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Comment by pmonks | Hacker News Reader

Yeah that’s a terrible approach. All you’d get are kids who are good at testing and nothing else.

Where do you think grades come from? Standardized tests are better because they are standardized (of course), and more fundamental to get at basic problem solving and reading comprehension.

I would argue it is impossible to be good at testing and nothing else. Even with a relatively poorly-designed test, there are valuable skills needed to be "good at it". and the current standardized tests have years of development and constant updating behind them.

Sure but grades aren’t all that indicative of anything in the real world. Some of the worst hires I’ve made were graduates who, on paper, should have been outstanding ICs.

Well they might've cheated. There's a lot of that around.

But if it's a pattern you see from STEM majors from a US school, you could complain to their dean. They usually have industry advisory boards also to get feedback about how students are performing and what is needed.

Or they could have been excellent test takers and not much else. Unless you’re trying to say that cheating on standardized test is commonplace, which would be yet another black mark against them.

This is false. You should read MIT's very helpful blog on why they decided to bring back the SAT. Tl;Dr - the SAT is not a perfect indicator, but in combination with GPA, it is the best predictor of success in advanced education, especially in STEM disciplines. There is very high correlation between grades and SAT scores. Anecdotally, this aligns with my observations too.

I am quite familiar now with the SAT, and have taken the GRE and GMAT myself, and don't understand why any of these standardized tests are considered unfair to certain groups. I think they are a good measure of cognitive ability for advanced studies. People are shooting the messenger.

I think you probably have a different idea about what constitutes success in higher education than the commenter to whom you're replying, and possibly also to admissions officers at prestigious universities.

It can be true that the SAT is a good predictor of university grades, and also that there is more to university life, and life in general, than grades. The parent comment is suggesting that optimizing for grades may not produce the ideal set of university students/graduates. But if you think that graduating with high grades is the whole point of the endeavour then obviously you'll disagree.

Certainly I enjoyed spending my time at university surrounded by people who had more going on than just academic excellence.

Of course there is more to university life than grades. But I strongly disagree with the comment that "all you get are people good at testing, and nothing else". I know a bunch of very high SAT scorers, many of them my kid's friends, and they are not just "good at testing". In general, they bring excellence and hard work to everything they do, including athletics, music and art. In fact, I'd argue that it's almost impossible to be "good at testing, and nothing else".

My experience was otherwise, but you might be right in general.

My money’s on you being right tbh.

Or kids whose parents could afford a prep course or private tutoring.

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