationale for the adoption of the SAT. It gained popularity in the first half of the 20th century as an attempt to identify poor kids with academic potential, so they could get educational opportunities that would otherwise have been out of their reach. Harvard, for example, used to be populated almost entirely by people who had gone to expensive private schools -- and then in 1934 they started giving admission and scholarships to students from lower classes who scored well on standardized tests, as part of an effort to improve socioeconomic mobility.
• WBrentWilliams 4y ago
  I've said this before: read the small print. The SAT (or similar) is no longer required to become admitted to Good School(tm). The donor class that subsidizes those without other means to attend the Good School(tm) have been explicit in their contracts: They award on test scores. Has the SAT (or similar) really become not necessary?
• JoshTko 4y ago
  Ivys further cementing their role as champions of inequality.
• SergeAx 4y ago
  > The luxury belief class [...] wants to keep you mired in [poverty and chaos] And why would they want that? Author doesn't provide any reasoning about it.
• nobodyandproud 4y ago
  Tragedy of the well-heeled commons.
• ahepp 4y ago
  It seems to me that what's being debated here is a point of fact. Shouldn't the article be presenting directly applicable evidence rather than telling anecdotes about the Vietnam War?
• wwilim 4y ago
  In contrast, the bare minimum standardized testing in Poland ("matura") leaves you no chance whatsoever unless you've been keeping up in literature class for the past 3 years.
• Steuard 4y ago
  Reading this is really weird for me. Worthwhile and eye-opening, but also baffling: I am literally the chair of the faculty committee at my small college that voted a couple of years ago to go test-optional (provisionally but with an eye toward making it permanent). I won't claim to be an great expert on the issues involved, beyond generally trying to keep up with the broad conversation about research outcomes: we're too small for any of us to specialize enough to get into the weeds of specific studies and methodologies outside of our fields (I'm in physics). From all I've read in the past, though, standardized test outcomes are very strongly correlated with family wealth. The kids who have great SAT vocabularies are overwhelmingly the kids who grew up with parents with plenty of free time to read to them every day. High scoring kids are overwhelmingly the ones whose families could provide lots of educational support (either through direct help from available parents or through private tutoring). They're so very often the ones who spent weeks of their lives getting dedicated training in the otherwise-useless skill of "how to take a standardized test". And the correlation between SAT score and college success (by whatever metric) is IIRC quite low once you control for family background. So by and large, the faculty members that I know have come to see standardized testing as precisely a tool to give preference to kids from wealthy, privileged backgrounds. Obviously the author of this article had a very different experience! And clearly there are kids out there who can use standardized tests to demonstrate amazing competence beyond what their grades show. (That's why we went "test optional" rather than "no tests allowed", for what it's worth.) And I'm not at all surprised that admissions essays correlate even more strongly with wealth than do SAT scores. (We don't rely entirely on essays, either.) Maybe we really did get it wrong, and the research we considered really was misleading, and universal testing would raise up more underprivileged students than it threw down. But I promise you, I absolutely 100% promise you, that no person in that room where we made the test-optional decision believed that the outcome of our decision would be fewer students with challenging backgrounds being admitted. So is the claim here that the college decision makers adopting these policies are also dupes of "the chattering class"? (Aren't we supposedly a part of that class?) Or maybe it's just that I, personally, was the dupe of my faculty colleagues, who were conniving behind my back to get less competent students in their classes? I don't get it. The only conclusion I can draw, in general, is that it is really hard to disentangle an individual student's intrinsic potential and preparedness from the influence of family wealth and resources. I agree with this author that there really are enormous systemic biases that encourage class segregation, and those biases are viciously wide-ranging and flexible and are embedded across all axes of achievement and opportunity. So I'm not particularly happy about the way that this essay very explicitly assumes bad faith on the part of those of us struggling to find a way to make things better. [I'm posting this late enough that it'll probably never be seen, but given my connection to the subject I still feel compelled to chime in.]
• say_it_as_it_is 4y ago
  The SATs only apply to applicants seeking to gain admission by merit
• Rapzid 4y ago
  > Elite colleges are eliminating standardized tests before they eliminate legacy admissions. Tells you all you need to know. Ah, well, case closed! Saved me from reading the entire article :)
• steele 4y ago
  Too many comments to reply to but the Scientific Racism in the comments here are astounding.
• ubj 4y ago
  It's interesting to compare this article with MIT's explanation of why they reinstated the ACT / SAT requirement [1]: > At the same time, standardized tests also help us identify academically prepared, socioeconomically disadvantaged students who could not otherwise demonstrate readiness . This may seem like a counterintuitive claim to some, given the widespread understanding that performance on the SAT/ACT is correlated with socioeconomic status. Research indeed shows some correlation, but unfortunately, research also shows correlations hold for just about every other factor admissions officers can consider, including essays, grades, access to advanced coursework (as well as opportunities to actually take notionally available coursework), and letters of recommendations, among others. Meanwhile, research has shown widespread testing can identify subaltern students who would be missed by these other measures. [1]: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-requirement-for-future-admissions-cycles/ https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our...