Comment by lokar
2 hours ago
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 .
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).