Yale will again require standardized test scores for admission | Hacker News Reader

Yale will again require standardized test scores for admission

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134 pointspseudolus233 comments

Grade inflation and bonus points for honors or AP classes has long made GPA a useless metric. One persons 4.0 is another school’s 4.27 (on a 4 point scale). Standardized testing isn’t perfect but it is one datapoint on how everyone did against the same task. Yes there can be differences in prep and training, but that’s life. Some folks will have more advantages than you. Those that work past that will succeed in life. That’s that don’t won’t.

Yep. Universities tried to track relative strength of GPA to school districts, but ultimately that is a hopeless task. Our own district has been guilty of severe grade inflation and teaching 2-3 grades behind grade level to the point where a “B” here would be a D or F in a college prep private school.

Standardized tests are imperfect, but they are not entirely flawed the way high school grades are.

This will also re level the playing field for poor families with smart kids who can’t afford all the extra-curricular wealthy families lean heavily into.

This will also re level the playing field for poor families with smart kids who can’t afford all the extra-curricular wealthy families lean heavily into.

Is this really leveling the playing field? If a wealthy, average student can get prep work to score as well as a gifted, poor student, that doesn’t seem like it’s leveling the playing field of socioeconomic disadvantage.

Ime tuition is far more accessible than many extracurriculars, and has better feedback (assuming that standardized testing is the only metric).

Maybe not perfectly level, but more so when colleges did not look at standardized test scores.

the problem is what better idea do you have? the idea of favoring "holistic student" just selects for students who have the time, money, and parental support to juggle 2-3 extracurriculars in addition to sustained effort in classwork.

it's goodhart's law in action: any measure that becomes a target will cease to become effective. for any metric you choose, a wealthy student will be able to deploy their familial resources to fiddle the metric, because that's literally what money is - "stored power and influence". My stored influence allows a pizza to appear at my door or a lawyer to appear to defend me, and it makes a violin and a tutor appear for your kids, if that's what the metric becomes. Wealthy families will always be able to fiddle something.

The dirty truth is that a small, fixed, standardized exam is actually not a bad solution to that problem. Things that require sustained effort (grades) actually tend to bias towards wealthy families, as do extracurriculars and other "holistic metrics". Wealth buys all of those things. But getting a smart kid through a standardized test successfully actually is a much smaller, more equitable hurdle. The unpopular answer is that ultimately pretty much anyone short of the completely destitute can afford a couple hundred bucks for a month of test prep (and the book alone gets you most of the way there), and in the cases where that's not true it certainly isn't improved in those cases by requiring 6 years of violin lessons and 2 instruments etc.

I mean think of it like a job interview... is it really fair to ask the applicant to do a big take-home assignment that takes a couple nights to complete? Now imagine that you have to start preparing in middle school, and your parents have to provide financial support while you do it. We all have this intuitive sense as developers that a short, deep interview is probably better, and that a long convoluted process is neither fair to the applicant nor particularly useful due to false negatives/etc. And in fact for many positions there is likely a fairly low "good-enough" bar where anyone reasonably competent is probably gonna be fine even if they're not hyperspecialized in the exact thing you're looking for.

Honest question, if you are looking at this in the sense of "college as a hiring interview": if you want true equitability, isn't the best approach to "fizzbuzz and give an offer to anyone with no major red flags" (for whatever fizzbuzz/small task is appropriate for an interview question for your position)? Obviously college applications outnumber slots, but if you have 100k "qualified" applications for 25k slots, just give a slot to the top 10k and randomize acceptance for the other 15k? That kinda seems to be what people want for colleges, if you want a true "background-blind system" - cherrypick the best and then just give everyone else who has a reasonable chance of success an equal shot at admission.

Otherwise you do end up in these "well candidate X is 82.3% likely to graduate but candidate Y is 82.4% likely to graduate" scenarios and effectively you are making decisions inside the margin of error. And that is the point where your parents' money comes into play - even a small edge helps you in a decision that is made on these super marginal factors.

I think that's the thing people are forgetting - the whole point of college admissions is NOT to discriminate, or even find the smartest; it's to attempt to make sure that those admitted can complete the coursework and benefit from it.

Once that bar has been cleared then you can start trying to improve things above it, but a problem has been that removing the bar meant you had many people who failed out (or, worse, you watered down the degree such that graduation becomes meaningless).

At the root of all this is the "everyone has to go to college to be happy and successful" - as long as we hold that AND there are people not suited to college as it currently is, we have a major problem. We need to make sure we have a society where non-college educated people can survive and thrive, or we're going to turn college into high school.

It's not leveling the playing field among social classes, but it is leaving an official door open for individuals who have a knack for tests but lack the support resources of richer folk. That's better then a closed door, and is easier to audit and evaluate than informal "holistic" admissions that may carry all sorts of implicit and hard to detect biases of their own. I'm certainly glad it was a door open to me some decades ago.

