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Comment by forgotmyoldname | Hacker News Reader

I didn’t go to Harvard, but I went to a decent university.

I was one of those students who got perfectly scores on all my tests but couldn’t possibly be bothered to do homework in high school, so my grades were less than perfect. If it weren’t for my high ACT score, I’m pretty confident I wouldn’t have been accepted into any university—especially as someone from a lower middle class family.

I’m not sure if eliminating standardized testing is a misguided effort to introduce fairness or a wisely guided effort to only let in the types they want through a more opaque process.

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The dirty little secret is that most of the admissions hoops don’t really matter.

I was a mere peasant at a SUNY school, but I tutored kids in the EOP program. These kids were mostly from awful high schools and had aptitude, but lacked a lot of basic high school skills.

Just like my friends from “normal” educational backgrounds, the kids who worked did fine. Most were boxed out of engineering but I know of a few alumni who are attorneys or have other professional gigs.

"but lacked a lot of basic high school skills."

If you back basic high school skills then you're not only probably not suited to Engineering, you're also probably not going to cut it.

It takes 'Aptitude' plus at very least skills plus even more.

>If you back basic high school skills then you're not only probably not suited to Engineering, you're also probably not going to cut it.

Quiet part aloud right here.

What you're saying is that if you haven't been raised in a certain way (in an environment that prioritizes formal schooling) then you're not fit to be a professional (engineer in this case) no matter how smart/talented. There's a word for this: classicism.

But I'll tell you something. As someone who grew up exactly like that but is now getting a PhD in CS at a top school and who has excelled in several FAANG internships: you can teach/learn high school skills. You can't teach/learn aptitude though. So if you think it's some kind just/effective/correct that these kids are kept out (just because they don't have good essay writing skills or something) well I have to wonder if you're just someone trying to keep the labor pool small to inflate your own salary (or for other reasons...)

You can definitely teach 'conscientiousness' and the 'basic high school skills'.

You can't teach 'aptitude' but I think you can encourage those things i.e. reading, curiosity, exposure.

You're right though that rich kids probably have a huge advantage in prep for Eng in terms of the former, but whether or not you call it 'classist' is besides the point: teaching your kids to show up to class and pay attention, do homework etc. is not something that costs money (of course it can help).

"So if you think it's some kind just/effective/correct that these kids are kept out (just because they don't have good essay writing skills or something) well I have to wonder if you're just someone trying to keep the labor pool small to inflate your own salary (or for other reasons...)"

For a PhD you're having an odd bit difficulty with leaps of unsubstantiated assumptions, because there's definitely nothing in my statement that would remotely hint about 'What I'm trying to do' about anything. I mean seriously, "I'm trying to keep the labour pool small?" What?

>teaching your kids to show up to class and pay attention, do homework etc. is not something that costs money (of course it can help).

of course it does. it costs money in the form of time - you have to be not working at home to have the opportunity to teach these things. it costs money in the form of energy - if you've never argued with a young child about the relative merits of homework and television then you have no idea how much it costs.

>because there's definitely nothing in my statement that would remotely hint about 'What I'm trying to do' about anything. I mean seriously, "I'm trying to keep the labour pool small?" What?

really? then what is the purpose of this part of your response?

>then you're not only probably not suited to Engineering

what do the words "not suited" mean to you?

If you 'don't have basic high school skills', you're 'not suited' to Engineering.

There is not much to interpret from that statement.

'Basic High School Skills' would be general subject matter competence, basic diligence and conscientiousness with respect to attendance, participation, learning, homework, socialization, organization.

Engineering is fairly advanced, it requires an even higher degree of general competence than most Uni subjects, and even those need a level of competency only found in the upper tranches (say top 1/3) of students in high school.

If you're not 'Generally Not Good At High School' then you are not going to make it through Engineering.

I don't think there's anything controversial here.

>If you 'don't have basic high school skills', you're 'not suited' to Engineering.

begs the question.

>and even those need a level of competency only found in the upper tranches (say top 1/3) of students in high school.

yet not a single one of these things has the slightest to do with technical aptitude

>'Basic High School Skills' would be general subject matter competence, basic diligence and conscientiousness with respect to attendance, participation, learning, homework, socialization, organization.

i'll repeat myself: you can teach each of these things to a kid that is good at math and physics but you cannot teach a kid that has perfect attendance, diligence, etc etc etc how to be good at math and physics.

>If you're not 'Generally Not Good At High School' then you are not going to make it through Engineering.

<shrug> i made it through a physics+math BS, and I'm well on my way to finishing the PhD (as in aced my classes and my quals) and i graduated high school with a 2.2GPA and 40 absences senior year. so not just bottom 2/3 but probably close to last. so along which axis do you think you're wrong? either a technical degree doesn't require the kind of "diligence" you think it does (i'd argue it does not) or that diligence can be learned fairly easily (i'd argue that too).

