The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status. Dropping the SAT is so obviously not a fix for that I question the competency of the administrators who thought doing so was a good idea.
The SAT is probably the most attainable piece of the application process for a poor kid to succeed at. You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study. One good smart friend helps if you're lucky enough to have one. Literally the lowest barrier to entry for a kid stuck in a shitty school with parents that aren't around and no money to your name. Is it still a hurdle for poor kids? Undoubtedly, but I can't think of anything that can show academic capacity that requires fewer resources.
> You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study.
I think it's important to realize just how extremely non-obvious this is, though, for many high school sophomores/juniors.
I went to a decent high school and was in honors classes, and even I would have had zero idea test prep was even a thing, if a single science teacher hadn't randomly mentioned it in class once. I went to the school library and found the "Princeton Review" and practice exams and everything. I absolutely credit it with raising my score by probably a couple hundred points.
But I never would have discovered it except for that single teacher's offhand comment. I just assumed it would be a test that was an accurate reflection of your knowledge/intelligence, so as long as you were going to school, you'd just take the test and get your grade. If someone had pressed me, I probably would have said that test prep would be something kids in rich schools wasted their money on that wouldn't make a difference anyways. I just had no idea.
Yes, I absolutely agree that the SAT is the most attainable way for a poor kid to succeed at. I personally don't support the movements to remove standardized testing, not at all. But I also want to highlight how there's still an utterly gigantic step needed to reliably educate kids both about the importance of the SAT and how to prepare for it.
Very often barriers aren't even primarily a question of money/time/effort -- they're simply a question of awareness that an option even exists or that it matters.
I don't know when all of this happened to you, but these days there's no excuse. I just googled for "how to increase my sat score" and the first result was this collegeboard.org page[1] called "How to Improve Your SAT Score." It referred me to the Khan Academy's free SAT practice course[2].
Especially because the entire purported schtick of the SAT is to measure aptitude (the "A" in the acronym). In principle, if the SAT is true to its name, getting a study book shouldn't help at all. But since study guides or repeated testing does improve the score, it can't be a true measurement of aptitude.
? Very often barriers aren't even primarily a question of money/time/effort -- they're simply a question of awareness that an option even exists or that it matters.
100% agree, and this was an experience I had as well coming from a single parent household with a high school dropout. I, thankfully, had a grandfather that had forgone college and regretted it. So, every chance he got, he reminded me to study, so my life wouldn't wind up as hard as his and my mother's. I wholeheartedly recognize that just knowing there was an attainable way out was a huge advantage over similarly poor kids. A lot of my friends and family pretty much self-selected themselves out before high school even began.
The benefits of SAT test prep seem to be a lot smaller than most people think https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the.... And in studies that have shown a benefit, the control group also tends to improve - meaning that simply taking one practice test ahead of time might have nearly as much of an impact as doing hours of test prep classes.
Also, just curious, how long ago was this that you were preparing for the SAT? It might have been non-obvious to study for it then, but I can't imagine that any kid today who is driven enough to want to get into a good college wouldn't just google this and find a bunch of practice resources.
Also if you think the chances of being told "here is a really well documented X step process you follow to crack this" is very hard to come across and/or needs Uber levels of serendipity (or just midly competent teachers) how is a completely subjective, random biased-person-in-the middle-with-random-criteria-for-different-people process supposed to be explained or discovered?
This rings true for myself and a couple of my friends who grew up relatively poor in a wealthy area - our test scores on the SAT and relevant subject tests boosted us into private schools that we would not have gone to otherwise, which then led us to well-paying jobs right out of college. Last I checked, my high school implemented affordable/free SAT tutoring for all students and I hope to see more of it nationwide as I believe it helps immensely in socioeconomic mobility.
I grew up pretty poor, and through a longer story than I want to type here and a confluence of negative voices mostly from my school, was dissuaded from taking the SATs and even considering college.
Years after high school I eventually found my way to community college, then to a 4-year, a grad program and so on. It worked out to be a blessing as I graduated without debt from a major university and entered into a realm of well paying jobs that have put me firmly into a life the rest of my family can barely even comprehend.
To me the proof I should continue to a 4-year degree was doing well in my community college courses. I am fortunate to have been given the gift of automatic entry by policy makers who decided long ago that if you graduate from a Community College you can go to a State School no questions asked...and you can go to a Community College by basically walking off the street no questions asked.
I graduated my undergrad with a 4.0 and my grad with a 4.0, but to be honest I don't think my SATs would have been worth entry into any college and my high school GPA was around a 2.5.
My point is, there are other ways of assessing a child's entire future for entry than a single test, and many alternate paths to attainment. But we act as if there is only one kind of path and one kind of package, a 1600 SAT score, lots of extracurriculars, "differentiator" activities, and an original heart strings pulling letter.
Top schools need to get smarter, more creative, and maybe take a page from those "lesser" schools they turn their noses up at.
Doing well in college is a great measure of how well you'll do in college, and subsequently, many good schools will accept mid degree transfers of undergraduate students who might not have done well in high school. I don't think it's viable to use that to replace the SAT and other current evaluation metrics, however.
Part of the argument for dropping the SAT is that the SAT has been shown to be a proxy for family socio-economic status and is no better an indicator of success at college than GPA, honor/AP/IB course participation, and extracurriculars.
(I’m not making that argument myself, I haven’t seen numbers explained well enough to form a solid opinion)
> SAT has been shown to be a proxy for family socio-economic status
The problem is that this argument is in isolation. If SAT is a proxy, how much better are the other activities as proxies? Who has the leisure to participate all those sports clubs, volunteer clubs, writing all kinds of fancy essays? While the poor kids struggle with jobs outside the school work to support the family and are perpetual tired? If u get rid of the SAT score, who are supporting these poor kids?
I don't believe the people who is making the argument didn't know this. I firmly believe that they are bad faithed and hope others can't see through the crack of the logic and eat it up. Who benefit from this kind of policy which favors the kids with 'life fulfilling' resumes? Plus AA, you know fully well who are benefiting (hint, not the poor kids).
GPA is utter horse hockey, at least in the high schools I grew up around. Grade inflation is so rampant in some schools that 80+% of students have an A or better average. Our valedictorian took classes like "Honors Ag[riculture]" that were trivial, but were graded on a 110 point scale. She also cried to the teacher in front of the class after every single assignment she made less than an A+ on and sent her mom in to cry if that didn't work. IMO GPA is one of the most hackable metrics and should play absolutely no part in college admissions.
There are a lot of issues with this argument which any administrator should immediately see the issue with.
GPA: Schools weigh GPA differently. One thing I saw was that some schools with honors / AP you can get above a 4.0 to the point of a 5/4. Also GPA can be messed up when someone has a bad home life, or works a job.
honors/ap/ib: These are often related to which school you go to. Poor schools have few to no AP classes available. My school had 2 AP courses available, 0 IB. I was shocked when I went to college and talked to people that had 10 or 20 AP classes. Sure anyone can just take the AP exam, but I didn't know that at the time.