Truly leveling the playing field of society is probably not a thing that can happen.

I agree that it’s better than a closed door. But I don’t think the argument is between binary options.

>easier to audit and evaluate

This is where I think a lot of approaches go wrong. Because it’s easier doesn’t mean it’s the best or most meritocratic. At a certain point, it seems like we start optimizing to make HR personnel’s life easier, rather than the true outcome.

Not to say there's no better alternative being used somewhere, but "holistic" admissions practices often amount to rewarding nontraditional students who prove good at mimicking at WASP class signals or who fit some patronizing, objectifying trope.

If you're aiming for meritocracy, those are not an improvement over standardized tests or prior academic acheivement (and neither are they doing a good job of culturing authentic, plurlistic diversity).

Yeah, I wasn’t making a case for the current “holistic” approach

It's a big question. You could also argue that the poor student has an unfair advantage for being born with better intelligence, and the money is helping even that out.

You could but you shouldn't.

Sure. But it would also acknowledge we’re not optimizing for intellectual ability. Now which of these do you think most of society would have a problem with:

1) College should optimize admissions for intellect.

2) College ships optimize admissions for familial wealth.

You could also frame it as a dichotomy between rich kids money spent to either:

1. provide tutoring so they can go to university 2. Do something frivolous like learning to sail.

But that implies the rich kid has the choice, no? That, in itself, is part of the disparity. This is such a weird, odd take to defend.

You run into diminishing returns on test prep pretty fast. You obviously could blow thousands of dollars on a private test prep tutor but you’d be wasting your money compared to the poor kid with a $40 book grinding away at practice problems every night.

I've worked as a teacher. I realized some kids really need people to help them learn. A book wont do them any good until they have figured out how to learn from books. Having a personal tutor if struggling is really helpful.

There need to be this "click" moment.

Learning styles and all of that associated nonsense have been definitely disproven, please stop perpetuating these harmful ideas.

Does prep work have that big of an effect? I don’t think it can make an average student beat a gifted one unless the gifted one completely phones it in.

It's not perfect but IMO it's the best acceptance criteria available. The alternative is evaluating people based on subjective criteria like "well roundedness".

I think this is a false dichotomy. For example, we could also fund test prep programs for socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals.

It is graded on a curve. Raising the student body score on a synthetic measure is pointless. (Edit: You could argue "exam technique" is a good skill though, maybe?)

But ye, since rich families buy prep courses it becomes an arms race, and poor kids need them too.

The cost of test prep is a red herring. A test prep course is a couple of thousand dollars, a one-time expense per kid. From K-12, the school system will spend $150,000 or more on the same kid. If a $1,500 test pre course can teach anything a decade of schooling that costs the public $15,000-$25,000 a year can’t teach, then those test prep companies are working magic. And if $1,500 of test prep was really the difference, then it would be a no brainer to spend that money to level the playing field.

In reality, the lack of level playing field comes from cultural capital. Americans see standardized testing as beneath them and don’t prepare for it. When my uncle came to America, he moved with his wife and two adult kids into a tiny 2BR apartment in a shitty part of Queens. But I’m sure they scrounged together the $1,500 for my cousin to prep for her GRE. Meanwhile, despite extensive prodding, my wife couldn’t get her younger siblings to study for the SAT. Both were much better of economically than my cousin, and could definitely afford a prep course, they just didn’t do it.

It’s not clear to me what you can do to level the playing field in a way that’s actually fair. If you don’t have the cultural capital to know to study for a test, you sure as hell don’t have the cultural capital to know how to stand out in an admissions process based on soft factors. I spend $30,000 per year per kid to send my kids to a private school with old money Annapolis WASPs, precisely so they can get access to that cultural capital. It’s a terrible idea to make that sort of capital more important by reducing the emphasis on objective factors.

You don’t need a prep course to do well in the SAT. I did quite well with no work at all beyond school work, and I know kids today where it’s the same.

As others have indicated, you can just buy a prep book if you want and be done with it. The prep courses are just separating parents from their money.

You get way better result by practicing on old standardized tests before the real one.

Preparation for those is the most value you can get from your time studying.

I.e. study for the exam, not for what the SATs try to measure.

Yes. Just take lots of exams under strict time constraints, preferably under more adverse conditions (a public place with distracting chatter, a room that’s too cold, etc.).

And don’t bother with fake exams written by book publishers. They just aren’t authentic.

The beginning of the last paragraph made sense to me:

> It’s not clear to me what you can do to level the playing field in a way that’s actually fair.

But the ending confused me:

> It’s a terrible idea to make that sort of capital more important by reducing the emphasis on objective factors.

In a world with disparities of "cultural capital", not to mention $30K prep schools, which factors do you consider to be objective?

