[HN Gopher] Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
___________________________________________________________________
Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
Author : Armic
Score : 405 points
Date : 2023-03-05 11:10 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (robkhenderson.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (robkhenderson.substack.com)
| jacknews wrote:
| 'Disguising self-interest as virtue'
|
| Indeed, and this seems like a prime example.
|
| I'm a fan of a level playing-field, and measuring, rather than
| judging, ability.
|
| But lets face it the putative victim described by the author is
| actually up against the kids of quite privileged, or dedicated
| families, who will be hiring private tutors, sending their kids
| to evening cram schools, or doing the 'tiger-mom' thing.
|
| Some flexibility might give a leg-up to talented kids who haven't
| had one before (although there is that danger that it could go
| woke).
| ryan93 wrote:
| Legacy acceptances rates at Princeton are close to ten percent.
| Kids who get in to those schools often have high GPAs and test
| scores without tutors.
| paulpauper wrote:
| How is it a luxury belief? A luxury would imply that it's hard to
| obtain and rare/uncommon, yet this is a view that is widely held
| by a lot of people, and it's not like there is any barrier to
| believing in something, unlike having enough money to buy a
| luxury car. It's more like a trendy belief than a luxury one.
| dougSF70 wrote:
| MIT brought the SAT back in because its they found it to be the
| least inequitable way to distinguish suitable candidates
| tester756 wrote:
| I've been thinking about this for long time
|
| On one hand I'm fan of standardized exams because they feel very
| very fair, are transparent and allow you to bootstrap yourself.
|
| On the other hand I see the pros of taking people's traits into
| consideration because you know, it's not always that the top
| scorers are actually top people.
|
| Unfortunately how to decide which traits are desirable? who
| decides that? etc etc.
|
| And just because of that I'd default to first option - pure
| exams, because they're fair and transparent, rules are clear -
| just be the best.
|
| But I do agree that in some cases there may be better ways to
| pick top people - just like during job interview.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Nassim Taleb's idea (not sure if he came up with it first) is
| instructive here:
|
| "Education doesn't create wealth. Wealth creates education."
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Standardized tests remain the only criteria totally in the
| control of the student. You can study for them and objectively do
| better, become a better applicant. Everthing else is either
| circumstantial or based in the opinion of others, mostly
| highschool teachers. If i had to rely on my highschool teachers'
| opinion of me i would not have ever gone to university let alone
| have won scholarships. Standardized testing allowed me to
| overcome thier base opinions.
|
| Want to be a lawyer but are not sure about law school and do ot
| know any lawyers? Look to the LSAT. Do well and where you went to
| university/highschool doesnt matter. Do really well and
| scholarships will appear. That is the freedom of good
| standardized testing.
| bnralt wrote:
| I've seen this recently with the elementary school near me.
| Grading is extremely opaque, and seems to be largely based on
| teacher intuition. Some very advanced students have gotten
| grades below where they are (I've heard many teachers just
| won't give the highest grade until the end of the year because
| of the weird system).
|
| Thankfully they also have standardized test scores, which both
| have a much more transparent scoring method and seem a much
| better match for the children's competency. It's not that
| standardized tests are perfect, but removing them makes things
| extremely capricious, and often very unfair.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It is true that many teachers react very badly to the best
| students, particularly where the students are very evidently
| smarter than the teachers. In this age of ready access to
| information, any student with a drive to learn can quickly be
| head-and-shoulders above the average highschool teacher in a
| given subject. Good teachers help such students. Bad ones get
| jealous and seek to harm them.
| bnralt wrote:
| What you say is true, but I've seen this happening even
| with good teachers. I think there's a few reasons for this
| - first, if you have a large class and a student is already
| meeting all the standards, you're going to spend the time
| you have on the students falling behind. Teachers are going
| to want all the students to know what they're supposed to
| for that grade, rather than to have some advanced far off
| the grade while others fail.
|
| Even if they had the time, there seems to be very little
| interest in advanced students across the board, and few if
| any programs put in place to meet their needs.
|
| Secondly, there aren't many opportunities for students to
| demonstrate that they exceed the standards. Getting a class
| test entirely correct demonstrates that they know what is
| being taught, but nothing more. One thing I like about the
| standardized tests they're given now is that the computer
| will adjust and ask more advanced problems if the students
| get answers correct.
| jozvolskyef wrote:
| When I applied to secondary school, I barely made the cut
| and was one of the lowest-scoring students to be accepted
| that year, only ranking around the 4th percentile of those
| accepted. Once I started attending, I performed
| exceptionally well, ranking around the 95th percentile,
| give or take 5. It was mainly due to the fact that a large
| minority of my primary school teachers had biased opinions
| about me and our personal differences affected my grades.
| madars wrote:
| >Grading is extremely opaque, and seems to be largely based
| on teacher intuition.
|
| Grading in certain subjects is just laughable. Can you
| objectively evaluate English essays so that 97/100 is
| "better" than 96/100? Why not add more significant digits:
| 96983/100000!
| hedora wrote:
| I've noticed this too. I assume it is because the teachers
| don't want parents to realize the school is failing their
| child until it is too late to have the teacher (or school)
| address the situation.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| In re to LSAT at least a decade ago your LSAT score meant shit.
|
| I'm S Asian, scored 99th percentile 17x, but my GPA was around
| 3.3 because I think college is a joke when it involves
| homework. I had never gotten less than a A on midterms and
| finals, but what I'm trying to say is that GPA and race matters
| much more.
|
| There was a law school acceptance calculator. With my scores
| and my Asian background, the T14 were either out of reach or I
| had somewhat of a chance at a lower rank of those schools.
|
| Law school is probably the most atrocious when it comes to race
| based acceptance. Changed my race on the calculator and my
| chances became green across the board basically.
|
| Being Asian is hard enough. We have to succeed because our
| parents and in some cases like me know what life is like
| without running water or electricity, genocide every few years,
| etc.
|
| It sucks that no school ever looks at that. I grew up without
| running water nor a toilet, and multiple people living in a
| home that was barely 400sq ft. Yet nobody cares about that
| because I'm Asian, the wrong minority.
|
| Yes I don't give a shit about homework, I understand the
| material which is why I'm slaying each test. I hated that about
| college. We are adults. I'm paying to get an education, why the
| fuck is homework 20% of the grade? It's practice, for people
| who don't get the material.
|
| Education is a joke. when I see a fellow asian person from a
| top uni I know they had to be actually extraordinary to get in
| and come out.
| counters wrote:
| > Yes I don't give a shit about homework, I understand the
| material which is why I'm slaying each test. I hated that
| about college. We are adults. I'm paying to get an education,
| why the fuck is homework 20% of the grade? It's practice, for
| people who don't get the material.
|
| What discipline did you study in undergrad?
|
| In many majors - or even just in well-taught classes - work
| outside of lecture or recitation is designed to complement
| what you are learning. It _is_ the education you're paying
| for. It isn't high school where it's a bunch of repetition of
| the same concept (although I'd vigorously defend that, too)
| intended as practice. Problem sets ought to be the
| application of the material you're introduced to in lecture,
| done so in a way that forces you to grapple with and connect
| core concepts to other material in your major.
|
| For example, in grad school I TA'ed an upper-level
| undergraduate course that would typically have 15-20
| students. The problem sets I created with the professor I
| worked for had problems split across two themes. The first
| was discover; we'd take something that seemed ho-hum or rote
| from class, and apply it to an oddball setting which yielded
| surprising results. Sure, that straightforward equation works
| - but why does it go so weird in this curated example we're
| providing? There's extraordinary opportunity for learning
| there.
|
| The second theme was connection across disciplines. Introduce
| a mathematics, computer science, or other concept and use it
| to extend something from lecture in an interesting way. These
| problems were intended t be challenging. We referred students
| to other textbooks and invited them to work together or come
| to office hours to fill in gaps in their background, because
| (a) this is a _vital_ skill to learn, and (b) it led to
| really cool and interesting problems and solutions.
|
| There simply is not time in lecture or recitation to cover
| the stuff we introduced in these homework assignments. That's
| why the course credit hours tallied up to 3x the amount of
| time spent in lecture. I'll also note that while challenging,
| we did not allow poor marks on or incomplete problem sets
| derail a student's grade. If in lecture/recitation
| participation and on exams they clearly knew the core
| content, we'd work with the students to ensure they got a
| high grade. But if someone shirked off the homework entirely
| but aced the exams? Well, the exams aren't testing everything
| we're teaching you in this course, so you better believe
| they'd get poor grades at the end of the term.
|
| So your perspective seems warped. If you weren't doing the
| homework, then you didn't get the education you paid for, and
| that's on you - not the university.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| To me education is about what you learn. And I'm happy that
| I aced every single exam and project.
|
| Like I mentioned to the other poster, there are people who
| do all the homework and still fail the class.
|
| I aced every single project, midterm, and final. I can
| understand most topics the first or second time I learn
| them, and when I don't I will do some homework. But for the
| most part I personally didn't need it and I got penalized.
| I also worked during college so I could afford to not
| commute, so i was glad I didn't need to do the homework to
| do well in everything else.
|
| So explain that to me. I recall students who did homework
| would still fail and then the professor would do some last
| saving grace move where you do some BS work to get an extra
| five percent.
|
| Someone who understands the material would ace the exams.
| In my experience most people did not ace the exams and in
| fact would hate on me and some others who would "kill the
| curve".
|
| Finally fwiw I went to a lower ranked state college not
| some MIT tier place. They were the only college who offered
| the most financial aid so I was able to graduate with under
| 7k owed while affording to live on campus.
|
| Paid off my debt in the first months paycheck lol.
| 2snakes wrote:
| No doubt school is far more about social signaling than
| intelligence. For someone like you without the
| personality trait of conscientiousness (at the time of
| doing homework), you would have been better served by
| finding an employer who only cared about an iq test.
| Another factor is social conformity that employers are
| looking for.
| counters wrote:
| > So explain that to me.
|
| You're special. Congratulations! You have a unique
| capability to absorb knowledge. In my experience, this
| means one of two things: either (1) you truly are
| brilliant and will exceed at anything you apply to, or
| (2) at some point you will run into something that you
| _don't_ understand after the first or second try, and
| you'll be entirely unequipped and unprepared to deal with
| that. Also in my experience, (2) is far more common than
| (1).
|
| Bashing your head against difficult things in a low-
| stakes environment where folks are literally paid to help
| you navigate failure is a great way to extend the runway
| until (2) hits. Again - you're _paying_ for this
| opportunity in college.
|
| > ... then the professor would do some last saving grace
| move where you do some BS work to get an extra five
| percent.
|
| Maybe it's not BS work? Maybe there's something to
| creating relationships with the people you work with, and
| creating alternative avenues for them to help you, since
| it's literally their job?
|
| I had an undergrad once who did reasonable on their
| homework problem sets, but just could not get it together
| in the written exams. Turns out their was an anxiety
| issue involved. But they came to my office hours for
| help, and put in the effort, so I was more than happy to
| see what I could do to ensure that not only would they
| learn the material to the best of their ability, but that
| we could soften the blow of a less-than-perfect final
| mark in the course. I wouldn't go to such lengths for a
| name on a paper who I saw in lecture but otherwise had no
| interaction with... how do I know they actually put in
| the effort and knew the material?
|
| > Someone who understands the material would ace the
| exams. In my experience most people did not ace the exams
| and in fact would hate on me and some others who would
| "kill the curve".
|
| Depends entirely on the exam. I've taken exams for
| coursework that I truly thought I had mastery over and
| utterly bombed them. I've also taken exams for courses
| that I was convinced I was going to fail, and done well,
| too.
|
| In my experience, it's actually very difficult to write
| an in-person exam that rewards mastery over course
| material. I've encountered very few such exams in my life
| that didn't resort to gimmicks or "gotchas" in the
| material. It's much easier in a timed, in-person setting
| to write busy work that has tricks built in so things
| simplify away and get rid of a lot of the manual work.
| [deleted]
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Yes I don't give a shit about homework, I understand the
| material which is why I'm slaying each test. I hated that
| about college. We are adults. I'm paying to get an education,
| why the fuck is homework 20% of the grade? It's practice, for
| people who don't get the material.
|
| So what you're admitting is that you are willing to not to do
| required parts of your job because you don't feel they're
| important. If you go out into the workforce and become a
| lawyer, what parts of your job are equally willing to blow
| off because you don't like them? Billing clients properly?
| Procedural stuff like filing answers properly?
|
| You're basically arguing that your unwillingness to do the
| assigned tasks not be held against you.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Homework being worth 20% is dumb for school.
|
| Besides I worked the entire time in college to pay for
| college. Being penalized because I don't have time to do
| homework without which I can't pay for school helps nobody.
| I don't think I ever got anything lower than a B on an
| exam, and nothing lower than A on a final/midterm/project.
|
| And yeah, homework is for people who need it. Work and
| school are totally different one you're learning the other
| you're utilizing what you learned. Having homework be worth
| anything more than maybe 5% is stupid. I'm not getting paid
| to do homework, in fact I am paying to even learn.
|
| People do homework and still fail. So what's the point of
| homework?
| 2snakes wrote:
| Learning theory of repetition and stretch goals have been
| found to help many trying to learn. Some sort of neuron
| network establishment neuroscientifically.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Where you go to school still greatly affects how well you are
| likely to do on standardised tests. Better schools can easily
| bump students up 2 or 3 grades compared to poorer schools. To
| some extent this will also improve students' ability to
| complete degree courses, but there's also a great extent to
| which this is just teaching students how to pass standardised
| tests well. It's true that truly excellent students will do
| well regardless of school, but you'll end up with mostly
| average students from good schools.
|
| Universities in the UK use A-level results (which are mostly
| based on standardised tests), but will sometimes compensate
| (lower) the required grade based on a students school and
| background. Which IMO works out fairer in practice.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> truly excellent students will do well regardless of school
|
| Not if they go to a school that doesn't have the
| prerequisites for college/university. Not if the school is so
| poorly-resourced that they don't have access to the study
| material, or even access to take the standardized tests they
| need. Not if the teachers are jerks. Go luck getting into a
| university science program if your highschool didn't teach
| science.
|
| (Yes, that is a thing even in the US. Many religious schools
| do not teach what we who read HN would call "science", which
| makes university applications tricky.)
| mrangle wrote:
| With all due respect, that's not right. Any student attending
| a prep school from kindergarten, or otherwise very early,
| will have their development accelerated as compared to a
| child who attends an average school. The effect compounds
| with each year.
|
| This doesn't somewhat improve college performance. It creates
| a markedly different brain and habits. An effect that
| declines as entrance into such a school system becomes later.
| Middle school being exceptionally late. High school being so
| late so as to have a marginal effect if any. Kindergarten
| being optimal.
|
| Prep schools, generally speaking, only give basic test
| instruction for college entrance exams. Other standardized
| testing is the same or even less than normal schools. Cram-
| course style instruction is generally private and paid for
| privately by any given family. In my experience, the vast
| majority of prep school students don't seek it. This is in
| the United States.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the "different brain and habits"?
| civilized wrote:
| You seem to be saying that "better schools" (mostly) don't
| actually select or train better students, but (mostly) merely
| train them to pass standardized tests better. Is there any
| evidence or reason to believe this?
| [deleted]
| rendall wrote:
| > _Where you go to school still greatly affects how well you
| are likely to do on standardised tests. Better schools can
| easily bump students up 2 or 3 grades compared to poorer
| schools..._
|
| Neither SAT nor ACT are measured in "grades", so it's not
| clear what you mean to say here.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Grades in the UK are based 10 percentage point increments
| if that helps.
| [deleted]
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's the other way around.
|
| It helps to have some familiarity with the test, so test prep
| has some value, but some rich kids can't test their way out of
| a paper bag. The one thing they could do is hire a ringer to
| take the test for them, otherwise it is a valuable form of
| downward mobility which presents a "barrier" to them hoarding
| opportunity from someone more able.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I had a law prof once correct a student: "If we all just tell
| lies then this entire system breaks down." People hiring
| ringers, telling lies during the examination process, is a
| problem. It it isn't a statement against the concept of
| examinations. The answer is to make it difficult to cheat (ID
| etc) and establish appropriate punishments to dissuade. The
| ability to cheat illustrates a flaw in the testing procedure,
| not any flaw in the actual test.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Yes, exactly. "Holistic" evaluation is entirely game-able.
|
| The claim is that they are trying to give the kid from East
| New York a shot but the reality is that this is all about the
| Dalton parents not wanting their little precious to have to
| go head to head on a fair playing field against a Stuyvesant
| kid.
|
| Their goal is to make all desirable institutions look like
| Dalton---very wealthy students with an appropriate sprinkling
| of diversity make everyone feel great about how open minded
| and progressive they are.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Not just gameable, but provably biased to start with
| against applicants from a lower-class background. And with
| K-12 public education declining even further in quality,
| the bias against students from less privileged backgrounds
| and having less outside support will only increase.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The issue is that the standardized tests correlate with IQ,
| and IQ has been determined to be have racial and other
| biases.
|
| I went to a shitty rural high school - high scores on my
| ACT made a huge difference as anyone who could read got out
| of that school with a 3.7.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| IQ and race have a confounding variable - poverty.
| Malnourishment, abuse, lack of healthcare, etc can all be
| detrimental to a child's development.
| realjhol wrote:
| Poverty correlates with high time preference. High IQ
| correlates with low time preference.
| civilized wrote:
| What do you mean by bias?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Different populations perform differently on average.
| There's also a historical association with IQ assessment
| and eugenics.
| civilized wrote:
| > Different populations perform differently on average
|
| Does this mean that today's IQ tests have racial bias?
|
| > There's also a historical association with IQ
| assessment and eugenics.
|
| Does this mean that today's IQ tests have racial bias?
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes, structurally if not deliberately (it is unlikely
| that mainstream IQ tests are anything but diligently
| designed to avoid overt bias, unlike those of the middle
| 20th century). If you measure something that has a large
| SES causative component, and SES is for whatever reason
| itself highly correlated with race, then your
| measurements will encode a racial bias.
|
| The big debate in academic psychology is the extent to
| which factors like SES (and factors downstream of SES,
| like general health) confound the measurement of some
| kind of general intelligence. The evidence we have right
| now pretty clearly points to an effect, so it's down to
| what the size of that effect is.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| One thing that amuses me is that I occasionally see press
| releases about some Hollywood star (say Alyssa Milano)
| who took an IQ test and got a 145 score which is
| suspiciously the top score for
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matri
| ces
|
| and given that standard variants of the test have 60
| items anybody who is capable of learning a script could
| memorize them and get a perfect score. I imagine there is
| one psychologist who coaches you then you go see another
| psychologist across the street who administers the test.
| rayiner wrote:
| Why would that be surprising? Gifted people tend to be
| that way in multiple areas. I wouldn't be surprised if
| the average IQ in Hollywood is quite above the overall
| average.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| What I'm saying is that isn't "the issue," it's just
| pretext.
|
| Schools can do affirmative action for African Americans
| without making standardized testing optional, they have
| been for decades. What's harder for them to do without
| getting rid of such tests is discriminating against
| Asians (and middle class whites) in favor of rich whites.
|
| It's no coincidence that this is happening in the wake of
| the Harvard lawsuit. What these schools want is a class
| made up entirely of diversity, athlete, and development
| admits. The first generation Asian-American kid isn't
| taking a seat away from a black kid, he's taking it from
| the son of the CFO of a Fortune 500 company.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Affirmative action is a big bugaboo that will probably be
| subject of a Supreme Court action.
|
| I think these are complex issues and there's no scenario
| where everyone is happy. As a society we'd be better off
| to tone down the fawning over Ivy League schools.
| tekla wrote:
| > standardized tests correlate with IQ
|
| > IQ has been determined to be have racial and other
| biases.
|
| Citation needed
| mrangle wrote:
| There's virtually no such thing as ringers taking tests.
|
| The majority of rich kids, whose parents are serious about
| college, are tracked through prep schools beginning with
| kindergarten.
|
| Its more rare than not that such a kid underperforms enough
| to be excluded from elite University admission. Especially
| once one includes the many elite liberal arts colleges that
| are generally off of the radar of poors.
|
| I do agree about the value of standardized testing, but for
| the reason that it enables positive filtering of
| underprivileged kids who otherwise wouldn't be looked at. I
| don't believe that a downward pull on rich kids is all that
| significant. To politely disagree with the reasoning of an
| otherwise well intentioned post.
|
| I attended prep school as a poor. One of the most egregious
| things that I've ever witnessed, in terms of admissions, is a
| truly stupid poor being admitted to an Ivy because his Father
| networked enough as the a prep school's soccer coach (soccer
| being why his son was at the prep school, but not why he was
| admitted to the Ivy). I knew this kid from when we attended
| Catholic school together before the prep school.
| kenjackson wrote:
| There are more ringers taking tests than we probably know.
| I used to teach SAT prep and I was propositioned multiple
| times about this (usual subtle). Of course I never did it,
| but I'm sure they could find someone.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > There's virtually no such thing as ringers taking tests.
|
| It happens more than you might think, but only because you
| don't have the money or desire to use such a service.
|
| https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-
| world/national/artic...
|
| There have been many scandals, relatively recently. This
| was just one of many many links that are very easy to find.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Don't forget the off the chart rates of testing
| accommodations for rich kids vs everyone else.
| mrangle wrote:
| Respectfully, the issue of unprovided testing
| accommodations is only relevant for kids with a
| disability.
|
| This would not apply to everyone else. Only to kids with
| an unidentified disability. Which will be more in the
| underprivileged group, but it is still a minuscule group.
|
| Especially taken in the context of elite University
| admissions, for which we are actually speaking of the
| even rarer child that is "twice exceptional'. That is,
| gifted with a disability.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| This assumes that the rich kid rate is accurate and
| what's missing is parallel accommodations for poorer
| kids.
|
| But what about if instead the elevated rate is a result
| of fraud? In other areas of life (e.g. service animals
| and medical pot) it's pretty clear that there are medical
| professionals out there are selling their letterhead to
| the highest bidder.
|
| Why should we believe that's not happening here?
| mrangle wrote:
| Why should you believe that it is "happening here"?
|
| Let alone at a significant rate.
|
| Why is this wild conjecture worth a discussion?
|
| Give me a break.
|
| As a clinician that evaluates disabilities, it is very
| difficult to fake one. They tend to be diagnosed at an
| early age, and not at "test time" in high school. In
| fact, as a person ages they are much less likely to
| receive a diagnosis. There has to be early-age evidence
| even if the diagnoses is later in life.
|
| The disability rate in elite / prep schools exists but is
| low. These kids tend to be more on the spectrum than
| anything else.
|
| Underperforming kids who don't have a disability, and
| might be prone to cheat by one means or another, and who
| aren't sports recruits tend to transfer to easier
| schools.
|
| If a kid wants to go through the process of being
| fraudulently diagnosed by an independent psychologist
| with ADHD, for the purpose of accommodations, then the
| same process is discoverable by literally anyone with an
| internet connection. That is, by everyone.
|
| And from what I know, this has much less to do with
| clinician corruption than it does with the individual
| faking symptoms. There's few to zero people risking their
| licenses to hand out fake diagnoses for scheduled
| medications that are under heavy scrutiny at all times by
| the States and the Feds. The liability alone is off of
| the charts.
|
| Schools are only likely to accept the diagnoses if a
| thorough clinical evaluation is undertaken. The result of
| which is not able to be faked.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| What makes a psychologist an "independent psychologist"?
| Are they selected and paid for by someone other than the
| parents?
|
| We see in medical malpractice cases that there's always
| two expert witnesses and their respective testimonies
| always line up with the interests of the side that's
| paying them. Why aren't those clinicians worried about
| losing their licenses?
|
| Edit: I upvoted your post, it was gray, I appreciate
| engagement especially from those that disagree with me.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There was a psychiatrist in my town who specialized in
| prescribing stimulants and benzodiazepines to hippies.
| One of his patients would get a scaled-up pill bottle the
| size of a small trash can full of Dexedrine every month,
| another got 3x a dose of Klonopin that would turn me into
| zombie. Frequently his "patients" would use only a
| portion of their medication and sell the rest for (often
| badly needed) income.
|
| I almost dropped the dime on him because one of his
| patients was a severely disturbed friend of mine who did
| not have a proper diagnosis (I'd conjecture today she had
| schizoaffective disorder) and I think would have
| benefited from a change in medication -- but we never
| found out because she took her own life. I'm pretty sure
| somebody else dropped the dime on him.
| surrealize wrote:
| Why should we believe that affluent parents clinician-
| shop and get a diagnosis from a friendly clinician?
| Because of the reporting that says so, linked upthread:
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-
| news/h...
|
| It's not a "wild conjecture".
| PaulHoule wrote:
| All the people I know who have been able to claim
| disability for psychiatric reasons as adults have come
| from upper middle class families (e.g. my bipolar aunt
| whose brother was the superintendent of buildings for a
| small cities, a friend who dropped out of grad school
| after not seeing his advisor for nine months whose father
| was a specialist manager for failing Montgomery wards
| stores, an ex-friend who suffered from panic disorder and
| agoraphobia whose father was an doctor in the army who
| later rose high in the ranks of the medical
| establishment.)
|
| Conversely I've seen people from hardscrabble backgrounds
| who are obviously disabled (a friend with no diagnosis
| but who so thought disordered that even though she are
| addicted to cigarettes it would take hours for her to get
| it together enough to smoke her first cigarette even with
| help) who would struggle to deal with the paperwork to
| get food stamps and TAANF, never mind the much more
| difficult and adversarial process to get SSI or SSDI.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Correct. It's a way to "cycle the elites". A healthy society
| will always include an elite minority. But to remain healthy
| there needs to be a way to circulate the elites so that those
| that should rise have methods to and those that should fall
| get their spot taken. Trying to engineer this around
| arbitrary things like sex or race can't work because those
| people don't have what it takes in the end.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > a way to circulate the elites
|
| Thr proper terminology is Sovial Mobility
|
| > arbitrary things like sex or race can't work
|
| They work as a litmus test-> if you are massively excluding
| someome, probably something in the process is fucked.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Sure, I'm just using terms that Gaetano Mosca uses when
| describing elite theory.
|
| As for litmus test, again sure. But accounting for
| cultural and biological differences matters. There's a
| reason Asians are over represented in certain things due
| to a culture that values education. Or men tending to
| distribute differently than women. And many other things.
| It would be naive to believe any difference in outcomes
| is purely discriminatory. Although of course that can be
| a factor.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup. My HS grades nearly completely depended on whether the
| teacher was assessing my knowledge or my effort. While most
| everyone complained about tests and especially the final being
| equal weight to each quarter year's grade, I thought it was
| great to effectively get 10 week credit for focusing on a
| 2-hour exam... So, yes, it is one thing that is far more in the
| student's control, and my SAT scores definitely helped me get
| into top colleges (although I did have to also take some extra
| classes to demonstrate that I could get good grades from doing
| work).
