Dartmouth College Reinstates the SAT 197
Longtime Slashdot reader ardmhacha writes: After making the submission of SAT/ACT results optional (along with most other colleges in the U.S.) for admissions because of the disruptions due to COVID-19, Dartmouth announced that they will reinstate the standardized test requirement for applications to the Class of 2029 (admission in Fall 2025) and beyond. "Informed by new research, Dartmouth will reactivate the standardized testing requirement for undergraduate admission beginning with applicants to the Class of 2029," reads an update to the college's testing policy page.
A study conducted (PDF) by the college found that "SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of academic performance at Dartmouth" and that "certain non-test score inputs in the admissions process, such as guidance counselor recommendations, do not predict college performance even though they do advantage more-advantaged applicants at IvyPlus institutions, increasing their admissions chances." MIT had previously reinstated the SAT/ACT requirement.
A study conducted (PDF) by the college found that "SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of academic performance at Dartmouth" and that "certain non-test score inputs in the admissions process, such as guidance counselor recommendations, do not predict college performance even though they do advantage more-advantaged applicants at IvyPlus institutions, increasing their admissions chances." MIT had previously reinstated the SAT/ACT requirement.
Talk about hindsight (Score:5, Insightful)
A study conducted (PDF) by the college found that "SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of academic performance at Dartmouth"
Wow, shouldn't they have done that before first making SAT optional?
"certain non-test score inputs in the admissions process, such as guidance counselor recommendations, do not predict college performance even though they do advantage more-advantaged applicants at IvyPlus institutions, increasing their admissions chances."
What a surprise, when you use any criteria other than merit, you get something else rather than merit! Gosh, what a revelation! /s
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Re:Talk about hindsight (Score:5, Interesting)
A large part of undergrad is memorize and regurgitate.
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A large part of undergrad is memorize and regurgitate.
One essential pillar of ANY kind of knowledge is rote learning. If you're truly going to be knowledgeable about any subject, there's always going to be a certain amount of "drill 'till it kills" learning involved. It can't all be fun stuff. Some of it has to be be the boring work of "memorize this". Like so many other things, we cast this truth aside to our detriment.
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Perhaps you forgot with all that boozing.
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Perhaps. But since I got my PhD early and successfully, it is obviously useless anyway.
Which is obviously useless? (Score:2)
Perhaps. But since I got my PhD early and successfully, it is obviously useless anyway.
The SAT, or your PhD?
(I should have bailed with a Master's... but by the time I figured that out, I was most of the way done with my PhD thesis so figured I might as well finish...)
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Rote (as in memorize and regurgitate) is largely useless, getting used to stuff by using it in actual problems is better.
PhD is also useless, as you've noticed, but in a different way :)
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A certain amount of honest review before a test is helpful but my fellow students who tried to cram an entire term into 2-3 days of cramming before a final didn't do very well.
I didn't take notes in 99% of my classes after first semester when I realized I was missing important lecture points by distracting myself writing down the previous statement and missed the big concepts entirely.
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I guess it depends on how you work. I found lecture notes somewhat helpful in tricky problems, but they required preparation - figure out what you don't understand beforehand, listen to it, update your pre-lecture work with the things you didn't get. And that was necessary only in hardcore shit with a lot of hairy math, like quantum mechanics of complex systems or reactor physics math, or nonlinear optics.
But then, when you begin to move from studying to teaching, it nicely ceases to be *your* problem, so y
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Rote (as in memorize and regurgitate) is largely useless, getting used to stuff by using it in actual problems is better.
No child ever learned their Times Tables by reasoning or experience. They learn by drilling. Rote . And no Times Tables, no foundation for later math.
Same with historical dates. If there are numbers involved, some amount of rote learning is absolutely essential.
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You need a certain number of facts and figures in your working memory, but an education primarily focused on that is not very helpful.
