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Comment by univalent | Hacker News Reader

I think the problem lies with SATs/GREs/GMATs. The tests (especially SAT, GRE) are ludicrously simple. I'm your run of the mill IIT-an and placed 98th and 99th percentile without breaking a sweat in the GRE when it came time for grad school. I think I maxed 2 of the 3 sections and was 98th percentile in both. What's the point of a test like that? Thousands of people max/get to the highest percentile and it becomes useless as a variable. Why not follow the model of the JEE exam instead of the SAT (a different variant of the exam for each specialization). If the exam is harder, the distribution of students is more spread out. You can rank them nationwide. Not being a jerk, I'm honestly curious why people like middle school math problems in a grad school exam? https://jeemain.nic.in/webinfo/Public/Home.aspx

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The SAT, which is the more relevant test for this discussion, was intentionally made easier years ago, so that it would be better suited to measuring the vast majority of USA college applicants. That made it less suited to Harvard's needs, but not as much as one might think. Plenty of Harvard students had less than the maximum SAT scores. Some might prefer that admission be based solely on test scores, but that is not Harvard's preference.

Or it works in Harvard's preference by potentially hiding the academic disparities of the different ethnic groups studying at Harvard.

If everyone's score is truncated at 800 on a test out of 1200, then you can't tell the difference between a group that averages 800 vs one that averages 1100

So maybe have 2 tests. A second one that is harder and spreads students out more. I was just questioning the value of a test that 'normalizes' student scores having no distribution at the top end.

Let me tell you a little story.

My son did miserably on the ACT the first time he took it and didn’t meet the minimum to get into his college of choice.

After 10 sessions with a private tutor who was a college professor - costing $100/hour - he scored well enough to get admitted. Did he learn anything from the tutor that would help him do well in college or was he taught the test? The test did not measure his aptitude.

Another anecdote. I had the highest SAT score in my school and the second highest in the (relatively poor) city I grew up in. Do you think it was because I was that smart or because my mom was a high school math teacher who had been doing SAT tutorials for years?

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