| medler wrote:
| > You can study for them and objectively do better, become a
| better applicant
|
| The thing is, attempts to measure the effect of test prep show
| they have little effect. According to these studies, SAT test
| prep courses might add ~30 points to your score:
| https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the...
| mrangle wrote:
| That's right. Now add the fact that people can have a thirty
| point swing in score between attempts and without a
| difference in studying.
|
| Total education and intelligence are largely what determines
| one's score. Beyond basic studying that literally everyone
| can and should do, no one is going to cram-course their way
| to a 250 point difference. Which when I took the test, was
| often the difference between say a successful Ivy applicant
| and a successful Duke applicant. Lesser private and public
| school applicants dropping from there.
| ghaff wrote:
| That is SAT test prep courses specifically though. Not going
| in completely cold versus having prepped for the test. I
| mean, if I took the SAT today many years on, I'm sure I
| wouldn't do very well--at least on the math section. There's
| too much that isn't muscle memory any longer because I
| haven't done a lot of the high school math stuff in years.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Nobody needs to go in cold when you can do a practice test
| at home or at the library.
|
| If someone's high school math skills aren't ready at all
| then that's a much bigger issue than any kind of bonus
| prep.
| ghaff wrote:
| Certainly. My point was more though that, while I could
| hopefully reasonably puzzle my way through a SAT test
| without doing any prep, I doubt I'd do a very good job
| within a time limit because I'd be puzzling a lot of
| things out that I learned decades ago and haven't really
| used since.
| cjmb wrote:
| did you read that link or just the subtitle?
|
| quoting the penultimate paragraph (why are the relevant bits
| always buried?)
|
| > Analyzing a 2008 survey conducted by the National
| Association for College Admission Counseling, he noted that
| one-third of respondents described a jump from 750 to 770 on
| the math portion of the SAT as having a significant effect on
| a student's chances of admissions, and this was true among
| counselors at more and less selective schools alike. Even a
| minor score improvement for a high-achieving student, then--
| and one that falls within the standard measurement error for
| the test--can make a real difference.
|
| Your link literally says: - test prep improves scores - most
| conservative possible study suggests ~25 point bump in score
| - college admission stats show this matters for many
| applicants
|
| ???
|
| the fact that the piece ALSO says, later on:
|
| > students who have a mean score on the math portion of the
| SAT around 450. According to the same admissions counselor
| survey, a 20-point improvement to a score in this range would
| have no practical meaning for students who are trying to get
| into more selective schools
|
| and no kidding. 450 on either section is clearly not suitable
| for a college experience at a "selective school." You're
| expected to do multivariable calc during MIT's freshman year,
| regardless of major. 450 on math SAT means you can't do
| algebra.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Make it 100% achievement. Any differences in background must be
| supplemented with aggressive college prep programs so the bar
| isn't weakened for some. It's the only way to remain globally
| competitive. And abolish legacy.
|
| (Don't get a JD unless set on a particular practice because the
| field is overflowing. Consider MD or DDS first.)
| mrangle wrote:
| Magnet programs operating from kindergarten on are one
| possible solution. The problem is that these programs are
| being effectively phased out because less-astute normals are
| insulted that everyone doesn't qualify. Which is the inverse
| precise equivalent of eliminating special ed programs.
| earlyam wrote:
| Most criticism I've heard of them is that they suck up a
| disproportionate amount of funding.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> Standardized testing allowed me to overcome their base
| opinions.
|
| The only K-12 school in which my children have been enrolled
| that has _never_ reported standardized test scores to student
| 's parents also happened to be a private school. I suspect the
| school's motive is a combination of not wanting to give
| leverage to parents whose children do well, and not wanting to
| piss off the wealthy parents. We are in the first group and
| thankfully my children weren't at that school for very long due
| to COVID lockdowns.
| [deleted]
| goosedragons wrote:
| Who grades the standardized tests? Besides multiple choice
| there's subjectivity in grading. Even with multiple choice
| there's some subjectivity for questions like "What's the best
| word choice".
|
| Why were teachers biased against you?
| pjscott wrote:
| I remember taking the SAT and ACT, and didn't notice any
| multiple-choice question which didn't have exactly one right
| answer and three unambiguously wrong answers. They put actual
| effort into making sure this is the case.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Standardized tests remain the only criteria totally in the
| control of the student. You can study for them and objectively
| do better, become a better applicant.
|
| This view ironically makes schools and education irrelevant.
| Why even send students to school, if test scores are "totally"
| in the control of the student?
| onos wrote:
| Agree, when school is there just to mark elite status.
|
| For those pursuing expertise though, schools can provide a
| lot of value through offering access to others with talent
| and to some degree infrastructure.
|
| That these schools serve both sets of demand is a problem:
| Sure hand out the elite status tokens to favored groups, they
| dont matter much anyways. But if society actually believes
| that there are pressing problems that need to be solved
| (global warming perhaps etc) training resources should be
| aimed at those who can best go on to make use of them.
| lapcat wrote:
| > For those pursuing expertise though, schools can provide
| a lot of value through offering access to others with
| talent and to some degree infrastructure.
|
| I think you misunderstood what I meant. When I was
| referring to schools, I meant high school and earlier. In
| other words, the schools that should presumably give you an
| education relevant to the standardized tests.
| ngc248 wrote:
| OP is not saying Only standardized tests are relevant,
| what he is saying is after your education, SATs are the
| level playing field which you can prepare for, the
| preparation is within the student's control. Otherwise
| its all fuzzy and vague extra-curriculars etc which will
| decide who gets in.
|
| The Elites will still get in and the people at the other
| extreme will also get in, but its the ones in the middle
| who will suffer.
| lapcat wrote:
| > after your education
|
| I don't think one can just hand-wave away the primary
| school in this way and at the same time talk about a
| level playing field and dismiss extra-curriculars.
| They're all related.
|
| Moreover, for better or worse, college is not a purely
| academic exercise. Colleges are looking for applicants
| who will participate in the social life of the campus,
| not just robotically go to class. They want students to
| participate in college extra-curriculars too.
| mrangle wrote:
| People can participate in the social life of campus at
| any college. The problem with using this supposed
| socializing metric at the expense of more academically
| qualified kids is that it just shuffles the more
| academically talented kids to a lesser University. Where
| they what? Supposedly socialize less. Why should the
| social kids go to the academically rigorous college and
| the academic talents go to a lesser University? In the
| end, this socializing metric is bs cover in order to juke
| admissions for the purposes of legacy and diversity
| criteria.
|
| The notion also relies on an inaccurate stereotype of
| what smart looks like. In practice, you are as or more
| likely to see an Ivy-level academic talent that looks
| like a leader than not.
|
| Its rare to find lesser academic talents who will have
| better extra-curriculars than the best academically
| inclined candidates. The latter's prep schools will
| generally offer far more opportunity in that regard, and
| moreover any excellence in EC's is in a competitive
| environment that is often more intense.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Why should the social kids go to the academically
| rigorous college and the academic talents go to a lesser
| University?
|
| I was speaking from the perspective of college
| admissions, not from the perspective of applicants. Note
| also that I said "for better or worse". I wasn't making
| an overall judgment of the university system, merely
| noting that colleges themselves find extra-curricular
| activities important. I personally would abolish the
| invitation-only university system and provide continuing
| state-supported education to everyone. What is the
| purpose of the current university system, other than a
| largely non-educational social purpose? The selectivity
| of admissions inevitably results in further disparity
| among citizens, between the club members and non-members,
| the haves and have nots.
|
| > The notion also relies on an inaccurate stereotype of
| what smart looks like. In practice, you are as or more
| likely to see an Ivy-level academic talent that looks
| like a leader than not.
|
| > Its rare to find lesser academic talents who will have
| better extra-curriculars than the best academically
| inclined candidates.
|
| I'm confused. You seem to be suggesting that extra-
| curricular activites are in fact an accurate indicator,
| contrary to the SAT proponents?
| mrangle wrote:
| >I'm confused. You seem to be suggesting that extra-
| curricular activites are in fact an accurate indicator,
| contrary to the SAT proponents?
|
| I'm unsure how you arrived at that conclusion. I'll chalk
| it up to me being unintentionally unclear.
|
| What I am saying is that its largely a fallacy that
| Universities are commonly put to the decision of a more
| social candidate versus a more academically talented
| candidate.
|
| The more common reality being that the leading
| academically talented candidates are as or more qualified
| in their extra-curricular participation.
|
| At least within a deviation of academic and social
| metrics that is meaningful.
|
| Selectivity of admissions allows for selectivity of
| curriculum. Selectivity of curriculum allows for better
| trained / educated students.
|
| As well as tailoring of education to meet a student's
| ability, both on the high and lesser ends.
|
| You may as well ask what the purpose of special education
| or gifted programs are. To put in in the terminology of
| those commonly concerned with the plight of haves and
| have nots, the answer is educational justice.
|
| Last, maximizing the education of elite academic
| performers tends to maximize results for the nation in
| the real world in a manner that raises the living
| standards for have nots.
| lapcat wrote:
| > What I am saying is that its largely a fallacy that
| Universities are commonly put to the decision of a more
| social candidate versus a more academically talented
| candidate.
|
| > The more common reality being that the leading
| academically talented candidates are as or more qualified
| in their extra-curricular participation.
|
| I have no particular objection to this, but doesn't it
| imply that the SAT requirement is superfluous, with the
| combination of grades and extra-curriculars adequately
| measuring what the colleges want to measure?
|
| > You may as well ask what the purpose of special
| education or gifted programs are... the answer is
| educational justice.
|
| I don't feel that's an answer. It's just a couple of
| words that sound nice.
|
| (I was in a gifted program in junior high school, by the
| way. In retrospect, it's not clear to me what purpose it
| served, other than to separate us socially from other
| students. Maybe it wasn't a very good gifted program, but
| I did live in a fairly well-off school district, so I
| don't think that was from lack of funding. In high school
| we had Advanced Placements courses, which are obviously
| more practically useful, though I wouldn't place them
| under the category of "educational justice".)
|
| > in a manner that raises the living standards for have
| nots.
|
| That's the issue. It sounds nice, reminiscent of the
| Rawlsian difference principle, but empirically I'm not
| seeing it in the world. What I see is largely self-
| enrichment of the minority, without much regard for
| everyone else.
| mrangle wrote:
| >I have no particular objection to this, but doesn't it
| imply that the SAT requirement is superfluous, with the
| combination of grades and extra-curriculars adequately
| measuring what the colleges want to measure? No. You are
| making an unfounded judgement call that grades and extra-
| curriculars adequately measure what the colleges want to
| measure, in total.
|
| >I don't feel that's an answer. It's just a couple of
| words that sound nice.
|
| It's a developmental clinician's perceptive (myself) that
| has its root in the long standing educational and
| clinical view that curriculums should be tailored to meet
| student ability. The most obvious every-day example being
| in the special education classroom (which enjoys the
| protection of hefty federal law), and which is also
| mirrored in the less obvious gifted programs.
|
| >I was in a gifted program in junior high school, by the
| way. In retrospect, it's not clear to me what purpose it
| served, other than to separate us socially from other
| students. Maybe it wasn't a very good gifted program, but
| I did live in a fairly well-off school district, so I
| don't think that was from lack of funding. In high school
| we had Advanced Placements courses, which are obviously
| more practically useful, though I wouldn't place them
| under the category of "educational justice".
|
| You can't see the purpose of a child with a 150 IQ having
| a unique curriculum apart from other students? That may
| or may not be you, but it doesn't mean that it isn't
| someone. Controlling for any lack in your specific gifted
| program.
|
| Unless highly organized and driven, the average
| admissions non-advantaged (no affirmative action, etc)
| successful Ivy candidate is likely 140 IQ+. With 150 not
| being uncommon.
|
| There is an ethical parallel to providing these
| individuals with a unique curriculum and providing one to
| special education students.
|
| >That's the issue. It sounds nice, reminiscent of the
| Rawlsian difference principle, but empirically I'm not
| seeing it in the world. What I see is largely self-
| enrichment of the minority, without much regard for
| everyone else.
|
| That's because you lack context on the history of living
| standards and poverty.
| lapcat wrote:
| > You are making an unfounded judgement call that grades
| and extra-curriculars adequately measure what the
| colleges want to measure
|
| Unfounded? I don't think so. After all, I've gone through
| admission myself. Anyway, what do you think they want to
| measure?
|
| > curriculums should be tailored to meet student ability
|
| > having a unique curriculum apart from other students
|
| I agree wholeheartedly. However, our school system
| doesn't provide that. Our system isn't even remotely in
| the vicinity of that. We still rely mostly on social
| promotion based on geography and age, with age groups
| sometimes divided into 2 or 3 rough subgroups. I'm not
| impressed. I think it's questionable how much if any
| value that provides. It's classism rather than
| individualism.
|
| > the average admissions non-advantaged (no affirmative
| action, etc) successful Ivy candidate is likely 140 IQ+.
| With 150 not being uncommon.
|
| "likely"? Is that just your speculation, or do you have
| empirical evidence? I know that IQ tests are not required
| for admission.
|
| I'm not a fan of the notion of "IQ". I consider it a kind
| of pseudoscience. I don't think I've ever taken an IQ
| test myself, though I don't recall exactly the criteria
| for admission to the aforementioned gifted program.
|
| > That's because you lack context on the history of
| living standards and poverty.
|
| Mmmkay, thanks for playing. I'm done here now. Congrats
| on the smugness, hope you enjoy it.
| lozenge wrote:
| My school's gifted and talented program contained the top
| 10% of students, or IQ 120. Anything more restrictive
| would not be politically acceptable or practical.
| [deleted]
| hedora wrote:
| Most universities would admit kids that did well by one
| measure (or require both).
|
| That hardly makes the school "irrelevant".
| gameman144 wrote:
| > Why even send students to school, if test scores are
| "totally" in the control of the student?
|
| Because the tests measure knowledge, and schools are intended
| to impart knowledge.
|
| As an analogy, my physical fitness is totally in my control:
| if I work out more, I'll build more muscle. But you'd never
| say "Why are you even going to the gym if your fitness is
| within your control?" If my local gym is really trash or I
| can't afford one, I can still do pushups on my own or go for
| runs, but nobody would argue based on that that gyms are
| worthless.
|
| Likewise, schools are (or should be) built for students to
| learn. Students can learn in other ways, too, and any kind of
| learning will be measured on these tests.
|
| The fact that other means of learning exists, though, doesn't
| mean that schools aren't important or useful.
| lapcat wrote:
| > As an analogy, my physical fitness is totally in my
| control: if I work out more, I'll build more muscle. But
| you'd never say "Why are you even going to the gym if your
| fitness is within your control?"
|
| This isn't a good analogy. A gym is a mere building. I
| wasn't referring to schools as mere buildings, the walls,
| the halls, the roofs. I was referring to schools as the
| places where the students meet the teachers.
|
| > Students can learn in other ways, too, and any kind of
| learning will be measured on these tests.
|
| How successful do you expect most children would be with
| entirely self-directed learning? No teachers, no tutors,
| not even parents. That's what I meant. I wouldn't expect
| that to work well, with only rare exceptions. Students --
| who by definition and nature lack experience, lack
| knowledge, are ignorant -- need guidance, and thus the
| quality of the schools, the quality of the teaching is
| crucial. Nothing is totally in the control of the student,
| nor should it be, for the student's own good.
| gameman144 wrote:
| > A gym is a mere building.
|
| > I was referring to schools as the places where the
| students meet the teachers.
|
| I think for any gym with personal trainers, this is still
| a pretty one-to-one analogy.
|
| > How successful do you expect most children would be
| with entirely self-directed learning? No teachers, no
| tutors, not even parents. That's what I meant.
|
| Ah, I think I might have been missing your point here --
| essentially does it boil down to "If tests are all that
| we're measuring, what's the point of all the grading and
| process that schools go through", to which the answer is
| presumably "Tests _aren 't_ all that matters"? If that's
| the case, we probably agree here (in that _learning_ is
| the thing that matters, and schools might perform a lot
| of functions which don 't map to test scores, but might
| map to better learning).
|
| LMK if this is still off base, though.
| Ekaros wrote:
| The schools and education offer students a tools to achieve
| good scores in SAT. Some do better, some do worse. On average
| I doubt most students are capable of self-learning or
| sufficiently directed towards it at that age.
| sgustard wrote:
| Were you objectively more deserving to go to college than a kid
| with stellar teacher recommendations but lower scores? You
| might think so, but others would disagree. When I hire, I
| choose a trusted colleague's referral over the candidate who
| happened to cram best to do binary trees on a whiteboard.
| weatherlite wrote:
| > When I hire, I choose a trusted colleague's referral over
| the candidate who happened to cram best to do binary trees on
| a whiteboard
|
| I love it that you make your candidates go through binary
| trees questions on a whiteboard AND are totally dismissive of
| it at the same time. That's totally not a waste of everyone's
| time.
| [deleted]
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Sigh... Isn't it obvious? The affirmative action wall is about to
| be breached by the conservative court, for better or for worse.
| If not by the current two cases brought by SFFA, then it's only a
| matter of time. The dropping of the SAT is the same reason
| Princeton et al. pulled out of the USNews rankings: they fully
| intend to continue AA, and they need to cover as much of their
| tracks as possible by not requiring people submit incriminating
| data that can be demanded in court once the policy is declared
| illegal.
| whack wrote:
| The following paragraphs were especially powerful:
|
| > _The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate
| standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who
| "don't test well." But they know how to strategically boost their
| GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack
| their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in
| their admissions essays. They have "polish."_
|
| > _Applicants from the most affluent families excel at these
| games. A study at Stanford found that family income is more
| highly correlated with admissions essay content than with SAT
| scores. Applicants from well-to-do backgrounds are especially
| adept at crafting their essays in ways that please admissions
| committees._
|
| If equity is so important, why not grant preferential treatment
| to all children coming from families that aren't upper-middle-
| class? Or ban legacy preferences at the very least? This is a
| simple and effective way of achieving the goals they claim to be
| championing. The author hit the nail on the head. Every other
| metric used for admissions is far more easily gamed by rich
| families. Hence why they are being preserved. Standardized test
| scores are the hardest metric to game, and hence, are most under
| attack. All this talk about equity is the most convenient and
| cost-effective way to eliminate the one barrier that most vexes
| rich parents.
| wefarrell wrote:
| Wouldn't rank within their school be the hardest metric to
| game, since schools tend to be fairly segregated with respect
| to income levels?
|
| The only way to game that metric would be for the wealthy to
| send their kids to schools that perform worse, which would wind
| up driving more resources to those schools.
| tomp wrote:
| This is a general question for the whole "social justice"
| movement.
|
| If you're concerned about the wellbeing of _black_ people, and
| you justify your concern with statistics pointing out that they
| 're disproportionately poor, why not, instead of instituting
| preferential treatment for _black_ people (which, btw, is
| racist), you support preferential treatment for _poor_ people
| instead? That way, you are more efficient (e.g. your resources
| aren 't wasted on Obama's daughters, who are certainly
| sufficiently privileged already), while also helping people who
| weren't captured by your superficial assessment ("black <==>
| poor").
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| The basic hypotheses for the pro-affirmative action crowd
| are:
|
| 1) Black people are not actually less "good at stuff", we
| just have a habit of defining "stuff" in a way that excludes
| the things that black people are more likely to excel at.
|
| And, 2) Where black people do statistically worse, it's not
| due to any innate difference, it's because socially accepted
| "normal" support systems are more useful for people with
| challenges more common in white populations than challenges
| common in black populations.
|
| So the idea is, if you change the support systems and
| measures of success to be more universal, the differences
| will go away.
|
| And then the metric for whether administrative bodies have
| succeeded in this is "equal outcomes". What you call
| "racism".
|
| But the inferences on which this affirmative action position
| are based make rational sense. There's no logical flaw.
| There's no conclusive evidence for these hypothesis either,
| but they are logically plausible.
|
| The opposite perspective is the same: rational, yet lacking
| any basis in evidence. That is the perspective that black
| people, through biology, socialization, and/or culture, are
| actually "worse at stuff". And the support systems and
| performance metrics are fair.
|
| There's no way to prove something is "fair" or "not fair" in
| the face of "unequal outcomes". It just comes down to what
| you want to believe. There's no rational basis to come to one
| conclusion or the other.
|
| I choose to believe that all of the big categories of people
| are pretty similarly "good at things" but I can acknowledge
| that belief is a leap of faith. The truth is unknowable.
| btilly wrote:
| Sorry, but I take offense at this "it is all a matter of
| opinion and all opinions are equally valid" BS.
|
| 1) It is trivially true that if you define your measure
| right, you can make anyone succeed. For example black
| people are better at looking like black people. But we try
| to define "stuff" in a way that correlates with ability to
| do economically useful tasks. There are excellent reasons
| to do so.
|
| 2) You are ignoring the obvious fact that blacks do NOT get
| anything like equal treatment. They start with terrible
| schools, in neighborhoods that are aggressively targeted by
| police, and grow up with realistic expectations of going to
| jail that are amply born out by lived experiences. It takes
| willful blindness and stupidity to ignore that there are
| excellent reasons why we should expect poor black
| performance.
|
| Given that the inferences on which this affirmative action
| position are based require willful blindness and stupidity
| to believe, there really is a giant logical flaw. It is
| most emphatically NOT plausible to say that we should
| expect equal performance from children whose fathers are in
| jail, whose schools are atrocious, whose neighborhood is
| dangerous, and who rightly believe that they are being
| unfairly targeted by police. Both how common these factors
| are and how important they are to actual outcomes is borne
| out by extensive research.
|
| The scientific truth is that we have no data either way
| that can even begin to address whether one group is
| innately better than any other. The reason being that we
| have no way to separate out the impact of racism and
| history from innate ability. Read https://press.princeton.e
| du/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th... if you want a more
| complete accounting of that fact.
|
| But you do not need to have an opinion on that question to
| identify many factors that are helping ensure that black
| kids don't get a fair shake at life. And it is obvious that
| affirmative action can be at best too little, too late,
| compared to the things most urgently in need of fixing.
| mynameishere wrote:
| _we have no data either way that can even begin to
| address whether one group is innately better than any
| other_
|
| Does all of world history count as data? What should we
| go by? Propose a test.
| btilly wrote:
| Given that I said we have no data that can begin to
| address this question, it is at best disingenuous.
| Because how can I offer a test without data?
|
| It is true that all of world history is data, but it is
| not necessarily data that can answer any particular
| question. The problem is the age-old nature versus
| nurture debate. Both genetics and environment are
| important to IQ. Both generally affect IQ through long,
| convoluted, and poorly understood reasons of cause and
| effect. Therefore we can establish evidence of
| differences, but can't necessarily distinguish between
| theories about the causes of those differences.
|
| What would make a difference is a theory of mechanism.
| For example it is uncontroversial that people with
| ancestry from Nigeria are better at sprinting, and people
| with ancestry from Kenya are better at long distance
| running. For this we can identify specific facts about
| body type that help with sprinting versus long distance
| running, and we can identify strong evidence that these
| body type differences are due to genetics.
|
| But we have no such theory of mechanism that can be
| applied to IQ. And therefore the mass of data we have
| about the existence of differences does not distinguish
| between potential causes of said differences.
| jlawson wrote:
| >The scientific truth is that we have no data either way
| that can even begin to address whether one group is
| innately better than any other. The reason being that we
| have no way to separate out the impact of racism and
| history from innate ability.
|
| I'm sorry but this is blatantly false. "Innately better"
| is a vague and inflammatory term, but if you define the
| measure, we can use straightforward statistical
| techniques to find correlations.
|
| Simple example: East Africans outperform others in long-
| distance running. In sprinting, west Africans outperform.
|
| We can separate confounders out because we have large
| data sets. You don't have to just try to compare
| populations as a mass. We can, for example, look at
| performance only of black people raised in white
| families. Or rich black people. Or white people raised in
| black families. Etc.
|
| Taking the example of IQ, which is the most important
| statistical measure in these discussions, we can also
| look at poor populations with high IQ, like Jews (at
| certain historical times) or various groups of people
| from East Asia. Vietnamese boat people are a great
| comparison. It has to be explained how they were so
| successful despite facing the very similar or arguably
| worse challenges (e.g. holocaust) as other population
| groups.
|
| Or look at subgroups of black people, like Nigerian
| immigrants to America, who have generally better social
| outcomes than average whites.
|
| All this has been studied to death for decades and many
| conclusions are well-supported by statistics (at least as
| well-supported as lots of noncontroversial findings).
| btilly wrote:
| Separating out confounders is easier said than done. When
| you look at the performance of black people raised in
| white families they are still exposed to media, teachers,
| and peers who have expectations of them based on
| appearance. Even with that population, racism remains a
| confounder.
|
| Likewise while you can look at historical Jews as a poor
| population with high IQ, you have the confounder that
| even then Jews placed a strong cultural value on
| education and intelligence. And therefore, even while
| they were poor, Jews were likely to work to improve
| themselves on both. Therefore this leaves open the
| question of how much of the difference is due to this
| cultural factor versus innate genetics.
|
| In the case of Vietnamese boat people, we have families
| that literally risked their lives for a chance at a
| better future. This attitude taken to a new country
| suggests that we should expect them to make the most of
| any opportunity that they can find. How much of their
| subsequent success is due to this attitude?
|
| On Nigerian immigrants, I'd need to see a source to
| believe your "generally better social outcomes" comment.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Americans puts the
| 2018 median household income for members of the Nigerian
| diaspora into the USA at $68,658. https://www.census.gov/
| library/publications/2019/demo/p60-26... the median
| household income for white non-Hispanic households at
| $70,642. At least on the easiest to check social outcome,
| whites are still doing better.
|
| That said, Nigerians who arrive here tend to be motivated
| and well-educated. I'm not sure how you can distinguish
| that from genetics. Doubly so since the poster child for
| racist claims about IQ is the poor performance of US
| blacks. Blacks whose African ancestry includes a
| significant share of Nigerian.
|
| So yes, we can cite volumes of statistics. And it is easy
| for find lots of books like _The Bell Curve_ that
| actually do. But when you dig in you won 't find a single
| statistic whose difference can be clearly attributed to
| genetics rather than some cultural factor.
| tacitusarc wrote:
| All the studies I've seen of these attributes fail to
| control for external factors in a way I find convincing.