Memorizing the times tables is not nearly as valuable to understanding high-level math as understanding the fundamental math concepts behind multiplication. Being able to spit out "10 x 10 = 100" is not nearly as good as understanding place value and the base 10 number system. If you understand multiplication conceptually and have memorized the multiplication algorithms, you
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Well, you must have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth if you never had to work to support yourself in school. But you missed out, it helps build character.
Also, what "obvious scams" are you talking about?
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Hi ESL troll. It was a joke. Everyone else got it. Have a nice day.
Maybe not memorizing (Score:5, Funny)
Strange, I did about half the work for my PhD thesis in my last 2 years of undergrad. I was doing booze and fellow female students in the first two. Totally no time for memorizing and regurgitation.
I'm pretty sure any college student doing that much booze spent plenty of time on regurgitation...
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Yes, but I was not regurgitating lecture notes ;)
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LOL implying that people doing their PhD thesis is some kind of a woman magnet turn on. Yeah man I had acne and thick glasses at school and was a weak little twerp, I was banging all the hot chicks.
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LOL, failing so badly in reading comprehension... You probably still have acne and definitely are a weak little twerp.
Re:Talk about hindsight (Score:4, Interesting)
I didn't mean Dartmouth specifically. In general, undergrad, especially lower division, is for students to figure out what field they're interested in and to do their core requirements for graduation (math, English, etc) which are not field specific. Upper division is where students have chosen a field and are doing entry level work that requires a brain to get through but still has a level of memory skills required in certain majors. Lower division is just providing the basics and filling in holes from high school to make sure the students all have the same basic ground work in place before getting to the real stuff.
Kids who want to go further get a masters or PhD. Everyone else gets a bachelor's and a job.
That's how the American system is set up at most schools.
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SAT score doesn't measure merit, it measures some types of memory and intellect.
Ability to take one test (SAT) is highly predictive of one's ability to take other tests in college courses (aka "academic performance").
That makes you happier? But what difference does it make in the end? If you want students that score high grades in college courses, you admit those that did well in another standardized test.
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But how do you actually determin merit at scale? Standardized testing might be the best way we have, but I would guess it is less than 80% predictive.
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Merit is a delusion of the privileged. Who your parents are matters far more than anything else. Ability and effort are almost completely meaningless.
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Merit is a delusion of the privileged. Who your parents are matters far more than anything else. Ability and effort are almost completely meaningless.
I honestly cannot determine if this is satire or not.
Re:Talk about hindsight (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know that SAT measures merit.
My son is running an SAT prep for high school students. And I can guarantee you that anyone who can afford the expensive tutors will get about 100 points on the SAT higher than those who can't, even if they study for the same amount of time.
So yeah, to get a high SAT score, a large component is whether you are an idiot or not, whether you study or not, and whether you pay attention or not.
But in lots of ways it also measures whether your parents could afford tutors, whether you were born in a native english speaking family, whether you are room at home to study or have access to a decent quiet space, whether you need to work two shifts on the week end to help parents pay rent.
I am glad they decided to use the SAT, at $LOCAL_UNIVERSITY use the SAT too. And in graduate admission, we use the GRE for foreign applicants. They really give you an idea of what is going on and let you discard scores that are just too low. But I wouldn't sort by SAT and take top-k; that's stupid! That just selects people in ideal conditions and people who managed to cheat.
SAT prep books work too (Score:2)
My son is running an SAT prep for high school students. And I can guarantee you that anyone who can afford the expensive tutors will get about 100 points on the SAT higher than those who can't, even if they study for the same amount of time.
No, you cannot guarantee any such thing. Buying a reputable SAT prep book that includes some practice tests will accomplish the same. Been there, done that. SAT, GRE w/ CS subject, GMAT ... it's all the same. Mostly getting familiar with the test taking process and strategy so you spend more time solving problems.
Prep centers and tutors are certainly nice to haves, but they are not just haves. It really about having realistic practice.
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You're dramatically underestimating the advantage that a private tutor offers. Sure, you can get similar results with a good book and practice tests, but you'll need to put in a lot more effort.