"competency only found in the upper tranches (say top 1/3) of students in high school.

yet not a single one of these things has the slightest to do with technical aptitude"

?? Aptitude is definitely correlated with academic performance. There is no debate there.

I'm sure on your journey you've taken enough stats to grasp that your personal anecdotal experience doesn't count for that much? I mean, being last place in school, absent all the time ... would it be reasonable for you, the Uni, or anyone to believe that you were 'well suited' to Engineering, or at least more suited than those with good grades, GPA yada yada? It's great you did well, but you must agree that wasn't likely.

In the aggregate, both GPA and SAT are highly correlated with Academic performance in University, so you're arguing against the wind here. [1]

(Do I really even need to provide a data point on this?)

And you must know that being 'Last Place' in High School would preclude most kids from even being accepted to Eng. programs, let alone Uni.

Students who do poorly in High School generally won't succeed in Eng. programs - let alone be accepted in the first place.

Everyone knows this, and it's why they use Grades and SAT as a primary means of admission.

And FYI raw aptitude can't be taught but all sorts of other things can i.e. having basic mathematical literacy and just 'keeping up' from grades 1-9, means that kids have the confidence and opportunity to participate in 'STEM' things which they would be blocked from doing otherwise. Peers, Mentors, points of Inspiration also give kids the extra energy and ethos to work through the issues they might not otherwise care about, in effect, there's a lot of 'passion' hidden inside 'aptitude'.

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

>In the aggregate, both GPA and SAT

You're literally commenting on a thread about how the SAT is being removed from criteria and your whole point is that the intangibles (you used a bunch of ambiguous words like diligence and etc and I explicitly pointed that out). So have you lost the thread of the conversation?

>Students who do poorly in High School generally won't succeed in Eng. programs - let alone be accepted in the first place.

You really need to look up and understand the begging the question fallacy that I alluded to

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

>And FYI raw aptitude can't be taught but all sorts of other things can i.e. having basic mathematical literacy and just 'keeping up' from grades 1-9, means that kids have the confidence and opportunity to participate in 'STEM' things which they would be blocked from doing otherwise.

I do not understand what you're saying. On the one hand not being diligent and having good attendance should preclude students but lack of "confidence" shouldn't?

Classicism != classism.

Damn that's what I get for commenting late at night

The kids I worked with had 7th-9th grade math skills but a good home support system so they had good reading skills and work ethic.

The successful students were taking and succeeding at Calc 1 in their second year.

I'm picking on you specifically because a lot of people are making this mistake. "Not requiring" is not the same as "eliminating". Not submitting scores will no longer be a reason someone is rejected. Someone who did well on them can still submit them and it will help their application.

I haven't followed this closely, but have seen a few headlines and tweets in passing. This is the first I've heard that people can optionally add test scores to help them stand out. Thanks for highlighting this.

I don't see how this can work in practice. At some point, you'll have an application with an SAT go up against an application without one for the same seat. Either a really good SAT score will push that one up (meaning not submitting an SAT score hurts application #2) or the score is ignored, meaning it doesn't actually help to include it.

Exaggerating here for ease of description: it used to be that if you had 2 spots and these 3 applicants

- applicant A: average grades, average SAT, no sports

- applicant B: great grades, no SAT, great sports

- applicant C: great grades, great SAT, great sports

then B wasn't even considered. Now, B will probably get in over A.

>I don't see how this can work in practice.

That's because the admissions process is not the line-by-line ranking exercise you're implying.

In some cases an SAT may help to complete the picture of an applicant. In other cases, other attribute permutations are enough. Maybe #1 was close and the SAT sealed it. But, it's not necessarily the case that applicant #2 was hurt by not submitting their SAT (or would have fared any better by submitting even a perfect SAT score).

Same. I had a troubled childhood and many D's in high school. If it wasn't for me studying really hard and getting a 2320 on the SAT, I wouldn't have gotten into any school, but that was enough for UCLA to take a chance on me.

Why could you be bothered to work hard on your tests but not your homework? I don't get the difference?

Homework was several hours per night of busy work. I learned nothing from it. I spent that time teaching myself programming and things that were actually useful.

For tests, simply paying attention and listening to what the teacher said was enough to do well.

For many people, homework is completely useless and many US schools absolutely love overwhelming students with it. There are also kids who need to work jobs after work to support their family--busy work assignments are just punishment for them, and countless people I know suffered because of that. The ACT/SAT was a way for them to elevate themselves.

Weighing in to say; same exact experience here.

The only thing I learned from the Aeneid diorama in my “Honors” English class in 9th grade was that a teacher could mark down a cave for not being colorful enough.

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