4 ms·

There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The SAT is not designed to rank students. The SAT is designed to solve a supply/demand problem. There are less sp

by com2kid 12y ago

There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The SAT is not designed to rank students. The SAT is designed to solve a supply/demand problem. There are less spaces available at top universities than there are applicants. The SAT creates a bell curve, allowing schools to go a standard deviation or two out to pick their incoming class. If the test was an absolute ranking, you'd end up with a large number of people scoring 100%, and the test becomes worthless to colleges as a filter.

majormajor 12y ago
The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter because the differences that separate, say, a 99.9th-percentile score from a 98th-percentile score (number picked by myself at random, as the article didn't mention any that I saw) don't actually correlate to much of anything of use for selecting who should get into the top schools. Especially if those differences are largely "had more time and money to spend on preparation." It reports that research shows that grades are a better predictor. (Though high schools are also hardly immune to grade inflation pressures, for the same reason that the huge test prep industry has sprung up—parents don't care about merit or fairness, they care about doing whatever they can to get the best-perceived college for their own kids. I find it doubtful that changing the SAT in the way suggested would do anything to address this root issue.) It also makes an interesting side point about year-to-year results for tracking overall education progress.
- stephencanon 12y ago
  On the contrary, "had time and money to spend on preparation" is extremely valuable information to colleges, especially those with ostensibly "need blind" admissions policies.
  - AnimalMuppet 12y ago
    That is one of the most cynical things I have read in a while. I'm not saying you're wrong, though...
  - benkuykendall 12y ago
    Going through the whole standardized testing regiment last year, I did not notice a need to spend large amounts of time or money on preparation. Although I am sure a few people waste a lot of resources on these exams, many of my peers in the running for top colleges can easily achieve in the top percentiles with little to no effort.
    - ska 12y ago
      I think the parents contention was that likely in your case and your peers, those resources had already been spent, and that this is a useful signal.
    - stephencanon 12y ago
      Of course some people do great without studying. I got a perfect score cold, FWIW (~nothing). However, the population of people with great scores also includes a disproportionate number of fairly smart kids whose parents are able to shell out big money for private school and test prep, and those students are a private college's bread and butter. If the schools happen to also pick up some poorer but equally good at test taking students in that population as well, so much the better.
- com2kid 12y ago
  > The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter because the differences that separate, say, a 99.9th-percentile score from a 98th-percentile score (number picked by myself at random, as the article didn't mention any that I saw) don't actually correlate to much of anything of use for selecting who should get into the top schools. Apply multiple filters. The more bell curves you have, the easier this gets. Bonus if those bell curves are not correlated to each other! (I'm not going to comment on how useless this becomes) Want to be an exclusive college? Use SAT scores to remove 87% of applicants right off the bat. (OK most people below the left half of the curve likely don't bother to apply.) Now filter out kids who didn't go to enough AP classes. (You've instantly removed children with parents who "didn't care enough" to move to an area with a good AP program! bonus!) Now filter out kids whose parent's didn't have enough discretionary free time to shuttle them to and from multiple extra-curricular activities. Alright, next up, who can afford to pay for a good essay? Drop anyone who can't. Congrats, you've just cut down the number of papers you have to read by a lot. In fairness, once the number of applications become's unmanageable, what else is a college going to do? Spend 1/2 of tuition money on entrance examiners?
  - VLM 12y ago
    "what else is a college going to do?" Competitive bidding instead of fixed cost tuition. This is what they already select for anyway, this would just be more honest and fair about it. Nobody seems offended that tuition cost seems to have no relationship with prof/TA salaries, facilities, future income... so removing the charade and opening for bidding seems the most fair. I suspect the end result is freshie year at MIT will be like $5M to buy a spot, but sophomore year transfer students will probably only have to bid $5K once the less talented flunk out. I pity the instructors trying to teach the wash-out classes. The tests will still exist but for classroom placement, someone belonging in remedial algebra will not be allowed into calculus without passing algebra, geometry, trig, first.
  - caseysoftware 12y ago
    I hate the latest "we only accepted 5% of applicants" measure. It forces people to freak out an apply to more schools. Which means top schools get more applicants. Which means to accept the same number of people as last year, they have to reject a higher percentage. Which makes people freak out, etc. When I applied to college, I did 3-4 and thought that was excessive at the time. Now I hear of students applying to 10.
- thedufer 12y ago
  > The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter I'm not convinced this is true. A few years after the writing section was introduced, college admissions were refusing to use it on the grounds that it didn't seem to correlate with any future performance (overall grades, English grades, foreign language grades, graduation rate, etc). Presumably they wouldn't be saying this if the rest of the test also failed to predict anything.
- WillPostForFood 12y ago
  It's only worthless if the colleges assume that the test indicates a meaningful difference between 99.9 and 98. If they assume that the test is good and not perfect, and use it as a broad filter, then there is no problem.