Extracurriculars: Bad and poor schools have fewer extracurriculars.
When you compare good schools (which are in wealthier more exclusive neighborhoods) with bad schools, not even accounting for private schools, its absolutely astounding the differences.
Almost everything colleges use to admit students is a proxy for socioeconomic status. Some things, like extracurriculars, could be far more correlated to SES. The only exception would be when a student gets points for being from a race or neighborhood that tends to be less affluent.
Which raises the question: why single out the SAT?
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
SAT is a rugged system that performs well while withstanding concerted efforts by hackers to undermine it. Replacing it with systems that perform no better (when not under anywhere near as much fire, and appearing to have no real security) is probably not going to work so well.
It doesn't matter what the numbers show on that, because it's a strawman argument. Most people promoting the preservation of the SAT, (certainly the OP by implication of his comments) is that a high score on it is a sufficient metric for college aptitude, which has a low cost barrier of entry for the poor but intellectually gifted. The people who look to do away with it seem to wrongly assume that the former group are all saying a high score should be a necessary condition for a competitive applicant.
You can watch SAT prep videos and pirate prep books for free. GPA gets juiced all the time. Honor AP/IB had a solid premium. Very few extra curriculars that don't cost money / resources.
The handful of kids (including me) that didn't pay 5 digits for fancy SAT prep at my school poured over some study guides and watched pirated VCDs and ended up doing better than kids who half hearted their private prep.
The problem of SAT is that it's too easy, or at least too easy to be gamed by tutoring. That is, family with means can really improve their kids' scores by throwing money. Make SAT as challenging as India's JEE or those national entrance exams in East Asian countries, and we will see that tutoring hardly will matter in large scale but teacher's quality will do.
> no better an indicator of success at college than GPA, honor/AP/IB course participation, and extracurriculars
It's no better than each of these, but it improves the prediction when combined with them.
But worse, those other things: GPA, AP course participation, impressive extracurriculars--- are far more receptive to being "bought" than a good SAT score. Being on a travel sports team, or having leisure / advice to do "impressive" volunteering, or having systemic tutoring support... do much more to move these other metrics than you can move SAT with any amount of prep.
If it were a proxy for socio-economic status, there would have to be some way for the score to adjust if the student's parents suddenly went broke.
Since there isn't it cannot be a proxy.
Perhaps you meant it correlates? So what? What if it correlates better with success in college than pure socioeconomic status, which I'm fairly sure it does?
> Undoubtedly, but I can't think of anything that can show academic capacity that requires fewer resources.
I'm less inclined than normal to challenge your view because I know how much of an anomaly I am: I was headhunted in HS by several UCs (that I didn't apply to as I focused on CSU because of the costs) despite having pissed off my HS administration who tried to impede my graduation despite holding a 3.2-3.5 GPA but only attending for the exam days. The irony being I'd later go on to get honors and letters of recommendation despite detesting and being a vocal critic of this system during my time in University. And after graduating in 2009 I barely made into my field, health sciences, and because of my strength in physics I was encouraged by my advisors several times to take the MCAT despite having absolutely no interest in medicine.
But, the SAT system is ONLY the best option if only we accept we rely on a model that only have bad options. The amount sheer amount of rote learning needed plus defaulting to deciphering cryptic deductive reasoning with misleading questions as a way to show 'academic capacity' underscores why plagiarism, fraud and just outright mediocrity plagues academia. I wonder if having more written or presentation based examinations, like they do in Cambrdige and Oxford in the UK, would be best. The issue is that it doesn't scale at all and thus cannot be so heavily monetized as it is at present.
As a person with a BSc and going for my 2nd in AI and ML I think the notion of university being used as a gate-keeping mechanism for mos roles needs to be re-evaluated: the Germanic model has proven that engineering doesn't suffer because you don't follow the 'straddle your undergrads with immense amounts of debt in a cram model from 8th grade onward' which ultimately often fails to deliver for many since the economic down-turns puts so many either of their fields entirely or dropping out for all but a select few who get cherry picked as the norm.
In short, the apprentice model works best of all as it gives talented students to shine better than anything else, but because of the current status quo and Paper signalling that University degrees have become (not to mention the admission corruption scandals) this doesn't mean much for the majority of said 'talented' individuals.
> The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status
Agreed, and good public schools can be of great help. Only when public schools fail do tutoring and socioeconomic status matter. No, I'm not talking about frills like one ipad per kid or low kid-to-teacher ratio or amazing extra-curriculums. I'm talking about teachers who can really explain concepts and deliver inspiring homework. I'm talking about an incentive system that students are motivated to learn instead of mocking those who try as "teacher's pets". I'm talking about an incentive system that ordinary students like me are pushed to achieve excellence even when they do not feel like studying. Really, it really does not require much to learn high school curriculum. It just requires a lot of dedication from teachers and students. Take a look at Asian countries. The have millions of students who went through daily hardship, yet they had a national system that drives students and teachers to focus on learning what matters, even though they can't necessarily afford what kids in the US can enjoy.
Perhaps a more important factor is that university administrators are being constantly bombarded with various demands, requests, accusations, and threats regarding diversity issues. By students, pundits, even accrediting organizations.
A law school dean once told to me that for years the ABA was constantly demanding, privately, that they increase the number of black students. The problem (as I saw it, we didn't discuss it much) is that this university had a reputation for being libertarian, which in the broader political climate translated (especially back then) as conservative, which translated as potentially hostile to black students. There were black students, but they deliberately chose the school for its somewhat unique curriculum which in many respects absolutely did lean libertarian. Most black students, like most students generally, wouldn't have strong enough preferences to override such a negative impression.
The woke crowd is far more vocal and fervent, and they're that way because they know that, at least in the short-term, being forceful can be effective, at least superficially. People with more reasonable sentiments and preferences, OTOH, aren't eager to put themselves in harm's way to defend those who are being targeted.
For all I know, the ABA was applying pressure because the ABA was being pressured by some other interest groups. And perhaps the ABA pulled their punches, keeping everything on the down-low, precisely because they believed the demands were less than reasonable. As the saying goes, "shit rolls down hill."
However, there may be legitimate concerns about a Scholastic "Aptitude" Test where you can increase your score by simply cramming with a guide book. Of course, since that is how most (?) college students operate anyway, maybe it is appropriate after all.
> The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status
If we are talking about the US, no, I disagree.
The greatest source of admissions inequity are shit K-12 education.
I'll give you a direct example from when my kids were at the local middle school. Their science teacher --a Chiropractor-turned-teacher-- was, well, there's no other way to put it, a moron. The guy actually taught the kids that the moon does not spin...at all. They, quite literally, had to answer the question that way on a test in order to get the points. I can't even remember the number of horrifically wrong things this guy was teaching his students. By the time my kids got to his class he had been there for about twenty years.
