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Comment by StefanBatory

1 year ago

American system of admissions to me seems so weird. Is it only there that unis accept mostly on extra things and not grades/test scores itself?

I'm Polish, here the only thing that matters is your final test scores, and nothing else. And I think it's same in the most of Europe and Asia too, right?

My impression is that American unis care way more about social aspect and so on, which I don't understand (but I guess it's a fine way of looking at things, too.)

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StefanBatory

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Meekro  1 year ago

The problem with the SAT is that too many people can score above 1500. In the 1500-1600 range, you might have only made 1-2 mistakes on the entire test -- it's more luck than skill at that point. You could maybe improve things by having a harder test for the elite schools, but the Asian model is not ideal either. I live in Japan, where many kids will spend their evenings in cram school (after a day of regular school) to prepare for the absurdly competitive college entrance exams. As I recall, South Korea actually restricts air travel on the day of their entrance exams so some kids won't be disadvantaged by being distracted by the noise of the overflight.

It's true that this model is more fair, and that's good, but it still feels wrong. There are way too many professions where you're de-facto locked out if you didn't get the right credentials at the right age, regardless of your practical skills. That results in us putting teenagers through these absurd trials for no real reason.

  • pizzly  10 months ago

    Each university could provide a custom entry exam to ensure the test is unique and difficult enough to not be gamed as easily

  • blitzar  1 year ago

    People are so much more than the single number abstracted from 6 hours of exams.

TimorousBestie  1 year ago

Parent already discussed this but at tier-one schools almost everyone (except legacy/athletic of course) has saturated the test score metric. Most applying have a max SAT or ACT. Most have a 4.0+ GPA. A 34 ACT score is in the bottom 40% of MIT applicants as far as I can tell.

The only thing that distinguishes applicants is the soft social stuff.

Japan and South Korea kind of fixed this problem with cram schools and ridiculously overtuned college admission exams. But e.g. KAIST isn’t really comparable to MIT.

  • StefanBatory  1 year ago

    So is this the case of final exams being too easy and unis having to adjust around that?

    Or is it that way because of some other factors? I was thinking how much of this is because of historical factors; I assume in times before standarised exams it would be a very convinient way of finding new students. But then, I don't know how it was historically in Europe/Asia.

tekla  1 year ago

It's because a good majority of these schools have thousands of applicants who might as well be perfect across the board grade and test scores wise, so its either they flip a coin, or choose some other standard.

The tests need to be harder, but people would complain.

I didn't study for the ACT at all (literally went in without knowing anything about it) and got a 35. It's a trivial exam.