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Comment by lazyant | Hacker News Reader

If it was up to me, for university admissions there would be a public clear and objective scoring system, based for example only on grades and then use a lottery system weighted inversely by income. No more essays and subjective values, silly extracurriculars or race involved (it's already somehow accounted for in the income).

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That's why it's not up to you and Harvard has a $40B endowment ;)

But more seriously, grades do not correlate across schools in the slightest. The rigor of a public school in rural Kansas vs. a private school in NY could be wildly different. AP scores and SATs correlate well (same test for everyone that takes it), but normal grades do not

And good grades are already a prerequisite for admission, you generally need to averaging an A- average GPA to be competitive. schools want to see that you can balance a ton of things on your plate well (or your parents can afford to send you to classes/camps) rather than just optimize for a 5.0 GPA

AP scores might, but class rank is a far better correlator than SAT scores [1].

Although I couldn't find any research on it for overall collegiate performance, the only research i could find in a short Google Scholar search found slight correlations between SAT performance and freshman year performance (but not overall).

[1] http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~norman/SAT.pdf

> The rigor of a public school in rural Kansas vs. a private school in NY could be wildly different. AP scores and SATs correlate well (same test for everyone that takes it), but normal grades do not.

That assumes students in rural Kansas have the same AP & SAT preparation as students in the elite NY private schools. The income disaparity between the two schools is probably quite noticable with one having more access to elite college prep than the other. By focusing purely on SAT scores and ignoring economic advantages you are discriminating against those from poor places without access to college prep. It's easy to be blind to that when you fall into the "elite NY private school" camp and have no idea how bad educational resources are in rural Kansas. It is a process of the elite admitting the elite and excluding the poor. You can tout how "fair" SAT scores are and how they equalize talent while conveniently ignoring you are just using it as a filter to keep out poor folks. The elite private NY school may send dozens of kids to HYP every year. The rural Kansas school may never send anyone to elite college in its entire existence. And it would be questionable if that rural Kansas school never had at least one student that would have excelled at an ivy (if given the same opportunities as students in the elite NY private school). Take the kids from the elite NY private school, strip them of their high parential income, put them into the rural Kansas school and take the kids in the rural Kansas school and put them into the elite NY private school with high parential income. Now see how many from each get admitted where.There are students at Harvard that have parential income of over $500,000. It wouldn't be unusual to find not one kid with the same parential income in the rural Kansas school.

Yea I agree, my point wasn't that the preparation is fair, but that it's easier (not necessarily "better") to compare 2 candidates based on the same nationwide test rather than a GPA from different schools with 4 years of different classes

It's not a value judgement and the SATs are far from perfect, but just another piece in the puzzle

And yea life isn't fair at the end of the day, nurture and nature are both super important for determining future achievement

I agree it is easier to compare two candidates on a standardized metric, but my point is these kids get different levels of preparation for that metric. It isn't a suprise those with more resources to prep tend to do better overall than those that lack resources. It doesn't mean the kid from Kansas that scored lower is dumber than the kid from NY that scored higher, if the Kansas kid didn't have elite prep and the NY kid did. Luckily the internet is flattening those disadvantages to a degree, and the Kansis kid could likely go to a library and study online after school but there is no denying that poor Kansas kid has a lot more to overcome than the elite rich NY kid to get to the same point in life.

Not sure you want that, because then you end up with something like the Iowa system. (Basically, everyone is admitted, because every school optimizes for getting the required score. It's nigh impossible to graduate high school in Iowa WITHOUT the required 245 points for the Iowa schools.)

Giving an explicit formula for scoring, along with a required score, has historically been the same as letting everyone in, because schools, over time, will always "teach to the test" so to speak.

Similarly in Wisconsin, and possibly any state with a flagship public university. Even if the point system isn't known, everybody gets into one of the Wisconsin system colleges. But everybody doesn't go to those colleges.

First, the number of positions is limited, though I don't know how the limit is set or if it actually fills up.

Second, the top kids at the top high schools in the state go to the Ivy's, or other selective private colleges, even if they could get into UW. This leaves positions open at UW for a wider variety of students.

There is also a third tier system, consisting of community colleges that feed into the university system or provide shorter term job training.

Disclaimer: One kid is at the flagship college, the other is in high school.

I went to UW. The Madison campus. And the limit is never technically hit. (Though if you want to live on campus, obviously, it's first come, first served. So you may end up having to live off campus if you dilly-dally.)

Here’s how it was in the old country:

Score = (score from exam at the school you want to go to * 2 + GPA + high school Math grade) / 4

That’s for engineering school. Every school has a different formula and holds its own exams. But the formula is public.

Sort all candidates, draw a line. When some of the selected people chose different schools, draw another line after a month.

We didn’t have an equivalent of SAT. But it can easily be plugged in a formula like this. There’s no studying to the test, since every school has a different test.

Juking the stats is pretty trivial.

That's not how Iowa works. You get the 245 points, you get in. Full stop. It's law.

It's a system that can't be "gamed". (And, coincidentally, doesn't need to be gamed.) The idea was that it would take all the race, and the extra-curriculars, and the subjective stuff out of the system. And it did. But it also gave everyone admittance. Which is fine. Maybe everyone should get into college? I don't know?

My point is, when you have a set target, it's pretty much guaranteed that after a few years nearly everyone will be hitting that target. It's the nature of the beast.

Seems like an easy system to game for the ultra-rich: you can make income be zero for a couple years. "Wealth" is probably more compelling.

That kills diversity because you only admit people who game the system. It also harms Harvard, because the value of their education comes from experiencing a very diverse crowd.

This is how you end up with China's system, which... has its own plethora of problems.

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