It didn't end there. This guy was a bad teacher. He was angry, had self-confidence problems, would yell and scream at the kids, etc. If a kid had a question he would sometimes tell them "That's stupid question" in front of the entire class. Just horrible.
I lost count of how many times I met with the school principal and vice principal to file complaints. I had many (friendly) conversations with him. He was clearly intimidated by someone who's daily life was about science and engineering. I offered to come in once a week to help out and bring stuff with me to inspire the kids (robots, space-related stuff I was working on, etc.). Heck, I offered to arrange for the kids to take a tour of a rocket-making factory. He never took me up on the offer.
My kids, to this day, tell me their science education happened at home because that guy was a clown and other teachers were ineffective. There was no way to get this guy fired. He did not belong in a school, at all. He is still there. That school might get a better science teacher once he retires...with full benefits for life.
I have other examples of truly bad teachers doing the kids a horrible disservice. Unions protect them. You can't get rid of them. We somehow accept this and it permeates the land.
The bottom line is that we, the inhabitants of this land, pay taxes and fund schools that are going a horrible job of educating our children. The school is where we can clearly make an effort to provide kids from all walks of life with better outcomes, regardless of socioeconomic status. They can be learning calculus and science even if their parents didn't finish high school and are not in a position to help or advise them. They can be using computers even if they can't afford them at home. They can take inspiring field trips to the most amazing universities, museums and companies even if they don't have the means to do that outside of school.
And yet, we don't do that. We don't have a unified nation-wide standard of excellence based on an absolute dedication to giving kids the best opportunities to learn, regardless of socioeconomics. Instead we hire people like the moron from my story, who, for thirty years, will not only teach nonsense to class-after-class, he also manages to destroy any potential opportunity for kids to get excited about learning science by being an absolute asshole.
Put a different way: If we had really good K-12 schools and results, university admissions would not be a problem for anyone at all and success rates would be amazing.
> > The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status
> If we are talking about the US, no, I disagree.
> The greatest source of admissions inequity are shit K-12 education.
You've missed the step where the higher socioeconomic classes opt-out of the shit K-12 education by moving to better school districts, sending their kids to private schools, or homeschooling them.
1) The SAT is obviously a superior and more objective indicator of "will do well on schoolwork" than the other components of college applications. Essays on political topics, biggest weaknesses, and a time you had to overcome a challenge are obviously less standardized, more subject to whims of reviewer, and this is why they are being promoted. The idea that there are kids with terrible scores but great portfolios of work worthy of admission seems wrong to me. The people with portfolios of work were likely already getting in.
2) "If you can study for the SAT that defeats the point" is wrong. Nassim Taleb made a point of demonstrating that these tests are study-able. The idea that you can't really study for the SAT is loserthink promoted by the SAT. Nearly everyone I know who wanted to succeed in school studied multiple times, took the test multiple times, and greatly improved their scores. It might still be unfair insofar as the better-prepared<->better-supplied kids get a head start but if you grind out a 1600 from a bad school that is still impressive and demonstrates hard work.
3) The solution to inequities in SAT/admissions is to devalue education via school, a la Caplan/ScottAlexander.
It's extremely difficult to compare grades from hundreds or thousands of different schools. You have to really know how rigorous each individual school's grade scale is.
Following the la times article’s link to its primary source, it also says:
High school GPA as a predictor of college success results in a much higher representation of low income and underrepresented minority students in the top of the UC applicant pool, than do SAT scores.
What surprises me is how many Asians support these measures. Make no mistake: our ability to progress as we have in America has depended on the fact that objective metrics cannot easily be gamed. The cost of test prep is a minor barrier to entry compared to the cultural knowledge required to write an essay that moves a WASP admissions officer, or the social capital and connections required to get involved in charitable or social activities that stand out in an application.
If culturally-discriminating WASP admissions officers were the main barrier, one would not expect non-Jewish whites to be the most underrepresented group in the Ivy League. Circa 2019, looking at non-international students only:
Ivy League US Ratio Mean SAT score [1]
Jewish 17.2% 2.4% 7.16 n/a
Asian 19.6% 5.3% 3.71 1216
White (incl. Jewish) 50.3% 61.5% 0.82 1148
Hispanic 11.4% 17.6% 0.65 1043
Black 7.8% 12.7% 0.61 966
White (non-Jewish) 33.1% 59.1% 0.56 ~1141 (lower estimate)
Percentages don't sum to 100 because multi-ethnic students, a few minor ethnicities (American-Indian, Pacific Islander..), and students categorized as "unknown"/"other" by the universities were excluded. Data on university undergraduate demographics was taken from the universities own diversity reports. Jewish representation was gathered from http://hillel.org/college-guide/list/, https://forward.com/jewish-college-guide/, and https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-undergraduat..., taking the lowest estimate when sources conflicted. ejewishphilanthropy.com (eJP) points out flaws in Hillel's data gathering (e.g. showing Harvard as 30% Jewish, when eJP found it only 16%) Hillel seems to have since fixed these flaws, as the estimates they now give are in-line with those of eJP.
Jews and Asians are overrepresented because they give the hard signal. Some absurd double-digit number of Asian students at Harvard have a perfect SAT score.
What's taking assessment tests out of that picture likely to do to the percentage?
It's not more WASPs, there are exactly twenty of those matriculating per year and they all drink blood out of a skull†. It's less Asians and more, heartfelt college essays about: you can fill that in, I'm sure.
†I'm not actually blood-libeling WASPs, something about how conversations have gone here recently compels me to point this out. Remember the 2004 election? Me neither.
Besides, the idea that you have to be wealthy to avail yourself of test prep is absurd. I buy books at the thrift store all the time, and there are always test prep books there for a couple dollars. The local public library has them for free. yootoob is loaded with test prep videos. There are no excuses.
Test prep is not overblown. Prior to test-prep I got a 630 on my math section. Post test prep I got an 800.
Why? Prior to test prep I was solving the problems as I was taught in calculus. Deriving equations. The test prep re-inforced memorizing key formulas and how to think not about solving the problem but eliminating options and determining when it's faster to validate if a given answer is correct.
SAT test prep does work. Similar to how FANG interview prep also works.
> Besides, the idea that you have to be wealthy to avail yourself of test prep is absurd. I buy books at the thrift store all the time, and there are always test prep books there for a couple dollars [...] There are no excuses.
Not quite. You have assumed that money is the only barrier, but that is not the case.
Arguing that "test prep is free - or nearly free - so anyone must be able to prep", doesn't account for the fact that both money and time are barriers to test prep.
What if you have no time prep because you must support your family through work? You have no free time to prep - or do any extracurricular - because you have a job. This is not uncommon! Or you have a parent or guardian who is incapacitated in some way and you must act as their care-giver? Again, not uncommon.
