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> 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-percent
by 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 agoI 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.