MIT Has Made the Decision To No Longer Consider the SAT Subject Tests (mitadmissions.org) 57
MIT's Stu Schmill, in a press release: I'm happy to announce our decision to discontinue the use of subject tests starting with the 2020-21 admissions cycle for first-year and transfer admissions (for students entering MIT in 2021 and beyond). We made this decision after considerable study, in consultation with our faculty policy committee. We believe this decision will improve access for students applying to MIT.
SAT was never fair... (Score:2)
The SAT has always had its problems including parental interference for which the students are penalized for leading to reduced scholarships and therefore higher student debt.
Re:SAT was never fair... (Score:5, Informative)
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I expect MIT is having problems attracting new students, so they probably becoming less selective (AKA Snobby). Accedema has had a problem in general where they value their selectivity vs their actual quality of education. This selectivity will often include factors beyond test scores, but things like if your parents went to that school, any particular power, fame and/or fortune you family already has,
SAT Skill tests, were just an other expensive test to weed out people who were on the line, and gives th
Re:SAT was never fair... (Score:5, Informative)
MIT was ranked #7 nationally in college admissions selectivity in 2019. Only 7% of all students who applied were admitted. The only schools more selective were Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, and Caltech.
Whatever reasons they have for dropping the SAT subject tests, it has nothing to do with students not wanting to attend MIT.
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But it does have to do with the applicant pool. Less selectivity caused by fewer applications de facto means lower USN&WR ranking, among others, which then leads to fewer applicants, which leads to lower rankings, etc. One of the easiest and revenue-positive ways to improve your ranking is to get more students to apply. Keep in mind two SAT subject exams were previously REQUIR
Re: SAT was never fair... (Score:2)
Your son rightly chose not to apply to a school he's too stupid to attend.
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universities have been known to boost their selectivity by asking people to apply which they KNOW they'll reject, just to increase the denominator.
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"Accedema has had a problem in general"
Who? What? Is that an insurance company? Maybe a HR outfit?
Maybe you need to master some basics before sharing your opinions?
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Problems attracting new students? Based on what evidence? That they decided the subject tests weren't good indicators of student performance? Utterly daft. They're the most famous, and usually highest-rated technology school in the world. Most tech students would probably drop their current school mid-semester if given an opportunity to transfer.
The scenario you offer is fine, self-elimination (Score:2)
They still require SAT (or the ACT). It's the SAT subject tests, which you could take to show off your special skills. They were kind of a self-selected bias, because if you didn't do well, you wouldn't send them in, and if you don't know about them, or if they are too expensive, you won't try. So they distort the college's view of the application pool.
Perhaps, and certainly in the inability to pay the fees scenario that is unfair(*) but it still works for the university. For example if you are applying for the CS department and you score well on the CS subject you have self-identified as a promising candidate. If you did poorly and did not report and lose "your" seat to the former then that's OK. The better qualified got the seat.
(*)To make the system fairer all they need to do is waive the fees for those that cannot afford it.
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Or, perhaps they're actually telling the truth, studied the matter, and when they looked at the data they realized that SAT subject test performance didn't actually correlate with success in the program.
That would mean considering it is a waste of time that could be better spent considering other aspects of a applicant that are better indicators. Worse, no doubt many of those in the acceptance pipeline would feel as you do, that despite evidence to the contrary the tests *must* somehow be useful predictors
They are address false neg, not false pos (Score:2)
Or, perhaps they're actually telling the truth, studied the matter, and when they looked at the data they realized that SAT subject test performance didn't actually correlate with success in the program.
As someone with some experience with academia, that is very unlikely to to be the case. Note "improve access", they are worried about false negatives not false positives. So it not about "success" as you imagine.
That would mean considering it is a waste of time that could be better spent considering other aspects of a applicant that are better indicators.
The argument made previous seemed to be one of false negatives, not false positives. Again, some of these false negatives could be addressed by dropping the testing fees. Setting that aside, the recognized positives filling the seats at MIT get qualified applicants in seats. Scoring well on a subjec
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When it comes to ranking applicants, false negatives and false positives have exactly the same net effect - they cause superior candidates to sink in the rankings while inferior ones rise.
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When it comes to ranking applicants, false negatives and false positives have exactly the same net effect - they cause superior candidates to sink in the rankings while inferior ones rise.
Not at all. False negatives do not turn an actual negative into a false positive. Keep in mind that MIT has more positive applicants than they have seats. So false negatives are a tragedy for an individual but it does not put a negative into a classroom seat. Again, doing something about the testing fee is the real solution.
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It puts a less qualified student in that seat. That matters to everyone who benefits from American excellence.