I don't think WASPs are given an edge here. I feel like it is actually racist to make this assumption also. White people as a broad category are the only racial group that is underrepresented relative to their population percentage in Ivy League schools. Maybe you could make the argument that WASPs are a subset of white people who are overrepresented specifically because of that faculty benefit for admissions but then I am not sure why, for example, you couldn't make that claim about other groups who are overrepresented in the faculty and student body. There are other groups who fit that critique but the people who argue Ivy League admissions are unfair seem to make a scapegoat out of WASPs exclusively.
I think the person you’re replying to is referring to the current(?) standardized testing regime that heavily rewards test prep above all else.
There’s a very obvious correlation between the SATs de-emphasizing essays (~2000-2005ish) and Asians absolutely blasting past Whites in terms of average SAT score.
"White people as a broad category are the only racial group that is underrepresented relative to their population percentage in Ivy League schools."
A better measure to consider: 4-year completion rates.
At elite universities, Asians tend to have the highest completion rates (even higher than whites) suggesting that you could improve completion rates by admitting a few more Asians, and fewer from other groups (including whites).
On this measure, Asians are the most 'underrepresented' group.
>” compared to the cultural knowledge required to write an essay that moves a WASP admissions officer, or the social capital and connections required to get involved in charitable or social activities that stand out in an application.”
When I was in high school we were advised, in no uncertain terms, that the mixed race students should not hesitate to identify with their Non-White ancestry on their application and that doing so gives them an advantage.
Universities and Colleges are all about diversity and I can’t imagine the admissions department being an exception to this. Diversity scores also factor into university rankings and I can’t imagine there are many schools that are actively trying to be less diverse in their admissions process.
I don’t follow the logic of needing social capital in order to get involved in charitable or social activities. I can’t really think of a local charity that would turn down volunteers because they aren’t WASP-y enough.
> When I was in high school we were advised, in no uncertain terms, that the mixed race students should not hesitate to identify with their non-white ancestry on their application and that doing so gives them an advantage.
One important caveat to this - I am not quite sure this would accomplish the desired effect if the other parent of such a kid was asian. Listing themselves as an asian instead of white for pretty much all top schools would almost definitely decrease their chances.
> Make no mistake: our ability to progress as we have in America has depended on the fact that objective metrics cannot easily be gamed.
Objective metrics can easily be gamed, and usually are, at the moment they are chosen. Metrics are almost always imperfect proxies, and the choice of metric is almost always driven by chosing the one that produces the most desirable results to the decision maker that can be sold given the notional purpose.
(East) Asians that support these measures get the media platform. In East Asian dominant neighbourhoods I've been in, opposing these measures are one of the few things that has politically activated the community in decades.
Realistically everything you listed here all requires you to come from at least an upper middle class family to attempt. My family couldn't even afford for me to join a club in high school. There is in reality no real fair way of selecting candidates without knowing more personal information such as their families tax history, income level, demographics, citizenship, etc.
Citation needed. MIT Dean of Admissions said the opposite:
"He says the standardized exams are most helpful for assisting the admissions office in identifying socioeconomically disadvantaged students who are well-prepared for MIT’s challenging education, but who don’t have the opportunity to take advanced coursework, participate in expensive enrichment programs, or otherwise enhance their college applications."
What you quoted above actually kind of reinforces GP's point. And if you read the article you cited it agrees with GP.
> [W]hat I think many people outside our profession don’t understand is how unfortunately unequal all aspects of secondary education are in this country. And unlike some other inequalities — like access to fancy internships or expensive extracurriculars — our empirical research shows the SAT/ACT actually do help us figure out if someone will do well at MIT.
> It turns out the shortest path for many students to demonstrate sufficient preparation — particularly for students with less access to educational capital — is through the SAT/ACT, because most students can study for these exams using free tools at Khan Academy, but they (usually) can’t force their high school to offer advanced calculus courses, for example. So, the SAT/ACT can actually open the door to MIT for these students, too.
Why even pretend that admission is in some sense "fair"?
I don't mean this as a "anti-woke" or "pro-woke" harangue, or as a middle school cynical pose.
Admission in the USA is a manual and largely arbitrary process. Just like judges' rulings, it's influenced by which person happened to read the application, what they had for breakfast and what time of day it is. Plus random factors like the orchestra's french horn player having just graduated.
We recognize this for hiring, why not school applications? Acknowledging it will reduce a lot of heartache.
(Another heartache reducer would be the elimination of the "common application")
The common application encourages people to apply for schools they aren't qualified for ("what the hell it's only another $30"), a phenomenon which has been exacerbated by the schools themselves. The USNWR ranking includes acceptance rate ("more selective" means a higher proportion of rejections), so schools send letters to kids who can't get in, encouraging them to apply. I saw these letters last year.
In addition, the common app really restricts what you can say. For example two kids might have earned an Eagle Scout rank: one just did the minimum to get a check box; the other might have really used it to learn and develop. In the common app there isn't really room to differentiate unless you devote your essay to it.
Back when each school had a unique application, the burden of applying makes you more judicious in your choices. However it also allowed you to adapt your application to what you wanted to emphasize to each school.
For a quantifiable difference: back when I was applying to universities in the 1980s, MIT had quite a high acceptance rate compared to its peers, ~18% IIRC. Why? Turns out few people applied because they (probably correctly) assumed they wouldn't get in anyway.
An implicit point in my comment, which replies suggested wasn't clear, is that it's completely unclear what "fair" would even mean.
Is it fair that my parents went on an extended walkabout and so I happened to be in the US during high school and had the chance to go to amazing universities?
Is it fair that some kid with a 160 IQ grew up on a reservation with parents who desperately wanted to help the kid succeed but had no idea how, while the kid had to go to crappy schools, learn only the basics, and worry about their next meal? They would be waay smarter than I, but I would be far better prepared and would get more out of an MIT education.
Trying to diversify the student population sounds like a good thing for schools to be doing, something that in the medium term will hopefully ablate some of the second case. And if that excludes someone with high test scores, which is "fair"? Hell, if it excludes someone who diligently labored to worked the system, well, the there's a reasonable case to be made that such a person will do OK regardless while the student with less opportunity might end up with a greater benefit for society.
And, as far as "fair" goes: private universities, at least, are going to accept a certain number whom they believe will provide future donations, helping the institution survive and grow, even if they are otherwise unqualified. Is that fair?
> One college purchased a data service that ranked high schools and factored those high school rankings into each application. Students from underserved high schools received a lower ranking, an admissions officer explained. It wasn’t a fair process.
This is the crux of the affirmative action fascists. They picked what they thought was a “fair” set of criteria and it didn’t produce the outcome they wanted. They concluded it wasn’t “fair” because it didn’t produce they wanted. That’s garbage.
Backing into an outcome simply based on skin color that they want is racist and truly unfair.
If you want certain communities to do better in education, you don’t manipulate the outcome by changing the selection criteria, you produce better candidates. Invest in education and safety in lower income areas. No one does this. South side Chicago and St. Louis Missouri and Baltimore aren’t filled with stupid people. They are filled with people who have suffered generational poverty, living in some of the most violent areas of the world. If you dump money into schools, jobs, and police in those areas, you will produce a thriving middle class in a single generation and from there you can create hundreds of thousands and millions of educated “underrepresented” people that are COMPETITIVE.
