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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

Why is SAT score a good way to decide which student is more deserving of a spot?

There should be some SAT score floor. But beyond that other factors should take over. If the floor is at n and two applicants appear - one with a score of 1.1n and the other 1.2n, I don’t think that’s enough information to decide who should get the spot.

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There is an incredible about of SAT prep that is free.

It's a good way of figuring out who is intellectually capable. SAT scores have a very good prediction rate of success in college.

High SAT scores are only a good predictor against low SAT scores. Can you say that extremely high SAT scores are a better indicator of college success than very high SAT scores?

I’m not saying SAT scores are useless, just that they should only be used as a filter and not for ranking.

> Why is SAT score a good way to decide which student is more deserving of a spot?

Name a better way.

SAT score floor + lottery?

What makes you think that is better?

Vox had an article about college lotteries earlier this year you might find interesting:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/4/19/23689402/colleg...

Lottery is a metric that can't be gamed, if implemented correctly. It may not ever be the best system, but it also can't end up being what was a better system that was gamed into a worst system. It provides a certain level of consistent mediocracy between various other systems which rise and fall as they are gamed.

what are the other factors?

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