> In a world with disparities of "cultural capital", not to mention $30K prep schools, which factors do you consider to be objective?

$30k/year private school helps very little for standardized tests or Math Olympiad or things like that. In part because elite WASPs consider those things gauche. A kid from public school can be on a level playing field with my kids on the SAT by investing a couple of hundred bucks in buying old administered tests to practice on.

$30k/year private school helps massively on “soft” metrics colleges look at: essays, teacher or counselor recommendations, weird coursework, work in public service, “leadership,” entrepreneurship, etc. All the shit WASPs think make for a “well rounded” student. For example, a recent thing is trying to get your kid “published” while still in high school. How many professors does a bright kid in rural Iowa know? I know dozens.

> A kid from public school can be on a level playing field with my kids on the SAT by investing a couple of hundred bucks in buying old administered tests to practice on.

I thought you were dismissing test prep? "If a $1,500 test pre course can teach anything a decade of schooling that costs the public $15,000-$25,000 a year can’t teach, then those test prep companies are working magic."

I’m not dismissing test prep altogether. My point is that test prep isn’t the huge unfair advantage it’s made out to be. It can help you familiarize yourself with the format of the test, and learn some techniques for certain kinds of problems. But at the end of the day, what’s being tested is your vocabulary, basic high school math, logical reasoning, and reading comprehension. The prep classes don’t help you with that.

And insofar as the prep classes are helpful, you can get nearly all the benefits with a small investment. When I was prepping for the LSAT, I got a 167 (out of 180) on my first practice test. Nearly all my missed answers were on the “logic games” section. So I went on some Internet forums and found recommendations for PowerScore’s Logic Games Bible, which is $34 used on Amazon. I’ve got a relatively poor visual-spatial memory, so I learned some tricks in the book for using diagramming as a crutch for that. I ended up with a 176, entirely due to improvement in logic games.

So I can’t say prep never helps—the difference between a 167 and a 176 is the difference between a top-25 law school and a top-10 one. But the vast majority of people can do what I did to prep. You say “what about homeless kids or kids who don’t have Internet access” but at the end of the day you’re talking about a process that’s extremely accessible to the overwhelming majority of even poor kids. Which is a lot more than you can say for any of the alternative metrics for filtering applicants.

Ok, public and private school kids could get the same test prep for a relatively low cost, but does that mean public and private school kids are on a level playing field with regard to the test? In other words, do years of private prep school have no advantage with regard to performance on standardized tests?

> In other words, do years of private prep school have no advantage with regard to performance on standardized tests?

I would say that standardized tests is where years of private prep school makes the least difference. My wife and I are both public school kids, and our kids go to an expensive private school, and as far as I can tell there’s nothing magic about what’s taught or how it’s taught. Our motivation for private schooling is that they can counsel-out disruptive boys (so they can’t interfere with the learning of our orderly girl) and so our kids get used to socializing and dating within the right social class. I don’t think it’ll affect our kid’s SAT scores one bit.

> there’s nothing magic about what’s taught or how it’s taught

Why does it have to be magic? It's simply "culture", as you've said. Indeed, your reply alludes to this:

> they can counsel-out disruptive boys (so they can’t interfere with the learning of our orderly girl)

Private schools usually have more disclipline, higher expectations of students, a better learning environment, and selectivity. Public schools have to take everyone, no matter how disadvantaged, disruptive, or dumb. And whatever the cause, the stats do show that private school students score significantly higher on average on the SAT.

Of course disparities exist among schools, whether private or public. Education in the United States is extremely decentralized. I've never attended a private school, but I recall that when I switched public schools as a result of my family moving to a wealthier city, I was suddenly far behind in math and lost. Though I eventually caught up, I suspect that if I had remained in my old school district for my entire childhood, I would have been at a disadvantage, through no fault of my own.

By the way, a few months ago I read the book "Quiet Street" by Nick McDonell, which recounts his experience at the Buckley prep school in New York. You might find it interesting, and in any case the book is quite short, so you can breeze through it.

> Private schools usually have more disclipline, higher expectations of students, a better learning environment, and selectivity. Public schools have to take everyone, no matter how disadvantaged, disruptive, or dumb.

These things make for a more pleasant learning experience, and more well-connected kids, but I don’t think they confer any particular advantage on the SAT, as compared to any other academic or intellectual metric you might choose to use to select some applicants while rejecting others. And while the average, unmotivated and undirected kid might do better in a private school environment statistically, I don’t think there’s anything a motivated kid needs to do well on the SAT that isn’t available in the vast majority of public schools in the US. My wife went to high school in rural Iowa. Two neighboring towns had to share a high school, and the nearest “big city” was Sioux Falls, SD, 70 miles away. She wasn’t missing any resources needed to do well on the ACT.