| tptacek wrote:
| The logic of this comment is that there is somewhere a
| celestial point tally system that accumulates the genetic
| trauma of past generations, catapulting Jewish people to
| the top of the leaderboard for their racial experience of
| the Holocaust, and giving the lie to argument that
| generations of ongoing discrimination --- redlining ended
| within some of our lifetimes! --- and low SES conditions
| for disfavored minorities has any impact on their
| scholastic performance.
|
| It is, to put it mildly, not at all well established how
| SES and assessed intelligence interact.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| Your tone seems disagreeing, but I think your second to
| last paragraph is making the same point I'm making?
|
| I agree with you that it's not fair, I'm just
| acknowledging that the adjudication of fairness happens
| outside the reach of science. It's a matter of values not
| evidence.
| btilly wrote:
| The second to last paragraph supports a minor point you
| made.
|
| But the others contradict most of what you said. The pro-
| affirmative action position that you outlined requires
| willful blindness and stupidity to accept. It is very
| emphatically not equally valid to the alternatives.
|
| There may be better arguments for accepting affirmative
| action as valid. But that one is terrible.
| paulolc wrote:
| No. The truth is not unknowable. Some truth is unknowable,
| though.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| But then Asians come along and outperform whites at the
| supposedly racist metrics. So much so that whites require
| affirmative action policies like Legacy Athletics and
| Dean's List. Simultaneously defeating both white
| supremacist arguments as well as anti-merit ones
| tomp wrote:
| Which of these basic hypotheses supports reparations?
|
| I'm pretty sure there needs to be a _3) blacks are poorer_
| as well.
| btilly wrote:
| The logic of reparations does not require poverty on the
| part of the victim.
|
| It requires acknowledgement of an injustice, and a
| requirement that the perpetrator has to make good on it.
| In the case of blacks we have forcible capture, slavery,
| a variety of discriminatory laws and policies, lynchings,
| and so on. There is no shortage of historical wrongs done
| to blacks that were never meaningfully made up for.
|
| So far, so good. However the logic runs into some major
| problems. First of all, what are the rights of current
| blacks to reparations due to the wrongs done to their
| ancestors? Second, how do we identify the perpetrators
| who need to owe repayment? Third, is it fair to punish
| those descendants now for the actions of ancestors that
| they do not know? And fourth, what reparation would be
| sufficient?
|
| My personal position is as follows.
|
| First, if we extend to one group reparations for wrong
| past, we have to extend this to all groups. That way lays
| insanity. I'm half Irish. My ancestors were targeted by
| the KKK for being Catholic, targeted by the English over
| centuries for being Irish, and escaped to the USA from an
| entirely preventable famine. Every ethnic group can
| rehearse its own story of victimhood, and the act of
| doing so primarily harms those groups again.
|
| Second, identifying perpetrators is hard. For example
| American blacks are more likely to be descended from
| slaveholders than the average white American. I grew up
| in poverty and there were no slaveholders in my ancestors
| for at least the last 200 years. I don't think it is fair
| to ask me to pay for the crimes of other people's
| ancestors.
|
| Third, holding people accountable for the actions of
| their ancestors crosses the line into collective
| punishment. Collective punishments of all kinds are
| considered human rights violations, no matter how strong
| the rationale. See https://ihl-
| databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v2/rule103 for a
| list.
|
| Fourth, no one-time cash reparation can make up for the
| ongoing problems that we continue to inflict on black
| communities. Therefore rather than focusing on the
| justices or injustices of such reparations we should
| focus on fixing what we continue to do wrong in the
| present. Of which, unfortunately, there is no shortage.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| You can shift the analysis from "black" to "poor" or
| "poor and black" or "poor and white" but it doesn't get
| you out of the subjectivity trap.
| 8note wrote:
| Take both of the two, and add the theory of compounding
| interest
|
| They're poor now because they were prevented from gaining
| wealth then, and wealth grows geometrically
| davidgay wrote:
| I think the logical conclusion of this argument is that
| reparations should be paid for from a wealth tax? (as
| opposed to the likely default of "from general revenue")
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| College educationally various outreach efforts are targeted
| to first generational students (those most likely to not have
| knowledge about how to maneuver the educational system).
| Unfortunately this leaves some holes, as not all student with
| parents who went to college know how to maneuver the system.
|
| Basically whatever metric you choose will leave gaps. And if
| you try to universally implement a system you get other
| negative effects (from cost, to information overwhelm, to
| non-adaptability).
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Because they don't believe that black underprivilege is
| _merely_ explained by poverty, and well, they 're right.
| whitemary wrote:
| Wokeness, like all forms of racism, is embraced by the ruling
| class for the purpose of dividing the working class.
| gadders wrote:
| I agree with this, and have been working to get this
| implemented at the large bank I work for. Being from a lower
| socio-economic background cuts across diversity
| characteristics and makes life a lot harder.
|
| It's starting to get some traction with regulators as well:
| https://www.progresstogether.co.uk/
| indymike wrote:
| > If equity is so important, why not grant preferential
| treatment to all children coming from families that aren't
| upper-middle-class?
|
| College education has always been sold as a way to keep your
| children elite, and to the less well-to-do, as a golden ticket
| to being elite. The issue with education is that it has been
| marketed as the ultimate wealth signal: "My daughter is
| attending ______." (too bad for your daughter who is at ______
| State)
|
| > Standardized test scores are the hardest metric to game, and
| hence, are most under attack.
|
| While this is true, standardized tests tend to favor children
| from more stable family situations and higher levels of wealth.
| The attack on the SAT is usually from the side favoring evening
| the odds for less financially advantaged groups.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The core problem is that merit-based entrance is inherently at
| odds with equality of outcome. Families that are better off
| rais more capable children on average
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I think they raise children who are more effectively
| socialized and protected more so than more capable. I've
| known very capable people who don't have the status to refuse
| to kiss rings and they always get screwed in public schools.
|
| The kids with sufficiently "decent" parents get handled with
| kid gloves and rule adherence, everyone else gets punched
| down with half-assery even when if they're experiencing
| injustice and unfairness.
|
| Have known so many bright kids who get nowhere because of
| schools.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow everything you wrote. Are you saying
| that poverty produces children and individuals more capable
| of driving and succeeding in society?
| Glyptodon wrote:
| No.
|
| That if one kid is poor or minority or unstable
| background, etc., and a bit of a loose cannon, they'll
| get graded lower for the same answers, punished or
| dismissed if they question anything, not going to be able
| or willing to check in before school or after class for
| more help, etc., meanwhile goody two shoes daughter of
| the town dentists will give the same answers, socialize
| better with the teacher, who knows the parent's status,
| and likes the kid, give her points back, and by the end
| of the semester they'll both be just as smart, but one
| will have an A- and the other a C+.
|
| Basically kids having the "right" kind of parents and
| community connections and behavioral signifiers is at
| least ~1 letter grade overall regardless of students and
| ability.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| Equity is not actually important, and the author said it
| saliently in this paragraph
|
| > Elite colleges are eliminating standardized tests before they
| eliminate legacy admissions. Tells you all you need to know.
| bnralt wrote:
| > This is a simple and effective way of achieving the goals
| they claim to be championing.
|
| And what are the real goals of these institutions? The whole
| approach of having artificially limited education where people
| are sifted into higher and lower status classes based upon
| judgements made when they're teenagers is premised on elitism,
| not equity. That's the purpose of these institutions - not to
| education as many people as possible, but to restrict education
| to a privileged few in order to increase their own worth.
| Saying they're concerned about equity is like the casinos that
| put up signs saying they're concerned about gambling addiction.
|
| There's a reason why Harvard is happy to take people's money
| and give them an education in the Harvard Extension School, but
| why they firmly tell those people they can't call themselves
| Harvard graduates. Contrast this with OMSCS, where they firmly
| say an in-person degree and an online degree will be the same
| thing.
| tenpies wrote:
| > There's a reason why Harvard is happy to take people's
| money and give them an education in the Harvard Extension
| School, but why they firmly tell those people they can't call
| themselves Harvard graduates.
|
| Just wanted to add since I've looked into Harvard Extension
| School (HES): a HES graduate from a degree program is
| enrolled in the Harvard Alumni Association and does get to
| refer to themselves as a "Harvard graduate".
|
| The degree is from the HES with a degree in "Extension
| Studies", which is the big distinction versus "real" Harvard,
| but I also suspect that beyond you first or second job, that
| becomes about as meaningful as your GPA.
|
| Also importantly, that difference has come up in the last few
| years, to the point where the Harvard College Undergraduate
| Council and the Harvard Graduate Council both voted last year
| in favour to remove that differentiation from HES degrees[1].
| It is however, Harvard University that has to decide,
| although it's quite interesting that the students - who are
| generally considered to be the ones who make the biggest fuss
| about "real" Harvard - are the ones in support of the move.
|
| It's also worth noting that the child of a HES graduate is
| still considered a legacy, so that benefit is also conferred
| on their family.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://blogs.harvard.edu/lamont/2022/03/28/harvard-
| college-...
| 2snakes wrote:
| I have been watching this discussion but wasn't aware there
| were recent votes about it. There is a diff between HES and
| Harvard College, as there should be since they are diff
| schools at Harvard University. Interestingly enough,
| something like 1/3 iirc of the classes are exactly the same
| invluding professor between the two. Pretty sure HES people
| would be satisfied if they were allowed to just put Harvard
| University by itself on their diploma or resume.
| somethoughts wrote:
| To your point, the biggest issue that I see is that elite
| schools are not growing physically to accept more students.
| When the eliteness is built on exclusivity versus the quality
| of the education/graduates that pits admissions of legacy
| versus new admits.
|
| Its kind of like when Nokia used to sell the mobile phones
| with gold plating and the only way to get one was via an
| invite from an influencer. Basically creating the perception
| of value via false scarcity.
|
| The first elite university school system that can physically
| expand to multiple campuses to accommodate new in person
| students and provide them with the exact same quality
| education and opportunities to network with legacy students
| will become Apple of collegiate education.
|
| IMHO, the UC school system gets probably closest to this
| ideal.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| The thing is, education doesn't scale infinitely like that.
| The bigger the class size the less attention you get from
| the professor, the less individualized the education is,
| the more generic it has to be, the lower the common
| denominator, etc.
|
| And lots of colleges are known for their teachers. You
| can't always just hire another identical teacher: good ones
| are rare. At elite schools, they are often even famous and
| individually important in their field. You cannot scale
| that.
| ghodith wrote:
| Sure, but when the US population grows by 10% (for
| example), Shouldn't there be a ~10% increase in elite
| teachers, allowing for elite colleges to expand hiring by
| 10%?
| [deleted]
| Glyptodon wrote:
| That public funds can go to private schools like Harvard is
| such a joke.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Okay. Why?
|
| Some of the public funds come by way of Pell Grants. What's
| so terrible about poor kids getting a top-tier education?
|
| Other mechanisms are research grants. You don't think it's
| in the public's interest to incentivize graduate students
| at top institutions to do socially beneficial research?
|
| Help me understand what your objection is to federal
| policy, and what you wish federal policy were instead.
| docandrew wrote:
| Harvard has an endowment worth more than $50B. Harvard
| grads are the ruling class of our nation, and their
| system of legacy admissions mean it's essentially a
| hereditary system of nobility. This endowment isn't
| taxed, and generates huge returns. Its one thing to
| defend poor kids getting a leg up with federal grants,
| but I'm not sure the ones who pay for it are the same
| ones who benefit, and the system seems to be enormously
| profitable for the private universities.
| torstenvl wrote:
| I noticed you didn't come close to answering the
| question. Complaining that people who aren't you are
| making money isn't a good look, and certainly isn't a
| sound basis for federal public policy.
|
| You indicated a problem with the way federal funds are
| spent. What section of what federal statute should be
| changed? In what way should it be changed?
| docandrew wrote:
| So far you've used straw man (you don't support poor kids
| going to college?) and an ad-hominem (complaining that
| people who aren't you are making money...) attack in your
| responses, which indicates a lack of argument in good
| faith.
|
| I spelled out pretty clearly why somebody might have
| issues with taxpayers subsidizing the tuition of a
| Harvard graduate.
| torstenvl wrote:
| You said you opposed federal funding here. Pell Grants
| are federal funding. Accurate descriptions aren't straw
| men.
|
| You expressed disapproval of the fact "[t]hat public
| funds can go to private schools like Harvard."
|
| I tried to guess what you might mean, but it appears
| you've found those guesses insulting. So why don't you
| just clear it up so we aren't left guessing? What are the
| specific changes to federal law you propose as an
| alternative?
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's not a straw man when poor kids do literally use
| federal grant programs to attend Harvard. It's not a
| distortion or exaggeration of the original objection that
| federal monies went to Harvard.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > legacy preferences
|
| Why does this even exist?
| pjscott wrote:
| There's a market for getting underqualified students into
| fancy universities via legalized semi-bribery, but it would
| be bad for their image if they _openly admitted_ to it. Hence
| the obfuscation.
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| "In the United States, legacy admissions in universities date
| back to the 1920s. Elite schools used legacy admissions to
| maintain spots for Anglo-Protestants amid fears that Jews,
| Catholics, and Asians were increasingly taking spots at the
| schools.[7][8]"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences
| kodah wrote:
| All of these takes ignore the fact that college shouldn't be a
| privilege. As long as we keep to the point that only a select
| few can go to college then we'll keep fighting over scraps.
| Nobody in this debate wants a meritocracy because implementing
| one would harm their interests.
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm experiencing this first hand. My family immigrated here
| from Bangladesh. Unlike much of my family, my dad had a
| college-degree required job lined up, and we ended up pretty
| comfortable with him on a GS-scale job and my mom selling
| furniture. Thanks to the SATs, my brother and I both ended up
| breaking into industries (banking, law) that until relatively
| recently were good old boy's clubs.
|
| Now that I have kids at in private school, I have a totally
| different perception of the cultural capital these families
| have that we didn't. We have a second winter break for ski
| holiday. My daughter asked me why we don't ever go to Aspen.
| When we were kids, we didn't know anyone, we didn't know what
| to write in admissions essays. We had enough money to do test
| prep, but that's incredibly cheap in comparison. I'm not
| concerned about my kids if we move to a subjective admissions
| system. We'll send my daughter to Bangladesh to do some gold-
| star project and hire an admissions coach to wring my dad's
| story of growing up in a third world village for all its worth.
| But if I was a recent immigrant, or a lower middle class kid in
| Iowa, I'd be pretty outraged about this.
| prpl wrote:
| Lower middle class (and even uneducated pedigree upper middle
| class) is where the brutalism is for competitive schools, but
| lower middle class has state schools (if in California, Cal
| State schools) or community college- and almost always
| finishes high school with a middle-of-the-pack education,
| thanks both to average public scholar and average home lives.
| So, generally they are fine.
|
| I wish the obsession with top-tier colleges would go away.
| It's not hard to get into a public research university, where
| there always an opportunity to shine, even if the average
| student is, well, average.
|
| The real tragedy here though is costs have gone up quite a
| bit for state educations and the true top-tier educations
| have so many scholarships available that an average education
| costs more than a premium one.
|
| I went to a state school but have spent far more of my life
| working at and with people from Princeton, Caltech, Stanford,
| etc...
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I attended Caltech, there was no evidence that it was
| a rich kids school. For example, very few students had a
| car. The ones that did had a Bug or an old Ford pickup. I
| don't recall anyone wearing tailored clothes, the students
| mostly wore completely unremarkable stuff. When I'd meet
| their parents, they were perfectly ordinary people.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| What house were you in? When I was there, there were huge
| income disparities between the houses. You may have had
| that experience in one of the less-well-off houses if you
| didn't socialize outside of that environment much. There
| are a lot of rich kids at the school, but it's less
| pretentious than Harvard or others.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Page, in the 1970s. I did not notice any disparity among
| the houses. Freshmen were initially assigned to houses at
| random, and then they'd go through "rotation" where
| they'd have dinner at each house in turn. After that, the
| houses would each make a rank of who they wanted, and the
| freshmen would say yes or no to the selection. I don't
| recall anyone, ever, talking about their social/wealth
| background in this process.
|
| > There are a lot of rich kids at the school
|
| They must have hid it well, because I didn't notice any.
| I never heard anyone mention skiing in Aspen. Nobody had
| even an upper class car. Nobody had an expensively
| outfitted dorm room.
|
| As for me, I come from a lower middle class family, and
| managed to get a modest loan in aid, which I paid off
| after graduation.
| WalterBright wrote:
| P.S. It's possible I was simply blind to the upper class
| signalling. Things like word choice, manner, etc.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I was one of the richer kids in what was one of the more
| "bohemian" houses, as another commenter referred to them.
| Page was actually toward the top of the wealth spectrum
| when I was there (recently). There was also a lot of
| wealth disparity within each house, too, by the way.
|
| However, the signals are more subtle than you think.
| Things like being happy to go out to eat on weekends,
| having a big wardrobe, having technical toys, and having
| a car (at all) were all signs of wealth. A few particular
| sports were also indicators. "Rich people cars" are
| usually not given to kids in their 20's, even by wealthy
| parents.
|
| More subtly, there are a lot of social things, like
| asking what your parents do and asking about your last
| vacation. Most rich kids know how to read the room enough
| not to brag about expensive vacations directly, but will
| ask assuming you recently had one. Having parents who fly
| in for things and flying out for short vacations is a
| dead giveaway.
|
| Also, at Caltech in particular, being well-read was a
| sign of wealth, but I assume that doesn't translate to
| non-science schools.
|
| And it would never come up in rotation, but certain house
| cultures just are more attractive to certain types of
| people. I think that's the source of the disparity, not
| any sort of rotation-related thing.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| If you are an outsider you are usually completely
| oblivious to all the subtle shibboleths.
|
| But the insiders can clearly tell you're not one of them.
| xvedejas wrote:
| At least for the two houses I was in, there were income
| disparities _within_ each house. It was never much talked
| about; I only realized it after a couple of years of
| getting to know individuals better. But I was in two (of
| the three?) houses with a very bohemian attitude I guess,
| and very little of our activities involved spending much.
| jadengeller wrote:
| I don't think the data supports this:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-
| mobilit...
|
| I do think it's true that Caltech students are all very
| passionate about STEM, so the average family wealth is
| less apparent.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > the data
|
| Keep in mind that I attended in the 70s. Nothing stays
| the same. I have little idea if Caltech is the same today
| as then, and rather doubt it. One obvious change is their
| mission statement has changed drastically. In the 1978
| "Caltech Information for Students" pg 105 it says simply:
|
| > The primary purpose of the undergraduate school of the
| California Institute of Technology, as stated by the
| Trustees, is "to provide a collegiate education which
| will best train the creative type of scientist or
| engineer so urgently needed in our educational,
| governmental, and industrial development."
| ridgeguy wrote:
| >Keep in mind that I attended in the 70s. Nothing stays
| the same. I have little idea if Caltech is the same today
| as then, and rather doubt it.
|
| Late 60s, Page, for me. I was lower middle class, which
| seemed to be the great majority. I recall only one House
| contemporary who was from serious wealth. Would never
| have known but for developing a friendship. As you say, I
| doubt things are similar today.
| umvi wrote:
| Caltech is very different today than it was 50 years ago.
| Modern Caltech recently cancelled Robert Millikan (the
| founder)
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Millikan as in the oil drop experiment, foundational to
| quantum physics?
| markdown wrote:
| Looks like he was a rabid racist and eugenecist. Glad to
| see that modern Caltech has progressed.
| ironcurtain wrote:
| Don't you worry, they'll come for you eventually.
| markdown wrote:
| One would hope so.
|
| Ideally, the people of the future will have progressed
| beyond the relative savagery of me and my peers and look
| upon us with disdain. Perhaps for how much I enjoy a good
| steak, or for the genital mutilation of our boys.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| He should have been canceled for all the experimental
| fraud he committed.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| If college is the only way to make a good living, then
| rational actors will game and lobby their way to getting
| in.
|
| Even in the 1990s, a CS program was easy to get into and
| a local 4 year degree was sufficient for most lines of
| work.
| [deleted]
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > I wish the obsession with top-tier colleges would go
| away.
|
| Until the ceiling of utility goes away the obsession wont
| go away.
|
| If your goal is to climb the corporate ladder, _all_
| schools have nearly the same utility. Maybe industry
| specific, but I contend that its not different enough.
|
| If your goal is to skip the corporate ladder, only top tier
| schools get you in the room. And only if the pedigree is
| used in _very_ specific ways. Still not a silver bullet by
| any means.
|
| But not being there is basically the same as having no
| ammunition.
| analog31 wrote:
| An amusing contrast, the public high school where my mom
| taught, had a week off for deer hunting. It was that, or
| teach to an empty classroom.
| toast0 wrote:
| > We have a second winter break for ski holiday.
|
| We've got this at my kid's public school. Neighboring school
| districts don't, but they have two weeks for spring break
| (Easter) and we have only one. So that works out for me,
| although I don't much want to go on a vacation that needs two
| weeks when everyone else is on vacation; it's no fun to go to
| fun places that are overcrowded.
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > But if I was ... a lower middle class kid in Iowa, I'd be
| pretty outraged about this.
|
| Of course, no one cares about these kids (least of all the
| elites and their cadre), and any outrage from lower middle
| class Iowans is already explained away as racism (never mind
| that Iowa, like much of the rest of middle America, went to
| Obama in 2008 and 2012).
| the_third_wave wrote:
| ...and anyone mentioning this is voted down by the
| chattering class of HN.
|
| Predictable yet still disappointing.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > But if I was a recent immigrant, or a lower middle class
| kid in Iowa, I'd be pretty outraged about this.
|
| It may be worth mentioning that one of the, if not _the_ ,
| most powerful IP lawyers in the Bay Area is "only" a
| University of Iowa Law School grad.
|
| https://www.quinnemanuel.com/attorneys/verhoeven-
| charles-k/#...
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| There is really nothing inherently bad about sitting at the
| back of the bus. It is more so about the discrimination.
| It's a matter of principle.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| It isn't that anyone things that folks from Iowa, going to
| the nearest in-state State college, can't make it. It
| happens. It just probably won't, but you _might_ be more
| comfortable than someone that didn 't go. Just don't, say,
| be a public defense lawyer or be a teacher.
|
| It is that we know that going to places like Harvard, you
| are much, much more likely to have a well-paying job,
| comparatively. Bonus points if you are rich and can do
| things more often with your peers. I'm not under the
| impression that the education is that much better (it might
| be, I can't assess that). The networking you definitely
| seems better. You are getting a foot in the door, a thing
| that poor families can't always get without a good dose of
| luck.
| pjscott wrote:
| In the case of Iowa _specifically_ , the trick (if you
| can handle the coursework) is to go to Iowa State and
| major in engineering. They're reasonably affordable and
| surprisingly high-tier. Quite a few other flyover states
| that you wouldn't intuitively expect to have really good
| engineering schools actually do.
|
| (The trouble, of course, is with career paths in which
| networking and prestige matter a lot more.)
| rayiner wrote:
| There's tons of people from fairly modest backgrounds in
| the legal profession, including ones who went to elite law
| schools. (E.g. Lawrence, Kansas, of all places, is the
| hometown of not one but two prominent south asian lawyers,
| Kannon Shanmugam and Judge Sri Srinivasan.) That's the
| direct result of the LSAT democratizing the legal
| profession over the last couple of generations.
|
| I suspect you're correct, though, that if Harvard closes
| those doors, talented people will go to the University of
| Iowa (my wife's alma mater) and do fine.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and
| extracurriculars. I don't get where the statement "rich kids
| don't test well" actually comes from, and it wasn't just made
| up to argue a point. Perhaps if you had state sponsored test
| prep like in China (you spend the last two years of high school
| just prepping for the test), but high school isn't compulsory
| and many poor kids don't even attend.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| There's a lot of evidence that it's difficult to drastically
| change someone's test scores in a year or two, and it's
| compounded by the degree of internal motivation of the test
| taker. And there's an element of reversion to the mean with
| children of some high achievers.
|
| Meanwhile, GPA and extracurriculars are significantly
| reflections of socialization and parents rather than anyone's
| inherent or learned abilities.
| adrr wrote:
| You just need money to game extracurriculars activities and
| GPA(pay a tutor to do your kids work every day or go to a
| private a school).