by com2kid 12y ago

majormajor 12y ago

The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter because the differences that separate, say, a 99.9th-percentile score from a 98th-percentile score (number picked by myself at random, as the article didn't mention any that I saw) don't actually correlate to much of anything of use for selecting who should get into the top schools. Especially if those differences are largely "had more time and money to spend on preparation." It reports that research shows that grades are a better predictor. (Though high schools are also hardly immune to grade inflation pressures, for the same reason that the huge test prep industry has sprung up—parents don't care about merit or fairness, they care about doing whatever they can to get the best-perceived college for their own kids. I find it doubtful that changing the SAT in the way suggested would do anything to address this root issue.) It also makes an interesting side point about year-to-year results for tracking overall education progress.

stephencanon 12y ago
On the contrary, "had time and money to spend on preparation" is extremely valuable information to colleges, especially those with ostensibly "need blind" admissions policies.
- AnimalMuppet 12y ago
  That is one of the most cynical things I have read in a while. I'm not saying you're wrong, though...
- benkuykendall 12y ago
  Going through the whole standardized testing regiment last year, I did not notice a need to spend large amounts of time or money on preparation. Although I am sure a few people waste a lot of resources on these exams, many of my peers in the running for top colleges can easily achieve in the top percentiles with little to no effort.
  - ska 12y ago
    I think the parents contention was that likely in your case and your peers, those resources had already been spent, and that this is a useful signal.
  - stephencanon 12y ago
    Of course some people do great without studying. I got a perfect score cold, FWIW (~nothing). However, the population of people with great scores also includes a disproportionate number of fairly smart kids whose parents are able to shell out big money for private school and test prep, and those students are a private college's bread and butter. If the schools happen to also pick up some poorer but equally good at test taking students in that population as well, so much the better.
com2kid 12y ago
> The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter because the differences that separate, say, a 99.9th-percentile score from a 98th-percentile score (number picked by myself at random, as the article didn't mention any that I saw) don't actually correlate to much of anything of use for selecting who should get into the top schools. Apply multiple filters. The more bell curves you have, the easier this gets. Bonus if those bell curves are not correlated to each other! (I'm not going to comment on how useless this becomes) Want to be an exclusive college? Use SAT scores to remove 87% of applicants right off the bat. (OK most people below the left half of the curve likely don't bother to apply.) Now filter out kids who didn't go to enough AP classes. (You've instantly removed children with parents who "didn't care enough" to move to an area with a good AP program! bonus!) Now filter out kids whose parent's didn't have enough discretionary free time to shuttle them to and from multiple extra-curricular activities. Alright, next up, who can afford to pay for a good essay? Drop anyone who can't. Congrats, you've just cut down the number of papers you have to read by a lot. In fairness, once the number of applications become's unmanageable, what else is a college going to do? Spend 1/2 of tuition money on entrance examiners?
- VLM 12y ago
  "what else is a college going to do?" Competitive bidding instead of fixed cost tuition. This is what they already select for anyway, this would just be more honest and fair about it. Nobody seems offended that tuition cost seems to have no relationship with prof/TA salaries, facilities, future income... so removing the charade and opening for bidding seems the most fair. I suspect the end result is freshie year at MIT will be like $5M to buy a spot, but sophomore year transfer students will probably only have to bid $5K once the less talented flunk out. I pity the instructors trying to teach the wash-out classes. The tests will still exist but for classroom placement, someone belonging in remedial algebra will not be allowed into calculus without passing algebra, geometry, trig, first.
- caseysoftware 12y ago
  I hate the latest "we only accepted 5% of applicants" measure. It forces people to freak out an apply to more schools. Which means top schools get more applicants. Which means to accept the same number of people as last year, they have to reject a higher percentage. Which makes people freak out, etc. When I applied to college, I did 3-4 and thought that was excessive at the time. Now I hear of students applying to 10.
thedufer 12y ago
> The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter I'm not convinced this is true. A few years after the writing section was introduced, college admissions were refusing to use it on the grounds that it didn't seem to correlate with any future performance (overall grades, English grades, foreign language grades, graduation rate, etc). Presumably they wouldn't be saying this if the rest of the test also failed to predict anything.
WillPostForFood 12y ago
It's only worthless if the colleges assume that the test indicates a meaningful difference between 99.9 and 98. If they assume that the test is good and not perfect, and use it as a broad filter, then there is no problem.