Every inaccuracy in the ranking algorithm means that the overall quality of the student body will be lower than it could have been if Admissions was all-knowing. When systemic inaccuracies are found, eliminating them will benefit the quality of the student body, provided that the magnitude of the inaccuracies was greater than the magnitude of the benefit. Specifically in the range where hard decis
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It puts a less qualified student in that seat.
That "less qualified" student is still a genuine member of the "qualified" pool, he or she is still a genuine positive. False negatives do not put unqualified people into seats, unlike false positives. Again, false negatives are not a problem for MIT since they are still filling seats with **qualified** people. And again the proper way to address false negatives related to fees is to address the fees.
That matters to everyone who benefits from American excellence.
By eliminating the test MIT creates a pathway for unqualified individuals to get into a seat. That is far wo
The SAT I took (Score:4, Funny)
I was recovering from pneumonia, and apparently running a fever of about 104, and went directly to the doctors after the test for strep.
Only got a 1400. This was "a while" ago. by which I mean, before the Internet.
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It isn't that difficult.
I barely slept the night before the test and scored quite well. The lack of sleep was mostly test jitters. I think our valedictorian scored perfect, but she was quite the book worm.
As far as accomplishments, I would put that shit in the bottom of the pile.
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Why is it anytime SATs are discussed, there is inevitably someone who volunteers that they never studied or didn't sleep before the test but got a 1400-1600 (which is highly above average). We get it, you're smart without having to try.
It's /. You expect a certain amount of BS.
I remember a time at the barber shop. Guy was so proud of his Son. Said he scored 750. I said - That's good, what about the other section? He said - other section? Everyone was just - OH... Yea... NM.
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My lazy white child deserves to go to the best college. -- Any President or Powerful Congressman.
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Re:IOW: Affirmative Action of the Whites. (Score:4)
When crack epidemic was ravaging black communities "lock 'em up and throw away the key" politicians were getting elected with thumping majorities. Till the opioid epidemic started ravaging white communities. Then suddenly it is time for reasoned approach, to deal with root cause analysis.
Same thing is happening to standardized tests. As long as only whites were doing great in these tests, it was all hunky dory. Once the Asians started beating them, now ditch the tests.
You can mod me down. You can stop watching spelling bee so that it withers away without ad dollars to support it. But the fact is the asians are here. Especially the Indian Americans. Not the barely qualified coders writing horrible code. Their children, born and raised in the USA. Hardly 3% of the population, already over 10% of executives in Fortune 500 companies. The percentage is incredibly large in the junior executive ranks, the low end of top management cadres. Shockingly high. Be prepared to see 200 or 300 Indian-American CEOs and 3000 to 5000 Indian CXOs in the top 1000 companies in the next 20 years.
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The tests are only a part of what admissions takes into consideration when they decide on who to accept. A good portion of it is things like essays, letters of recommendation, and stuff like that which are entirely subjective. And since they don't tell us what criteria they use and how they weight it anyway, they can pretty much admit (or not admit) whoever they want. If you actually visit the campus, you'll find a disproportionate amount of Asians and other non-whites compared to the general population
Re:IOW: Affirmative Action of the Whites. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are three reasons why a university would find a student a very attractive admission:
(1) Academically strong enough to maintain/improve the reputation of the school
(2) Interesting enough to make the school experience more rich for everyone (accomplished musician, superior athlete, etc.)
(3) Likely to be useful to the school after graduation, as a donor himself/herself or as a connection into the business world for other alums
If you tick one box, you are merely decent -- some will be let in and others not. Being able to tick 1-1/2 of these boxes makes you a strong candidate. Ticking even just two makes you someone who will have a lot of options.
Great universities are going to fight tooth and claw to maintain some kind of mix of these three for their incoming class. They were never going to allow #1 to rule all.
So I am not really disagreeing with you, 140Mandak, but the picture is a little more complex from the school point of view. Using test scores or not using test scores were always a tool to achieve certain strategic goals.
I agree it was a tragedy how it played out for certain communities. How to fix that is complicated, and efforts must go beyond just changing the set of tests used for university admission.
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Which, in the area of highly selective schools such as MIT, is exactly nobody, or a handful of people at best. When you accept a mere 7% of the applicants, you're rejecting an entire class full of equally-qualified students. Yeah, if you win the Westinghouse science thingy or get a DARPA award or something, they'll want you more, but nobody really gets box 1 checked. Nor 3- there are less than 3K people on the planet who cou
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>nobody really gets box 1 checked
Obviously, a respectable portion of the previous alumni did, or the school wouldn't still have a reputation to trade on. They're not just resting on the laurels of the famed Doctor XYZ who graduated 100 years ago.