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/.
| ..
| ilamont wrote:
| What happens when the student takes a test in class if the
| tutor has been doing all the work?
| megmogandog wrote:
| Presumably that's where the rich students who "don't test
| well" come from
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Usually things are designed so that these kids can still
| get A's if their tests are all B's, B's if tests are all
| C's, and so forth. Often with some special extra credit
| offered just to makes sure they can always get at least a
| B.
| lcuff wrote:
| > Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and
| extracurriculars.
|
| Based on comments so far, I'm curious what you mean by this.
| My own take is that you are correct because standardized
| tests are 'easier to prep for' because, in many ways, they
| are IQ tests that you can't prep for, or rather that Bang for
| the Buck of prepping is low. So, poor, smart kids with no
| prep can take the test hung over and do well, as the author
| says. Rich folks can get tutors to spend tens or hundreds of
| hours prepping, and have only a modest impact on their score.
| tptacek wrote:
| SAT prep tests do have some impact, but much more
| significantly, re-takes and disability accommodations are
| highly impactful and heavily SES-correlated.
| Clubber wrote:
| >I don't get where the statement "rich kids don't test well"
| actually comes from, and it wasn't just made up to argue a
| point.
|
| When I read what you said and thought the same thing. I then
| looked up what the author wrote:
|
| _Rich kids who "don't test well."_
|
| He's just saying if you have a kid that doesn't test well (I
| am one of those) and happen to be wealthy, the rich have
| options that poor kids don't. He isn't saying rich kids don't
| tend to test well.
|
| I'm not sure that premise is 100% accurate either. My parents
| were teachers and we didn't have extravagant lives, but my
| parents knew the value of an education and forced me to do
| test prep 6 days a week the summer after my Junior year. I
| ended up improving my scores and getting into a good state
| university and subsequently have a good career 25+ years and
| still going strong.
|
| I think edge case success (students that don't test well)
| boils down more to parents giving a shit than anything else.
| It's not easy, that's for sure, even if you are moderately
| wealthy.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| GPA and extracurriculars are so much easier to game than
| standardized tests, it's not even close. Moreover, this is
| what all the research on the topic suggests.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and
| extracurriculars
|
| And that makes them perfect for poor kids who don't have much
| time or money, they can easily get similar levels of test
| prep as rich kid with little effort. GPA or extracurriculars
| however, no chance, those are much more dependent on home
| environment and wealth.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Yeah exactly. Being able to score well on some standardized
| test is way easier than being able to keep up performance
| year round when you have problems at home if you have the
| aptitude to succeed at either.
|
| GPA is also much more subject to getting penalized because
| a teacher straight up hates you for being poor, disabled,
| male (this one is measurable by having teachers grade tests
| with different names), ugly, smelly, other thing K-12
| teachers tend to dock you for even though on paper they
| shouldn't.
|
| Many extracurriculars are also expensive and poor kids
| don't get to do a lot of them or excel at them to the same
| degree.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| People are so oblivious to how judgy and twisted a solid
| chunk of teachers are. Obviously not the majority, but it
| only takes a few to really screw things up for people
| without enough of a support system.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Why would home environment be more influential for GPA,
| which is a bunch of tests, versus the SAT, which is also
| just a test?
|
| Extracurriculars I agree with, rich people are more likely
| to have connections to get the nice internships.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| GPA is not a bunch of tests. Schools make it so box
| checkers who squeak get every opportunity to make up for
| their ability with cooperative socialization. While other
| students who don't do the right stuff and aren't involved
| in the right extracurriculars get everything rounded
| down, and rounded down harder if they speak up.
| Jensson wrote:
| You don't see why studying 20 hours for 1 test that you
| can easily repeat is easier to scrape together than 2000
| hours to score well on all tests throughout high school?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Maybe a test is bad if you can study all of the material
| or enough of it in 20 hours.
|
| Realistically good test would require that multi-hundred
| hour build up.
| Jensson wrote:
| SAT stands for aptitude test, why would an aptitude test
| require multi-hundred hours of studying? All you need is
| to know a bit of math and how to read and you can score
| really well, you'd think that would be a shit test but
| apparently 90% of people can neither read well nor do a
| bit of math, so it is actually a good test.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The SAT and ACT are pretty easy in this regard. You can
| do really good at it just by practicing for a few months.
| Nothing like the Chinese Gaokao, which you need to study
| for a couple of years at least.
| lordnacho wrote:
| If you can't find the time to do your normal tests for
| GPA, you won't find time to study for the SAT either.
| Whether that's because you live in an unsupportive home
| or you just can't find the discipline, it's only
| theoretical that someone who isn't used to a studying
| environment can somehow have the foresight to invest
| their few hours on this particular exam.
| Jensson wrote:
| > If you can't find the time to do your normal tests for
| GPA, you won't find time to study for the SAT either.
|
| That is just nonsense. Lets say that you have 20 hours to
| study per year, like a couple of weekends that are calmer
| etc, you can spend those on SAT and you got basically the
| full benefits of studying for that test since studying
| more isn't very beneficial. But 20 hours to study per
| year wont budge your GPA much at all. Close to every kid
| can find 20 hours to study per year, I'm pretty sure.
|
| Or do you think that people can either study all the
| time, or study none of the time, no in-between at all?
|
| Edit:
|
| > it's only theoretical that someone who isn't used to a
| studying environment can somehow have the foresight to
| invest their few hours on this particular exam.
|
| Not at all, I never studied for anything in high school
| and got shit grades. But I spent a weekend to study for a
| SAT once, got good on that, and got into college that
| way. This isn't theoretical at all, it happens all the
| time. It is very different to do something for a very
| short time, or keeping that up for 4 years straight.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Have you ever met kids who aren't good at studying? Do
| you think they somehow get their shit together just for
| this one test, because they read somewhere that it's
| judged fairly and a great investment of time? Teenagers
| will somehow know that 20 hours, that's where Jensson's
| return curve breaks?
|
| People who study a lot study a lot for the SAT, people
| who study little study little for the SAT, and in between
| people do an in between amount of SAT. That somehow seems
| like a good starting point, which we'll probably be stuck
| on given evidence will be hard to come by.
|
| FWIW there were kids in my kid's class who had three
| tutors and studied every day over the summer holiday (the
| test is right after). They would have stopped if it was
| so obvious the benefits stop past some level. Just as
| there will be people who think it's a great idea to put
| 1000 hours into it, there's going to be people who think
| they'll just show up on the day and see how it goes.
|
| Edit: seems this wasn't a direct descendent of the the
| thread I thought it was, about the UK 11+, but the point
| is the same.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Have you ever met kids who aren't good at studying? Do
| you think they somehow get their shit together just for
| this one test, because they read somewhere that it's
| judged fairly and a great investment of time? Teenagers
| will somehow know that 20 hours, that's where Jensson's
| return curve breaks?
|
| I was one of those kids. I never had a stable home, I
| have 5 siblings with many parents, I moved between
| different parents, lived on the floor with mom and
| siblings at one of her friends homes for a few months
| etc. But mustering up the energy to put in effort for one
| test is still possible, doing that for everything, no
| way.
|
| Kids aren't stupid, they have spent years doing things,
| reading things, it isn't hard to find out information
| about college, SAT etc. A bad home doesn't mean you are
| stupid even though you make it sound like it does.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Yes, but do you think that's what normally happens? I
| would suggest that what normally happens in your
| situation is that no studying gets done and you bomb the
| test.
|
| I also know people who've been in your situation, and
| that's what I see more often than not.
|
| I can understand if you think that's what the SATs are
| for though, a kind of lifeline for kids in bad
| situations. I just have reservations about it actually
| working enough of the time to not simply be another
| opportunity hoarding play by wealthier people.
| Jensson wrote:
| I don't get you here, poor people are in much greater
| need of lifelines than rich people, removing the lifeline
| from poor people just because rich people also use it is
| just horrible.
|
| The main effect of removing it is that disenfranchised
| smart kids don't get into college, replaced by dumb kids
| with stable homes who spent a ton of time studying yet
| were too dumb to score well on SAT. Colleges are already
| full of such kids, and so is the job market, we don't
| need more of them.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Yeah what I mean is it would be a shame if it weren't a
| real lifeline, just one that sounds good for PR.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Agreed except the easily part. You need to even know that
| you can prep, and have some clue about prepping, along with
| quiet places at home or a library you can get to to do the
| work. Let's not make a lot of assumptions here.
|
| The only exception I can think of are the temporarily poor;
| e.g. refugees from Southeast Asia or Africa whose families
| were well to do back home and still have that familial
| knowledge even if they are currently lacking in money.
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| > Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and
| extracurriculars
|
| All the data shows the exact opposite. Also, it's pretty
| obvious this is false if you spend 10 seconds thinking about
| it.
|
| You're forced to give the test yourself. Whereas you can
| easily hire a tutor to read over and "check" (i.e. rewrite)
| your school essays/homework.
|
| Rich kids can also easily get internships/research experience
| while in HS due to family connections.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Cram schools exist for a reason. You can get lots of help
| on the ACT/SATs, heck, they even offer it in China.
|
| Grades and extra circular can be gamed as well, but you
| have to do a lot more planning ahead of time...like you
| can't just start 6 months before a test date and maybe try
| again 6 months after that. You have to start form late
| elementary school and be consistent up until 12th grade.
| ouid wrote:
| What? I think you have the wrong kind of standardized test in
| mind. Bad standardized tests written by politicians are easy
| to prepare for. Often by design, since they are supposed to
| measure "what you have learned", rather than how smart you
| are.
|
| The SAT is an IQ test.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| "Or ban legacy preferences at the very least"
|
| It would be interesting if there was a rule that forbid you
| from attending the same school as your parents.
| josephcsible wrote:
| This would be unfair for exactly the same reason that legacy
| preferences are, just in the opposite direction.
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| They could just implement a reciprocal legacy status instead
| for your children.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| The USSR under Khruschev tried something similar: they were
| worried that people were becoming stratified: university-
| educated people would send their children into universities,
| factory workers would send their children into technical
| schools. Surely in a perfect world the demographics of
| university students should reflect the demographics of their
| parents' generation?
|
| So, a lot of restrictions and quotas were added to get these
| working-class children into universities. A couple of years
| after the first batch graduated the program was rolled back.
| Soviet scientists started to complain, because diversity and
| equity be damned, the quality of the graduates cratered. If
| you want to be able to rain nuclear fire on the USA, you need
| the best and the brightest working in your research
| institutes.
| cm2187 wrote:
| That sounds like conspiracy theory. I think it is more likely
| the combination of ordinary racism with woke militantism. They
| think certain minorities aren't smart enough to pass SAT
| standards so the solution to get more of them in, is to not
| test for SAT.
|
| It's the same stupidity that leads well-thinking liberals to
| bring their kids to drag strip shows because in their little
| mind "trans = gogo dancers in gay clubs".
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Allowing Rich kids in. THISSSSSSS!!!! is what it was always
| about.
|
| It amazes me how corrupt higher education is now. It is
| AMAZINGLY corrupt.
|
| There is this thing with getting old (I'm in late 40s now)
| where you think the world is going to hell, but really what is
| happening is that you are figuring out EXACTLY how fucked up
| everything is.
|
| However, sometimes things really are going to hell (increasing
| rich/poor divide, environment/global warming, vast increase in
| higher ed/healthcare/housing relative to inflation).
|
| Anyway, in this case, I still am trying to gauge if my fondness
| for the general institution of higher education circa late
| 1990s was actually still somewhat deserved at the time and it
| has _truly_ fallen apart in the next 25-30 years, or if it was
| this bad for the last 40-50 (I can argue there's a good chance
| it was a great institution in the 1960s fresh after post-WWII
| investment in higher ed by the gubberment).
|
| Anyone have thoughts? I personally think it is ACTUALLY worse,
| that the rise of the huge administrator/MBAs in higher ed has
| led to do-anything-for-a-buck, and it REALLY is this bad.
|
| Signs that it actually is bad:
|
| - the stupendous rise in cost / that little student loan crisis
| we have
|
| - the stupendous rise in Div I coaching salaries and facilities
|
| - the amount of frivolous facilities built
|
| - the rise of the minimum wage adjunct professor
|
| - the decline of import of tenure (revenue/publishing/research
| is now everything)
|
| - the decline of humanities. I still as a science guy look down
| at them, but they are historically important (as in over 1000s
| of years) to educational institutions.
|
| - grade inflation, it is pay for degree even in some Ivies it
| appears now
| lordnacho wrote:
| > There is this thing with getting old (I'm in late 40s now)
| where you think the world is going to hell, but really what
| is happening is that you are figuring out EXACTLY how fucked
| up everything is.
|
| This is so true. When I was younger I thought "oh what a
| cynical thought, I should cheer up and be less gloomy". Now I
| realize I was right. The sheer amount of waste arising from
| badly managed orgs with wrong incentives is just enormous.
| This is why we don't have flying cars and teleporters.
|
| If you consider that universities these days let in a lot
| more people, it's inevitable that the academic level is
| lower. Back in the day someone doing a phd had a reasonable
| chance of becoming a professor. Now there's so many people
| the university is not really for producing knowledge, that's
| just a side business to giving a stamp of approval to your
| average middle class kid who is not gonna be doing research.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| No one wants to tell children they aren't good enough but
| it's much better than worsening the quality of everyone's
| education. Especially when they don't even want to be there.
| We should have never put so much emphasis on getting everyone
| a college degree.
| User23 wrote:
| > If equity is so important, why not grant preferential
| treatment to all children coming from families that aren't
| upper-middle-class? Or ban legacy preferences at the very
| least?
|
| Because the equity that the school cares about above all else
| is its endowment, and rich family legacies give more than
| anyone else by far.
| ww520 wrote:
| Legacy admission should have been abolished long time ago. It's
| systematic racism. Legacy admission has been part of the
| official admission system for the longest time. It's a system
| to favor the incumbents, the riches, the powerful, and the non-
| minority. It's used to ensure to give the elites are systematic
| unfair advantage.
| wernercd wrote:
| I bet "why not ban legacy" is answered with "legacy donations
| mean two things: No chance".
|
| https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-why-elite-colleges-...
|
| "To find out why elite colleges love legacies, two business
| school professors were granted access to 16 years of admissions
| data at one elite Northeastern college. The upshot: it's in
| this school's clear self-interest to take them. Alumni children
| who received offers matriculated at much higher rates, giving
| the school more certainty in their future enrollment numbers.
| And these loyal families with multi-generational ties to the
| college were far more likely to donate funds, money that the
| school needs, in part, to offer scholarships to others."
|
| Colleges want to look good... but no chance in hell they'll
| give up consistent students of families who donate.
|
| Cost effective? not when it'll cost them millions or billions
| in kick backs.
| wldcordeiro wrote:
| Yeah it's like they've never walked around a college campus
| and noticed that every other building is named after some
| alumni that has made large donations.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| > get recommendation letters from important people, stack their
| resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in
| their admissions essays. They have "polish."
|
| Or they just completely fake it, like a few cases that were
| discovered a few years ago. [1]
|
| Let's be honest though. Those with less "polish" that would be
| admitted on purely objective/anonymous merir might even excel
| academically at the university, but they would be excluded by
| the very same social games being played here.
|
| Sometimes they might even be told that explicitly but usually
| an excuse will be concocted.
|
| The real question should be:
|
| > What is more cruel, excluding them early on or allowing them
| to "win" but then ignore them completely when the benefits of
| that are to be distributed?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal
| cactus2093 wrote:
| I have a really hard time believing this is being actively
| driven by collusion among rich families who know they could
| game non-SAT metrics. It would require a huge organizational
| effort, and for what? It's still not going to be a sure thing
| to get their kids in, there's gonna be even more randomness in
| the process after this change than there is now. And sending
| your kids to elite an school doesn't even buy them that much
| anyway if you're already rich & influential, you can pull
| strings to get them a job after they graduate from a mediocre
| school.
|
| It's much easier to believe that this is being driven by
| college administrators who know that the way to advance their
| careers in the current climate is by passing radical social
| justice changes, and this particular idea is simply an
| organically popular fad among social justice influencers so
| it's the one they've latched onto.
| prakhar897 wrote:
| Here in India, we have quotas for different kinds of people.
| There's caste based, Gender based and finally EWS (Economically
| Weaker Section) Quota. Overall 60% of total seats are reserved
| for these people.
|
| My friend who's ultra rich was selected in EWS Quota. His
| father who runs his own company took Zero pay for the last two
| years so he qualified for the benefits. Meanwhile people who
| actually deserved this had to compete for the non reserved
| seats.
|
| The point is you can't just give preference based on income as
| its incredibly easy to fudge.
| notlukesky wrote:
| 40% for meritocratic entrance is more than twice what is at
| elite schools in the US. Maybe ambitious Americans should
| move to India for a fairer chance.
|
| At most US elite schools, less than 20 percent is for "non-
| reserved" seats. Elite schools reserve seats for sports teams
| (affirmative action for rich white elites with "sports" like
| fencing and rowing), legacies (affirmative action for rich
| white elites), related to professors and school
| administrators (affirmative action for rich white elites),
| those who write essays on poverty tourism and their work
| experience in the NGO/white savior/charity scams (rich white
| elites), and then regular affirmative action (capped at 20%].
|
| So it is a brilliant way to use regular affirmative action
| for Blacks as a weapon to ensure that rich white elites
| always win and do not compete with the "deplorable" poorer
| whites, the Asians and immigrants.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| This is kind of a racist against whites who I think are
| used as a scapegoat no matter what. In my experience, those
| sports teams you are talking about are filled up with
| international and Asian students[1][2]. The dumb white
| elite student and the extremely talented, poor Asian
| student stereotypes are not true in my opinion. Maybe they
| were in the past.
|
| Even the SAT score can be gamed.[3] I think pretty much
| every admissions advantage that exists is found and
| exploited. These schools are no longer about providing an
| elite education to talented students who want to get ahead.
| They are credential factories and students who go these
| schools have parents that push them from young ages to get
| in because they want the status credential. I have all
| sorts of stories about how fake a lot of students CVs are.
| Fake non profits, doing math competitions despite not
| liking math, getting into obscure sports, etc. It's
| absolutely not just white people who do this.
|
| I am not advocating for dropping test scores. I just want
| to point out how aggressively people pursue getting
| admitted to elite schools and the specter of cheating hangs
| over it all too. I have friends who did tutoring in other
| countries who talk about paid SAT test takers.
|
| [1]: https://gocrimson.com/sports/mens-fencing/roster
|
| [2]: https://goprincetontigers.com/sports/mens-
| squash/roster?path...
|
| [3]: https://qz.com/980074/the-sat-can-be-hacked-and-gamed-
| with-t...
| tbihl wrote:
| >These schools are no longer about providing an elite
| education to talented students who want to get ahead.
|
| This is the arbitrage opportunity for lower-ability
| legacy students. If the schools provided elite
| educations, they would chew up and spit out lazy rich
| kids (and probably generate parental acrimony toward the
| schools in the process, weakening the donor connections.)
| As affirmative action of all shapes and sizes creates an
| ever-expanding group of people most likely to fail who
| the school is particularly determined to not flunk, there
| is more safe space for deadweight rich kids (which, for
| the record, I suspect is an overplayed trope relative to
| actual prevalance, though probably not hard to find at
| top-ranked schools.)
| onetimeusename wrote:
| > arbitrage opportunity for lower-ability legacy students
|
| Is that generally true or is that a stereotype?
|
| _Legacy students also had a higher average SAT score
| than non-legacy students, at 1523 for legacy students and
| 1491 for non-legacy students._ [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/9/8/2025-fre
| shman-su...
| tbihl wrote:
| First, if that number could be read directly as a
| refutation of my hypothesis, it would be tied, rather
| than showing an advantage to the legacy students.
|
| Now, a few guesses: first, to the extent that affirmative
| action is even partially successful in targeting
| disadvantaged groups, affirmative action students should
| be less likely to be legacy, meaning that applications of
| legacy students should at least reflect a numerical
| superiority consistent with the strength of the
| affirmative action bias. Second, I will say that from
| personal experience I valued, more highly than was
| deserved, the schools that my parents attended; in this
| way those schools were the beneficiaries of highly
| effective advertising, through my parents, that made me
| more focused on those particular schools than they
| deserved (so much so that two of the three were two of
| the four schools I intended to apply to.) The aggregate
| outcome of that effect across all legacy applicants
| should be a higher-than-usual applicant quality in the
| pool of legacy students.
| lordnacho wrote:
| "The average SAT score of students with family income
| under $40,000 was 1443, while those with a family income
| of more than $500,000 averaged 1520."
|
| Would the legacies tend to have much higher income, or is
| any old person who's a child of an alumnus considered a
| legacy?
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| This particular example is just not representative. It
| does "benefit" whites who are apparently 83% of the
| athletic quota. The graph is just terribly made. We need
| not blame or scapegoat whites but at the same time
| acknowledge that they are the beneficiary
|
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/9/8/2025-freshman
| -su...
| onetimeusename wrote:
| As a contrast, this points out that Asians
| disproportionately were affected by Stanford's decision
| to cut varsity sports.[1] This resonates with the
| experience I have had.
|
| I don't know if whites are generally the beneficiary of
| student athletic admissions policies at all elite schools
| although it is complicated because of things like decades
| old sports from before diversity was a concern and team
| size. I don't see Harvard cutting long successful teams
| just to appease non white people but then again they
| probably would. Also things like the men's football team
| have a very large roster of 100+ people.
|
| [1]: https://stanforddaily.com/2020/09/27/varsity-cuts-
| challengin...
| rayiner wrote:
| > So it is a brilliant way to use regular affirmative
| action for Blacks as a weapon to ensure that rich white
| elites always win and do not compete with the "deplorable"
| poorer whites, the Asians and immigrants.
|
| I just realized that there are more Appalachians in America
| than Asian Americans. But how many people have you run into
| in an elite school with an Appalachian accent? (Or a
| southern or mid-atlantic, or other lower-tier white
| accent?)
| [deleted]
| tbihl wrote:
| I can think of exactly one guy: a classmate in electrical
| engineering courses who was from Kentucky. While you can
| obviously still find accents in the US, there are lots of
| reasons why you won't run into that family of accents
| much. Just about everyone in the US can avoid accents
| they don't want by engaging in all forms of audible
| media, and social climbers and people who move around
| will avoid strong accents. Those are the same people who
| will filter to the top of any affirmative action cohort
| and end up at elite schools.
|
| Maybe the redneck culture of poor Appalachian people is
| less sticky than the redneck culture of many poor Blacks
| in the US. My personal anecdotes support that, but then
| selection bias means they necessarily must.
|
| When I run into guys at work with heavy Appalachian
| accents, they tend to be heavy machinery mechanics.
| That's also where I find Black guys who cling to a large
| amount of Black redneck culture. And those two groups
| together comprise the supermajority of heavy machinery
| mechanics at work, come to think of it.
|
| Source: I spent my entire childhood on counties adjacent
| to what is considered 'Appalachia', and I went to a
| higher-end college with a significant affirmative action
| focus on geographic distribution around the US.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| > Black guys who cling to a large amount of Black redneck
| culture.
|
| Am former rural redneck(my coworkers say I still am
| culturally). I've never heard of a distinctly black
| "redneck culture". I've always associated redneck with
| rural and most of the black population is not rural. The
| few black people I've met doing redneck work seemed no
| different than anyone else to me. Maybe it's just less of
| a thing in TX.
| pilarphosol wrote:
| This is about right. They want every podunk town to
| remember that the smartest or most impressive kid in 10
| years went (finishing is optional) and they don't really
| want more "strivers" than that.
| harvey9 wrote:
| That sounds like it was designed to be easy to game; income
| in last two years as a metric rather than total assets, or
| zip code, or high school attended etc
|
| Does India have something like SAT as well?
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Yes, it's actually much harder. But the final results are
| group by category order by rank. There is negative marking
| to discourage guessing, so the cutoff for certain
| categories can even be 0 or even negative
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _> you can 't just give preference based on income as its
| incredibly easy to fudge_
|
| That's why you have to look at total wealth, not just
| income... though I'm sure the ultra wealthy will find some
| way to work around that as well.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I knew a kid in high school whose parents divorced for
| college financial aid reasons. As long you have a trusting
| relationship, seems easy enough to divorce, give one spouse
| the wealth, and then remarry when you don't care about
| FAFSAs any more.
| prakhar897 wrote:
| You don't even need Trusts for this. EWS is decided by an
| issued certificate. The issuer can be bribed.
| csa wrote:
| Trusts are the most common way to do this.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Then any trusts that benefit you should be counted as
| part of your wealth.
| zamnos wrote:
| So then the trust doesn't list you as a beneficiary but
| instead goes through a series of shell corporations that
| they don't control on paper. With stakes this high - your
| very child's future, there are always going to be people
| that are rich enough to break the spirit of the rules.
|
| If it's a small handful of people, there's probably
| better things for them to spend time on, rather than
| trying to make an unbeatable system.
| nradov wrote:
| As a practical matter how would college admissions
| departments even try to account for "total wealth"? That
| number doesn't appear on income tax returns. Applicants
| could write down any number and there wouldn't be any way
| to verify it short of a court ordered forensic audit.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You disclose it on FAFSA, which most schools require even
| to be eligible for non-need-based financial assistance
| (such as academic scholarships)
| civilized wrote:
| Wouldn't any metric be gamed? Why single out income for
| criticism? At least favoring lower income is going directly
| at the problem.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| This is off topic, but do you find it difficult seeing this
| friend the same way while knowing that they and their father
| gamed the system like that? If I learned this about somebody
| I knew it would seriously hurt their image in my eyes.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Well he is still his "friend". Perhaps he has repented and
| paid for the education of a number of people who would
| otherwise not be able to afford it.
| photonbucket wrote:
| People will do what they can to make their children's lives
| better. It just means the system was poorly designed
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| A suggestion: Judge the parent who did the action, not the
| child who was along for the ride.
|
| Unless you have some specific knowledge that the child
| insisted on their parents taking the action, it's not
| really fair to blame the child. A lot of children don't
| have much choice in the matter at that age.
| prakhar897 wrote:
| Atleast in India, everyone "games" systems as much as they
| can. Those who can't dream about gaming it. The Kafkaesque
| system makes sure that the few who actually tread the right
| path are never rewarded [1].
|
| And unlike EU, this benefits corporates/capitalism as they
| can cut through the red tape easily by "gaming" things.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33368104
| WalterBright wrote:
| Does it benefit capitalism? India has always had a less
| prosperous economy.
| amerkhalid wrote:
| Coming from other side of border but with similar culture
| and attitudes, corruption is so common in that part of the
| world that most of the people don't even see it.
|
| They would consider it smart to game the system.
|
| Only way I can explain this attitude is to compare it tax
| loopholes in the west. It is very hard for many Americans
| to see loopholes in tax codes as unethical. Like using
| mega-backdoor-ira loophole to bypass income limits for
| contributing to IRA. (Personally, I am not saying that tax
| loopholes are ethical or unethical, just something that can
| be seen both ways.)
| WalterBright wrote:
| The only equitable tax is one that taxes other people.