No, you will not need to put in more effort. A book and 2 weekends and I was up to speed with the mechanics of standardized test taking and results were knowledge based not test taking skills based. Been there, done that. SAT. GRE, GRE CS Subject, GMAT. Its all the same.
That difference is what we call privilege.
No, the difference you claim is laziness. Mom/Dad need to drop you off at a test center, bring in a tutor, to make you study. Yeah some people need that. However others with a little self discipline and inner motivation to succeed can get a
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And I can guarantee you that anyone who can afford the expensive tutors will get about 100 points on the SAT higher than those who can't, even if they study for the same amount of time.
After dropping out of high school 14 years prior, I walked in and took the SAT cold and scored a 1345. Would 100 points really be worth any money at that point?
I have taken all of my adult tests (mostly certifications) completely cold and always scored either perfect or near perfect.
Why did I feel the need to post this? Bragging seems the obvious answer but no. I am trying to say something but I don't know what.
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> But in lots of ways it also measures whether your parents could afford tutors, whether you were born in a native english speaking family, whether you are room at home to study or have access to a decent quiet space, whether you need to work two shifts on the week end to help parents pay rent.
In other words, it's not so much if your parents pay a tutor, it's if your parents give you a proper environment. Basically, it's the parents, but it's not about money. Any poor person can speak English at home f
Re:Talk about hindsight (Score:4, Interesting)
What a surprise, when you use any criteria other than merit, you get something else rather than merit! Gosh, what a revelation! /s
Sarcasm aside, there isn't an objective thing called "merit". It's self-defining. Professors in college, business leaders, lawmakers, come up with self-serving definitions of merit "Merit is someone who is good in the same way that I was". It's self-reinforcing. It's easy to be self-deceptive about merit, to think there's some objective quality that your definition of merit is close to, but I don't think it truly is except in a tiny number of black-and-white cases ("had fewer patients die" or "won more court cases" or "made more money") and even those largely boil down to "played the current system well" rather than something more objective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.spiked-online.com/... [spiked-online.com]
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Wow, shouldn't they have done that before first making SAT optional?
The SAT was made optional because of Covid.
Re:Talk about hindsight (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, shouldn't they have done that before first making SAT optional?
The SAT was made optional because of Covid.
The SAT was made optional because of politics.
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Wow, shouldn't they have done that before first making SAT optional?
Sure, and if there wasn't a COVID pandemic that completely and utterly changed the result of SAT scores for several graduate years of school I'm sure they would have.
The SAT in the study is not the same SAT being presented to people in 2021/22. One is far more reflective of the student.
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It's the social sciences, you can find a study to prove whatever you want: https://news.uchicago.edu/stor... [uchicago.edu]
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The SAT/ACT optional issue was around DEI, not a COVID issue. But once one University did it, others followed. Now classes of 2024-2028 may be seen as "a statistical anomaly" in terms of academics.
Why aptitude/IQ instead of achievement? (Score:4, Informative)
What is the logic in choosing the smartest students, rather than those who have proven themselves in high school? Smart is important, but not the only criteria for academic success.
I'm guessing it must be simply too hard to compare school achievement in the United States? is that the case?
In Australia, like many other countries, we have an authority set external final exams for all high-school students.
These standard exams for each subject serve not only to compare students' achievement, but allow grades from their schools to be scaled for fair comparison. And for scores between different subject choices to be compared.
Each student ends with an aggregate scaled score, and an admissions rank. This used to be the sole metric for admission to university courses, but due to political and demographic shifts, we have been moving away from that. Also, universities have become money-making machines instead of a public service, so merit is no longer of such importance.
Re:Why aptitude/IQ instead of achievement? (Score:4, Informative)
Grades count. They have always counted. They're just saying they are now (re)-including the SAT which was always there until a few years ago.
I assume their non-SAT based new students didn't do as well on the whole as when they had the SAT to help filter.
We have the SAT which is English/math. We have the achievement tests. We have the advanced placement tests. We have the ACT. There are all sorts of standardized tests. Some are optional, some are optional replacements for other tests, etc, etc.
