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Comment by foobarian | Hacker News Reader

If the rich kids are also getting SAT prep books AND tutoring on top, and everyone gets maxed out scores, seems like it's a waste of everyones's time and we're better off just skipping it.

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I don’t think you should be downvoted for asking an honest question. As someone who tutored in SAT test prep a couple decades ago, I’m aware of the issues with standardized testing. However, the solution you propose is not so simple. The parent had a good point: high test scores may have given many students a boost in the eyes of admissions teams, especially if they did not attend a high school that is notable in the eyes of those admissions teams. They may not see top grades as equitable to those from a top prep school if they don’t know much about the school and don’t have high test scores to confirm their view of the student. Again, it’s not fair, but for these students, it’s a way to stand apart. If you take that away, it could be harder for them to be noticed until we have something else that’s sufficient.

SAT proposed an adversity score to address this, but it was extremely controversial and abandonded: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/us/sat-adversity-score-co...

Ah yes the. We are going to modify your score based on the color of your skin. I think that is a good way of doing it. I am sure no one would lie about that just to get a few extra points on the SAT, besides treating people different based on their race is totally a good idea an never results in unintended consequences. I like the idea basically we are making sure each side is equal but slightly separate from each other.

here are the criteria they used in the adversity score:

Crime rate, Poverty rate, Housing values, Vacancy rate, Family environment, Median income, Single parent, Adversity score, Education level, ESL, High school environment, Undermatching, Curricular rigor, Free lunch rate, AP opportunity

Each school got a score.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sat-to-give-students-adversity-...

Oxford does something a bit like this, but AFAICT only for getting interviewed; you still have to get the same exam results as anyone else, and you aren't given any advantage in the interviews:

https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/applying-to-ox...

The former head of Green Templeton College, Oxford, did an analysis of the final results achieved by people from different backgrounds who had got into Oxford, and the conclusion was that those who came from fancier backgrounds did less well in their degrees than their poorer colleagues with similar entry scores. The hypothesis was that the private schools were very good at hothousing borderline students, but that this obviously stopped happening once they were admitted and got the same environment as everyone else.

This is one of the reasons that Oxford is beginning to seriously concern itself with background - it turns out that if you're already expecting top entry grades it's a good way of getting better students.

That, and its long-standing gross overrepresentation of children from posh schools is getting embarrassing.

Looks like I am too late to edit my comment but I will acknowledge I was wrong about that those indicators seem to be reasonable and I could see myself possibly being in support of something like that not in the SAT itself but as a factor in admissions.

>seems like it's a waste of everyones's time and we're better off just skipping it.

Agree, but what are we replacing it with if we're "just skipping it"? Extracurriculars? Are those also not "waste of everyone's time"?

The real question is: how much does tutoring really helps as compared to simply prepping with free ressources?

Is it 5%? Does that mean you can't tie-break between two scores within 5% of one another? That's called a measurement error. No, this steel beam isn't 8 feet up to the micron.

I strongly suspect there are diminishing returns. You get the biggest benefit from knowing the material from school. After that, familiarity with the test (practice tests every weekend for a few months) will help the most (and tutoring is no substitute for actually practice the test). After that, yes, tutoring will help some, but again, diminishing returns.

Had this, did this, got 99th percentile score -> ivy league.

It's happens. I think I'm pretty smart but obviously very privileged.

Are the rich kids going to stop being able to afford prep books and tutoring once they get in?

The alternative is to make it completely subjective and based on the whims of the committee. I can't see that going wrong at all, like because there are no committee members who might be racist or sexist or have a bias against religious people or anything like that. No the college acceptance committee stands as paragons of virtues moral giants in this land of ethical pygmys they alone are incorruptible unswayable and perfectly and completely fair in all things.

So standardized merit based metrics serve only as a barrier to their ineffable judgement and pure deductions let it be them alone and their powerful "algorithm" that is too pure and holy for mortal eyes to sully with their gaze be the new standard by which we determine if a student can go to Harvard, for clearly this is the one true way forward and will never be manipulated by self serving or short sighted beauracrats to manipulate and politic in.

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