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| > The point is you can't just give preference based on income
| as its incredibly easy to fudge.
|
| Okay, well this is the US.
|
| Your tax returns are a very good indication of how much money
| you make.
|
| If you lie on your tax returns then you have much bigger
| issues than college admissions counselors.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I think you're missing the point. The really wealthy can
| just stop receiving income and have enough to draw on from
| their accumulated wealth. You can start looking at net
| assets but it's a cat and mouse game against lots of very
| well resourced opponents.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Taking a $0 salary for a few years is feasible for most
| rich people. That's why the FAFSA (financial aid form) also
| asks about assets.
| jefftk wrote:
| And the CSS profile, like FAFSA but for fancier schools,
| is even more exhaustive.
| djbusby wrote:
| If your family has $10MM in the bank, you too can take (and
| report) to IRS zero income.
| sklargh wrote:
| Assuming US due to agency choice. What about a 1099-INT?
| Surely even trivial interest earnings on 10mm would
| trigger this?
|
| Moreover I'd expect that any given user w/10mm would be
| rolling into multiple accounts to maximize protection
| offered by FDIC.
| pjscott wrote:
| If you put the money mostly into bonds or stocks that
| don't issue significant dividends, you'll pretty much
| just have to worry about capital gains (form 1099-B), and
| those aren't taxed until the fiscal year in which they're
| realized.
| flangola7 wrote:
| In the US parents' income is already considered when
| applying for financial aid. Just add that info to
| admissions
| lordnacho wrote:
| Does this mean you can not work for a couple of years to
| make it easy to get in, plus get a discount on the fee?
| selectodude wrote:
| No, assets are taken into consideration for that exact
| reason.
| [deleted]
| wernercd wrote:
| "tax returns" and the OPs example was someone who had
| millions in the bank and took no "income" for years to
| fudge the tax return.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Deferred compensation plans allow you to strategically
| create a low w2 income for awhile and are mostly available
| to high earners.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _If you lie on your tax returns then you have much bigger
| issues than college admissions counselors._
|
| If you own a large amount of equities you can get a secured
| loan on those holdings and use it to pay your bills while
| taking zero salary. This allows folks to live fancy
| lifestyles without selling holdings and triggering capital
| gains:
|
| * https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/13/portfolio-loans-can-be-
| one-w...
|
| The loan is not counted as income.
| WalterBright wrote:
| At some point the loan gets paid, and then the income
| taxes apply.
| LightHugger wrote:
| Then what do you do for children coming from wealthy families
| who don't support them? Just because the parents have money
| doesn't mean they spend any of it or time on their kid, and
| with your system, those kids get screwed.
|
| It's difficult.
| roland35 wrote:
| Interestingly I feel the same way about coding interviews,
| which HN seems to hate. I feel like studying and doing well on
| my coding interviews helped me get into top companies that
| otherwise would probably pass over my decidedly non-elite
| resume.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I used to think standardized tests were the way to go, but...
|
| My kid recently went through another testing gauntlet, which is
| the 11+ test. For those who aren't in the Southeast corner of
| the UK, this is a multiple choice type test that looks a lot
| like an IQ test in some ways. It's a single sitting and
| determines whether you are allowed into something called a
| Grammar School, which is just a selective school, and the test
| is taken the year the kid turns 11.
|
| So the thing about this test is that nobody will admit to it,
| but everyone in the middle class will hire tutors to help their
| kids pass the test. Furthermore, private primary schools will
| spend a lot of time prepping for this test in the two years
| before the kids take the test. Plenty of people do both: send
| their kids to a fee-paying primary school, and pay for tutors.
|
| Guess what, the pass rate for fee-paying (aka independent)
| schools is way higher than for state schools. It's hard to
| break down which parents went for state + tutoring, but it's
| not exactly a stretch to suppose those kids did better than
| state school kids with no tutoring. Furthermore state schools
| that do well tend to be in certain wealthy areas.
|
| If you have a look at one of these tests, it's pretty clear you
| benefit from practicing. Like just about any test, if you've
| done it before you are at an advantage, the more the better.
|
| I don't see how this isn't gaming the test. The idea with a
| test is to uncover which kids will get the most out of the
| selective school, but how is that going to work when a select
| few are prepped for the test?
|
| Now just for the record I did the SAT back when I was a kid.
| It's pretty much the same as the 11+, for a slightly older age
| group. Again, it doesn't make any sense to say it's hard to
| game. People are gaming it as we speak.
|
| I think what might actually be hard to game is teacher
| recommendations. After all these people have been with the kid
| for a long time and know what they can do. They also tend to be
| distanced enough that they don't have to say good things about
| every kid.
| gadders wrote:
| I live in the southeast of the UK and my daughter took the
| 11+ and passed. She also went to a private prep school.
|
| Private schools don't give as much 11+ help as you would
| think - if a child passes the 11+, the private lose all the
| potential senior school fees.
|
| Tutoring for the exam definitely helps, but it's mostly exam
| technique and practise on those types of logical reasoning
| questions. They can't do the questions for you.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Well if you look at the scores, about 25% of a year group
| passes the test. It's something like 16% of state school
| kids and 36% of independent schools. Unfortunately the guy
| who compiled these stats closed down his website, so it's
| not so easy for me to look up.
|
| The variation is enormous though. My kid's school is
| boasting about 95% of their kids passing the test. I know
| they've been prepping the test because well, that's what
| the kid has been doing for past couple of years.
|
| > if a child passes the 11+, the private lose all the
| potential senior school fees.
|
| It's true that some schools try to discourage the kids from
| taking it for that reason, but of course that's only true
| if there's a senior school section.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I think what might actually be hard to game is teacher
| recommendations. After all these people have been with the
| kid for a long time and know what they can do. They also tend
| to be distanced enough that they don't have to say good
| things about every kid.
|
| Recommendation letters aren't worth a lot. Most kids who have
| a shot at getting into a top-ranked school surely have _some_
| teachers they got along with. But then there 's the luck of
| the draw whether said teacher will also put in an effort
| beyond a pro-forma recommendation.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| In the Netherlands, teacher advice (based on standardized
| tests)is the way. They really restrict practice for the test
| in multiple ways, some legal and some cultural.
| speleding wrote:
| Interestingly, the Netherlands tried it a few years without
| the results of the standardised tests being known to the
| teacher (the results came in after they'd given their
| advice). It turned out that children from a poor background
| started getting worse recommendations...
|
| As a result that practice has been reversed and teachers
| now use the result from the standardised test again when
| making their recommendation.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| > I think what might actually be hard to game is teacher
| recommendations. After all these people have been with the
| kid for a long time and know what they can do. They also tend
| to be distanced enough that they don't have to say good
| things about every kid.
|
| How can you compare recommendations from different teachers?
| The whole point of the SAT is that it is a single number: you
| can compare SAT results from different schools and see which
| children are better at taking the test.
|
| > If you have a look at one of these tests, it's pretty clear
| you benefit from practicing. Like just about any test, if
| you've done it before you are at an advantage, the more the
| better.
|
| Yes, but you can't get from 500 to 1500 by practicing. You
| can probably get from 1450 to 1500, but that's just a few
| practice sessions to learn what the questions look like, how
| to fill in the answer sheet, how to tackle the most common
| ones.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Teachers are people and so subject to bias, favoritism, and
| just plain malevolence. They also can be bribed.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Wouldn't teacher recommendations just leave to bribery? And
| not even that expensive. Have the kid deliver some nice
| present before each suitable occasion. Maybe brown envelope
| with cash.
|
| At least with tests you could release previous tests and then
| possibly some groups could release free instructions on key
| points or tactics.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| _I think what might actually be hard to game is teacher
| recommendations. After all these people have been with the
| kid for a long time and know what they can do. They also tend
| to be distanced enough that they don 't have to say good
| things about every kid._
|
| When I was 11, I had a teacher lean over during class and
| tell me how much she didn't like me, that I was the laziest
| student she had ever had, and that she couldn't wait until
| the end of the year because she wouldn't have to see me any
| more. To be fair: I wasn't a horrible student, was usually
| quiet without many friends, and just wasn't at the point to
| handle 2-3 hours of homework, probably due to undiagnosed
| issues.
|
| I learned that teachers don't always have your best interests
| at heart, and I couldn't trust any of them much. I couldn't
| imagine the stress of trying to impress teachers to the point
| of getting recommendations, and I can't imagine she'd have
| given me one and I probably would have been scared to ask the
| others after that. On the other hand, it also became quite
| clear that you could game the system a little if you got the
| teachers to like you.
|
| Just because they don't have to say good things about every
| kid doesn't mean that all of them will say things that give a
| fair assessment, though a lot would try a little more than
| this woman did.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I had a similar experience in sixth grade. Completely
| insane.
|
| On the other hand, it taught me early how life actually
| works.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Yeah this is something I thought about quite hard before I
| moved countries. I didn't want my kid to be at the mercy of
| some teacher who might not like him.
|
| So then I ended up where we have this one time test, which
| stresses the hell out of everyone. Luckily he did well on
| it, school decisions came out last week and he got what he
| wanted.
|
| I'm not actually sure which is better, part of why I
| thought maybe teacher recommendations would have been
| better was that my kid would undoubtedly get recommended if
| that were the system, he just happens to have that thing
| that teachers recognise. But even so he could have had a
| bad day and not made it in the system we actually live in.
| thegrim22 wrote:
| How is hiring a tutor "gaming" it? They spend extra time
| learning, and as a result they do better. It's not like the
| tutors secretly give them a cheat sheet list of all the test
| answers; they still have to answer the questions the same as
| everyone else. If somebody puts more time into studying,
| whether on their own or with a tutor or with their parents,
| they'll do better than somebody who didn't.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Prepping for a test doesn't give you any practical
| knowledge or expand how you think about things; it's just
| about getting familiar with the test's format and the way
| the question authors think. It'd be a bit like getting
| "better" at poker by always playing with the same people
| and learning their tells. It's "gaming" it because you're
| not better at what the test is supposed to measure, you're
| just better at what it actually does measure.
| rayiner wrote:
| Prepping for the test is a valuable signal when you're
| talking about the entire pool of high school students.
| And it does not gate opportunities by economics as much
| as you'd think:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/magazine/asian-test-
| prep-.... Immigrant families eligible for reduced price
| lunch are able to scrounge up the money for these tests.
| zenta wrote:
| It's not though.
|
| Give ten kids from the same class a self study online
| course and give another ten a private tutor, and they
| won't see the same score distribution. Where's the signal
| there?
|
| SAT results don't have a line item that notes the amount
| of wealth or privilege that went into preparing.
|
| > Immigrant families eligible for reduced price lunch are
| able to scrounge up the money for these tests.
|
| Some families can't. Other families aren't aware, or
| aren't interested. But we judge the kids in the family
| for that.
|
| That said... I don't know how the _new_ system will work
| at fighting that privilege -- there are still lots of
| ways for it to disguise itself. But we have to at least
| acknowledge the issues with the SAT.
|
| But, to me at least, this goes beyond privilege. This is
| about diversity of skills and diversity of learner
| profiles and moving away from linear quantification of
| potential.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| The JEE solved this problem by changing the format of the
| test each year. It's not disclosed before the exam. So it
| is really hard to form meaningful strategy that
| consistently helps you
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > That said... I don't know how the _new_ system will
| work at fighting that privilege -- there are still lots
| of ways for it to disguise itself. But we have to at
| least acknowledge the issues with the SAT.
|
| I'm in favor of using tests like that SAT as cheaper
| diagnostic tests, to help with student placements and
| accommodations, not for admissions. It's too bad this is
| being lost with the removal of the testing requirements,
| but I guess it doesn't matter much as the tests were
| never used this way in the first place, despite providing
| this information. https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default
| /files/ACT%20Paper%20... (note that I don't agree with
| the conclusions of this paper, merely the identified
| diagnostic criteria)
|
| > This is about diversity of skills and diversity of
| learner profiles
|
| I might believe that if I didn't believe that the
| diversity would mostly be token, with the majority of
| students in selective schools fitting a handful of
| templates.
| [deleted]
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| I'm a former educator and tutor.
|
| The effects of studying "for the test" as you put have
| been measured, improved test taking skills tends to be
| worth ~30 points which is not _that_ significant. This
| matches my anecdotal experience and that of people I know
| who run SAT prep courses.
|
| It's _far_ more effective to actually teach students the
| material, either by teaching them new concepts or by
| firming up their understanding to ones they 've already
| been exposed to. Particularly in Math, many students in
| high school have shaky understandings of fractions or
| algebra. Firming up these foundations can often lead to
| >100 point increase (given sufficient lead time). Those
| foundations are something the test is actually looking
| for since numeracy and strong algebra skills are a strong
| predictor of success in Calculus.
|
| It's true that tutoring grants unfair advantages but this
| is going to be true in any system that uses skills as
| part of a selection criteria.
| derbOac wrote:
| I'm familiar with that 30 point differential because it
| shows up in research.
|
| You're right that 30 points isn't _that_ much if you 're
| thinking about the whole distribution, but I guarantee it
| can be significant around the selection threshold. That
| threshold might be implicit or explicit, but it's there,
| and if it's enough to nudge applicants past it, it's
| significant.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| Sure, but having read a large chunk of educational
| literature I'm not aware of any alternatives with fewer
| distortions from parental aid. Grades correlate more
| highly with a good home life than test scores do, for
| example.
|
| As long as we have "prestige" universities there's going
| to be _some_ form of skills testing, and no one has ever
| designed an un-gameable test that can be administered
| nationally. The question we have to ask ourselves then is
| how we can reduce game-ability and I doubt we can make
| improvements that are more than incremental.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Would you have some papers I could google, or some
| keywords to get me started? I'm quite interested in
| reading those studies.
| bsder wrote:
| > The effects of studying "for the test" as you put have
| been measured, improved test taking skills tends to be
| worth ~30 points which is not that significant. This
| matches my anecdotal experience and that of people I know
| who run SAT prep courses.
|
| I see this often but I suspect that it is lumping "Took a
| prep class for 1 hour on a Saturday" and "Spent 6 hours a
| week for 52 weeks with a tutor" in the same category.
|
| Any tutor who only gets a 30 point increase won't be
| seeing much business among the folks I know.
|
| However, I do agree with you that firming up skills is a
| remarkably quick way to get a significant boost. Being
| able to add 2 + 2 and come up with 4, repeatedly and
| accurately is often a big deal on these tests even with a
| calculator.
| nradov wrote:
| The admissions essays show polish because they are written (or
| at least heavily edited) by parents and paid consultants.
| morelandjs wrote:
| This is an interesting idea. You could stratify the admissions
| process by family income level, and set bars for admission at
| each level that ensure an equal distribution of admissions
| relative to the population distribution of income.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| >> They have "polish."
|
| > Standardized test scores are the hardest metric to game, and
| hence, are most under attack. All this talk about equity is the
| most convenient and cost-effective way to eliminate the one
| barrier that most vexes rich parents.
|
| It's also a good way to sneak in affirmative action (racial
| discrimination really) in places where voters and taxpayers
| repeatedly said no, like in the UC system, since it removes an
| objective measure and leaves more "holistic" criterions an
| admission committee can use to accept or deny (without giving
| out any explanation) a candidate. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-harberson-
| asian-...
| andrepd wrote:
| I've made this proposal several times: judge an applicant by
| his/her delta relative to their cohort. For example (highly
| simplified) a kid from a wealthy family in a nice neighbourhood
| statistically scores 70% on average, if he scores 80 that's a
| +10. A kid from a poor single-parent household going to a
| dilapidated school where scores are 40% on average, if he
| scores 70 that's a +30.
|
| Very rough example but the idea is this.
| Philosophically/ethically, it seems better. But practically as
| well: you want to admit the students most likely to excel if
| given the high quality resources at your university. Among a
| kid with all the comforts and private tutoring and all that,
| and a kid who rose way above his shitty lot in life, wouldn't
| the latter fit that description better?
| Gunax wrote:
| There is always a way to manipulate it. In this case, one
| would seek to downplay their own cohort.
| cma wrote:
| > Standardized test scores are the hardest metric to game
|
| Learning disabilities give unlimited time on the tests. That
| means you can slowly use brute force on the math section to
| check each alternative one by one instead of needing to be good
| at other techniques.
|
| Harvard had something like 25% of admitted students do this.
| Does it sound plausible that 25% of Harvard students need
| unlimited time on the test due to a learning disability and
| that lower tier schools have lower rates of learning
| disabilities, or more plausible that Harvard students have more
| access to sympathic doctors (through family relations,
| upper/upper midle class organization connections) and savvy
| admissions advisers?
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/colleges-bend-the-rules-for-mor...
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/h...
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The system of accommodating learning disabilities is a grift,
| I had a few while always being a strong tester who tended to
| finish tests early. The "accommodation" I always got was
| extra time which was extremely baffling. Extra time in
| particular was given out like candy for no reason. Harvard
| students having learning disabilities that warrant extra time
| on tests is a fucking joke, how delusional must one be to
| think that those admitted into Harvard are MORE disabled than
| most students at learning?
|
| Why is somebody deemed somebody to have a weakness in
| learning in one particular area that makes them "learning
| disabled"? Why aren't students who just aren't as smart as
| other students considered "learning disabled" and given extra
| time on tests? But if you're called dyslexic or dysgraphic or
| have dyscalculia you're disabled and deserve not just
| accommodations (Which I wouldn't be opposed to on balance)
| but extra time on every test even if on the whole you smoke
| the other students?
|
| They are beyond questioning and any teacher who does is
| likely to have their heads chopped off for hating and not
| believing disabled people despite not being an expert in
| disability. Which pretends these accommodations were given
| out in the first place due to some rigorous criteria by
| experts in disability.
| [deleted]
| htag wrote:
| Learning disabilities are a type of neurodevelopmental
| disorder in which a student that is of otherwise average of
| above average intelligence struggle with a specific type of
| material, commonly reading (dyslexia) or basic math
| (dyscalculia). The most effective treatment is early
| remediation, in which students in primary education are
| identified and given extra lessons and exercises on their
| weakness to help make them more well rounded so they do not
| struggle later in their education. This is super effective.
|
| I can tell your frustrated with accommodations. I think
| your arguments against accommodations would be a lot
| stronger if you knew more about them. I think you might
| have some good points inside, but your frustration and
| ignorance prevent them from being compelling. I encourage
| you to do more reading, but let me point out a few mistakes
| in your post.
|
| * You seem to mistakenly associate a learning disability
| with low intelligence. A person cannot have a learning
| disability and be below average in intelligence by
| definition. Struggling to learn how to read while being
| average or above average in every other subject is
| different than strugglingly to learn everything. The more a
| student struggles to learn to read while excelling at
| everything else, the more likely they are to be diagnosed.
| This means very intelligent students with a learning
| disability are more likely to be diagnosed than average
| students with the same disability.
|
| * Extra time on test is an accommodation.
|
| * Accommodations are not being handed out like candy for no
| reason. Anyone can buy candy. Accommodations require a
| documented disability.
|
| * Many standardized test accommodations are very
| appropriate, such as blind people being offered a braille
| version of the test, or people with poor motor control
| having someone else physically fill in scantron bubbles.
|
| * A student can be disabled based on low intelligence. It's
| not called a learning disability, because it's
| fundamentally a different thing.
| nradov wrote:
| That is not how it works in the real world. Affluent
| parents go doctor shopping to get learning disability
| diagnoses for their children. This has been going on for
| decades (I saw it with some of my classmates when I was
| in school) and the friendly doctors are well known in
| those circles.
|
| I am not claiming that learning disabilities aren't real
| or that students who legitimately have those conditions
| don't deserve some accommodations. But the reality is
| that the current system is totally broken and
| discriminatory.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Hi anxiety higher status parents (professors, doctors,
| etc.) with kids who aren't Einstein go doctor shopping
| and waste district time constantly to get their kids
| testing advantages even though their kids are often
| totally typical kids with 110ish IQs. Special Ed at the
| local district is sick of them because it wastes so much
| time and money and takes away resources from the kids who
| actually need. (Though many of these parents do cause
| their kids to develop actual real anxiety disorders...)
| acmj wrote:
| Also want to add that getting a formal certificate for
| learning disabilities is expensive. From what I heard, an
| ADHD test costs a couple of thousand USD, which could mean a
| lot to low income families.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| I am glad someone pointed this out. I don't know the
| percentage but a lot of students game their GPA in school
| too. From pushing professors to give group assignments to
| using mental health days to claiming to have learning
| disabilities, these are all tools they have including
| cheating. Professors don't usually change their homework
| assignments every time they offer a course and online sites
| sell the answers. Professors know but they can't risk giving
| students below an A-. It causes a shit storm.
| berjin wrote:
| I've seen this play out in a non-US country. My friend with
| wealthier parents got his loans paid because his parents didn't
| earn an 'income' and thus the state interpreted them as being
| poor. In reality they were fairly well off business owners who
| had a good accountant who channeled the cash flows through the
| lowest taxed entities.
| chaostheory wrote:
| If you ban legacy, then you lose needed donations. If you lose
| donations, then costs go up for everyone else. There is a net
| benefit for everyone when there are academically challenged
| wealthy children. Just keep standardized testing to prevent
| mass arbitrary admissions that will inevitably become racist.
|
| https://priceonomics.com/do-elite-colleges-discriminate-agai...
|
| It's happened in the past to Jewish people and it's now
| happening with Asians. It's routine to hear admissions officers
| say that Asians are boring.
|
| If the end goal is to eliminate any sign of a meritocracy, they
| are well on their way to achieving it.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| > If you ban legacy, then you lose needed donations. If you
| lose donations, then costs go up for everyone else.
|
| Or the universities could spend a bit less money. Most
| donations go to things that aren't exactly central to the
| supposed mission of a university, like football fields or $90
| million dining halls [1]. The explosion of administrative
| staff over the last couple decades also doesn't help.
|
| [1] https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/blog/real-
| estate/2016/0...
| chaostheory wrote:
| Sports programs, just like legacy entries, earn a lot of
| money for universities.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| But for the beneficence of the aristocracy...
|
| I think that's a joke of an argument. The people whose kids
| would no longer get in would go somewhere and the
| distribution of their bribery would surely be more
| democratizing.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Did you not read the part where the 'aristocracy' pays way
| more tuition money for their one child? If you weren't so
| focused on class warfare, you'd realize all of that extra
| money can be used for other things such as scholarships for
| families who wouldn't be able to afford a university
| education for their children. The people you're referring
| to wouldn't be able to afford tuition before the rate
| hikes, and they sure would be in a worse position post
| tuition hike
| nick__m wrote:
| Elite institutions like MIT, Yale, Stanford, Princeton and
| Harvard do not need more donations.
|
| Look at the worth of theirs endowment funds at the end of
| 2021 : Harvard 53G$ Yale 42G$
| Stanford 37.8G$ Princeton 37G$ MIT 27.4G$
|
| Can you honestly tell me that they need more donations ?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| G$ == Giga dollars?
| chaostheory wrote:
| Not all universities are elite
| guiambros wrote:
| What is G$?
| bluescrn wrote:
| 1000 megabucks
| mvelbaum wrote:
| 1024
| PNWChris wrote:
| I think that'd be gibidollars (Gi$ or something like
| that?).
|
| All these unusual units are kinda fun, could spice up a
| presentation or conversation to throw in without context.
|
| It gives me that hacker having fun, tarsnap
| picodollar/byte-month pricing vibe.
| jprd wrote:
| It is the SI prefix for giga, and commonly used instead
| of B for "Billions" outside of the US when writing
| "Harvard's endowment fund is currently worth fifty-three
| billion US dollars".
|
| 53G$ == $53B USD
| nick__m wrote:
| 1G$ = 1 000 000 000$
| Master_Odin wrote:
| None of these (and other) schools view endowments as
| something to spend. It must always be growing to show how
| amazing and great the school is.
|
| I remember how during the pandemic there was a number of
| articles about how these schools might have to take out
| some small pittance of the endowment to fund certain things
| and the schools were all doom and gloom about it.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| You don't spend the endowment, you spend the interest.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Many endowments pay the salary of the fundraisers at
| major universities, in fact. And legacy gifts are usually
| set up for "forever" scholarship, where, say 5000 bucks
| is available for a certain type of student each semester
| forever, because the gift to the school was large enough
| that they know investing it will make at least enough to
| cover the cost.
|
| So no, endowments aren't spent, but the returns fund a
| lot of stuff.
| markdown wrote:
| > If you ban legacy, then you lose needed donations. If you
| lose donations, then costs go up for everyone else.
|
| LOL they don't need any more donations.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| This is not the reason ivy's have legacy. They have legacy
| students because that's what makes them the most prestigious
| universities in the world. Legacy students will succeed no
| matter what due to their connections. They will become rich
| and powerful, and networking with the rich and powerful is
| the main value add that ivy's are providing. Without legacy
| admits ivy's would be no different from Berkeley or ucla.
| ww520 wrote:
| We don't need rich people to all piling in to donate to the
| top schools. Have them donated to the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th tier
| schools.
|
| Encouraging donation to top schools via legacy admission
| creates a perverse incentive to concentrate resources at a
| few top schools, creating the cycle of everyone fighting to
| get into them. Money and resources should be spread out.
| chaostheory wrote:
| * * *
| guiambros wrote:
| I like a alternate version of this: tax 25% of all
| donations to schools (all of them, top or not), and
| redirect the money to fund and improve quality of public
| universities.
|
| You still have a strong incentive for folks who want to
| show gratitude to their alma mater, and at the same time
| help improve access and equity to everyone else.
| yakireev wrote:
| _> If you lose donations, then costs go up for everyone
| else._
|
| Aren't costs going up for everyone else anyway? Hot take:
| instead of hoping that rich alumni would donate to
| universities, the nation could tax these folks properly
| instead, and use that money make public education free/cheap.
|
| There are quite a few countries in the world doing this, not
| all of them rich.
| chaostheory wrote:
| That would help public universities, but many universities
| are private
| paleotrope wrote:
| Once a school is all lower class people it will stop being a
| high class product. Part of the value of these institutions is
| in reinforcing and renewing class solidarity.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > If equity is so important
|
| Because equity is about keeping people down, not lifting people
| up.
| JohnDoe_f9t40e wrote:
| 100% correct
| setgree wrote:
| Banning legacy admissions is a coordination problem. Try to
| eliminate it at one school and parents (re: donors) will raise
| an uproar. It would need to be eliminated at the whole cohort
| of peer schools to eliminate parents' exit option.
|
| Semi-related anecdote: my alma mater got huge pushback from
| donors when it tried to eliminate its football team [0], which
| was legendarily bad and a recruiting nightmare to boot
| (apparently football rosters can be 100+, though Swarthmore's
| was ~53). So there was about as clear a case for elimination as
| you could hope for, and _still_ it was a big controversy that
| impacted the school where administrators tend to notice -- its
| endowment.
|
| So when we talk about eliminating legacy admissions, I picture
| that, but just a thousand times worse.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/sports/football-no-
| more-f...
| TimPC wrote:
| The US is the only country in the world where standardized
| testing improves the performance of low-income students. In most
| parts of the world standardized testing is unfair to the poor.
| But in the US the rest of the system is so unfair to the poor
| that standardized testing helps rather than hurts. It's basically
| a consequence of funding schools by property tax and having GPA
| requirements above the maximum possible at certain schools
| because the bonus points courses aren't offered everywhere.
| vbtemp wrote:
| We have to remember that Rob Henderson is a performer running his
| shtick. At first I really liked him, and in general agree with
| his assessments of things.
|
| But he's just another guy that has to turn tricks with some new
| variant of "durr hurr liberal plan for X is elitist and a luxury
| belief."
|
| It's a little personal with him, because right before the 2020
| election he posted something pretentious like "In 2016 I bet and
| won a lot of money on the outcome of the election, and I bet even
| more this time" (Implying his non-elitist background gave him the
| clairvoyance that Trump would win. I asked him who he bet on this
| time. Then the results came in and Trump was clearly losing in
| 2020, and then he blocked me.
|
| In the end, even if we agree with him, he's just another culture
| warrior that whose livelihood depends on feeding the angry masses
| outrage at whatever Team Blue/Team Red is doing.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| As an Asian person, I think it's a cultural thing.
|
| There is this old joke about how even if you are a one-in-a-
| million person, there are still 8000 of "you"s to choose from;
| how does one chose who to pick, if there aren't positions for all
| of them?
|
| So how do you make it "fair"? Since of the number of seats are
| limited, so imagine if the cut-off for the last seat is for
| someone who is in the 90.3765335th percentile, look at how many
| significant digits that is! (Yes, that's how specific it can get,
| when population sizes grow large enough.)
|
| Yes, you can argue about having a "bad day", but there are
| thousands of other people ALSO in the same percentile as you, and
| you all didn't have a "bad day", at some point it's about
| resource limitation.
|
| There are two and a half billion Asians of different varieties,
| that means MILLIONS of people at each economic/social strata. You
| simply CAN'T provide the same resource to all of them, some of
| them will have to vie for a lower-ranked resource.