In fact, the SAT is probably fairer than most of those other metrics, because it tests a pretty lowest-common denominator set of math, vocabulary, and logical reasoning skills. It doesn’t rely on books some kids might not have read or advanced math that might not be available at particular high schools.

> And whatever the cause, the stats do show that private school students score significantly higher on average on the SAT.

Because parents who can afford private school are smarter and more sophisticated than parents who can’t.

> And while the average, unmotivated and undirected kid might do better in a private school environment statistically, I don’t think there’s anything a motivated kid needs to do well on the SAT that isn’t available in the vast majority of public schools in the US.

How many kids are self-motivated? I certainly wasn't. I did the required work, the minimum expected of me, getting by on raw talent. Nobody ever pushed me, and I kind of regret that now. I didn't acquire self-discipline and motivation until my mid-twenties. My observation has been that the majority of "driven" kids are driven by somebody else.

> In fact, the SAT is probably fairer than most of those other metrics, because it tests a pretty lowest-common denominator set of math, vocabulary, and logical reasoning skills. It doesn’t rely on books some kids might not have read or advanced math that might not be available at particular high schools.

Ok, but what if colleges eliminated the "non-objective" factors and made the standardized test the sole criterion for admission? You can't just change the system without consequences. There would probably be more perfect SAT scores, because everyone would be focused on the SAT as the sole source of college admission, ignoring grades, extracurricular activities, recommendations, etc. Prestigious colleges would start to require perfect SAT scores for admission, given the pool of candidates with perfect SAT scores and the lack of other criteria; after all, with only one criterion, they couldn't justify letting in someone with a lower score than other applicants. In that scenario, it's questionable whether the SAT could even remain as "easy" as it is currently. They'd probably have to make it more difficult in order to produce a wider range of scores.

> Because parents who can afford private school are smarter and more sophisticated than parents who can’t.

How exactly would that matter? Many parents who can afford private school are also very busy, sometimes absent. We're not talking about home schoolers. Regardless of wealth, most parents seem to rely on the schools to babysit their kids.

I have been a standardized test coach and I can assure you that standardized tests are not as coachable as people think they are. Students plateau pretty quickly and you simply can't move their scores higher.

>Yes, there can be differences in prep and training, but that’s life

Some feel that we should be working towards evening out that playing field of opportunity. That doesn’t mean using standardizing is wrong, but that we shouldn’t be treating it as a panacea. It’s a brick in a bigger wall.

That's perfectly reasonable as long as you don't have unrealistic expectations, like thinking that differences can or must be completely eliminated, as if students are dolls we're playing with and don't have their own agency and varying abilities.

Related: MIT's detailed blog post about why they reinstated the SAT/ACT requirement (2 years ago):

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

Some quotes from the MIT blog post:

> [S]tandardized tests also help us identify academically prepared, socioeconomically disadvantaged students who could not otherwise demonstrate readiness because they do not attend schools that offer advanced coursework, cannot afford expensive enrichment opportunities, cannot expect lengthy letters of recommendation from their overburdened teachers, or are otherwise hampered by educational inequalities.

> [O]ur findings directionally align with a major study conducted by the University of California’s Standardized Testing Task Force, which found that including SAT/ACT scores predicted undergraduate performance better than grades alone, and also helped admissions officers identify well-prepared students from less-advantaged backgrounds.

Sanity and normality is returning, slowly.

It's normal to test children at the end of the educational process.

No, it isn't racist/bigoted/discriminatory.

No, minorities aren't too stupid to recognise the test is important. Implying that _is_ racist.

No, it isn't any of the other things it was claimed to be.

No, it isn't perfect.

Yes, it's necessary to ensure that schools are actually teaching and that schools which aren't actually teaching can be fixed.

Really the entire US educational system appears to have come under the influence recently of some people with very strange ideas.

As a (to me, puzzling) counterpoint, Caltech ran a similar internal analysis in 2020 and again in 2022 and extended their moratorium on standardized test scores for first-year admissions out to 2025.[1]

[1] https://www.admissions.caltech.edu/apply/first-year-applican...

Caltech is a much smaller and more narrowly focused school with a smaller applicant pool that self-selects even more than MIT's. The needs and workflows of their admission process are different and peculiar and shouldn't be taken as a strong signal of what makes sense elsewhere.

My only hang up with standardized testing is that it isn't accessible but not in the ways people might think. When I was in high school, I saw a good number of people who could not travel to a testing center. The closest testing center to my high school was the next city and with no public transport and a variety of family circumstances they couldn't take the test.

Test also cost money and you could find yourself in the middle class trap where you are too rich to get a waiver but too broke to afford the test.

Ideally, said tests are part of the normal tests done in the last year of highschool, right?

Shit, having to travel and pay for another test before you can go to college is borderline dystopian...

Way back in the day, I remember having to travel to take the SAT. In fact, I got a speeding ticket on the way to the test! Naturally, that didn't help my score.