They're not looking for incredible knowledge - they're looking for incredible *potential*, which is a very different thing, and probably why the subject tests aren't useful
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Alums are still a useful resource for getting more money, over the long haul, and it is easier to get donations from the right kind of social set or people who might rise to that level of money.
Harvard received $1.4 billion in 2019 from donations, FWIW.
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(1) Academically strong enough to maintain/improve the reputation of the school
My school (in Canada) was requiring Physics SAT for admissions to graduate programs. After a while I learned not to look at it when considering candidates. The score was all over the board and not indicative of future performance as a researcher. The overall grade record and academic history had good correlation with the student's potential. The specialised tests had not.
I imagine the subject tests are even less useful for undergraduate admission. It's a good decision by MIT to ditch them.
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As long as the Whites were beating the Blacks and Hispanics in these "standardized" "objective" tests,
Actually, they originally made for a fairer system for the poor and minorities who had aptitude, but may not have performed to well in school due to their circumstances. Standardised aptitude tests are the best method of identifying those with potential to do well academically.
But it starts to fail when getting to high-stakes testing at the extreme end, i.e. top colleges in most demand. Once you get an industry preparing people (gaming the system) for a test that is supposed to be for pure aptitude, you
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>Standardised aptitude tests are the best method of identifying those with potential to do well academically.
Bullshit.
The SATs have been statistically invalid and unreliable all along.
Try and get the reliability and validity data out of ETS (the private company that administers the SATs for megabucks) and they will give you nothing, because it doesn't exist.
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The SATs have been statistically invalid and unreliable all along.
I'm not familiar with the specifics of the American SAT, but a bit surprised it is done by a private company. Guess I shouldn't be.
Do you mean it is not a predictor of academic success? Are there better tests available in the US?
Other countries use high-school test scores, but that needs a standardised curriculum and standardised academic testing.
What alternative would you use for the US ?
Thank God I was born not asian! (Score:1)
EOM
SAT *subject* tests (Score:2)
They're phasing out the SAT subject tests (a.k.a. SAT 2 tests), while at the same time reaffirming their use of the general SAT test. Most colleges never asked for SAT 2 scores in the first place. Two decades back when I was applying to various schools, I think Rice was the only one that required SAT 2 scores from me. The rest were fine with SAT/ACT and your high school transcript.
Just not worth it anymore? (Score:3)
MIT is a little bit different from the other "elite" schools in that they attract the smartest scientific and engineering types, or more realistically, the ones who "excel at school." I could definitely see this as a way to ensure they don't recruit classes full of test-acing robots who can't do anything other than get grades. SAT subject tests are optional, and I imagine anyone applying to MIT these days has perfect or near-perfect SAT general AND subject tests. So, I could see this as a way to ensure MIT gets a mix that includes more creative smart people as opposed to just the school-smart ones.
As we saw with the elite college admissions scandal last year, the competition to get into any of these places is fierce. You basically have to be a perfect student, have perfect test scores, and have some kind of other story to even be considered. It makes sense too...it's basically a ticket to lifelong riches if you get in. Almost all investment bankers and high-end management consultants are Ivy League grads, which leads to them becoming highly paid executives or super-rich bankers later on. You'll also have access to plum academic roles, elite law schools and elite medical schools...all of which are tickets to Easy Street.
Basically unless you're a genius or have a massively moving hardship story you're not getting into the Ivy League or MIT. I know my kids aren't going to be able to, but that's OK. Not considering the SAT would be one way to ensure that the kids of the elite can't just buy their kids infinite amounts of test prep. Lower income students do worse on the SATs because they don't understand/aren't taught that all they have to do is be perfect for 18 years, then the rest of their life is smooth sailing.
Previous Grads (Score:1)
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If a degree from MIT is worthless, then a degree from any school is worthless (maybe except for Harvard). You have nothing to worry about. At worst, you can just use your white privilege with all its advantages.
Too much liability? (Score:2)
Were Asians and other non-preferred racial groups doing too well on the tests?
More access? (Score:3)
We believe this decision will improve access for students applying to MIT.
So, how is ignoring the SAT going to create more space at MIT?
Ornate hexagonal crystals of dihydrogen monoxide (Score:2)
What the current generation of campus satraps fears the most is Asians becoming not just a student-body majority, but a majority in campus administration. This would pop their cherished little power bubble. Science over feeee-lings, oh my!
They want to weed out Asians (Score:2)
Why would a highly competitive institution obfuscate one of the few useful tools it has to make admission decisions?
This is because SAT1 includes English, which is hard for immigrants, while for SAT2 English is optional. On the other hand, protected minorities seldom take SAT2.
This way ignoring SAT2 provides much benefit. As far as making admission calls, they still have options like throwing dice, flipping pennies, etc.