|
| If there are limited number of seats, and your economy cannot
| afford to fund more seats, then a standardized test is the _only_
| fair way, at least it allows you to have SOME sort of control at
| your luck.
|
| ----
|
| That same thinking applies to Asians who move to the US. It's
| patently unfair, from their PoV, to give weightage to things they
| CAN'T control for (race/wealth etc.) and not give weightage to a
| thing they CAN control for; a standardized test.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" a standardized test is the only fair way"_
|
| It depends on who writes the tests and who the tests are
| written for.
|
| There's a long and shameful history of standardized tests being
| written to benefit certain groups over others, or to stigmatize
| certain groups.
|
| Just because a test is standardized doesn't make it fair.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Most such standardized tests, atleast now-a-days, are
| objective-MCQ type questions that feature heavily on certain
| core stem subjects as Maths, Science etc.
|
| This is partially to allow examiners to create a bank of
| questions that can be rotated around easily, and also to
| create easily markable exams that can be OCR-ed automatically
| and don't require manual markers.
|
| (I think the SAT English essay is an outlier, in most
| countries these sorts of subjective questions are simply not
| a part of standardized test, at least for competitive tests
| like University Entry)
|
| I think it's hard to argue an MCQ marginalizes anyone.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| You've articulated this very well. It's something I also have
| for years believed as a non-Asian person that has become a
| "conceptual framework" (my words...probably inadequate) to
| better understand Asian co-workers now and co-students back in
| my school days (to unfortunately generalize here). For me at
| least it really does explain a lot of the cultural differences
| that lead to lazy western stereotypes.
|
| So many examples of casually thrown around of borderline
| racist-ish terminology/dog whistles..."tiger parents", "hard
| working"...all the "model minority" stuff.
|
| It really is a population density issue...which leads to
| resource scarcity...as a westerner all you have to do is
| interact personally with someone from India or China where you
| have millions of people competing for a seat at a university
| and it becomes pretty clear how you get the "Asian work ethic".
| hedora wrote:
| This happens in the US too though. We have about 10% as many
| people, so for undergrads, it's really just ~ one more level
| of applicant filtering than we have in the US.
| rayiner wrote:
| That's part of it, but as an Asian American immigrant myself,
| the stereotypes aren't really far off. "Tiger parents" is an
| American characterization of how Asian families are generally
| structured: parents (who have knowledge and life experience)
| dictate to kids (who lack both). Dating and relationships are
| discouraged (freeing up huge bandwidth for studying) while
| marriage is expected (heading off the tendency for extended
| adolescence). "Hard working" is a byproduct of being not that
| far removed from subsistence agriculture. "Finding yourself"
| is discouraged. "Carrying out your role" is encouraged.
|
| These are cultural adaptations to an environment that's very
| different from America. My dad grew up in a Bangladeshi
| village, where people who didn't work literally didn't eat,
| and the vocational choices for 99% of people were
| "subsistence farmer." I don't think the words "fair" or
| "unfair" were ever uttered in my house. (And it drives me
| nuts when my American-born kids say that.) In America, these
| cultural traits become positively adaptive, because _most of
| the competition isn 't trying as hard._ It boggles my mind
| how many Americans don't study for the SATs, but do have
| iPhones.
| tptacek wrote:
| How does one study for the SAT, would you say, and what
| impact do you believe that studying has?
| ryandrake wrote:
| My roommate in undergrad (State university) many decades ago
| was an Indian guy. The whole "asian work ethic" stereotype:
| Driven, hard working and brilliant. It dawned on me really
| early on that there were probably 20 _million_ people his age
| in India and out of them all, he was one of the (relative)
| handful to pass all the gatekeepers and come study in the
| USA. Whereas I had a mediocre GPA and SAT score and basically
| out of laziness applied to my home State 's university only
| and got in because of my address. Super early and instructive
| lesson on white (and American) privilege.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > You simply CAN'T provide the same resource to all of them,
| some of them will have to vie for a lower-ranked resource.
|
| It depends what the "resource" is. If it's the mix of prestige
| and the individualized attention of highly impressive scholars
| that you get at elite colleges, then of course not. If it's
| simply high-quality educational content plus some average-
| quality tutoring, that's a scalable resource that could be
| provided to many more people at very low cost.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| I get the gist of your comment, but isn't prestige kind of
| the point (at least partially)?
|
| If education was the point, you don't even need to spend
| money for cheap local community colleges, you can get a very
| good education from MOOCs like Coursera (I am doing one right
| now, in fact), edX, heck youtube even.
|
| But the whole point is that an organization is staking their
| prestige against your qualification. There _wouldn 't_ be a
| barrier to entry in the first place for the MOOCs, so the
| point wouldn't even arise.
|
| ----
|
| I know the HN commenter base prides itself of favoring
| "experience" over "qualifications", but let's be honest here.
|
| When they are both starting from fresh, a "traditionally
| qualified" person would have access to more opportunities,
| because the barriers are lower, which is what parents are
| aiming for, and the more prestigious the qualifying
| authority, the lower the barrier.
| tekla wrote:
| I come from a poor Asian immigrant family, and this SAT shit
| seems wild. My parents always told me that America is an easy
| country to succeed in. Just do decently in school, ace the SAT,
| and boom full ride to a upper middle class life, no matter the
| background.
|
| Its proven pretty true so far.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hgomersall wrote:
| This is what puzzles me. What is the intent of the SAT, is it
| to assess aptitude for something? Is that something the
| desire to achieve good grades? Is it intelligence? Is it the
| aptitude to fire guns in a tank? For sure if you have a test
| that tests something, then you assign outcomes based on that
| assessment, then anyone has the opportunity to understand
| what is being assessed and practice until they are good, but
| what does that tell you?
|
| I don't doubt there's a correlation between some aptitude
| that measures propensity for success and SAT score, but I'm
| still struggling to see how that benefits the poor or the
| migrants in general? In truth, it benefits a narrow section
| that "fit the mould" that is expected by success on a SAT;
| that is, members of the notional outgroup that do the SAT in
| the expected way can benefit, those that don't still fall by
| the wayside.
|
| There are very many intelligent people that for whatever
| reason - cultural, bad parenting, poor education - still fall
| to achieve this mark of success. Is that acceptable? I think
| there's at least scope for saying that maybe a SAT is not the
| optimal strategy for finding all those that would benefit
| most from higher education. I've no idea what is, but there
| seems to be some very strong opinions here that don't seem
| particularly intent on seeing the bigger picture.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| the point of standardized tests, is from what I understand,
| getting some sort of "objective" ranking, not for the
| purpose of intelligence per se, but to have a number so
| that when there is a cutoff, no one complains because
| everyone had ( _ceteris paribas_ ) had an equal chance of
| getting in that cut-off, if they had worked hard enough.
|
| In countries like India, the test like JEE are really
| absurd, because the competition is just that tough. Just
| any sort of question that fits in the syllabus is thrown
| in, because what else can you do?
|
| In countries like the US, where things are a bit _less_
| stressed, they can try to attempt to perhaps gain some
| secondary data, by testing reasoning or what not.
|
| but in the end, it's just a way to rank "fairly" to create
| cut-off, to look too deeply into it is not worth it, that's
| the job for your regular school education.
| hgomersall wrote:
| > but in the end, it's just a way to rank "fairly" to
| create cut-off, to look too deeply into it is not worth
| it, that's the job for your regular school education.
|
| Except, presumably, when there are debates about how the
| tests benefit or not one particular cohort?
| yterdy wrote:
| I don't know what your definition for "ace" is, but I did
| pretty well. That was my peak. Ever since has been dealing
| with barrier after barrier, which often seem actively
| hostile. I suppose that some would chalk my failure up to
| laziness, but everyone that I've seen overcome those barriers
| had access to mentors, contacts, connections, and
| opportunities - resources that don't come my way. Too black,
| too short, too gay, too quiet, too whiny, too weird. Maybe I
| just I trip people's gut alarms?
|
| Granted, most of my peers who received a full ride seem to be
| doing fine. For millennials, I guess your parents gave decent
| advice. When I look around today, though, I feel less like a
| one-off loser than someone at the vanguard of a socioeconomic
| reality where even coming out of an education with no debt
| weight isn't a guarantee of a clean and unencumbered launch.
| Increasingly, superficialities - affinity, attractivenes,
| imminence - are the criteria. Which means that playing by the
| old rules, going forward, is foolish.
|
| I sometimes wonder where I'd be, with my dark skin (et al.)
| and high scores, in a country that cared less about the
| former and more about the latter. But, here, socially, I
| don't know what I'd have to do to beat out an Asian or white
| candidate.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Not sure if America an easier country to succeed in, but I do
| believe it's a RICH country (with a high GDP per capita),
| i.e. it can afford to fund more colleges, imho, which means
| the competition is less.
|
| Not just colleges, but colleges with prestige, there are a
| LOT of American college at every prestige level. The supply
| is rather high.
|
| I am really impressed at the Land grant college schemes, for
| example. Really funneled a lot of money into the creation of
| colleges all over the country, not just in the populous
| cities.
| [deleted]
| nathan_compton wrote:
| "You simply CAN'T provide the same resource to all of them,
| some of them will have to vie for a lower-ranked resource."
|
| Why not just distribute those resources via lottery? Why not
| actually just split resources evenly across the population?
| There are good practical reasons not to do this, but they are,
| fundamentally, ideological (eg, we might feel it is inefficient
| to spend resources on someone which may not provide as much
| productivity as someone else). It serves nothing to pretend
| these things are inevitable.
| hedora wrote:
| Different people have different skill sets.
|
| It makes sense to evenly distribute resources in elementary
| schools, but that's not what is being's discussed here.
|
| You could give me the same violin lessons as a virtuouso, and
| stick a functionally-illiterate Michelin-starred chef in my
| favorite calculus series, but doing so would be a complete
| waste of everyone's time.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| > Why not just distribute those resources via lottery
|
| It comes back to the concept of "fairness"; or rather,
| something you can control for, something you can work hard
| and strive for.
|
| Race/Gender/Ethnicity/Location/Wealth etc. are all lottery
| variables already, people was _something_ that is not a
| lottery.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I would do a very very selective 1st round, eg a college with
| an intake of 1000 would admit 10 people who are special in some
| way, so you can get that kid that is head and shoulders above
| everyone else.
|
| For the other 990 spots, you make a minimum bar of achievement
| (lots of As, high score, whatever) and put everyone who meets
| it in a lottery.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| As I replied to another comment, lottery doesn't achieve what
| (Asian) people really want; an attempt to control destiny,
| some sort of idealized version of fairness and justice.
|
| A test allows them to (seemingly) achieve that.
| lordnacho wrote:
| It's one of those things where people kid themselves that
| it was all them. To some degree it's a useful fiction, we
| can't be going about being all gloomy about our prospects.
|
| But it also creates a heck of a lot of stress. What your
| parents think of you, how they talk about you to their
| friends, is going to depend on this test. On top of it all,
| you're not even really learning anything, you need to spend
| the time learning the test.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| isn't a (limited) exam stress a worthy tradeoff compared
| to life-time stress from uncertainty of sustenance?
|
| Because that's what Asian parents would say, stress a bit
| now, be sure of an income for a lifetime.
|
| obviously, I am not going to discount that stress does
| not scale well and that for children, who do not have the
| maturity to deal with it all, exam stress and peer
| pressure could lead to devasting outcomes...
|
| but asian parents, who have long since forgotten their
| one-time exam stresses, but face daily stresses from
| inflation etc, would argue that it's worth it in the end,
| since they would be comparing themselves to their old
| classmates who didn't make the cut and are worse-off than
| them.
|
| ----
|
| The exam themselves to tend to be absurdist, but when the
| seats are limited, and "fairness" is still required...
| asking candidates to do a special dance might be the only
| alternative left.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Yes, that is exactly what they say. I've heard it many
| times since I am one of those kids.
|
| But they don't really think about how to deal with the
| fallout if things don't go well. I mean sure, tell the
| kid it's important to do well, but don't put everything
| on passing the test. I've never heard any strategy for
| what to do in case it doesn't go well. You'll destroy the
| kid's confidence and possibly his friendships too if you
| make it about your worth as a person.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Because there is no safety net otherwise.
|
| also, wages (and respect) for employees are already
| limited, and the lower down the "totem" pole you are the
| worse it gets. parents don't want to imagine such a
| scenario, even if they have moved to the US where despite
| everything, things are still much better, minimum wage
| wise.
| mchusma wrote:
| I'd be curious to see a good school most the opposite direction.
| Admit ONLY based on SAT or SAT+ACT or something. Effectively
| allow students an "instant acceptance" option. I highly suspect
| that this "SAT-Only" group would be competitive across most or
| all metrics.
| tarotuser wrote:
| I think people are missing the bigger picture, that's related
| directly to the SAT.
|
| In the USA, public education funds are directly derived from the
| local tax base as a percentage of that revenue. If you live in a
| rich area, it means your family is also rich. The tax base,
| although it may be the rough same percentage, is much higher
| actual dollars than a small non-rich community.
|
| I even see that locally in my nearby college town. There's
| definitely a "rich district". Homes go from $750k up to $5m.
| Their elementary has teachers and aides to cover students at 7:1,
| and flush with a wealthy technology budget. The other schools, or
| in particular, the "subsidized housing and trailer parks area's
| schools" have student coverage around 25:1, no teacher aides, and
| very limited tech budget.
|
| This should be of little surprise given how our education system
| by default teaches the wealthy to be wealthy. And that starts as
| early as preschool and easily onwards through public school. And
| naturally, I didn't even touch upon private schools. And in my
| state, vouchers can be used from public schools on private and
| even religious schools. That too is an even higher rung on
| elitism.
|
| Unless you're a genius from a poor family, you're likely going to
| stay in the "dumb and low paying" jobs for most of your lives.
| mrangle wrote:
| Even the most expensive prep schools tend to do limited SAT
| test prep, if any.
|
| Poor kids can technically access the same private test prep as
| rich kids, and whether they actually can or not, financially
| speaking, has nothing to do with the tax base and the school
| itself.
|
| That being said, better schools do provide for better child
| development.
|
| This can be compensated for, to a degree, by enhanced parental
| interaction with the child from an early age.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > This can be compensated for, to a degree, by enhanced
| parental interaction with the child from an early age.
|
| Which, as this article points out, is exactly the kind of
| thing that wealthier parents are able to provide their kids
| and which less wealthy parents often cannot, even when they
| would like to.
| Trevorwendy wrote:
| [dead]
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Now that chatGPT breaks the college essay, proctored standardized
| tests seem like one of the only ways to assess kids.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Not sure I agree with Peter Hitchens, but he wrote a book (A
| Revolution Betrayed) about Modern, Grammar and Comprehensive
| secondary schools in Britain which digs into a lot of this as it
| feeds into the colleges systems in both countries. It's a good
| book for getting your head around the problem.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > Our ruling class is doing all they can to prevent this
| possibility.
|
| HN gets bizarrely left-wing when wokeness comes up.
|
| Ruling classes keeping the poor down? You simply don't see that
| kind of talk here unless affirmative action or similar is
| discussed.
|
| It'll be a double win if these attempts to undermine wokeness
| lead to a society that truly provides equality of opportunity for
| all.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| As one of the comments to the article mentions, a lot of this
| dropping of standardized tests is likely being driven by the fact
| that the Supreme Court will likely rule against affirmative
| action for college admissions. The colleges want to remove as
| many objective measures of student achievement as possible to
| allow them to pick and choose they type of students they want.
| gchallen wrote:
| Related reading which I didn't see posted yet:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/mit-admiss...
|
| Lot of great stuff in there, but here's one quote:
|
| > Richer students don't just get better SAT scores. They also
| tend to outperform on everything else that an admissions
| committee would use to select students. Personal essays? Their
| style and content are more strongly correlated with family income
| than SAT scores are. Recommendation letters? They are subject to
| teachers' classist and racist biases, and even knowing how to
| request the letters requires significant social capital.
| WBrentWilliams wrote:
| I've said this before: read the small print. The SAT (or similar)
| is no longer required to become admitted to Good School(tm). The
| donor class that subsidizes those without other means to attend
| the Good School(tm) have been explicit in their contracts: They
| award on test scores. Has the SAT (or similar) really become not
| necessary?
| honkycat wrote:
| I worked during high school at a restaurant and later as a pizza
| delivery person.
|
| In college I went to school at night and worked during the day.
|
| I basically didn't get an education but paid for two pieces of
| paper that for me a great career... Not as good as a CMU grad,
| but pretty good.
|
| The person OP is describing is me.
|
| I don't think standardized testing is the answer. Nothing good
| happens by accident and using the SAT to fight a proxy war for
| accessibility of high quality higher education is not a good
| strategy.
|
| I don't even know why people bother posting this stuff anymore.
|
| We are living with mass encampments of the unhoused in our major
| cities full of the mentally handicap and physically addicted and
| our government and private sector has decided to let them rot.
|
| 45% of bankruptcies are caused by medical debt.
|
| The rich have consolidated their power. The purse strings are
| closed. Nobody who matters gives a shit about the poor.
|
| To quote George Carlin:
|
| "But there's a reason. There's a reason. There's a reason for
| this, there's a reason education SUCKS, and it's the same reason
| it will never, ever, EVER be fixed.
|
| It's never going to get any better, don't look for it, be happy
| with what you've got.
|
| Because the owners, the owners of this country don't want that.
| I'm talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The
| Wealthy... the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests
| that control things and make all the important decisions.
|
| Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are
| put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice.
| You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU.
| They own everything. They own all the important land. They own
| and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and paid
| for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls,
| they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the
| big media companies, so they control just about all of the news
| and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.
|
| They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to
| get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more
| for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you
| what they don't want:
|
| They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical
| thinking..."
| 1-KB-OK wrote:
| I agree with the article. The SAT is a chance for any student,
| regardless of background, to demonstrate academic skills and the
| ability to succeed. I was one of those students -- my SAT score
| got me a full merit scholarship. I wasn't as polished or
| accomplished as other students around me, but I was able to show
| that yes, I am smart, and that I can succeed academically at the
| college level. I did go to a korean after-school program to help
| study for it though.
|
| I feel like instead of dropping the test they could provide free
| resources to students to prepare for it. At least get them
| familiar with the structure of the test and encourage them to do
| the best they can. A lot of kids like those in the article would
| stand to benefit.
|
| The only winner from getting rid of the test is rich, stupid kids
| that don't do well regardless of how much prep they get. They
| then go on to cheat and BS their way through college and use
| their network to land jobs. Poor and disenfranchised students
| will continue to be marginalized.
| [deleted]
| gqcwwjtg wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something because you and the author seem to
| agree, but I think schools are moving toward test-optional
| applications, not test-ignored. So it still could show that a
| student is excelling. Right?
| raincom wrote:
| One can't file a lawsuit against test-optional schools for
| discrimination. In the end, test-optional = test-ignored
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| Rich people feel less guilty ("black people do bad on tests",
| they say) and also don't have to pay for years of SAT tutoring so
| their average IQ kids overperform and qualify for prestigious
| colleges. Gifted underprivileged kids pay the price. Sounds about
| right.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Maybe I'm old or insufficiently woke, but I don't see legacy or
| identity as substitutes for demonstrated learning. I see the
| decay of rigor and achievement as signals of decline of
| excellence and the crumbling of knowledge. The mythology of
| "everyone needs degrees" created a wealth transfer scam and a
| lowering of standards to sell more student loan debt for
| sheepskins. Maybe we need to throw away arbitrary employment
| requirements and make universities run on merit. Oh and there's a
| gender imbalance in most undergraduate programs where the bar is
| effectively higher for women because men aren't keeping up or
| have been left behind.
| baremetal wrote:
| If everyone must be equitable, then the most expedient way to
| achieve that is to reduce the standard.
| hedora wrote:
| Of course, there will always be a way for well off people to
| buy their way into higher standard systems.
|
| We need a word for this. "Separate but equitable"?
| baremetal wrote:
| Perhaps we can ask the Soviets what they called it.
| CJefferson wrote:
| "Legacy" applicants is the opposite of woke, it's been how the
| "old boys network" has run for hundreds of years, getting under
| qualified students into top Universities.
| mrangle wrote:
| That's an urban myth perpetuated by people interested in
| generalized grievance. At least from the period I attended
| prep school, and beyond. From the mid-1990's.
|
| Almost in-total, the "old boys" applicants are not under-
| qualified. When compared to almost any kid that attended
| lesser secondary schools than the privileged kid attended, on
| average.
|
| These kids have almost always proven themselves in elite
| educational environments. Most of those who skate by in such
| environments don't go Ivy. They will instead attend one of
| the many more numerous elite Liberal Arts colleges that most
| others ignore but that carry almost equivalent cache.
|
| There are no Stuyvesant valedictorians missing Ivy
| admissions. In the same vein, there are plenty of prep school
| kids who do. I've only rarely seen underqualified kids go
| Ivy, and the only one that I can actually think of was a poor
| kid.
|
| Today, Ivy's are skipping qualified lesser privileged kids
| for diversity. In eliminating the SAT/ACT, they are
| essentially gambling that their reputation rather than their
| student body will continue to qualify them as Elite. Over
| time, I have doubts. The curriculums will have to be adjusted
| so as to avoid the pall of racism or classism that will occur
| when wildly divergent grades become apparent.
| ww520 wrote:
| If they are so qualified, why not let them compete on the
| even ground with the rest of the applicants? Why is there a
| need to special track them via legacy?
|
| Legacy should have been abolished long time ago. It's the
| epitome of systematic racism.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > If they are so qualified, why not let them compete on
| the even ground
|
| There's not enough room for all the qualified applicants.
|
| Choosing based on family is less fair than a lottery but
| it's not like a lottery is very good either.
| ww520 wrote:
| A legacy with a B grade candidate will get in. It's a
| boost, not a tie breaker.
| joenot443 wrote:
| So does that mean that on average, "legacy" students at
| these schools are lower performers? Since their bar for
| admission would be that much lower?
|
| This system doesn't really exist in Canada so I'm finding
| it very interesting
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Possible! But my previous answer was based on the "If
| they are so qualified" scenario. The important takeaway
| is that the legacy special track has a reason to exist
| _whether or not they let unqualified students in_.
| mrangle wrote:
| You seem to have missed the point of my prior post, and
| you misunderstand how legacy admissions work. Dropping
| the rhetorical nuke of "systemic racism" doesn't cover
| for that. Read my prior post again.
|
| Legacy gets one looked at. Its not an automatic
| admission.
|
| Unlesss you are simply stating that legacy admissions
| should be disqualified (this would be ridiculous), then
| also consider that:
|
| you may be making the "research" error of uncontrolled
| variables that include the fact that legacy kids are
| likely to be smart, their parents are astute enough to
| track them in a manner that makes them better candidates
| on average, and that their parents are more aware of the
| process that they can relate to the child.
|
| Al leading to a statistically significant rate of legacy
| admissions that has nothing at all to do with unfairness.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > Legacy gets one looked at
|
| I'm not that familiar with the US legacy system but even
| if it is just "we'll definitely take a look at your
| application" that isn't competing on even ground is it?
|
| It might not guarantee you a place but it's clearly an
| unfair advantage.
| mrangle wrote:
| No one is disputing the fact that there are advantages to
| being legacy, at least in terms of giving the application
| a hard look so as not to unduly disappoint donors and
| other people in the "club" that is the entire reason that
| non-legacy candidates want in.
|
| Versus say a public school (American) candidate who gets
| filtered out earlier because they graduated in the middle
| of their class.
|
| I don't recall anyone promising anyone else a perfectly
| even playing field down to the most minuscule detail.
|
| The people arguing that point seem to be demanding a
| social standard and then working from the assumption that
| it is a shared standard, value, and may even be the law.
| None of which is true.
|
| But the more important points are at the end of my last
| post, which point to the fact that people arguing against
| the rate of legacy admissions haven't a leg to stand on
| without first controlling for obvious variables.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > I don't recall anyone promising anyone else a perfectly
| even playing field down to the most minuscule detail.
|
| Neither do I but that doesn't mean that we should make
| trivial changes to even the playing field where possible.
| Especially when that trivial change is just to _stop
| doing something that is very obviously unfair_.
|
| At this point I'm guessing you or your children benefited
| from the legacy system and don't want to feel guilty
| about it because I can't really imagine any other reason
| to defend the system. It's _very obviously_ unfair, and
| there is _very obviously_ no good reason to keep it
| (other than money of course).
|
| > people arguing against the rate of legacy admissions
| haven't a leg to stand on without first controlling for
| obvious variables.
|
| You don't need to do any statistical analysis to prove it
| has an effect to know that it is unfair. Like, if you
| took fair dice and then sanded one side slightly, you
| don't need to actually do any actual analysis to know
| that you shouldn't do that because there are no possible
| good effects and one possible bad effect.
| ww520 wrote:
| Legacy boosts admission rating. That's all needed to be
| said.
|
| It's systematic racism because legacy admission has been
| part of the official admission system for the longest
| time. It's a system to favor the incumbents, the riches,
| the powerful, and the non-minority.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| But systematic racism against Asians who actually are
| smart is okay right?
| tqi wrote:
| Two questions:
|
| 1. does having a parent who is an alum make a student
| more qualified?
|
| 2. does having a parent who is an alum increase the
| likelihood of an applicant being accepted?
| adrr wrote:
| Is it an urban myth? We can look at former presidents like
| George who attended Yale with a 1200 SAT and a 2.5 HS GPA.
| [deleted]
| sillypuddy wrote:
| States and companies are starting to drop college arbitrary
| college degree requirements:
|
| https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/pennsylvania-governor-r...