No. They are done in specific locations, administered by the testing organization.

They do a lot to try to avoid cheating, limit memorizing answers, and so on. There is a conflict of interest with actually trusting the school whose reputation depends on how well their students do. Over the years, I've run into quite a few cheating scandals with other tests where teachers tried to improve scores. Because of that, I think that their precautions are very reasonable.

Many high schools do force every junior to take the SAT in school. Mine did. We all got to skip class for the day and took it in the gym.

Thats the PSAT and is not used for any college admissions that I'm aware of

This was the only time I took the SAT and I used it for my college admissions.

Actually, a number of states require students to the SAT. [1] This has an interesting effect on the average SAT scores, since the pool of students who choose to take the SAT tend to have somewhat higher testing ability than the students who would not have chosen to take it (but end up taking it due to state mandates).

1: https://blog.prepscholar.com/which-states-require-the-sat

I know the PSAT and SAT can be taken multiple times, and often starts with PSAT as a sophomore. Very common to take SAT as a junior, and then again as a senior if you weren’t happy with your junior score.

Have not heard of traveling outside your district for SAT’s, I’m not sure why that would happen.

No? We took it in the school.

Hell I took the SAT in the 6th Grade and I also took in the school

Many schools offer the SAT, but I'd agree it likely just should be all.

>Test also cost money and you could find yourself in the middle class trap where you are too rich to get a waiver but too broke to afford the test.

This test in particular is only $60 even if not subsidized, so it's hard to believe anyone who doesn't qualify can't scrounge up enough for at least the one attempt. However this is a real issue with financial aid as a whole, just 10-20k more a year can have a negative impact on what scholarships/financial aid you can receive, and that can easily end up at over six figures of 'lost' aid.

$60 + lost income for a student who works outside school hours and also has to take the test outside school hours + transportation which could be over an hour in rural areas and you can see how this could quickly add up, especially for a teenager who may be smart but may not see the proper cost/benefit of skipping the SAT

You are looking for corner cases within corner cases at this point. I know it's uncool to assign the responsibility of children to their parents these days... but if you subscribe to the idea that every system in place has to cater to every possible living situation, you'll just end up with one that doesn't work well for anyone, as evidenced by this post.

and if they know how it is, they probably are able to make it happen by planning for it over the course of a year.

honestly, im not sure i would ever wish to hire someone who couldnt make this happen

All this seems like a small investment compared to properly preparing for the test. An average student would probably want to study at least 10 hours if they care about their test score.

> especially for a teenager who may be smart but may not see the proper cost/benefit of skipping the SAT

The SAT is for students who want to attend college. If $60 and a two hour round trip is going to tilt the scale on whether you spend 4 years in college, then from the college's point of view, you may not be the type of applicant they are looking for.

"I mean, it's one banana Michael. What could it cost? 10 dollars?"

Absolutely agree. If these tests are not offered in the school during normal school hours, students should receive compensation for taking the test. It's bonkers to me that students have to pay to take it. Travel should also be provided if the test cannot be offered in the student's school. I think that would be a much fairer way to close the equity gap for standardized testing, rather than remove one of the few ways a student from a low-income background can prove their academic worth.

I think this trap is rarer than you would think. I qualified for Pell Grant but still had no problem arranging transport to testing.

I can think of all of my friends who couldn't be assed to go to the test or ask for voucher, but I couldn't imagine them being academically successful in college anyway.

"i was poor, but nobody is THAT poor" is a bad argument.

Not at all. You can’t design the standard system used for everyone around the needs of people in extreme circumstances. In the US, 80% of even poor households have access to a car. Likewise, the $55 one-time registration fee for the SAT is not unaffordable for the vast majority of poor people.

The percentage of even poor families for whom these are the barriers to taking standardized tests is small enough where you can just have the regular system and come up with special case accommodations for kids who are truly desperate.

"Well a lot of people can afford it so its fine" is a bad argument.

I don't think these tests are unaffordable to middle class people

Why did you constrain it to “middle class people”?

because the post s/he is responding too specially mentions the middle class getting squeezed.

Got it. Thanks for clarifying, I think I lost the thread

LMAO, this is so bizarre. The biases on this site and the weird attention you get for criticizing them.

I wouldn't be surprised if the mods get involved.

My state currently uses the SAT as it's high school standardized test, I believe for Juniors. Everyone gets at least one shot at it then.

I haven't remained up to date with how testing is handled now since I'm an old fart but before the test was not given during school hours. If it is now then wonderful.

When I was a youngster we got the PSAT for "free" in Junior year, but the SAT we had to schedule and take ourselves.

Then again, back then there was no essay part for the SAT, so lol.

All of the tests have fee waivers: https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/registration/fee-waive...

The alternative to testing is looking at resumes and various resume-boosting extra-curriculars are substantially more inaccessible to those without means. Merely identifying some edge cases in the current method doesn't make a good argument.