> They picked what they thought was a “fair” set of criteria and it didn’t produce the outcome they wanted. They concluded it wasn’t “fair” because it didn’t produce they wanted. That’s garbage.
No, that's science. If your goal is "more racially- and background-diverse admissions", and you set up a process to achieve that, and then find that your new process didn't work, then the process was wrong. So you come up with a new process.
> If you want certain communities to do better in education, you don’t manipulate the outcome by changing the selection criteria, you produce better candidates. Invest in education and safety in lower income areas.
The problem is that universities don't really have the ability to invest in education and safety in lower income areas. As rich as many top-tier private universities are, they don't have the resources to make a dent in this problem. So you have a chicken-and-egg problem: you can't fix the inequity that causes some kids to get a worse primary education, but you can't give them a better secondary education and allow that to flow back into their communities.
You have to break the cycle somewhere, and it seems pretty obvious that US federal and local governments have been failing miserably at improving education and safety in underserved communities. So you decide that you're going to find kids that your regular admissions practices would have rejected out of hand, but have the potential to learn and be successful at your school, even if there are gaps in their education. No, it's not a perfect plan, but what had been going on before wasn't working either. And maybe this won't work. But I think it's a worth trying.
No it is not science. If the objective is to be “fair” then they don’t like the outcome then that’s not science.
If the objective is to increase the amount of certain skin colors, then fine. But call it that. Don’t be racist and then wrap it up in a lie saying that it’s to be “fair”. “Fair” in the way it’s used in the article is entirely subjective, which is not scientific.
When the system is as obviously corrupt as it is now, people lose faith in the system entirely and that’s what’s happened.
> The problem is that universities don't really have the ability to invest in education and safety in lower income areas.
I wasn’t talking about the universities, I was talking about the government. If the government is willing to dump hundreds of billions into Ukraine, I’d rather see that money going into creating businesses, schools and safety in the most egregious areas of our own country and build them up. Create competitive applicants by destroying generational poverty.
Not by bending admission standards and lying to everyone’s face as if we are racist for pointing out their racism. I would much rather see my tax dollars funding this rebuilding of the worst parts of the country than war. And if it produces hundreds of thousands of competitive students one generation from now, we all benefit because they won’t be as underrepresented and we can get rid of these racist policies by radical left fascists that believe that more racism is the answer for racism.
It reminds me of European universities switching from selecting on humanities to selecting on maths a century ago.
The idea was to remove the social upbringing's impact on test scores, as candidates from higher socioeconomic status are heavily advantaged from using a larger vocabulary from birth.
A PhD friend who studied this told me it had no measurable impact. Put aside raising math tutors salaries of course.
I'm from a former socialist european country, and we use grades + standardized tests results to get into most colleges (art, music and acting colleges are an exception, due to obvious reasons). Everybody has to pass a standardized test at the end of highschool, 5 subjects, for most, the first three are slovene (our native language), english (second language) and math + two subjects chosen by the student (eg. physics and sociology, or chemisty and informatics, or whatever).
The colleges just give out rules how to calculate "points" (usually 40% are the grades, 60% is the test score, but some (eg medicine back in my time) require you to choose chemistry or biology as one of your subjects and that is worth 20%, next to 40% for the other ones and 40% for the grades).
Students know those rules, apply for a college they want, finish the year, do the standardized tests, get the results, colleges calculate them into points, and if there are 60 spots for that study course, top 60 students are accepted... you don't even have to wait to get your letter, colleges publish that the cuttoff was 82 points to get accepted, and if you're above that, you're in, if not, you compete in other colleges/programmes that still have open spots left over.
No races, no letters, no subjective stuff, no problems with -isms.
> “I think the students that do have the strong test scores still do have that advantage, especially when you have a student that has strong test scores versus a student who doesn’t have test scores and everything else on the academics is more or less the same,” an admissions officer
Why would we expect this to not be the case? It’s literally additional evidence of scholastic aptitude and, if you want it to not have any effect on admissions, you have to prevent its inclusion* rather than making it optional, as optional means “those with strong scores submit those scores.”
* Or, accept them in the application but prevent their inclusion in the admissions process and use them only for research/analytics and only after the fall semester starts.
Readit News
The SAT is probably the most attainable piece of the application process for a poor kid to succeed at. You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study. One good smart friend helps if you're lucky enough to have one. Literally the lowest barrier to entry for a kid stuck in a shitty school with parents that aren't around and no money to your name. Is it still a hurdle for poor kids? Undoubtedly, but I can't think of anything that can show academic capacity that requires fewer resources.
I think it's important to realize just how extremely non-obvious this is, though, for many high school sophomores/juniors.
I went to a decent high school and was in honors classes, and even I would have had zero idea test prep was even a thing, if a single science teacher hadn't randomly mentioned it in class once. I went to the school library and found the "Princeton Review" and practice exams and everything. I absolutely credit it with raising my score by probably a couple hundred points.
But I never would have discovered it except for that single teacher's offhand comment. I just assumed it would be a test that was an accurate reflection of your knowledge/intelligence, so as long as you were going to school, you'd just take the test and get your grade. If someone had pressed me, I probably would have said that test prep would be something kids in rich schools wasted their money on that wouldn't make a difference anyways. I just had no idea.
Yes, I absolutely agree that the SAT is the most attainable way for a poor kid to succeed at. I personally don't support the movements to remove standardized testing, not at all. But I also want to highlight how there's still an utterly gigantic step needed to reliably educate kids both about the importance of the SAT and how to prepare for it.
Very often barriers aren't even primarily a question of money/time/effort -- they're simply a question of awareness that an option even exists or that it matters.
[1] https://blog.collegeboard.org/how-to-improve-your-sat-score [2] https://www.khanacademy.org/sat/confirmed
100% agree, and this was an experience I had as well coming from a single parent household with a high school dropout. I, thankfully, had a grandfather that had forgone college and regretted it. So, every chance he got, he reminded me to study, so my life wouldn't wind up as hard as his and my mother's. I wholeheartedly recognize that just knowing there was an attainable way out was a huge advantage over similarly poor kids. A lot of my friends and family pretty much self-selected themselves out before high school even began.
Also, just curious, how long ago was this that you were preparing for the SAT? It might have been non-obvious to study for it then, but I can't imagine that any kid today who is driven enough to want to get into a good college wouldn't just google this and find a bunch of practice resources.
Years after high school I eventually found my way to community college, then to a 4-year, a grad program and so on. It worked out to be a blessing as I graduated without debt from a major university and entered into a realm of well paying jobs that have put me firmly into a life the rest of my family can barely even comprehend.
To me the proof I should continue to a 4-year degree was doing well in my community college courses. I am fortunate to have been given the gift of automatic entry by policy makers who decided long ago that if you graduate from a Community College you can go to a State School no questions asked...and you can go to a Community College by basically walking off the street no questions asked.
