Comment by thebradbain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thebradbain | Hacker News Reader

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I don’t think it’s a stretch to say an Olympiad 4.0 student — many of whom exist, I went to school with a few — has a much more promising academic career than someone who managed to get good-not-great grades and a single perfect test score.

Aside from the dedication of waking up to practice a sport every morning, think of how much time and discipline is it takes to balance being an amazing athlete with being a great student. They likely have all the mental fortitude and academic talent they need to succeed in college, no question, regardless of if they had a bad test day, or their pencil broke, or they had to use the bathroom and ran out of time, etc.

Someone with As and Bs, maybe a C, who did nothing else of note and managed to get a perfect test score one time doesn’t seem near as surefire a bet. If anything it shows you didn’t apply yourself.

In this scenario where you have a track star with a 4.0 and a “boring” student who happened to luck out and get a perfect SAT score, did these students take the same classes? Because maybe the reason the track star didn’t do as well is because they don’t know as much as the athlete.

What's the difference between training for track meets and training for a standardized test? In either case the student is applying themselves to excellence in a very niche skill - running really fast, or taking a test.

The difference is that one has to do with academic study, and one doesn't.

Edit: you’re acting like performance on the test is completely arbitrary. Clearly, it should be designed to avoid this, and to actually test academic mastery. For example, someone planning to study physics should be asked to solve difficult physics and math problems. Someone planning to study history or literature should be asked to write long-form essays on those topics. And so on.

I feel like a lot of people in this thread are only familiar with the American system and thus assume that “standardized tests” all have to be like the SAT, i.e. answering a ton of relatively basic multiple-choice questions as quickly and accurately as possible. That is not the case.

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