I specifically mentioned fee waivers and ignoring edge cases doesn't make the current method good. But I'm not making a large case about why standardized testing is bad. Like I said, these are my only hang ups. I'm not trying to put you out of business.

Ah my mistake, didn't read your final line properly.

I think my only problem with the current standardized tests is when a standardized test from a private company is required for a public school. Harvard can require whatever it wants. But I feel like to get into the state university, it should be a standardized test ran by the public (state, federal? Don't really have a preference).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccalaureate

This is the normal way to do it. One state administered batch of exams. Unique national questions. Everyone takes it in their own school. Private school students still do the same state test.

Universities tend to require a minimum overall grade and a minimum grade on the exam closest to what they teach.

But I suppose it would be communism if the federal government did it.

It's important to remember that the legal context around admissions has changed over the past few years. 2-3 years ago, it seemed clear that (1) the courts were likely to strike down policies that support diversity via admissions and (2) they were going to use test scores as a way to measure the inequity. [A]

It appeared then that schools were no longer requiring test scores as a defensive move - if they don't require tests, it's harder to use them in court.

Today, the court appears to be signaling that they won't continue cracking down. [B] [C]. Accordingly, we should not be surprised that that admissions offices are reacting by reinstating the requirements - they've always been useful; they were just briefly dangerous.

[A] https://www.harvard.edu/admissionscase/wp-content/uploads/si... [B] https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-rejects-virgi... [C] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/02/05/s...

> It appeared then that schools were no longer requiring test scores as a defensive move - if they don't require tests, it's harder to use them in court.

From the article: "When the coronavirus pandemic scrambled testing, Yale and many other colleges dropped requirements that applicants submit standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT."

Why is everyone looking for a convoluted theory when there's a very obvious explanation?

Remote computer proctoring is a solved problem, way before Covid, so the pandemic may be part of the reason, but it's unlikely to be the whole reason.

Universities bandwagon just as much as anyone else does, and the reasons they give afterwards may not be the reasons they went into it.

That's like saying remote instruction was a solved problem before Covid.

The problem with the pandemic was that almost every student in the country was suddenly thrown into a remote situation, and nobody was prepared for that.

It's the same with remote work. It may have been a "solved problem" before the pandemic (and I personally WFH before the pandemic), but nobody was prepared for a huge portion of the country's workforce to be suddenly thrown into remote work.

It was as solved problem for the pre-pandemic volume of students

A significant portion of the US population wants to believe the convoluted theory over the obvious explanation.

It seems like many universities (especially Ivy league schools) who made testing optional during the pandemic did so for logistical reasons: they couldn't ask students to sit in a big room with a hundred other kids to take a test. I can't say whether COVID provided cover for the motives you list above, but the proximate reason given was sufficient.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/coronavirus-s...

This makes a lot of sense, thanks.

I have no real qualms with this under one wishful condition. My condition is that I think if schools are going to start selecting for this type of individual again, it would be quite beneficial to start heavily screening children for learning disabilities and other disorders that can impact educational attainment.

I had an undiagnosed learning disability, and had I known at the time, I could have received proper accommodations and treatments that I believe would have greatly improved my abilities to better perform on standardized tests and academics in general.

However, screening children for such disabilities was not common in the public education system of the South East, US during my time. Based on my academic achievements, GPA, etc. the standardized test I took (ACT) was by no means an accurate reflection of my abilities. In fact, the ACT actively harmed my educational opportunities.

While these tests may help children with poorer socioeconomic status, I think the tests currently discriminate against neurodivergent people, and are probably significantly worse for neurodivergent people with poorer socioeconomic backgrounds.

Unfortunately, screening requires spending time and money, and both are things businesses/schools would rather not do.

> The decision comes after officials found that the scores were the single best predictor of students’ academic performance and that not considering them could be a disadvantage for those who have already faced daunting challenges.

Neither half of this sentence is surprising. Some people love to hate on standardized testing, despite it having been repeatedly shown to have high predictive capability.

It's almost as if those of us who used critical reasoning before the decision was made to scrap these tests were right. A lot of introspection needs to be done to determine why these decisions were made. At the time of the decision, the admissions committees claimed the exact opposite was true, that the tests are poor predictors and disadvantaged already-disadvantaged students. Now they're claiming the opposite. Based on what data? Why did we allow the admissions committees of so-called 'elite' institutions to be so easily swayed? Are these institutions really worthy of their 'elite' status? It would seem to be called into question if they can't answer a question as straightforwards as this.

Especially institutions like MIT... one would expect that they have a solid understanding of data analysis.

I think the groups championing stuff like this had a lot of clout a few years ago. Unfortunately for them, concrete positive results never materialized. In the meantime, the Supreme Court ruled negatively on race-based admissions and DEI offices are facing public backlash. If there really were any ideas with pursuing, those groups squandered their chance.