I graduated my undergrad with a 4.0 and my grad with a 4.0, but to be honest I don't think my SATs would have been worth entry into any college and my high school GPA was around a 2.5.
My point is, there are other ways of assessing a child's entire future for entry than a single test, and many alternate paths to attainment. But we act as if there is only one kind of path and one kind of package, a 1600 SAT score, lots of extracurriculars, "differentiator" activities, and an original heart strings pulling letter.
Top schools need to get smarter, more creative, and maybe take a page from those "lesser" schools they turn their noses up at.
(I’m not making that argument myself, I haven’t seen numbers explained well enough to form a solid opinion)
The problem is that this argument is in isolation. If SAT is a proxy, how much better are the other activities as proxies? Who has the leisure to participate all those sports clubs, volunteer clubs, writing all kinds of fancy essays? While the poor kids struggle with jobs outside the school work to support the family and are perpetual tired? If u get rid of the SAT score, who are supporting these poor kids?
I don't believe the people who is making the argument didn't know this. I firmly believe that they are bad faithed and hope others can't see through the crack of the logic and eat it up. Who benefit from this kind of policy which favors the kids with 'life fulfilling' resumes? Plus AA, you know fully well who are benefiting (hint, not the poor kids).
GPA: Schools weigh GPA differently. One thing I saw was that some schools with honors / AP you can get above a 4.0 to the point of a 5/4. Also GPA can be messed up when someone has a bad home life, or works a job.
honors/ap/ib: These are often related to which school you go to. Poor schools have few to no AP classes available. My school had 2 AP courses available, 0 IB. I was shocked when I went to college and talked to people that had 10 or 20 AP classes. Sure anyone can just take the AP exam, but I didn't know that at the time.
Extracurriculars: Bad and poor schools have fewer extracurriculars.
When you compare good schools (which are in wealthier more exclusive neighborhoods) with bad schools, not even accounting for private schools, its absolutely astounding the differences.
Which raises the question: why single out the SAT?
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
SAT is a rugged system that performs well while withstanding concerted efforts by hackers to undermine it. Replacing it with systems that perform no better (when not under anywhere near as much fire, and appearing to have no real security) is probably not going to work so well.
The handful of kids (including me) that didn't pay 5 digits for fancy SAT prep at my school poured over some study guides and watched pirated VCDs and ended up doing better than kids who half hearted their private prep.
It's no better than each of these, but it improves the prediction when combined with them.
But worse, those other things: GPA, AP course participation, impressive extracurriculars--- are far more receptive to being "bought" than a good SAT score. Being on a travel sports team, or having leisure / advice to do "impressive" volunteering, or having systemic tutoring support... do much more to move these other metrics than you can move SAT with any amount of prep.
If it were a proxy for socio-economic status, there would have to be some way for the score to adjust if the student's parents suddenly went broke.
Since there isn't it cannot be a proxy.
Perhaps you meant it correlates? So what? What if it correlates better with success in college than pure socioeconomic status, which I'm fairly sure it does?
Should we just use the less accurate one instead?
I'm less inclined than normal to challenge your view because I know how much of an anomaly I am: I was headhunted in HS by several UCs (that I didn't apply to as I focused on CSU because of the costs) despite having pissed off my HS administration who tried to impede my graduation despite holding a 3.2-3.5 GPA but only attending for the exam days. The irony being I'd later go on to get honors and letters of recommendation despite detesting and being a vocal critic of this system during my time in University. And after graduating in 2009 I barely made into my field, health sciences, and because of my strength in physics I was encouraged by my advisors several times to take the MCAT despite having absolutely no interest in medicine.
But, the SAT system is ONLY the best option if only we accept we rely on a model that only have bad options. The amount sheer amount of rote learning needed plus defaulting to deciphering cryptic deductive reasoning with misleading questions as a way to show 'academic capacity' underscores why plagiarism, fraud and just outright mediocrity plagues academia. I wonder if having more written or presentation based examinations, like they do in Cambrdige and Oxford in the UK, would be best. The issue is that it doesn't scale at all and thus cannot be so heavily monetized as it is at present.
As a person with a BSc and going for my 2nd in AI and ML I think the notion of university being used as a gate-keeping mechanism for mos roles needs to be re-evaluated: the Germanic model has proven that engineering doesn't suffer because you don't follow the 'straddle your undergrads with immense amounts of debt in a cram model from 8th grade onward' which ultimately often fails to deliver for many since the economic down-turns puts so many either of their fields entirely or dropping out for all but a select few who get cherry picked as the norm.
In short, the apprentice model works best of all as it gives talented students to shine better than anything else, but because of the current status quo and Paper signalling that University degrees have become (not to mention the admission corruption scandals) this doesn't mean much for the majority of said 'talented' individuals.
Agreed, and good public schools can be of great help. Only when public schools fail do tutoring and socioeconomic status matter. No, I'm not talking about frills like one ipad per kid or low kid-to-teacher ratio or amazing extra-curriculums. I'm talking about teachers who can really explain concepts and deliver inspiring homework. I'm talking about an incentive system that students are motivated to learn instead of mocking those who try as "teacher's pets". I'm talking about an incentive system that ordinary students like me are pushed to achieve excellence even when they do not feel like studying. Really, it really does not require much to learn high school curriculum. It just requires a lot of dedication from teachers and students. Take a look at Asian countries. The have millions of students who went through daily hardship, yet they had a national system that drives students and teachers to focus on learning what matters, even though they can't necessarily afford what kids in the US can enjoy.
A law school dean once told to me that for years the ABA was constantly demanding, privately, that they increase the number of black students. The problem (as I saw it, we didn't discuss it much) is that this university had a reputation for being libertarian, which in the broader political climate translated (especially back then) as conservative, which translated as potentially hostile to black students. There were black students, but they deliberately chose the school for its somewhat unique curriculum which in many respects absolutely did lean libertarian. Most black students, like most students generally, wouldn't have strong enough preferences to override such a negative impression.
The woke crowd is far more vocal and fervent, and they're that way because they know that, at least in the short-term, being forceful can be effective, at least superficially. People with more reasonable sentiments and preferences, OTOH, aren't eager to put themselves in harm's way to defend those who are being targeted.
For all I know, the ABA was applying pressure because the ABA was being pressured by some other interest groups. And perhaps the ABA pulled their punches, keeping everything on the down-low, precisely because they believed the demands were less than reasonable. As the saying goes, "shit rolls down hill."
If we are talking about the US, no, I disagree.
The greatest source of admissions inequity are shit K-12 education.
I'll give you a direct example from when my kids were at the local middle school. Their science teacher --a Chiropractor-turned-teacher-- was, well, there's no other way to put it, a moron. The guy actually taught the kids that the moon does not spin...at all. They, quite literally, had to answer the question that way on a test in order to get the points. I can't even remember the number of horrifically wrong things this guy was teaching his students. By the time my kids got to his class he had been there for about twenty years.