But you're not getting into a place like Dartmouth with unexplained mediocre grades and great test scores.
Re:Why aptitude/IQ instead of achievement? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe not, but great GRE test scores can help overcome a mediocre undergraduate GPA, and they can absolutely help get you admitted to graduate school if you got your B.S. at a university no one ever heard of.
High school GPAs mean next to nothing, and likewise for a lot of university GPAs. Grade inflation is out of control, and no one trusts an admission essay that was probably written by ChatGPT.
Standardized tests like the SAT, ACT, and GRE are one of the few yardsticks left that can truly distinguish a student's potential. Everyone is finally figuring that out. Now that the Ivy League is returning to requiring them, and COVID is over, it will only be a matter of a couple of years before everyone requires them again.
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Yes. Grades are basically useless as a measure of a student. I'm a second-career teacher, and can tell you that teachers in the same grade, and the same department, of the same school, will have wildly different grade distributions. Now try to compare grades between students who come from different schools...or even states...or heck, even countries...and it's simply impossible.
When the revolution comes they'll have standard-based grading, but as it is now, at my low-income school I will basically give an
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Grades are basically useless as a measure of a student
Yes there is rampant grade inflation (one high school near where I used to live in the south: 50% of the graduating class had 4.0 GPAs or higher). But statistically grades are still very predictive of college performance, more so than any other measure (except family wealth perhaps).
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... but great GRE test scores can help overcome a mediocre undergraduate GPA, and they can absolutely help get you admitted to graduate school if you got your B.S. at a university no one ever heard of ...
When applying to CS grad school my advisor basically said don'y worry about anything beyond the GRE CS subject matter. Score in the top half and you are in. A good nationally known State U but not Dartmouth.
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Grades count. They have always counted. They're just saying they are now (re)-including the SAT which was always there until a few years ago.
Though there's some skepticism of high school grades, which is really good for some of us slackers. I found high school boring and as a result graduated from high school with a 2.3 GPA, but I maxed the ACT (didn't take the SAT) and that was enough to get me scholarship offers.
But you're not getting into a place like Dartmouth with unexplained mediocre grades and great test scores.
Hehe. As it happens, Dartmouth was one of the places that offered me a scholarship, with my crappy grades and great test scores! It did come with a qualifier that I would be required to maintain a higher college GPA than is required fo
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The case is even simpler - it is much, much cheaper, as the cost is borne by the students.
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Something I have always though could be enacted is getting kids to think more about careers and what's out there to choose from earlier on.
I don't have statistics but I have to imagine that while lots of factors play into a strong but more difficult to test or track metric for college success is just having some passion for whatever you are there for. Let's be a little more honest with kids that we live in capitalism and education is as much about having a skill to support yourself in life as much as it is
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What is the logic in choosing the smartest students, rather than those who have proven themselves in high school?
Because high school grades are not necessarily "proof". Getting a "B" at a high quality school is not the same as getting a "B" at a low quality school, or high quality teacher vs a low quality teacher.
A national standardized tests removes a bit of the locality, showing if someone is a "B" student on the national scale or just on a local scale.
I'm guessing it must be simply too hard to compare school achievement in the United States? is that the case?
There is a lot of variability. And it's more about the culture of the school's staff and teachers than a wealthy neighborhood. The latter is certainly a nice to ha
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Maybe college admissions could get access to the school's ranking to determine how seriously to take you HS grades? Brilliant! I'm sure that unless some admissions officer from Dartmouth reads your comment, they'll remain completely in the dark about the comparative strength of high schools on the almost 30k applications they receive every year. Geez.
You misinterpreted my comment, I'll take the blame for that. It was a statement of what I expect happens now, not a suggestion.
Now with your respect to the 30K application, that's a red herring. Most of those can be eliminated before an admissions officer even needs to look up whether a high school is categorized as competitive vs struggling.