> I think the groups championing stuff like this had a lot of clout a few years ago.

Alternative explanation: the pandemic happened. "When the coronavirus pandemic scrambled testing, Yale and many other colleges dropped requirements that applicants submit standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT."

That is indeed a possibility. However that was not the popular narrative. I'd be interested to see if that was the reason given and how often

> However that was not the popular narrative. I'd be interested to see if that was the reason given and how often

"For nearly four years Yale’s undergraduate admissions process has been test-optional. The experience, originally necessitated by the pandemic..." https://admissions.yale.edu/test-flexible

"I am writing to announce that, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, our office will be suspending our usual SAT/ACT testing requirement for the coming application cycle." https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-suspending-our-...

"When Dartmouth suspended its standardized testing requirement for undergraduate applicants in June 2020, it was a pragmatic pause taken by most colleges and universities in response to an unprecedented global pandemic." https://admissions.dartmouth.edu/apply/update-testing-policy

I thought the popular narrative was that this was primarily driven by the pandemic? The debate about the value of standardized test scores has been raging for decades and up until the pandemic most elite colleges and universities still required them. (Upon reflection, there was a prior movement at some schools to boost declining enrollment by making tests optional, but that seemed more driven by profit-seeking than morality.)

The primary explanation I have heard both in the news and from friends in admissions departments for so many elite schools going test-optional at the same time was for the pandemic, and most of the ones I am aware of explicitly called it a temporary measure as Yale did.

Now I could buy that the testing debate may have played a role in why some schools have been dragging their feet to return to requiring tests post-pandemic because anti-test folks are exploiting this opportunity. But having worked in academia I also would not discount the immense inertia in university admissions playing an equally large role.

I'm sorry... no. The pandemic also messed with ... grading. Why is a one day exam considered enough of a danger to merit ignoring it, while mandating continued schooling? Many disadvantaged students obviously were going to be more disadvantaged with online schooling. We could have easily found ways to administer tests safely (outdoors, fewer people in larger, well-ventilated buildings, etc). No... no attempts were made to even encourage that, realizing that making this opportunity available would mean more disadvantaged kids able to attend these schools.

> We could have easily

Easily, yes, that's the stereotypical HN comment. Everything is easy. I could do it in a weekend...

> outdoors

That's much easier said than done in many parts of the country.

> realizing that making this opportunity available would mean more disadvantaged kids able to attend these schools.

Sooooo... why are they stopping then?

Have you considered the possibility that maybe during a global pandemic, with all kinds of terrible crap happening, administering the SAT wasn't a very high social priority, and it was easier for everyone just to skip it?

I’m out of the loop on the Supreme Court decision, could you briefly fill me in?

Here is the ruling: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

> A lot of introspection needs to be done to determine why these decisions were made.

Not really. It started with the pandemic, which messed up everything, including testing.

It didn't start with the pandemic, it just continued during it.

This article from the Washington Post, in October 2019 (before the pandemic started) reported that as of then, 40% of accredited schools had already dropped this requirement.

>>> Nearly 50 accredited colleges and universities that award bachelor’s degrees announced from September 2018 to September 2019 that they were dropping the admissions requirement for an SAT or ACT score, FairTest said. That brings the number of accredited schools to have done so to 1,050 — about 40 percent of the total, the nonprofit said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/10/18/record-n...

The article is about Yale, and it did start for Yale with the pandemic.

I think we have a both/and situation - there was a strong current to remove SAT/ACT score consideration already in play and the pandemic was enough to force it through at Yale and others.

What schools did not drop the requirement during the pandemic would be more interesting.

> What schools did not drop the requirement during the pandemic would be more interesting.

It might be interesting... if you named any.

It's hard to find (as in a one second google search didn't find it, but man found a lot of lists of SAT/ACT-free admissions) but I did find this:

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-lis...

At least one on there (MIT) we know dropped and brought it back, so it's clearly not a list of those that always required it.

It's a bit more nuanced than what you're describing. I suggest listening to this (or reading the transcript): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/podcasts/the-daily/the-wa...

Doesn't seem very nuanced to me. The transcript directly supports anon291's claim.

Transcript: "So this in-depth study looking at college admissions that was released last summer ended up finding that the richest applicants have huge advantages in college admissions, and a lot of people have assumed that the SAT must be one of the advantages that richer applicants have."

Then they controlled for the obvious confounders, and the assumption was wrong. (Big surprise: Wealthy people attend better schools.)

I, too, am curious why schools changed their admissions policies before studying the matter closely.

>>I, too, am curious why schools changed their admissions policies before studying the matter closely.

Probably for the same reason Oregon decided to decriminalize most drugs thinking it would reduce usage and harm (it didn't).

