Hacker News Reader

Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

> is even more socio-economic stratifying.

Is there data to suggest that? Public schools are generally very good about providing a variety of extra-curricular activities to keep students focused upon athletic and scholarly activities outside the classroom if the student is willing to participate. Contrast those tax funded and faculty lead activities to private tutors and rigorous SAT practice that is almost exclusively limited to families with the personal financies to afford such.

> It largely feels like an excuse to lower the competitive bar to manage the demographics

I can certainly empathize with that. Wealthy households had an advantage with private tutors and timely dedicated/forced test preparation activities. Now that advantage has evaporated so that wealthy students are now less exclusively advantaged, or in other words the bar of entry has lowered to wider availability.

View on HN

> Public schools are generally very good about providing a variety of extra-curricular activities to keep students focused upon athletic and scholarly activities outside the classroom if the student is willing to participate.

I think you’re greatly underestimating how much the college admissions game has changed in recent years. For top universities (like the better UCs, Ivies, etc.), being, for example, president of a club in one’s high school is essentially irrelevant. The paths to admission consist of: (1) being a top athlete, (2) significant extracurricular achievement (meaning state/national accolades, founding a non-profit, etc.), or (3) extreme adversity.

You’re absolutely correct that the SAT rewards those with wealth and resources the most. But the absurd time and resource investment required of modern high-schoolers and their families to participate in extracurriculars in the way top colleges now demand is far greater a burden than SAT prep.

Lottery with a min bar would fix most of these issues, especially the crazy extra curricular game that is played today.

Most of the Ivy League schools already implement a lottery, because even with the absurd requirements for entry they can't differentiate the qualified candidates well enough to make a determination given the limited number of acceptance slots and high number of applicants.

You have to keep mind those schools are extremely tiny compared to the highly rated state schools in California, Texas, and Florida.

This suggests that issue is not so much who get to Ivy League school, but the disproportionate advantage Ivy League schools graduates have. No matter how the entrance test is tweaked, as long as not studying there is a block in some career goal of an highly talented and highly ambitious student, there will be issues.

> You’re absolutely correct that the SAT rewards those with wealth and resources the most.

What, why? Not American here, but in the past I was looking into going for university in US and studying for SATs and it's just a test that everyone can learn for...

Lower socioeconomic status is thought to add stress, often in the form of less time for studying because teenagers at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder have to work more. They also can't afford tutors, have fewer books in the house, etc.

Allegedly, with time, money, and tutors you can "study to the test" pretty effectively.

Yes, everyone can study for it, but generally the easiest ways to boost your SAT scores are to pay a tutor to drill you through the parts that can have the biggest impact on your scores, and to take the test multiple times until you get a score you like, both of which can get very expensive. Retaking the test is really helpful, as you'll be more familiar with the format and less stressed out the second time around, but a lot of students don't have the opportunity to take it more than once.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com