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Yes, it is. Each state sets its own curriculum, standards, and creates their own tests to measure against those standards. A 93% on Tennessee's standardized tests would have very little correlation with a 93% just across the border in Kentucky. One state may teach precalculus and another state do trigonometry instead, a national achievement test would score those states significantly differently.
H
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Achievement is damn hard to measure in any kind of fair way.
Who achieved more, the student from a wealthy, stable nuclear family going to a good school in a good neighborhood, who got straight A's, was class president and captain of the debate team, or the student from a single-parent household below the poverty line who works 30 hours a week on top of school and taking care of younger siblings and still manages to graduate with a 2.8 GPA? More to the point, how do you determine which of those two students
Good first step (Score:5, Insightful)
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Can you name some Marxist ideals that Dartmouth is teaching?
Re:Good first step (Score:4, Insightful)
https://www.thedartmouth.com/a... [thedartmouth.com]
Dartmouth must bolster race-conscious recruitment programs to ensure campus diversity.
That sounds good, but by "recruitment" they really mean racist admissions policy.
i.e. not just seeking out low-performing minorities, and offering scholarships, but admitting them with lower standards.
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BTW, rather than pushing racism, we should be pushing for helping the POOR with a hand-up. By that, I mean more educational $ for districts that rate poor. The disgusting group are those that push based on race and how somebody OBEYS your ideas.
Republicans won't even feed hungry children https://truthout.org/articles/... [truthout.org] and you're talking about helping the poor? Maybe they should read the bible themselves instead of telling others what it says.
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Therefore Tump is marxist.
Can't fault right wing logic.
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It was a rather cunning ploy by the USSR.
Oh, and "polit
The point of the tests... (Score:2)
Highly predictive of academic success? (Score:2)
You mean they might actually measure what they claim to measure and the Slashdot "those tests don't mean anything" neckbeards don't know what they're talking about?
*Nick Cage You Don't Say.gif*
Gasp! (Score:2)
"SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of academic performance at Dartmouth"
I also like that they're balancing the applicant's score against their peers at the same high school. This eliminates most of the bias
arguments people will use.
Now let's see the other Ivy League schools follow suit.
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Right. You wanna get into Dartmouth? Transfer to a crappy high school. If you don't get murdered, it's a lock.
Wealthy people are better, suck it up. (Score:4, Funny)
When you're a wealthy kid .. your parents can send you to SAT prep and all kinds of tutoring. They'll be better equipped to excel in college too, they'll not have to worry about a having a job while in college and they'll know how to study because they were taught early. They'll do better in college than a kid who didn't learn those things until late in life. That's just the reality. Reference: https://mlt.org/blog/impact-of... [mlt.org]
Am I saying it's fair? Hell no. It fucking sucks. But then, if your child has cancer .. do you want her to get the best doctor the world or do you want the guy who is second best but overcame all kinds of poverty to graduate?
Engineering Academic Equity is Hard (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically, what do you want out of an education? If it’s *just* a matter of teaching skills, then most education anywhere has succeeded on that metric. But the other thing education happens to do is reward winners and punish losers, by offering prizes (selective schools, high-paying white-collar jobs) to people who can perform the best *relative* to their peers. Harvard is more prestigious than a state school because one has to outcompete more people to get into it, based on some idea of merit (grades, connections, wealth, some demonstrable proof of genius). If the goal is to produce a meritocratic ranking of people, then inventing new educational methods that make everyone smarter has no effect on this game.
Unfortunately, the only way so far to change *relative* outcomes is basically to put one’s thumb on the scale. The field of education research is littered with failed attempts to improve equity, and basically every easy policy lever has been tried and found wanting. One can not only predict college success from SAT scores, one can predict it fairly well from Kindergarten assessments: https://freddiedeboer.substack... [substack.com] . We can discuss ways in which everyone can have a dignified life, even if they do not win these educational contests, but we cannot engineer a way to enforce a certain target demographic representation of winners in these educational contests without basically handing them out purely for demographic reasons.
