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Comment by Snoozle | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the whole point of things like this to help edge cases? I grew up poor and did badly in school, but I was smart enough to score in the top 3% of SAT scores and that allowed me to get in to many colleges that I wanted, something I would not have had based on my grades and ability to pay.

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“students from families earning more than $200,000 a year average a combined score of 1,714, while students from families earning under $20,000 a year average a combined score of 1,326.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/03/rich-students-get-better-sat...

Meaning what?

Meaning that if you have money you will get a better score than if you don't. If that's not a problem to you then fine but I think its a little messed up.

Is it just owning the money which grants you a better score? In that case that's the problem indeed. But if you think that investing money in your or your kids development is a problem I tend to disagree. That's the whole point of having money.

I understand what your trying to say but paying for a tutor to specifically train you for the SAT is not giving your child a better education. (Well it kind of is because they'll get into a better college from a better SAT score but training for the test itself doesn't really make you more educated)

If if just getting a better education gives you a better score on the SAT then that is a "problem" impossible to fix. However, teaching kids tips and tricks to do better on the SAT would have minimal effect on their actual intelligence. That right there is the main problem: Preparing for the SAT has no substantial increase in intelligence but does make it seem like you do.

I don't have much time when I'm writing this so if your confused by something just ask

I see your point now, and I do agree with it. Sorry, but it was rather difficult to get it from the original message.

Hey thanks for reading it! I thought it was a misunderstanding! (I'm sometimes not very clear)

Correlation != Causation

Do you have a citation for the causation that you seem to strongly imply?

The article I linked above has a bunch of the sources you want if you read it.

More importantly, why use the SAT when your highschool grades are more accurate? This is what I'm really annoyed about! Why put everyone though a stressful test when your grades are more accurate?

https://edpolicyinca.org/publications/predicting-college-suc...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/06/11/what-...

> Isn't the whole point of things like this to help edge cases?

No, just that's a marginal side effect. The whole point of standardized testing is the "standardized" part - to provide a common metric upon which to base large scale institutional decisions.

The edge cases (and also the large biases in the system) are handled by other criteria, like weighing other aspects of a candidate's background against their academic performance.

This is why it's important that you can submit test scores if you want.

I expect a lot of people will anyway, if the test scores are good.

You can still submit test scores, this just means that the colleges don't require them.

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