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/25/companies-eliminate-college-...
| aperson_hello wrote:
| But all it will take for those arbitrary requirements to get
| reinstated is another recession...
| cleandreams wrote:
| I totally agree. I was an SAT high tester in an unsupportive
| home. I was not a good student. I had actually flunked a grade in
| elementary school though they let me pass. BTW, I ended up as a
| principal level at Microsoft.
|
| When I tested 99.9 percentile in Verbal and 97 percentile in Math
| my father's only comment was, "Who ever thought you could test
| like that?" Snicker, snicker.
|
| I'm disgusted by this decision. You HAVE to let kids have a way
| of knowing they have capabilities when for some reason the
| environment blocks that.
| thephyber wrote:
| Your anecdote is that you weren't a good student, but you
| tested well and you credit that as having unlocked success in
| your career.
|
| I have 2 anecdotes of high school students who earned near
| perfect SAT scores, were terrible students in high school,
| barely passed their undergraduate courses and are struggling to
| maintain careers in tech.
|
| My point is that standardized testing is a measure of
| potential. But a college must gamble on a bad-grades, high-
| scores student. The payoff for a college might be better if
| they target higher grades with slightly lower scores. Not every
| student lives up to their capacity and the transition away from
| home to college isn't an easy one.
|
| My preference is to build more colleges and let them choose
| their own entrance criteria. Also, adults should do far more to
| help high school students understand how much social status,
| marketing, and press relations do to make some colleges appear
| far more prestigious than they are.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Ivys further cementing their role as champions of inequality.
| petilon wrote:
| There is this belief among some, that the wealthy have an
| advantage when it comes to standardized tests such as SAT. This
| isn't true. Correlation isn't causation. You can't use your
| wealth to buy SAT scores. The best SAT tutoring available is Khan
| Academy, and it is free.
| euroderf wrote:
| If you're going to discuss standardized testing, you should at
| least mention that it's totally a racket: Educational Testing
| Service.
| i_am_toaster wrote:
| Whenever I see articles like this one, I imagine this is the kind
| of PR that US colleges would use to deflect conversational topics
| they don't want happening. Get people talking about "how do we
| get into college?" (with the assumption that college is where we
| want to be) instead of "why is the US college system broken?"
|
| Not saying this is that, but just a thought and I'd be curious to
| see if this is a trend that continues.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| As a Canadian I never took anything like the SAT. I don't quite
| get why it exists. Or why people are convinced it needs to exist.
| Most of the world does fine without it.
|
| That being said, I support whatever helps empower the diminished
| classes and helps quash the undeserved power of those born into
| money. ...And in that case, the SAT might make a lot of sense now
| that I think of it.
|
| Even if your teenage years were a quagmire and you have no grades
| to show for it, a single test can still open you up to academic
| opportunities.
| pjscott wrote:
| Yes, that's _exactly_ the historical rationale for the adoption
| of the SAT. It gained popularity in the first half of the 20th
| century as an attempt to identify poor kids with academic
| potential, so they could get educational opportunities that
| would otherwise have been out of their reach. Harvard, for
| example, used to be populated almost entirely by people who had
| gone to expensive private schools -- and then in 1934 they
| started giving admission and scholarships to students from
| lower classes who scored well on standardized tests, as part of
| an effort to improve socioeconomic mobility.
| [deleted]
| paulsutter wrote:
| Employers should embrace standardize testing: we're on the cusp
| of a revolution in education driven by the tireless personalized
| tutoring and feedback of LLMs
|
| Of course not all schools are ending testing, MIT for example:
|
| "We are reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions
| cycles" https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-
| our...
| LeonardoTolstoy wrote:
| If you read the explanation I do think that makes sense in that
| they are very clear that it is specifically the _math_ portion
| of the SAT/ACT where they see the value. And generally I agree
| with that, especially as a threshold (as opposed to a fine
| ranking).
|
| It was similar when I applied to grad school (this was
| engineering). They told us pretty unequivocally that getting a
| perfect GRE math score was pretty much required, but that the
| verbal went right in the bin, so don't worry about it.
|
| It makes sense for engineering focused schools or those
| applying to engineering schools. I'm still less convinced
| places like Harvard where a good chunk of the students won't
| take a ultra-difficult math class during their time there has
| much use in the SATs. At least in the "I got a 1580 on my SATs
| but someone with a 1570 got in over me, how is that fair?" Kind
| of way.
| ec109685 wrote:
| As an aside, that is so well written, and I love the use of
| inline citations that expand right where the reader is versus
| jumping to the bottom. It feels so natural that I wish all
| publications did that.
| ghaff wrote:
| I had a professor in grad school who had studied how admissions
| inputs correlated to various measures of success (which is of
| course a fraught subject of uts own). This was a while back
| though I assume not much as changed. As I recall, standardized
| tests followed by some sort of adjusted class rank were the
| best predictors while a lot of the softer stuff like interviews
| and letters of recommendation were pretty close to worthless. I
| expect schools could drop some of the more time-consuming
| softer stuff with very little impact on the admissions process.
|
| In MIT's case it probably is especially important to assess
| certain types of skills, because someone who doesn't have a
| reasonable math background for example is going to have a bad
| time. (Though problems doing math is a surprisingly common
| theme in higher ed including at the grad level--even with
| programs you wouldn't think were especially quantitative.)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _while a lot of the softer stuff like interviews and
| letters of recommendation were pretty close to worthless_
|
| It's telling we're seeing testing attacked while these are
| preserved.
| lumb63 wrote:
| It's not a mistake, that's for sure. I'll be more blunt
| since a lot of other comments in this thread beat around
| the bush: higher education institutes are removing
| objective admissions criteria so that they can admit less
| qualified minorities on subjective grounds.
| baremetal wrote:
| the question is, why? why are they doing it? the real
| reason not the ostensible one.
| ljhlkjlkj wrote:
| [dead]
| IshKebab wrote:
| Money presumably. There's an extremely strong incentive
| for educational institutions to spend their long term
| reputation on short term financial gain by setting high
| fees and giving everyone a high grade. Basically everyone
| loves it except people who already graduated.
|
| And maybe employers, but employers tend to do their own
| tests because of the difficulty of comparing external
| test results across time and institutions.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _question is, why?_
|
| Discretionary admissions with social goals turns the
| university, and its administrators, into institutions
| with broad public remit.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, on the one hand, student applicants want to feel that
| "I am not a number, I am a human being."
|
| And admission committees put a lot of time and effort into
| trying to discern qualities that go beyond some numbers of
| the page to admit a qualified but diverse student body (for
| reasons both good and arguably bad or ineffective).
| tomohawk wrote:
| Employers used to have standardized tests for all sorts of
| things. The tests enabled a lot of upward mobility for people
| to pursue occupations that did not require college degree. If
| you could show aptitude in a test and had at least a high
| school education, they'd take you on and train you and you'd
| have a nice career.
|
| However, certain groups sued saying that "equality of outcome"
| is more important than "equality of opportunity". They argued
| that if the outcome of a test showed intersectional
| differences, then the test _must_ be biased. They succeeded in
| pressuring the various trade groups and industries to get rid
| of the tests or be sued into oblivion.
|
| The trade groups that offered these tests realized it was just
| easier to require college degrees as a proxy instead of having
| their own specific tests and having to deal with these pressure
| groups. This is why many occupations these days require a
| degree when it seems like that should be unnecessary.
|
| This slammed the door to upward mobility for many that the
| pressure groups were claiming to try to help.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Can you provide references for this story?
| standy17817 wrote:
| It was a Supreme Court case, Griggs vs Duke Power, in 1970.
| Since then, employers cannot use IQ tests or standardized
| tests, since they were deemed discriminatory against
| minorities.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
| kenjackson wrote:
| This case says something different though. It says you
| can't use a test that doesn't relate to the job,
| regardless of if there's intent to discriminate or not.
|
| A standardized test that tests your ability to do the job
| is still allowable -- presumably even if minorities fare
| worse on it.
| tomohawk wrote:
| This misses the point. The point is that the process is
| the punishment. The process is that these groups will sue
| over and over again until you give in.
| kenjackson wrote:
| That story doesn't say that at all. You brought in your
| own baggage to make that claim.
| jiscariot wrote:
| This case is the whole reason the "disparate impact"
| phrase exists and its had a chilling effect on employment
| testing. If you're a large FANG company hiring
| programmers, you risk testing (validating someone can
| write code), but if you don't have the pocketbook and
| legal team, there is not much incentive to put your
| company at legal risk of being sued. This is especially
| true when you can just use "college degree in X required"
| as an extremely inefficient and costly proxy for what
| could have been a test. And we wonder why tuition is so
| high.
| kenjackson wrote:
| But even small tech companies do coding tests. I don't
| think its a function of large pocketbooks. Rather I think
| that they found tests that correlate more to the work
| done on the actual job.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Or, what a private employer tested was not necessarily a fair
| standardized test, given they are a private entity that could
| do whatever they wanted, not part of the public education
| system that has to adhere to all kinds of annoying standards.
|
| Just because something claims to be fair doesn't mean it is.
| nemo44x wrote:
| When universities drop standardized testing but keep legacy
| admissions it tells you all you need to know.
| mrangle wrote:
| There are no bottom-barrel legacy admissions.
|
| The "club", which includes the assurance of giving legacies a
| hard look, is largely why these Universities are desirable for
| non-legacy candidates.
|
| In general, but also University depending, the education itself
| is nothing that can't be attained at many liberal arts
| colleges.
| nemo44x wrote:
| It's about the connections, not the content. It's about being
| with a cohort of people that can play at your level and share
| ambitions. Rubbing shoulders with rich kids who are average
| isn't as useful as you make it out. Rich people will invest
| in smart kids that have the prestige of a top university with
| or without their own kids being connected to them.
| baremetal wrote:
| did you think they weren't gonna protect their own?
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Interesting how many people try using inequality of outcomes as
| evidence for inequality of opportunities
| kenjackson wrote:
| Especially since evidence of inequality of opportunity is so
| prevalent.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Would you like to provide an example then? Government
| inequality please, I'm not interested in hearing why you
| believe a private party should be obligated to give you
| anything.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Probably referring to things like this:
| https://www.sba.gov/federal-contracting/contracting-
| assistan...
| kenjackson wrote:
| It's not about being obligated or private parties. It's
| just simply pointing out that not everyone has equal
| opportunity. You can start with access to prenatal health
| care, which literally starts before birth. And then you can
| find inequality of opportunity all the way up through life
| -- from differences in water quality, school quality,
| access to money through inequality in banking access,
| access to high quality foods, etc....
|
| This isn't about the causes of these issues. But it's
| obvious that not everyone has the same opportunities in
| childhood. It seems odd that you'd even question this.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Like I said, I'm not interested in hearing why you
| believe other individuals should be forced to pay more
| money to things that would benefit you. Do you have any
| examples of government inequality? For instance, does the
| law require that a white student with the same SAT as a
| black student be prioritized?
| kenjackson wrote:
| We were talking about inequality of opportunity. There
| are lots of sources of this inequality.
|
| One example of government inequality is in sentencing of
| crimes. Also in arrests related to drug possession.
| Another example is tax breaks for the wealthy. And farm
| subsidies. Access to federal money for small businesses.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Sure, in the case I believe any inequality in sentencing
| and arrests should be eliminated. As should subsidies and
| non-consumption taxes, making tax breaks
| irrelevant/impossible. Seems like you have no such
| consistency.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Why do you say I have no consistency? I'm not making
| judgments. I'm simply pointing out that there is ample
| inequality of opportunity.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I realize that the argument here is isolated to testing, so
| perhaps instruction is out of scope, but it reeks of a sickness I
| see all over education: so often we don't bother teach, we merely
| filter.
| zenta wrote:
| Probably the most common pro-SAT take I see is: "I wouldn't be
| where I was today without the SAT, so therefore it must be a good
| thing."
|
| Which is fine.
|
| What _is_ narrow sighted is extending that to "Everyone will
| benefit from the SAT" and "the system must remain the same
| because it worked for me".
|
| This article unfortunately drops into the latter category.
| analog31 wrote:
| In my view it might be possible to distribute resources to a
| greater extent by making it explicitly a lottery. For instance, a
| college could assign a "score" to each applicant, using their
| existing process, but then deliberately add a certain amount of
| random noise to the score. Socially, everybody would know that
| acceptance was decided by a combination of "merit" (by whatever
| measure) and luck.
|
| The degree of randomness could depend on the school. For
| instance, community colleges accept virtually 100% of applicants
| anyway, and a random factor would not change anything.
| lapcat wrote:
| I think the author is missing an important point: like many young
| people, he was smart but undisciplined. If he had gone directly
| to college from high school, instead of into the military, he
| probably would have performed as badly in college as he did in
| high school. He needed more time to grow up and mature. The SAT
| is irrelevant to that natural fact.
|
| If you're not self-disciplined, then college can be even worse
| than high school, because you have more personal freedom in
| college. For example, if you skip classes in high school, you're
| in big trouble, but if you skip classes in college, they just
| shrug, cash your tuition check, and give you an F. In college,
| the adult supervision is largely absent. You're expected to be an
| adult and supervise yourself.
|
| The military accepts smart underachievers because the military is
| going to force you to work whether you like it or not.
|
| I didn't join the military myself, but it took me until age 24 to
| become self-disciplined. Although I was smart enough to get into
| college, I wasn't psychologically ready for it at 18, and I
| dropped out at age 20. I had a great time partying for the first
| 2 years though. ;-)
| rflrob wrote:
| > if you skip classes in college, they just shrug, cash your
| tuition check, and give you an F.
|
| Depends on the college. A friend of mine who went to an "elite
| institution" struggled to supervise themselves and got set up
| with a counselor to keep them on track. I'm not certain this
| was actually in their best interests, since they've spent most
| of their late 20s and early 30s struggling to apply to med
| school but missing deadlines.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I finished high school with a 2.2 GPA and my SAT score was 1380.
| I was a terrible student, and I hated being in school, but
| somehow I did really well on the standardized test. That got me
| into the community college.
|
| Standardized tests equalize things. It's everything else that
| should be banned, because all of those steaks get manipulated.
| wunderland wrote:
| All of this debate about what measures should be used to gatekeep
| higher education ignore that the US system is only loosely about
| teaching students; the goal of an American university degree is
| class differentiation.
|
| There is not a shortage of textbooks or qualified teachers who
| could explain calculus or history or economics. As a society, the
| could easily produce far more educated people (and for a lower
| cost), but that is not the goal of a degree. The diploma --
| especially from an elite school like Columbia -- first and
| foremost is a signifier that you deserve entrance into an upper
| middle managerial class. Unless the goals of higher education are
| teaching (or god forbid actual job training), the entrance
| requirements will always be arbitrary enough that class lines can
| be sufficiently preserved.
| freework wrote:
| I feel the same way. Imagine if Harvard had the ability to
| enroll one billion students per year. There would be no need to
| use either grades, SAT score, personal essays or anything else
| to reject students. They would be able to accept everybody, and
| then everybody could get an elite education and society would
| be so much better off.
|
| But that would never happen. The whole point of ivy league is
| that they are exclusive. Companies get to feel special when
| they hire an ivy league grad so they can feel special for
| having one of the special chosen ones. If everyone gets to have
| an ivy league degree, then the ivy league degree becomes
| worthless.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The ivy leagues combined are half a percent of college
| students. They are not representative of the system as a
| whole.
| [deleted]
| vgatherps wrote:
| In a loose sense this is the accepted purpose of a degree, not
| just as an education center (theoretically motivated peers in
| addition to the teachers), but as a stamp of "we have given you
| education in X and deemed that you learned/retained enough of
| it". I don't know that many school do it well, but some
| universities can claim that they have much more rigorous
| programs than others and so students going there will come out
| better educated (I studied abroad and the mathematics standards
| at my host school were just nonexistent).
|
| Anyone can pick up a math book and start teaching themselves,
| there's no doubt about it - but any form of third-party
| verification of this is very high effort on a case-by-case
| basis.
| tester756 wrote:
| >There is not a shortage of textbooks or qualified teachers who
| could explain calculus or history or economics.
|
| There is shortage of skilled teachers, especially in CS.
|
| People go to the industry cuz pay sucks.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| If you want to help poor kids let them take the SAT exams for
| free.
| rflrob wrote:
| One obvious difference between how the AVSAB and SAT are used is
| that the minimum score on the AVSAB is ~ 35th percentile
| (somewhere around a 980 on the SAT). That kind of score is likely
| all-but disqualifying at Columbia, where the 25th percentile is
| 1450, and only 5-6% of applicants are accepted.
|
| The question is not "does the SAT provide some globally useful
| measure of college performance," to which the answer is "very
| probably yes"; instead, Columbia is asking "does requiring it
| help them identify top tier talent from underrepresented
| backgrounds rather than filter out top talent from those
| backgrounds", to which the answer is "quite possibly not". They
| aren't banning it as a factor, they are just permitting those
| with a low score to omit it.
|
| And lest I sound like I'm cheerleading elite universities here, I
| suspect there are enough people with >1500 SATs and family
| incomes <$50k that you could fill 2 whole Columbias. They're
| obviously going to keep admitting legacies and other high donor
| value applicants because they're mostly trying to maximize return
| on investment.
| ec109685 wrote:
| The key part that is glossed over is that Columbia is making SATs
| optional, so if a candidate is amazing in all ways except they
| are a poor test taker, they do not have to submit a test score.
|
| And the author also tries to correlate SATs with the Armed Forces
| aptitude tests, the latter which weeds out those at the far
| bottom end of aptitude versus making hitting a high bar a
| requirement for entry. Once in, recruits are judged by other
| means. And while what he says is true about how poorly those low
| scoring recruits faired, a big reason they died at a higher rate
| was that they were assigned to infantry at a higher rate, so were
| more often put in harms way.
|
| Finally, why do we assume the SATs are fair? I was fairly good at
| the SATs, but would have been awful if they had required
| spelling, grammar or were fill in the blank versus multiple
| choice. Should I have a leg up over everyone because I am good at
| what it tested? I chose not to submit SAT 2's for writing for
| that reason (timed essay writing for an hour in pen was a truly
| awful experience).
| mrangle wrote:
| "Poor test taker", without fail, is a bs excuse for people who
| are lesser academically talented but cannot bear to admit it.
| With a couple of exceptions that I list at the end.
|
| Doing well on these tests is absolutely as important as all of
| the other ways that these candidates are amazing.
|
| It is as irrational to highlight amazing performance in other
| areas while discounting sub-par performance in standardized
| testing. Just as much as it would be the inverse.
|
| These tests lend insight into, and serve to balance, the
| "amazing" or "underperforming" metrics in these other areas
| that may be in fact be more a measure of the relative quality
| or relative competition within these other areas.
|
| In my opinion, the only two factors that are likely to truly
| affect test scores beyond innate / developed talent are: time
| management and the timeline of natural cognitive development.
|
| If time management is an issue, then it will be an issue in
| college as well. If it is an issue because of uncontrollable
| factors, then the student should seek help to have other
| arrangements made that will enable them to eventually do well
| on the test.
|
| Some people truly don't cognitively bloom until their early to
| mid twenties. One indication of this might be signs of talent
| with underperforming grades. Other strategies are more
| appropriate than having them flounder at an elite University at
| eighteen years old.
| prepend wrote:
| > Should I have a leg up over everyone because I am good at
| what it tested?
|
| Yes, that's a feature not a bug. The SAT doesn't test randomly.
| It is designed to test for specific subjects and knowledge in
| those subjects.
|
| I've SAT is not fun but I think it's purpose is to fairly test
| all takers and rank them to assist with allocating educational
| resources.
|
| It's such an odd question to ask "should I get a leg up because
| I got an A in chemistry and someone else got a C?" There are
| many reasons that make trades hard to get. But the idea is to
| compensate for them as best as possible and not dwell on the
| fact that any merit system will not be completely fair.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I think the point might have been, you can be excellent at
| chemistryy, a real value to society with your ingenuity and
| rigor, and be no good at all at writing about chemistry.
|
| A test like that would be fair if it were testing for
| journalists.
|
| Maybe every job needs at least a little bit of rounded basic
| skills like that, and so it's fair for the test to include
| _some_ the same way. In that case I see no problem there
| either.
|
| But I don't know how out of balance the commenter is talking
| about. Was the test they are thinking of totally wrong or did
| it just include the appropriate portion of basic rounded
| literacy/competency, and if they sucked at it, then that was
| exactly the job the test is there to do is to guage those
| weaknesses?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| I think we can all agree there is no such thing as a
| perfect test, but at the end of the day we need some sort
| of objective metrics if we want a merit-based educational
| system.
| ahepp wrote:
| It seems to me that what's being debated here is a point of fact.
| Shouldn't the article be presenting directly applicable evidence
| rather than telling anecdotes about the Vietnam War?
| SergeAx wrote:
| > The luxury belief class [...] wants to keep you mired in
| [poverty and chaos]
|
| And why would they want that? Author doesn't provide any
| reasoning about it.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Tragedy of the well-heeled commons.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| I think an important thing to note is that the university of
| California Academic Senate (not exactly a body that is seeking to
| overthrow liberal narratives) conducted a review on the effects
| of eliminating the SAT, and concluded that eliminating the SAT
| would _disadvantage_ non-asian minorities. They then voted
| unanimously to keep standardized testing, but were overruled by
| the UC regents, who made their decision based on no evidence at
| all, resulting in UC dropping standardized tests.
|
| https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/committees/sttf/
| sct202 wrote:
| The SATs may not be fully fair, but they are definitely more fair
| than any other means of judging college applicants.
|
| Extracurriculars can make a very mediocre student look amazing,
| and if you pour enough money into sports, student organizations,
| community organizing, arts, etc, eventually one of them might pan
| out as sounding impressive. Middle class and poor kids won't have
| opportunities like that, while rich people can keep spending
| until their child seems unique and interesting.
| djaouen wrote:
| The only reason I was able to break into programming was because
| of high standardized test scores. The SAT and others like it
| really are a great equalizer. Dropping the requirement is a
| shame.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| They're not banning it, it's just no longer a requirement. You
| could still have benefited.
| tomp wrote:
| Sorry, but what do you mean?
|
| If you said any other career except _programming_ I 'd agree
| with this, but programming is literally the least gate-kept of
| the high-paying careers. _Anyone_ can break into programming,
| all you need is the internet, interest and aptitude to
| understand code.
| qsort wrote:
| > Anyone can break into programming, all you need is the
| internet, interest and aptitude to understand code.
|
| If by "break into programming" you mean getting any decent
| paying job, it's even easier than that. I'd say it's closer
| to "show up on time having showered and be able to code
| yourself out of a paper bag".
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| And time. Don't forget about time. Not everyone has the
| luxury of 24h/day.
| tomp wrote:
| that goes for any career. I'm talking about young people
| who have plenty of time to invest into their future.
|
| Doctor? Gatekeepers. Actor? Gatekeepers. Lawyer?
| Gatekeepers. Programmer? Just show up and be good! (The
| closest thing to a meritocracy there is.)
| oofnik wrote:
| In my country at least, having friends or family with a foot
| in the door is pretty essential to landing that first
| interview. You still need to demonstrate competence, though.
|
| I think the newness of software engineering relative to more
| traditional professions like medicine, law, and even other
| kinds of engineering is a large part of the reason why
| gatekeeping is less of a barrier. Given enough time, though,
| I'm sure this will change for the worse.
| i_am_toaster wrote:
| I do think it's hard to break into initially -- if you are
| approaching it from any other industry (such as what I did),
| it can take a few jobs to make the leap into a high paying
| career.
|
| Edit: not trying to derail what you had said either, just a
| comment
| tokey wrote:
| Isn't this patently obvious that dropping the SAT is entirely
| about creating pretext for continued discrimination against Asian
| applicants?
|
| In 1996, California repealed affirmative action via Prop 209. At
| the UC Berkeley and UCLA, considered the 'best' of the UC system,
| Asians represented 25-30% of the student base. Studies and fear-
| mongering at the time showed that a repeal of affirmative action
| would imply that Asians would become 90% of the enrollment based
| on the admissions factors used.
|
| The UC system dismantled its admissions framework, and yet
| despite moving to a 'softer' framework, Asian enrollment at UC
| Berkeley rose to 65-70%, which is the case today.
|
| Now the ithe same thing happening, but on a national scale, 27
| years later. It's about time! The reality is on any quantifiable,
| OBJECTIVE framework, Asians and to a lesser extent, whites, have
| been shown to be discriminated against. The only way to sustain
| this, especially in light of the pending ruling from SCOTUS
| likely banning affirmative action policies at Harvard et al... is
| to dismantle any external, objective framework for measuring
| applicants.
|
| Chief Justice Roberts said it plainly: "the only way to end
| discrimination is to end discrimination."
|
| My question is, if you eliminated race - 'banned the box' on
| applications, what would the outcomes be? Answer is self-evident
| and that's the true reason the SAT and test scores in general are
| going away. "a rose by any other name".
| [deleted]
| kenjackson wrote:
| How could whites be discriminated against if Asians would rise
| to 90% of the accepted population? There aren't enough
| underrepresented minorities at selective all combined to get
| Asians to 90%. That is most of the pool that Asians would take
| is from White students. From a pure counting perspective, more
| whites get in over "more deserving" Asians than any other group
| (assuming your numbers are accurate).
|
| Based on this Whites are the greatest beneficiaries of
| affirmative action (by numbers), even if blacks are by ratio.
| There just aren't enough blacks at these schools to make that
| much of a difference of scale.
| tokey wrote:
| I was incorrect about the 65% of Berkeley as Asian. It's
| 30.6%. Note this is double the percentage as the Ivy League
| schools - and it's based on a framework that was specifically
| developed as a way to get around the 1996 ban on affirmative
| action.
|
| I still believe the only explanation for eliminating clear,
| measurable and quantifiable metrics for university admissions
| is because universities are looking for discrete ways to
| continue discriminatory tactics against Asians and to a
| lesser extent, whites. This is not about legacy admissions
| practices.
|
| "Berkeley diversity statistics show that the enrolled student
| population at the University of California, Berkeley is
| composed of individuals who identify as Asian (30.6%), White
| (25.4%), Hispanic or Latino (16.3%), Two or More Races
| (5.5%), Black or African American (2.42%), American Indian or
| Alaska Native (0.139%), Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific
| Islanders (0.132%), and Other Pacific Islanders (0.132%)."