They didn't do the research first? (Score:2)
Sadly, education appears to be the field least interested in science, data, or reason. But they sure
Re:I thought (Score:5, Informative)
They are, they are just less racist than all the other methods.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/02/reinstate-standardized-testing [lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com]
Re:I thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Reality has a well-known racial bias.
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Given that race doesn't exist, that claim looks dubious.
Given that sex doesn't exist, we've all been wasting a lot of time.
Re:I thought (Score:4, Interesting)
Reality has a well-known racial bias.
Given that race doesn't exist, that claim looks dubious.
Race does exist, it's just that it's a social construct without strong biological correlation. There is some correlation with physical appearance, which obviously has its roots in genetics, but both the relationship between genes and "racial" physical traits and the relationship between physical traits and race are fuzzy. Oh, of course you can point to individuals who are examplars of the "races", but you can also find lots of people who are on the edges and whose race, while well-defined, is defined more by cultural context than anything biological.
The best example of that I know is a study (probably nearly 20 years old now, and unfortunately I can't find it at the moment -- if anyone can, I'd like a link) that found that in the US, going to prison makes you black. That is, a large percentage of Americans who self-identify and are identified by their peers and families as something other than black and then go to prison for a year or more get out self-identifying and being identified by their peers and family as black. Their physical appearance didn't generally change, but the culture's perspective about them did.
Given the complex interplay between culture, perceptions and expectations in academic success, it shouldn't surprise anyone that even though race is a social construct, it does have a correlation with academic success. This is not, of course, an argument for excluding people of less academically-successful races from academia. Instead, it's an argument for finding ways to support them and enable their success in order to change the culture, perceptions and expectations. This is very difficult. And very important.
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Not all questions are the same though. Ie, "How many firkins are in a hogshead?" That question is highly biased to someone who grew up knowing such obscure measurement systems, it assumes a particular cultural background. There can be more subtle biases though, such as "Tom and Mary went to the park..." where the student might never have seen a park before and thus not understand the rest of the story. Or "Name the odd one out: apple, orange, turnip, cherry"
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Depends, does your tv have the Fox News logo burned in the corner?
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Racist or otherwise, they measure only one thing - how good you are taking them.
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But of course how good you are at taking them has a direct relation to your abilities at English/math, not just your ability at answering multiple choice questions. If you added a theoretical physics section to the SAT, people would be getting in the 300s.
Re:I thought (Score:5, Informative)
Really now, a "direct relation"? When I was teaching English in Asia many years ago, I developed a simple approach that improved student scores on TOEFL and TOEIC by 30 or more percent for about two weeks just by getting them used to the test format and the manner to eliminate answers, without regard to their English skills.
The approach was quite good on tests and totally useless in visa interviews, as it turned out.
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It used to actually be fairly easy if you followed the structure of the question and the answers. Dunno what is the situation now, things could have changed a lot.
Re: I thought (Score:2)
Na, it relates to time and money to take prep courses and buy study materials.
Re:I thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I thought (Score:5, Insightful)
they measure only one thing - how good you are taking them.
MIT, Dartmouth, and other schools have looked at the test scores and found they correlate well with academic success at their universities.
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the test scores and found they correlate well with academic success
In almost every study I've seen, the ACT / SAT do not add much predictive value once you account for high school GPA. But there's no doubt that an SAT score adds more in predictive validity to admissions than bogus "essays" (which tend to be written by coaches and consultants), "activities" (which tend to favor students from rich families), or "recommendations" (again written by coaches and consultants).
But let's be honest. If the Ivy league schools really wanted to make a difference, they'd take everyone
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In almost every study I've seen, the ACT / SAT do not add much predictive value once you account for high school GPA.
The problem is that GPAs can be manipulated, especially in smaller schools. Doubly so if they become the main criterion for admission. ACT/SAT are much harder to manipulate.
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So, yeah, standardized tests are the way to go. I'm glad to see that at least some Universi
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math, objectivity, and the written word were tools of white supremacy
I mean, that's kinda true. That's how the whites were able to do the industrial revolution and get into a position where it can be called "supremacy".