It didn't end there. This guy was a bad teacher. He was angry, had self-confidence problems, would yell and scream at the kids, etc. If a kid had a question he would sometimes tell them "That's stupid question" in front of the entire class. Just horrible.
I lost count of how many times I met with the school principal and vice principal to file complaints. I had many (friendly) conversations with him. He was clearly intimidated by someone who's daily life was about science and engineering. I offered to come in once a week to help out and bring stuff with me to inspire the kids (robots, space-related stuff I was working on, etc.). Heck, I offered to arrange for the kids to take a tour of a rocket-making factory. He never took me up on the offer.
My kids, to this day, tell me their science education happened at home because that guy was a clown and other teachers were ineffective. There was no way to get this guy fired. He did not belong in a school, at all. He is still there. That school might get a better science teacher once he retires...with full benefits for life.
I have other examples of truly bad teachers doing the kids a horrible disservice. Unions protect them. You can't get rid of them. We somehow accept this and it permeates the land.
The bottom line is that we, the inhabitants of this land, pay taxes and fund schools that are going a horrible job of educating our children. The school is where we can clearly make an effort to provide kids from all walks of life with better outcomes, regardless of socioeconomic status. They can be learning calculus and science even if their parents didn't finish high school and are not in a position to help or advise them. They can be using computers even if they can't afford them at home. They can take inspiring field trips to the most amazing universities, museums and companies even if they don't have the means to do that outside of school.
And yet, we don't do that. We don't have a unified nation-wide standard of excellence based on an absolute dedication to giving kids the best opportunities to learn, regardless of socioeconomics. Instead we hire people like the moron from my story, who, for thirty years, will not only teach nonsense to class-after-class, he also manages to destroy any potential opportunity for kids to get excited about learning science by being an absolute asshole.
Put a different way: If we had really good K-12 schools and results, university admissions would not be a problem for anyone at all and success rates would be amazing.
> If we are talking about the US, no, I disagree.
> The greatest source of admissions inequity are shit K-12 education.
You've missed the step where the higher socioeconomic classes opt-out of the shit K-12 education by moving to better school districts, sending their kids to private schools, or homeschooling them.
2) "If you can study for the SAT that defeats the point" is wrong. Nassim Taleb made a point of demonstrating that these tests are study-able. The idea that you can't really study for the SAT is loserthink promoted by the SAT. Nearly everyone I know who wanted to succeed in school studied multiple times, took the test multiple times, and greatly improved their scores. It might still be unfair insofar as the better-prepared<->better-supplied kids get a head start but if you grind out a 1600 from a bad school that is still impressive and demonstrates hard work.
3) The solution to inequities in SAT/admissions is to devalue education via school, a la Caplan/ScottAlexander.
Nope. SAT offers an official curriculum via Khan Academy.
https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/scores/what-to-do-with...
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-22/grades-v...
It's extremely difficult to compare grades from hundreds or thousands of different schools. You have to really know how rigorous each individual school's grade scale is.
High school GPA as a predictor of college success results in a much higher representation of low income and underrepresented minority students in the top of the UC applicant pool, than do SAT scores.
Amen. I loosely put GPA in my "portfolio/body of work" mentally.
[1] https://www.ednc.org/eraceing-inequities-the-influence-of-ra...
Jews and Asians are overrepresented because they give the hard signal. Some absurd double-digit number of Asian students at Harvard have a perfect SAT score.
What's taking assessment tests out of that picture likely to do to the percentage?
It's not more WASPs, there are exactly twenty of those matriculating per year and they all drink blood out of a skull†. It's less Asians and more, heartfelt college essays about: you can fill that in, I'm sure.
†I'm not actually blood-libeling WASPs, something about how conversations have gone here recently compels me to point this out. Remember the 2004 election? Me neither.
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Besides, the idea that you have to be wealthy to avail yourself of test prep is absurd. I buy books at the thrift store all the time, and there are always test prep books there for a couple dollars. The local public library has them for free. yootoob is loaded with test prep videos. There are no excuses.
If you want to prep for the test,
1. read lots of books meant for adults
2. pay attention in math class
Why? Prior to test prep I was solving the problems as I was taught in calculus. Deriving equations. The test prep re-inforced memorizing key formulas and how to think not about solving the problem but eliminating options and determining when it's faster to validate if a given answer is correct.
SAT test prep does work. Similar to how FANG interview prep also works.
Not quite. You have assumed that money is the only barrier, but that is not the case.
Arguing that "test prep is free - or nearly free - so anyone must be able to prep", doesn't account for the fact that both money and time are barriers to test prep.
What if you have no time prep because you must support your family through work? You have no free time to prep - or do any extracurricular - because you have a job. This is not uncommon! Or you have a parent or guardian who is incapacitated in some way and you must act as their care-giver? Again, not uncommon.
There’s a very obvious correlation between the SATs de-emphasizing essays (~2000-2005ish) and Asians absolutely blasting past Whites in terms of average SAT score.
A better measure to consider: 4-year completion rates.
At elite universities, Asians tend to have the highest completion rates (even higher than whites) suggesting that you could improve completion rates by admitting a few more Asians, and fewer from other groups (including whites).
On this measure, Asians are the most 'underrepresented' group.
When I was in high school we were advised, in no uncertain terms, that the mixed race students should not hesitate to identify with their Non-White ancestry on their application and that doing so gives them an advantage.
Universities and Colleges are all about diversity and I can’t imagine the admissions department being an exception to this. Diversity scores also factor into university rankings and I can’t imagine there are many schools that are actively trying to be less diverse in their admissions process.
I don’t follow the logic of needing social capital in order to get involved in charitable or social activities. I can’t really think of a local charity that would turn down volunteers because they aren’t WASP-y enough.
One important caveat to this - I am not quite sure this would accomplish the desired effect if the other parent of such a kid was asian. Listing themselves as an asian instead of white for pretty much all top schools would almost definitely decrease their chances.
Asians are a pretty big and diverse group but I would say there's pretty strong support the lawsuits that will soon dismantle affirmative action.
Objective metrics can easily be gamed, and usually are, at the moment they are chosen. Metrics are almost always imperfect proxies, and the choice of metric is almost always driven by chosing the one that produces the most desirable results to the decision maker that can be sold given the notional purpose.
(East) Asians that support these measures get the media platform. In East Asian dominant neighbourhoods I've been in, opposing these measures are one of the few things that has politically activated the community in decades.
None of the colleges I applied to asked for my family's tax history or income level, except for on the separate financial aid application.
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"He says the standardized exams are most helpful for assisting the admissions office in identifying socioeconomically disadvantaged students who are well-prepared for MIT’s challenging education, but who don’t have the opportunity to take advanced coursework, participate in expensive enrichment programs, or otherwise enhance their college applications."
https://news.mit.edu/2022/stuart-schmill-sat-act-requirement...