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Why is that a bad thing?
|
| Cal is in Bay Area. Bay Area is like 35% Asian.
|
| I agree that certain people are racist / jealous towards
| Asians because we are smart and can get ahead in a
| generation even when we start far behind some other people,
| but UCB is a state school located in a area that has a lot
| of Asian population.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I still don't see how it's discrimination against White
| students. This actually looks more like discrimination
| against Asians, with Whites being the biggest beneficiary
| of the discrimination based on the numbers. Blacks get the
| biggest bump, but it is Whites who "steal" the most spots.
|
| It does make me wonder about the marketing of anti-
| affirmative action. For example you see on social media the
| kids who posts about their great grades and scores and not
| getting into the Ivies. The common refrain is that some
| black kid got their spot due to affirmative action.
| Although it's actually more likely, if the applicant is
| Asian, that it is a white kind who got that spot due to
| affirmative action. I wonder how public perception changes
| if they knew that reality?
| hedora wrote:
| In the UC system, Asians are the only over-represented
| group, specifically because they are higher achieving on
| average.
|
| Any effective equity based admissions system will have a
| similar effect as UC's old (edit: offensively racist)
| Asian quotas.
| bsdetector wrote:
| > I still don't see how it's discrimination against White
| students. This actually looks more like discrimination
| against Asians, with Whites being the biggest beneficiary
| of the discrimination based on the numbers.
|
| Because you are looking at it through the lens of total
| student makeup of certain top universities.
|
| If Whites need 100 points higher on SAT than some others,
| then Whites are being discriminated against. That is, if
| you remove only the discrimination against Whites then
| they do better in the current system. If Asians need 200
| points higher on SAT and you remove all discrimination
| then Whites do worse at some top universities than
| currently. So Whites would be both being discriminated
| against and for _at those certain universities_.
|
| If you look at the overall college system, there's
| something like 35% of undergrads that are Black/Hispanic
| and 5% for Asian so in the overall system Whites net
| benefit more from no discrimination than Asians do.
|
| So you've picked a particular point of view between
| principled and subjective, global and local, to conclude
| Whites aren't being discriminated against. Maybe it's
| worth exploring why.
| kenjackson wrote:
| > If you look at the overall college system, there's
| something like 35% of undergrads that are Black/Hispanic
| and 5% for Asian so in the overall system Whites net
| benefit more from no discrimination than Asians do.
|
| I don't understand this. The vast majority of colleges
| are uncompetitive. If you apply and can afford it, you
| get in. Affirmative action is only relevant at
| competitive colleges. For example, at the totality of the
| UC system, it's only 4.5% Black, 22.5% Hispanic, 22.2%
| White, and 32.2% Asian. It's in these schools Asians get
| the benefit. Whites and Blacks were the two groups
| hardest hit by the elimination of AA in the UC system.
|
| And I'm OK with this personally. I just think the AA
| narrative that it is Blacks that took that Asian kid/s
| seat is misplaced -- it was more likely the White kid who
| took their seat.
| bsdetector wrote:
| > I just think the AA narrative that it is Blacks that
| took that Asian kid/s seat is misplaced -- it was more
| likely the White kid who took their seat.
|
| And at the schools that are very good the Asians that
| couldn't get into the best ones are taking those spots
| from others. But you've excluded those colleges from your
| calculus for some reason.
|
| People generally apply to several schools and may not get
| accepted to all of them, majors have limited number of
| spots, scholarship are limited, and so on. If the College
| Board subtracts 100 from every White person's score
| they'll apply to or get accepted to lower choice
| colleges, and this is effectively what race-based
| affirmative action is doing.
|
| When you have systemic discrimination like affirmative
| action the whole system is affected. It seems like you
| don't believe race-based affirmative action causing White
| kids to get accepted to their 3rd choice instead of their
| 2nd is fine since you're pretending it doesn't happen.
| [deleted]
| econonut wrote:
| Your statistics there are wrong. I think you got that from
| a site other than Berkeley. Those percentages don't even
| come close to 100%.
|
| Berkeley reports here: https://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-
| berkeley-fall-enrollment-data-ne...
|
| Asians are 43%-53% depending on how many who identify as
| 'International' are Asian. Whites are 19.7% and Blacks are
| 3.4%
|
| You are right, however, about why schools want to eliminate
| the SAT. SAT optional admissions is a way for schools to
| admit students whom would have previously been considered
| unqualified. By increasing the pool of eligible applicants,
| the school is discriminating against the previous
| population of qualified, top tier students, which has been
| historically an Asian majority. Additionally, Asian
| students with low or no SAT scores will not benefit from
| these changes because the best Asian students will continue
| to submit high SAT scores. How many Asian students are
| going to be accepted without an SAT score when they're
| being compared to other Asian students with 1500+ SAT
| scores?
| kenjackson wrote:
| Note, colleges should not discriminate based on race. But
| they are under no obligation about their acceptance
| criteria. They could just use SAT tests if they wanted.
| Or just grades, or it could be a lottery. Or it could be
| the best dressed, or who could pay the most. Just because
| you don't use a mechanism that favors a specific group,
| doesn't mean that you are discriminating against them
| (necessarily). For example, most don't use height in
| admissions, but it doesn't mean we're discriminating
| against people from the Balkans.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Do you know how many people cheated on the SAT in test centers
| across Asia? If you knew, you'd not say this.
|
| It's only discriminatory against Asian AMERICANS.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" any quantifiable, OBJECTIVE framework"_
|
| The whole contention is that these measures are not objective,
| and that they're biased in favor of certain groups.
|
| You can't just base the core of your argument on the assumption
| of objectivity when that objectivity itself is what is in
| question.
| slibhb wrote:
| If your a priori belief is that every group (however defined)
| has the same merit then every measure of merit is biased
| except 1. a coin flip 2. some form of group quotas.
|
| Standardized tests are the least-bad way to measure merit. We
| should try to make them better, not get rid of them.
| rayiner wrote:
| > The whole contention is that these measures are not
| objective, and that they're biased in favor of certain
| groups.
|
| And it's a silly contention. The SATs were invented by
| American WASPs. Yet the group that does extraordinarily well,
| Asians, are the most recent immigrants to the country, from
| places that have the least similarities (in terms of
| language, culture, political knowledge, etc.) to American
| WASP culture.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's only silly to the extent that you collapse the
| argument down to the design of the test itself, and not all
| the circumstances that go into the administration of the
| test across the country.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It seems like there is an inherent contradiction in logic at
| play.
|
| If you believe that racial disparities result in real harm to
| certain groups, you would expect the impacts of those harms
| to show up on objective metrics of capability.
|
| The only way to have a measure blinded to the impacts of
| inequality is to ignore everything about the individual being
| measured. Perhaps everyone has equal potential and capability
| at birth, but everything after that is tainted by their
| unequal environment.
| vasco wrote:
| Your argument makes no sense because as the comment you are
| replying says, when you drop the shenanigans, the
| universities get full of Asians. If what you say is true,
| they'd become full of rich people of any race, common
| denominator being the richest you are the likelier you are to
| be there. But instead what happens is hard working Asians are
| admitted.
|
| Universities should optimize for the best students.
| jwilber wrote:
| No. They mentioned what happens upon dropping affirmative
| action. Standardized tests still exist.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| I'm white, my wife is Asian, our kids will be applying to
| university over the next couple of years. We've started to have
| the conversation about which race they will check off on the
| application. I'm coming to the conclusion that they have to
| just check white, as this means they will face less
| discrimination than if they check Asian. This makes me very
| uncomfortable, and also just seems absurd.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Under no circumstances should your children let the
| university know if they have Japanese, Chinese, or Korean
| heritage. They will discriminate against them. That was the
| case 14 years ago when I was applying for college and it has
| only gotten more acute since then.
|
| They say that they don't discriminate, but it's an absolute
| lie.
| csa wrote:
| Let me put your concerns to rest...
|
| There are no elite schools that systematically discriminate
| against Asians.
|
| Zero.
|
| None.
|
| Let me add a few points that counter some folks who think
| that schools do discriminate against Asians:
|
| - Some schools _do_ give preferential treatment to Black and
| Latino /an applicants. This is not a particularly good look
| for the schools, imho, but it's the reality. This is not the
| same as discrimination against Asians. Not declaring a race
| or declaring white does not help with this. Note that schools
| give preferential treatment to many groups (e.g., recruited
| athletes), and race is just one of them.
|
| - I see many folks arguing a case for discrimination based on
| differences in test scores and grades between different
| races. If those were the only criteria for admission, then I
| would agree with them. Like it or not, those are not the only
| admissions criteria that are used at elite schools. Just
| because the system isn't what these folks think it is (or
| possibly should be), that doesn't make it racist.
|
| - The cases of Stuyvesant and Berkeley having an increase in
| Asian admissions once rules/laws were changed are accurate.
| The part that they leave out is that the systems changed
| (almost) purely to some combination of grades and test
| scores. So I wouldn't call this necessarily an improvement in
| fairness, but it definitely was in increase in transparency
| and move to a system that seems to be (at least currently)
| more favorable for Asian applicants.
|
| - Note that the lawsuit against Harvard was sponsored by a
| folks who are anti-affirmative action. This wasn't some
| charity move towards Asians. Imho, it was an attempt to use
| one minority group as a weapon to strike against other
| minority groups. Note that I think that affirmative action
| has its flaws, but it's not the villain many folks make it
| out to be.
|
| - Imho, and this is just my opinion based on many anecdotes,
| I think that the narrative of "elite schools discriminate
| against Asians" is often used in Asian American communities
| by folks who don't understand or just can't accept that their
| kids are not strong applicants in the elite school applicant
| pool. The argument I most often hear is "... but perfect
| grades and SAT scores", and this shows me that they really
| don't understand what makes for a strong elite school
| applicant (e.g., recruited athlete, having done something of
| impact at a national or international level, etc.). I
| strongly encourage you not to feed this narrative, especially
| to your children. There is enough real discrimination against
| Asians in the US -- we don't need to make up additional
| sources that aren't real. Note that this phenomenon is not
| unique to Asian-Americans -- I've heard equally incorrect
| narratives from White folks in the NE corridor that (imho)
| serve an equivalent function.
|
| - To help your kids, familiarize yourself and them with what
| is evaluated in admissions at the schools they are interested
| in. As a simple example, Harvard rates applicants on
| athletics _even if they are not a recruited athlete_. Also
| note that 15% of Harvard undergrads are varsity athletes; and
| something like 35% of white undergrads are varsity athletes
| (not all recruited, but probably rate 1 or 2 in athletics).
| Not to push athletics, but I think that a lot of people are
| surprised by these numbers, and it provides some insight into
| why some seemingly less qualified students are accepted over
| "perfect grades and SAT" folks.
|
| - The article below provides some good insights into Harvard
| admissions. I honestly don't think that they go far enough in
| explaining how impressive the folks who get 1s in any
| category actually are. That said, these types it things are
| good for college applicants and their parents to know, and
| many don't.
|
| https://veritasessays.org/college-admissions-
| blog/posts/type...
|
| - Lastly, note that some schools actually don't get enough
| high quality Asian applicants, and they not only get
| favorable admissions treatment as an underrepresented
| minority group, but these schools will also throw scholarship
| money at them like there is no tomorrow. I know of one
| specific very good (R1) large state school in the Midwest
| that does this, and I imagine that there are many more.
|
| Best of luck to you and your kids. I'm sure they will be
| fine.
|
| Don't stress about the race issue. Focus on things that
| actually matter (e.g., location, access to desired major,
| social fit, etc.).
| yibg wrote:
| So schools have subjective criteria that disproportionately
| impacts one group of students, but it's fine because that's
| the rules and they are following it?
| csa wrote:
| > So schools have subjective criteria that
| disproportionately impacts one group of students, but
| it's fine because that's the rules and they are following
| it?
|
| I don't think that the criteria are quite as subjective
| as you think. Anything on the margin, especially if it
| will make or break an application, will be discussed and
| evaluated at a reasonable level.
|
| Most people are getting downgraded because of complete
| omission of one or more evaluated areas.
|
| For the past few decades, elite schools have been very
| clear that they are looking for more than good grades
| (which themselves can be highly subjective) and good SATs
| in applicants. As mentioned in the article I linked in my
| first reply, Harvard actually lays out their exact
| rubric.
|
| If someone, Asian or not, decides not to participate in
| sports and doesn't really have a good reason why not
| (e.g., had to work after school), they shouldn't be
| surprised by their low rating in this area, and they
| better be highly rated (as in, a 1) in one or more other
| areas to compensate.
|
| The schools don't maintain these criteria in order to
| exclude a certain race of people. They maintain these
| criteria because they think it's good for the school long
| term.
|
| As a simple example, so many of the people who disparage
| athletics as a component of admissions have no idea how
| important being a varsity athlete can be _after
| graduating_ -- I call it a totally-not-club club because
| it has such an invisible but significant influence.
|
| Lastly, I will add that it is almost impossible to have
| an evaluation system that yields an equal outcome for all
| races that isn't a pure lottery. I know the lottery idea
| is popular on HN, but I think that this is overly
| dismissive of what makes the strong elite school
| applicants strong both when they apply and after they
| graduate. Imho, other than 10% or so of each entering
| class, it's not that they are brainiacs -- it's that they
| are smart enough and can get interesting shit done.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| It sounds like you're buying into Harvard's argument that
| "asian applicants are systematically less likeable / weaker
| in intangible attributes" which is racist nonsense in my
| opinion.
| csa wrote:
| > It sounds like you're buying into Harvard's argument
| that "asian applicants are systematically less likeable /
| weaker in intangible attributes" which is racist nonsense
| in my opinion.
|
| Please don't put words into my mouth that I did not say
| (and certainly don't think).
|
| Note that I had a positive experience living in Asia for
| 9 years, and I am currently active in Asian communities
| in Asia as well as the Asian-American community. If I
| felt for one second that there has been any actual
| systemic discrimination happening, I would be all over
| it, and I would speak out loudly against it.
|
| Clearly I haven't found any plausible systemic
| discrimination.
|
| Regarding the "Asians being weaker" in some areas
| argument, i think there are two sides of this argument.
|
| First, using Harvard as an example, 25-28% or so of the
| entering class is Asian. Given that Asians-Americans are
| about 6% of the US, this hardly smacks of systemic
| racism. Something doesn't add up with this argument.
|
| Second, I hear people say something like "ah, when you
| control for grades and test scores, Asians are accepted
| less frequently". This is pretty much true at every elite
| school whose data I have seen.
|
| So is _this_ racism? Maybe, but I'm guessing not. Two
| courts who basically did a full body cavity search on
| Harvard also did not find any discrimination (note that
| if the Supreme Court overturns these decisions, it will
| be based on labeling affirmative action policies as being
| actively discriminatory against Asians and Whites, not
| actual direct discrimination against Asian applicants).
|
| What I will say, based on hundreds of data points, is
| that Asian parents of kids who apply to elite schools
| (esp. those who don't get in) _routinely_ emphasize
| grades and SAT scores over all else. As I mentioned in my
| original reply, this is just living in denial about what
| the actual application process is. It's much more than
| grades and SATs.
|
| Check out the article I linked to above - applicants
| really want one or more 1s (and these 1s are tougher to
| get than this article makes it out to be) or pretty much
| all 2s with nothing below 3. The people who complain
| loudest about elite school admissions are typically
| scoring 5 or 6 in one or more categories while not
| getting a 1 in any. I have no idea why they are surprised
| that they were denied.
|
| Some additional comments:
|
| - The most likely discrimination that an applicant will
| face is _at their own high school_. High school
| counselors and teachers can be petty tyrants, and
| ambitious students can be screwed by high school
| counselors and teachers if they do not play their cards
| right. It can be a very political process.
|
| - For folks who think that they were "almost there" and
| didn't get in due to being Asian, I ask them this -- were
| they waitlisted? If not, they were not even close.
|
| - If someone is a strong applicant to elite schools, they
| will get into at least one. There are some weird things
| like rough quotas from certain high schools that may make
| it seem arbitrary for a specific school, but generally
| this is a known issue if it's an issue. There is plenty
| of room at the bottom of each entering class for strong
| applicants, so these schools aren't randomly turning away
| highly qualified applicants for meaningless reasons like
| race.
|
| - I have an open offer to people who think Asians are
| discriminated against in admissions. Show me their
| application (or give me a lot of details), and I will
| tell you where things went south. 100% of the time people
| have done this, there was a glaring gap in their
| application. In the event that I somehow don't find a
| gap, my next inquiry would be about their references (one
| bad one can ruin an applications, and some applicants get
| blindsided). If you have any examples, please post here.
| I will be happy to comment.
| Jiro wrote:
| >First, using Harvard as an example, 25-28% or so of the
| entering class is Asian. Given that Asians-Americans are
| about 6% of the US, this hardly smacks of systemic
| racism. Something doesn't add up with this argument.
|
| There's a larger percentage than the whole population of
| the US, but a smaller percentage than the percentage who
| apply and have similar qualifications to accepted
| students who aren't Asian.
|
| What you're seeing is that Asian-Americans are better
| qualified, but not enough of them are accepted as one
| would expect from being better qualified.
| bushbaba wrote:
| I believe you can check any race and they will never question
| it. You could state you identify as Black and so long as the
| name and application looks 'black', they'll never know.
| You'll start your first day at university and what will they
| do, ask you to take a genetic test?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| As a thought experiment couldn't you just say your from
| South Africa. Thus being "African American".
|
| For the record I hate affirmative action, but I also hate
| the notion of having some elite 10 schools everyone strives
| to get into. You can do just fine going to a state school,
| and you'll probably have a much more relaxed experienced.
|
| You can also do what I did and hit 100k no degree at all.
| With all this talk of student loan forgiveness, maybe we
| need to rethink the role of college.
|
| It doesn't need to be an automatic first step into
| adulthood, you can learn a great deal working for a few
| years beforehand.
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| The best option would be for them to identify as mixed race.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| wirrbel wrote:
| When I studied physics it was almost "free admittance"
| (essentially a high school diploma with at least P-Level courses
| is what I think would be an equivalent in California).
|
| Within the first semester everyone was weeded out who wouldn't
| make it to the degree with theoretical physics and math courses.
|
| It was pretty fair in retrospect. Everyone had their chance and a
| bad grade in English didn't prevent anyone from pursuing physics.
| Since there was only an administrative fee of ~500EUR for the
| semester it also didn't ruin people's finances
| Animats wrote:
| Columbia University. Figures.
|
| Yeonmi Park's "While Time Remains" has a biting critique of
| Columbia University's "wokeness".[1] Park escaped from North
| Korea to China as a child. In China, she was an illegal alien,
| and if caught would be deported back to North Korea and executed,
| so she and her mother were kept as slaves. She managed to escape
| China and get to the US. So she knows about oppression.
|
| She ended up as a student at Columbia University. "What a load of
| crap" she writes. "The difference between a passing grade and a
| failing one lay in a refusal to criticize the usual targets
| (capitalism, Western civilization, white supremacy, systemic
| racism, oppression of minorities, colonialism, etc.) Worse than a
| bad grade was to be labelled by one's classmates as a 'SIX HIRB',
| a sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamaphobic,
| racist bigot."
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/While-Time-Remains-Defectors-
| Freedom/...
| jmugan wrote:
| "Elite colleges are eliminating standardized tests before they
| eliminate legacy admissions. Tells you all you need to know."
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I live in a society with free education for all, up to and
| including university. To make that possible, there are a limited
| number of seats, and the number is based on the needs of society,
| and on our government's budget. The seats are allocated based on
| testing, but there are multiple ways to "test into" a seat, i.e.
| "you missed it this time, but go do another two years of pre-
| university and you might get in later".
|
| This is the best we can hope for: a transparent system, with
| clearly defined multiple pathways, and a limited number of
| completely free seats at the education table.
|
| Also: one thing which other systems miss is different maturity.
| If someone is bright but at 15 does not see the point of studying
| and prefers to smoke with the stoners, fine. At 18, get a job in
| retail, and perhaps at 20 the light will go on and they will
| realize that there's a way put of retail hell and they are smart
| enough to test into university with night prep classes.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| If there's a limited number of seats, it's not "free for all".
| (Of course, there's no way around inherent class size limits
| under _any_ system, other than MOOC 's which are quite
| different from actual real-world college classes.)
| jeffrallen wrote:
| All education at all levels is free for all. If what you are
| capable of contributing to society to support your family is
| plastering, your plastering training is free.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Forgot to mention: I suppose this only works in high trust
| societies.
|
| Citizens are sometimes dissatisfied with individual outcomes,
| but there is no groundswell of resistance to it because people
| generally believe the system (both the educational system, but
| also the entire economic system) is fair.
| wwilim wrote:
| In contrast, the bare minimum standardized testing in Poland
| ("matura") leaves you no chance whatsoever unless you've been
| keeping up in literature class for the past 3 years.
| projektfu wrote:
| Is this coming from a different place by the sort of person who
| has good-but-but-top grades and top standardized test scores, but
| thinks they deserve a look by elite universities? However, they
| can't say that so they point to a theoretical disadvantaged
| student who is somehow elevated by taking the test?
|
| Fundamentally, the question is whether the SAT does what ETS
| wants you to believe it does, that it provides an objective
| assessment of a high schooler for college admissions. The claim
| is a correlation to the first year grades. Beyond that, it's
| mainly correlated to IQ and social class (professional class
| scores best IIRC).
|
| Contrast this with the situation in other countries that rely
| heavily on testing, such as Ireland. As I understand it, the
| subjects are tested and the test grade is used instead of
| subjective markers of academic performance. Students are allowed
| to choose their university course based on priority derived from
| these test scores. This seems like a much more likely way for a
| poor Irish kid to arrive at Trinity college than for Harvard to
| notice and pluck out a poor American kid, if they even bothered
| applying.
| Zigurd wrote:
| In principle, SAT scores enable people like me, who were very
| very good at such tests, to break into elite schools.
|
| In fact, test prep works well enough to enable a shockingly high
| percentage of legacies and donor brats in elite schools.
|
| Ending SAT use in admissions might enable a more balanced
| approach to admissions, but it does not broaden access to elite
| schools. They could increase class sizes, or they could get rid
| of legacies and donor admissions.
| civilized wrote:
| Standardized tests are designed to be as non-gameable as
| possible. They're definitely less gameable than the other
| admissions criteria still used in elite colleges: admissions
| essays, playing obscure sports, fancy extracurricular
| experiences, etc. Most studies find SAT prep confers very
| limited benefits to the average person.
|
| Having an essay essentially written for you by an expensive
| consultant with contacts in admissions departments is
| undetectable and widely practiced. But when it comes to
| standardized tests, many wealthy families get so desperate for
| good scores for their kids that they engage in criminal
| conspiracy (recall the Varsity Blues scandal in 2019).
|
| It's extremely hard for me to see how, when you remove the
| least gameable aspect of admissions, that it gives the rich
| less of an advantage. I'm almost certain it gives them more of
| an advantage instead.
| Zigurd wrote:
| 14% of Harvard undergrads are legacies. It is exceedingly
| unlikely that SATs help a higher percentage of deserving but
| otherwise overlooked applicants.
|
| My point is, there is a way to have a far higher impact on
| opening seats for kids who _should_ be getting an elite
| education than the question of whether SATs help or harm
| attaining that goal. They 're not really serious until they
| don't preference legacies.
| civilized wrote:
| > 14% of Harvard undergrads are legacies. It is exceedingly
| unlikely that SATs help a higher percentage of deserving
| but otherwise overlooked applicants.
|
| I don't follow. Are you implying that the first sentence is
| evidence for the second? Do you think legacies are getting
| in via high standardized test scores? I don't think that's
| true. If standardized test scores were a major determinant
| of admission, these schools would be 2-3x more East Asian
| than they currently are. And virtually none of those
| students would be legacies. The Harvard admissions case
| showed all this with evidence from Harvard's own admissions
| data.
|
| Additionally, the article cites a study saying that SATs do
| in fact help "deserving but otherwise overlooked"
| applicants.
|
| > My point is, there is a way to have a far higher impact
| on opening seats for kids who should be getting an elite
| education than the question of whether SATs help or harm
| attaining that goal. They're not really serious until they
| don't preference legacies.
|
| I agree with you that elite schools do not explicitly
| prioritize the talented poor. My impression is they
| prioritize (1) the powerful, (2) those who possess or can
| afford expensive class signals, (3) those who will donate
| money, (4) racial balance, (5) high achievers. Standardized
| tests allow students who can't get in via Categories 1-4 to
| sneak in via Category 5. Even these students tend to be of
| higher socioeconomic class, but to a lesser extent than
| Categories 1-4.
|
| In my opinion, the only way to do better than standardized
| tests would be (standardized tests) - (all the non-academic
| mechanisms that privilege the rich) + (explicit priority
| for the talented poor). But these second and third terms
| will never happen, so standardized tests are better than
| nothing.
|
| It is hard for me to understand those who support
| standardized tests being discarded along the way to a more
| fair admissions process. As you point out, there are much
| more obvious ways to achieve that first.
| kenjackson wrote:
| The SAT is way more gameable than the College Board would
| have you believe. Most coaching is not very effective, but
| there is a group that is very effective. It's almost by
| design that they aren't very popular.
|
| That said it is less gameable than most of the rest of the
| process. Family wealth and income are probably less gameable,
| but many schools are need blind.
| someguydave wrote:
| Can you link published research indicating that you can
| increase SAT scores through training? The research I have
| read says the opposite.
| civilized wrote:
| Are you saying there is some particular training program
| that increases scores much more than the 30-90 points
| claimed by various studies?
| kenjackson wrote:
| Yes. And I'm going to be coy and not tell you much about
| it. So you're right to be skeptical. In a few years I'll
| speak more freely on it.
| civilized wrote:
| Skeptical is putting it mildly. I'd give you better
| chances of having a secret proof of the Riemann
| Hypothesis than producing miracle educational results at
| scale (even if it is just on a standardized test).
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| They are being so vague that's it's impossible for us to
| know, but they didn't say "at scale". You're certainly
| correct that there isn't some secret sauce that we could
| just apply to everyone. But it wouldn't surprise me if
| there was a service that costs (high) 5 or 6 figures per
| year that could substantially increase test scores.
|
| Though I would imagine such a service would have to take
| place over months/years and not days/weeks, and that kind
| of blurs the lines of whether it even counts as test prep
| at that point.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I'd be just as skeptical. It's something that would
| require strong evidence and I'm providing you none.
|
| I'll be around on HN in five years. Ask me then.
| civilized wrote:
| If it's real, you might as well tell everyone and I'll
| hear about it that way - I am certain you'll be very
| popular.
| kenjackson wrote:
| To be clear, the plan is to not just tell you. :-)
| tomp wrote:
| I sometimes wonder if rich people pay tutors to test prep their
| stupid children simply because they don't want their kids
| knowing they only got into a good school because of corruption.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's no amount of test prep that will get a "stupid child"
| to a 1500+ on the SAT.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| To get into Jesuit High in New Orleans, you need to have
| parents with money, no criminal record, and a pulse. The
| average student ACT score there is 31. That's the 95th
| percentile nationally. Those kids get great educations and
| have involved parents, but they aren't averaging 31s due to
| merit unless you're counting their parents' wallets too.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That looks to be about the equivalent of 1400 in the SAT.
| An ACT of 31 is more aligned to Tulane's admitted class
| than Harvard's. (Tulane is a top 50 university, so still
| "a good school" relative to the entire population of 18
| year old high school grads.)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I've taught at Tulane and I promise you some of these 31
| ACT kids can't add fractions or understand how exponents
| work, leave aside integrals.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| All dropping standardized test does is grant them the ability
| to discriminate.
|
| There are going to be special cases and examples of unfairness
| in any system, and so you can find cases where a standardized
| test resulted in an unfairness, but the alternative is only
| 100x worse.
|
| The alternative is not "Without the burden of these inflexible
| uncaring mechanistic tests we can serve each precious flower
| better and leave no one out."
|
| That is only the sales pitch.
|
| The alternative is actually nothing but "Now we can
| discriminate."
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
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