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Comment by PubliusMI | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts on the current backlash against the SAT/ACT/other standardized college entrance exams?

The liberal refrain is "High-scorers just had rich parents to hire them a tutor!", as if the tutor's instruction didn't actually uplift the children and make them stronger.

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Standardized test scores are correlated with race, but schools want to admit a more diverse set of students. If they consider test scores and still try for more diversity, it looks a lot like discrimination against groups with high scorers, like Asians. I think the SCOTUS has agreed to take a case against Harvard pertaining to this.

My own institution did not require standardized tests for a couple of years, mostly because of Covid, and it's been a bit of a mess. Test scores turn out to be good for placement in math classes.

>I think the SCOTUS has agreed to take a case against Harvard pertaining to this

The arguments are next week!

Thomas Sowell has a point on this, affirmative action allows in students that cannot reasonably do the work and it results in higher failure rates for students that got in with affirmative action.

His point is that they got in and feel like a failure when they could have gone to a different school and done just fine and not felt that way. And that, as such, affirmative action was actually having a negative effect on minorities.

I see how that could happen, and probably has. But, for example, I can also see how the top x black applicants to Harvard would be capable of doing very well at Harvard even if those applicants are not in the top 4.6% of SAT scorers who apply to Harvard. (where x is maybe 14% of entering class size to be proportional to US population, and 4.6% is I think the Harvard acceptance rate.)

Anyhow, it's a tough problem and I don't know the right answer and don't envy anyone having to set admission policies.

I can guarantee you that SAT tutoring is not uplifting anyone. They teach very specifically to the test, it's an extremely inefficient way to try to develop intellectually.

I think the anti-SAT argument is indeed misguided though. As it stands, the SAT is actually the best way for a poor kid from a bad school district to stand out - you can't take the grades at face value, and academic extracurriculars are substantially more expensive.

Should those with low standardized test scores be denied a rigorous education?

Despite the handwringing and poopooing from "liberals" there isa correlation between test performance and performance in college. Why would you send a student with sub 1000 SATs to Harvard when they likely won't be able to pass a single course?

Why would you? Because you want them to get the most rigorous education possible I presume. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it doesn't seem like anyone in the scenario doubts the value of education.

The point being if you don't have some base level of preparedness the value of the education will be lost on you because you cannot complete it.

That makes sense to me. Presumably it's up to the university to make that determination, isn't it?

Indeed and most have found that scores below a certain cutoff on a test like the SAT indicate that the student is unlikely to handle the curriculum.

That makes sense, but I was under the impression that some(many?) of the most elite colleges had actually done away with the SAT requirements. I wonder if it has affected their graduation rate?

I don't think most have, MIT for example explicitly went back to testing precisely for the reasons mentioned.

https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our...

Absent test scores all you have is GPA which can be gamed and is impossible to compare against other applicants and extracurriculars which will be dominated by wealthy kids with engaged parents. so that smart kid from a poor family in West Virginia has no way to show they can compete with the kid from Greenwich on the Lacrosse, Sailing and Model UN teams.

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