Comment by StateflowsLabs
4 hours ago
"The surge in math deficiencies after dropping the SAT highlights a systemic issue: grade inflation. Without a standardized baseline like the SAT/ACT, a 4.0 GPA from a high school with relaxed standards looks identical to a 4.0 from a highly rigorous one.
Paradoxically, removing test requirements harms underprivileged students the most. Preparing for the SAT requires a book and an internet connection. In contrast, building a competitive profile based entirely on expensive extracurriculars, sports, and elite summer camps is far more wealth-dependent. Standardized testing isn't perfect, but it's often the only objective equalizer we have."
I wasn't underprivileged but I did go to a terrible evangelical high school that had no honors or AP classes (AP bio at a place teaching creationism would've been something else...) and I think I only got in to a decent college on the strength of my SAT and ACT scores. My grades were OK (except in bio, where I refused to acknowledge young Earth creationism) but not amazing.
> My grades were OK (except in bio, where I refused to acknowledge young Earth creationism) but not amazing.
This is... Wild.
The funny thing is the Adventists seem to produce good hospitals but are still creationists. I guess it’s not a big deal how we got here if you just want to do medicine.
It's very common in US private schools.
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Who gets to set the curriculum is a much bigger deal than given credit for. So many teachers complaining about the shit they have to teach. I remember one who didn't necessarily disagree but wondered why Al Gore should be the one to decide what goes into the [mandatory] documentary (in the Netherlands)
An inconvenient truth was mandatory viewing in NL?
I can't read the article - do they explain why they think this is a "paradox"?
Expectation: removing standardized tests will give more opportunity to students who historically tend to do worse on those tests, like poor kids.
Reality: removing standardized tests means that universities have to put more weight on the rest of the college application, such as extracurricular activities which are often expensive and thus disadvantage poor kids.
Calling it a "paradox" is maybe a little hyperbolic, but basically it did the opposite of what they expected.
This doesn't exactly answer your question, but MIT added test scores back recently and wrote a blog post explaining why: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our...
I think the "paradox" is that you'd expect disadvantaged students to perform worse on standardized testing.
Personally, I don't think they actually believe it's paradoxical, I think the authors are just trying to be polite to those who criticize standardized testing with identity politics. Politeness can aid in persuasion, so I don't blame them.
I don't think it's paradoxical at all. This was the original strength of the SAT system.
> Preparing for the SAT requires a book and an internet connection.
Sports frequently just requires a ball or a place to run.
In both scenarios, you can still purchase better equipment/training. There are very expensive, effective SAT prep options out there for the wealthy.
My kids were able to take some SAT test prep course through their school (partially funded by the PTA) and it helped a lot. They wrote a bunch of practice exams and each time their scores went up. Also, test taking itself is a skill and the more you practice it the better you get at it. If you’ve written the SAT 15 times over the past 2 years, then the 16th time won’t be as stressful and you will know strategies that work and the questions will be familiar.
If you are in a school that doesn’t have a well funded PTA, you are at a disadvantage.
You can, as of about a year ago, take official SAT practice exams for free in Google Gemini.
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That's not the reality for most youth sports anymore. It's gotten much more competitive. Participating in school sports isn't enough. They generally can't develop the level of skill necessary to gain advantage in college admissions without paying a lot to participate in travel club teams and for private coaching. And I'm not talking just about NCAA recruited athletic scholarships but even for the sort of regular extracurricular sports activities that might give someone an advantage in college admissions.
Sports is the most expensive way to get into college. Tennis is close to $1 million to get your kid into an Ivy league through tennis. Malcom Gladwell wrote about sports and colleges in his book "revenge of the tipping point". Sports is used by the wealthy to get their less academically inclined children in to top schools and some school are expanding it.
Your analogy works against you, given that tons of professional athletes come from poverty.
Professional athletes are like people who get 1600s on the SAT; a bit of an outlier.
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> tons of professional athletes come from poverty
Is that actually the case?
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According to IA this is mostly a myth though.
Whatever gates you put up, the wealthy can fire cannons of cash at them. You just have to pick the ones least vulnerable to cash barrages.
What is the marginal gain of expensive SAT prep? Versus just doing hundreds of mock tests out of some prep book, like SWEs grinding LeetCode?
It feels like the problem are the SAT prep courses' existence then
And SAT as high school math exam itself I think is way too easy. They should design another test which can clearly distinguish top 1% or even 0.1%.from others
When I was in high school in California more than 20 years ago, SAT math alone was insufficient for admissions to STEM programs at mid-ranked and top-ranked universities. I was required to take the SAT Math IIC subject test, which went up to pre-calculus. We were also strongly encouraged to take calculus in high school. There are two AP Calculus exams: AB (which covers the first semester of university calculus) and BC (which covers the first two semesters).
There are already such tests. They're called International ___ Olympiad.
Yes, the scores at the top are way too bunched. A perfect score should indicate generational genius, not the 100th smartest kid your year in California.
That's not a real problem for UC admissions. They accept thousands of students every year. Anyone who scores near perfect (within the margin of error) should be admitted to at least one UC campus. If that's not happening then the problem is with the admissions criteria, not with the SAT.
I've been wondering with all the data that's available now couldn't admissions look at a 4.0 from HS A vs a 4.0 at HS B and then compare those to actual grades on the campus once students were in class? Assuming HS A has lower standards, they should be able to tell that a 4.0 isnt as meaningful as a 4.0 from HS B. Seems like a straightforward exercise.
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The problem is as never the tests. It was pretending that the difference between a 600 and 625 (or whatever) really predicted anything.
It was the silly idea that with tests you could produce a fair ordering of students based on potential to succeed.
You can absolutely make a bet on who's more likely to succeed based on a 100 point difference, though. It's not absolute, but it's highly predictive. And the reason the SAT was dropped wasn't because admissions were being forced to blindly accept 620 over 610 (they never were), but so that people who scored hundreds of points below the mean could be admitted (in the pursuit of other institutional goals).
We have decades of data (test score vs grades and degree completion). They should gather it up and calculate the answers.
Flip answer: the bucket width should be 2.5 times the score improved of a prep course.
Any working system has to rely on some arbitrary rules. Drawing a line between students who scored 600 and 625 is still infinitely better than drawing it based on the decision-makers' moods.
Or, treat 600-625 as a tie, and use a lottery.
As imperfect standardized tests are, they are still more fair and less biased than using arbitrary judgement on extra curriculars
Bucket to the observed predictive power of the score, resolve ties with a lottery .
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who uses SAT scores as "potential succeed"??
The original argument for standardized tests was to pick based on how well you would do in university (vs who your parents know).