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Comment by grego61 | Hacker News Reader

One way that rich parents can game SAT/ACT is through aggressive seeking of test accommodations for disabilities. There was common knowledge of up to 50% of test takers having extended time in some affluent private schools in the SF Bay Area prior to the Covid pause.

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In the case of students trying to get into MIT I wonder if there is actually much point in gaming the test?

The article says they are using the tests as a threshold. It sounds like they don't care by how much you pass the threshold, just that you have passed it.

I'd expect that most students who will be able to survive at MIT can make the SAT threshold with no gaming of the test and no test prep other than maybe doing one or two free sample tests.

Someone who could not easily make the threshold on their own who games their way in is just going to find that the coursework crushes them. All that gaming their way in gains them is the ability to in a year or two add "flunked out of MIT" to their bio.

> I'd expect that most students who will be able to survive at MIT can make the SAT threshold with no gaming of the test and no test prep other than maybe doing one or two free sample tests.

Eh, not so sure. The "threshold", if we really trust that they do threshold and don't consider overperformance beyond that threshold (something I am skeptical of), is likely quite high.

The MIT threshold is 800 minus noise. So MIT can't consider overperformance on the SAT (math section) because the test is designed to make students indistinguishable at the top. All it does is help them weed out the chaff who won't be able to handle the mandatory math and physics classes that all students have to pass.

I don't know what "800 minus noise" means. All 800s is something only about 500 people achieve a year, and not all of them are going to MIT.

800 on the math section is something a ton of people get. Way way more than 500. More like ten thousand per year, maybe more.

I thought you meant 800 across the categories.

I should have figured that was your assumption when you had the 500 number in your reply. Dumb on my part.

Roughly nobody at MIT brags about SAT scores (at least when I was there 20 years ago). Any test is most sensitive around a given range. I think most MIT students are performing well enough in math that most of their mistakes in the SAT I and SAT II math subject tests are roughly statistical noise. I happened to get 800 on the math sections of both the SAT I and SAT II, and I got the impression most of the other students at MIT did similarly. I'm sure there are plenty of people with better mathematical ability than me who got 760s because of a loud neighbor or a bad breakfast burrito.

Very good point, and explains exactly why there should be no extra time on these tests. Give everyone the same time, same test, see how they do on the curve, and then you can make accommodations for disabilities ie 'how do you do among students with your disability or disabilities.

isn't that already the case for all grades? and all extracurriculars? (i.e., picking teams that allow anyone to join, or giving students who couldn't make the cut a pity position on a team such as `team manager` so they can add it to their college application?)

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