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Of course they would, half of their management goes on to "work" on the boards of the ETS, ACE and the college entrance examination board. And the salaries are nice.
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There are measures of academic success at an institution more granular than the one you used, which is "do they graduate in six years?". Grades are the most obvious, but another is years to graduate.
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It's racist to track scores by race.
Nope. Not racist. (Score:2)
These tests were declared racist?
If the SAT score were racist it would under predict the success of black students. It does not.
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Possibly true. In that it doesn't predict shit, so criticism leveled on its alleged cultural biases is perfectly valid. Let's quote the College Board itself:
"SAT scores add 15% more predictive power above grades alone for understanding how students will perform in college."
Standardized tests and minorities (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't be certain I'll correctly remember the history of anti-Semitic discrimination being challenged by good test scores, so I'll use a more recent anecdote.
An online friend's family emigrated from China to Australia. With a thick accent and limited English, her "teachers" treated her as being stupid. Then came the day she got a standardized test and her very high intelligence became clear. She got into a selective school and a high paying career.
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Re:Those who measure, measure crap (Score:4, Insightful)
What a load of over-generalised horse-shit! LIGO can measure a change 1/10,000 the size of a proton over 4km! You sir are no engineer.
SAT is highly predictive of many things, not as accurate as LIGO, but better than grades, or any other available metric. Your ignorance does not make it false. Face facts, people are diverse, not all the same, not the same talents. Stop shooting the messenger.
Re: Those who measure, measure crap (Score:2)
Experience means nothing when you're obviously incompetent.
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Having one year of experience, thirty times, does not count.
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Meh, 15% is pretty good in the social sciences. You take what you can get when you are trying to predict an infinitely complex system.
Although honestly, anything would be better than "guidance counsellor recommendations."
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Highly predictive? ... Here it is again: "SAT scores add 15% more predictive power above grades alone for understanding how students will perform in college.".
Wow! I knew it was better than using just grades. 15% more of what is not quite clear, nor the actual correlation, but it is a very impressive number in this context.
I would call that barely predictive.
Uh, are are you confusing 15% with "15% over what we knew from grades"? Because that was a really dumb comment. But I guess you knew that so ticked the AC box?
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You're probably right, and the correlation with zip code might well be very valid as the correlation with parental income is well known and the correlation with zip code and income is also pretty obvious.
The question is, IMHO, not exactly whether we see a correlation that is also causal, but as another poster said: who do we want to bet on, and what is the effect if that bet pays off?
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The "standardized tests" also significantly reduce the cost to the institution, as all the expenses are shifted from them to the future student.
Also, the ETS and its managing organizations are somewhat of a monopolistic business empire, their "non-profit" status notwithstanding.
It is a revolving-door type scam for the education management crowd who are very handsomely paid to keep it running while in school in exchange for cushy positions and 6-figure salaries that began with 7 or more 15 years ago.
The ETS
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. And probably also makes it easier to do mediocre (i.e. cheap) teaching and hide it if you select people in this way. Because you know they to well on standardized tests while they got mediocre teaching, so you just give them more of both and claim that you actually do good quality teaching. Perverted incentives and crap metrics go hand-in-hand.
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And then you can "re-invest" a part of your profits to cement your monopoly on testing. Works better than even "intellectual property rights".
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As any good engineer knows, measuring stuff in tricky and only gives you some rough approximation, and often measures other things that you actually want to know. Tests like SAT are no different. Essentially they only measure who does well on standardized tests.
BS. While far from perfect they have one of the better correlations with college graduation. A small amount of preparation, a decent book with some practice exams, and one can get up to speed on the mechanics and strategy of test taking in a short amount of time on your own. From that point it's basically knowledge. Been there, done that, SAT, GRE, GMAT. All the same, the mechanics of test taking only requires a small amount of preparation.
Re:Those who measure, measure crap (Score:4, Funny)
As any good engineer knows, measuring stuff in tricky and only gives you some rough approximation
So, you work for Boeing?