> [W]hat I think many people outside our profession don’t understand is how unfortunately unequal all aspects of secondary education are in this country. And unlike some other inequalities — like access to fancy internships or expensive extracurriculars — our empirical research shows the SAT/ACT actually do help us figure out if someone will do well at MIT.
> It turns out the shortest path for many students to demonstrate sufficient preparation — particularly for students with less access to educational capital — is through the SAT/ACT, because most students can study for these exams using free tools at Khan Academy, but they (usually) can’t force their high school to offer advanced calculus courses, for example. So, the SAT/ACT can actually open the door to MIT for these students, too.
I don't mean this as a "anti-woke" or "pro-woke" harangue, or as a middle school cynical pose.
Admission in the USA is a manual and largely arbitrary process. Just like judges' rulings, it's influenced by which person happened to read the application, what they had for breakfast and what time of day it is. Plus random factors like the orchestra's french horn player having just graduated.
We recognize this for hiring, why not school applications? Acknowledging it will reduce a lot of heartache.
(Another heartache reducer would be the elimination of the "common application")
In addition, the common app really restricts what you can say. For example two kids might have earned an Eagle Scout rank: one just did the minimum to get a check box; the other might have really used it to learn and develop. In the common app there isn't really room to differentiate unless you devote your essay to it.
Back when each school had a unique application, the burden of applying makes you more judicious in your choices. However it also allowed you to adapt your application to what you wanted to emphasize to each school.
For a quantifiable difference: back when I was applying to universities in the 1980s, MIT had quite a high acceptance rate compared to its peers, ~18% IIRC. Why? Turns out few people applied because they (probably correctly) assumed they wouldn't get in anyway.
Is it fair that my parents went on an extended walkabout and so I happened to be in the US during high school and had the chance to go to amazing universities?
Is it fair that some kid with a 160 IQ grew up on a reservation with parents who desperately wanted to help the kid succeed but had no idea how, while the kid had to go to crappy schools, learn only the basics, and worry about their next meal? They would be waay smarter than I, but I would be far better prepared and would get more out of an MIT education.
Trying to diversify the student population sounds like a good thing for schools to be doing, something that in the medium term will hopefully ablate some of the second case. And if that excludes someone with high test scores, which is "fair"? Hell, if it excludes someone who diligently labored to worked the system, well, the there's a reasonable case to be made that such a person will do OK regardless while the student with less opportunity might end up with a greater benefit for society.
And, as far as "fair" goes: private universities, at least, are going to accept a certain number whom they believe will provide future donations, helping the institution survive and grow, even if they are otherwise unqualified. Is that fair?
A way to find highly capable students based on a very low bar (relative to college education), with a low ceiling, avoiding peacocking.
Well that's hardly an interesting solution is it? x) Yes things are not good, and they might never be perfect. But that can be better.
For example, I'm bald. That's unfair. At some point, one has to just accept it and move on.
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This is the crux of the affirmative action fascists. They picked what they thought was a “fair” set of criteria and it didn’t produce the outcome they wanted. They concluded it wasn’t “fair” because it didn’t produce they wanted. That’s garbage.
Backing into an outcome simply based on skin color that they want is racist and truly unfair.
If you want certain communities to do better in education, you don’t manipulate the outcome by changing the selection criteria, you produce better candidates. Invest in education and safety in lower income areas. No one does this. South side Chicago and St. Louis Missouri and Baltimore aren’t filled with stupid people. They are filled with people who have suffered generational poverty, living in some of the most violent areas of the world. If you dump money into schools, jobs, and police in those areas, you will produce a thriving middle class in a single generation and from there you can create hundreds of thousands and millions of educated “underrepresented” people that are COMPETITIVE.
No, that's science. If your goal is "more racially- and background-diverse admissions", and you set up a process to achieve that, and then find that your new process didn't work, then the process was wrong. So you come up with a new process.
> If you want certain communities to do better in education, you don’t manipulate the outcome by changing the selection criteria, you produce better candidates. Invest in education and safety in lower income areas.
The problem is that universities don't really have the ability to invest in education and safety in lower income areas. As rich as many top-tier private universities are, they don't have the resources to make a dent in this problem. So you have a chicken-and-egg problem: you can't fix the inequity that causes some kids to get a worse primary education, but you can't give them a better secondary education and allow that to flow back into their communities.
You have to break the cycle somewhere, and it seems pretty obvious that US federal and local governments have been failing miserably at improving education and safety in underserved communities. So you decide that you're going to find kids that your regular admissions practices would have rejected out of hand, but have the potential to learn and be successful at your school, even if there are gaps in their education. No, it's not a perfect plan, but what had been going on before wasn't working either. And maybe this won't work. But I think it's a worth trying.
If the objective is to increase the amount of certain skin colors, then fine. But call it that. Don’t be racist and then wrap it up in a lie saying that it’s to be “fair”. “Fair” in the way it’s used in the article is entirely subjective, which is not scientific.
When the system is as obviously corrupt as it is now, people lose faith in the system entirely and that’s what’s happened.
> The problem is that universities don't really have the ability to invest in education and safety in lower income areas.
I wasn’t talking about the universities, I was talking about the government. If the government is willing to dump hundreds of billions into Ukraine, I’d rather see that money going into creating businesses, schools and safety in the most egregious areas of our own country and build them up. Create competitive applicants by destroying generational poverty.
Not by bending admission standards and lying to everyone’s face as if we are racist for pointing out their racism. I would much rather see my tax dollars funding this rebuilding of the worst parts of the country than war. And if it produces hundreds of thousands of competitive students one generation from now, we all benefit because they won’t be as underrepresented and we can get rid of these racist policies by radical left fascists that believe that more racism is the answer for racism.
The idea was to remove the social upbringing's impact on test scores, as candidates from higher socioeconomic status are heavily advantaged from using a larger vocabulary from birth.
A PhD friend who studied this told me it had no measurable impact. Put aside raising math tutors salaries of course.
The colleges just give out rules how to calculate "points" (usually 40% are the grades, 60% is the test score, but some (eg medicine back in my time) require you to choose chemistry or biology as one of your subjects and that is worth 20%, next to 40% for the other ones and 40% for the grades).
Students know those rules, apply for a college they want, finish the year, do the standardized tests, get the results, colleges calculate them into points, and if there are 60 spots for that study course, top 60 students are accepted... you don't even have to wait to get your letter, colleges publish that the cuttoff was 82 points to get accepted, and if you're above that, you're in, if not, you compete in other colleges/programmes that still have open spots left over.
No races, no letters, no subjective stuff, no problems with -isms.
taking grades into account seems weird as hell
Why would we expect this to not be the case? It’s literally additional evidence of scholastic aptitude and, if you want it to not have any effect on admissions, you have to prevent its inclusion* rather than making it optional, as optional means “those with strong scores submit those scores.”
* Or, accept them in the application but prevent their inclusion in the admissions process and use them only for research/analytics and only after the fall semester starts.