I understand your good intentions, but a poor response is one that says "go spend time listening to this podcast." That's someone else's article-length response. If you think that podcast/article made interesting points, briefly summarize them in your comment and provide the link for those who want to dig in a bit more.

Who is "we"? We are generally not in a position to allow or disallow anything. Most of those elite institutions are private non-profit corporations. They can do pretty much whatever they want (within certain legal bounds) and are accountable only to their own Boards.

"We" are the people who continue to associate these schools with academic excellence. Yes, I agree they can do what they want. My local evangelical bible school can also do what they want but no one associates them with academic excellence.

We didn't allow them to do anything. They're just not accountable to us.

If you've been following Harvard's anti-Semitism drama over the last 4 months, it appears they're not really accountable to anybody. Neither US Congress nor their wealthiest donors have been able to force action from them.

But Harvard's president was forced to resign?

Due to a citation scandal, that wasn’t as big a deal as it was presented in context.

The wrong reason to go…

A better reason to go was that her research was crap based on bad statistics.

Things like the citation scandal are a signal for the kind of problem that lead to that.

It's not at all obvious to me that (or why) Yale or Harvard ought to be accountable to us. They're private universities and, as far as I know, they appear to be following the laws that they're subject to. (Following the law is a form of accountability, but a very weak form.)

If they want to suddenly condition admissions on a hash function of the applicant's name, I think that would be absurd, but I don't think I ought to have any say in that matter.

chances are excellent the decision to abandon standardized testing came directly from the colleges bean counters instead of its laureates.

running a college is very lucrative, with most institutions being nothing more than taxpayer subsidized sports team franchises. Yale isnt one of these, so its only alternative to boost revenue is to relax admissions criteria.

chances are also great that cloistered elites found this idea so dyspeptic as to demand the bar be raised oncemore. Yale is also a critical litmus for the social signaling of americas capital class.

Yale definitely is that. Elon Musk put it bluntly in https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1526975113597489154?lang...

Yale is the epicenter of the woke mind virus attempting to destroy civilization.

Paul Graham's response to this was:

Bizarre as that last sentence sounds, I have to say that when I asked someone with a lot of experience in freedom of speech issues which universities to avoid, Yale was the first he mentioned.

When my son was applying to colleges, Yale and Stanford were at the top of his list of schools not to consider because he didn't like DEI.

Maybe someone is finally waking up to the fact that this is becoming a long-term reputation problem for the university?

Now consider that the Supreme Court Justices are basically all from Harvard / Yale.

A lot of introspection needs to be done to determine why these decisions were made.

These decisions were purely political and social in nature, and it will happen again as soon as there is another opportunity. University administrators, under political and a little bit of social pressure, ignored science and data in pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The bulk of Ivy League schools have determined that some groups of people cannot make it without help, and it is up to those universities to correct this wrong by reducing as many roadblocks and responsibilities as possible.

I doubt there will be any introspection because many of the people who made these disastrous decisions are still in power and will likely be so for some time.

> Especially institutions like MIT

MIT dropped the standardized test requirement only during Covid (in 2020 and 2021). One could argue that in those time keeping the requirement would be tantamount to endangering people. Maybe they made that argument, maybe not, but the fact is that they were the first to reinstate the requirement, so not clear why you decided to pick on them.

> scores were the single best predictor of students’ academic performance

I wonder what the best predictor of high scores is?

Probably parents' level of educational attainment.

since we're not talking causality, maybe it's students' future success that predicts parents level of educational attainment!

IQ isn't real according to some, so clearly we need an inferior proxy.

The state standardized test scores kids take in middle school.

When did the officials find this out?

It's only been known for close to a century. It is the reason why standardized tests were accepted in the first place. It has been confirmed in many ways since. If they were ever ignorant of this fact, it is because they were willfully choosing to be ignorant of it.

Research also found that IQ tests are a better predictor of job performance than other available measures, such as interviews. This was first established in the military, then in the 50s and 60s was confirmed for a variety of jobs. Unfortunately the case Griggs v. Duke Power Co. make it illegal to use IQ tests, because it results in hiring fewer blacks.

But IQ tests can still be done indirectly. For example coding boot camps can use what is essentially an IQ test to decide who will be a student, and then graduation from said boot camp serves as a signal to companies that this inexperienced person is smart, motivated, and willing to learn. That signal is likely to be more valuable to the company than the training itself.

I appreciate your point, but the nuance to remember is that IQ tests are also influenced by education (or, as you point out minorities, access to education as well). IQ tests do have value only within the context of what they essentially require to be able to take them and have a shot and demonstrating your innate problem solving and reasoning ability, etc.

> IQ tests are also influenced by education (or, as you point out minorities, access to education as well).

Presumably, so is job performance?

I suspect we'll get to scientific racism sooner or later in this thread.

The cure to that would be letting colorblind standards work over time, but that's politically unacceptable because too many people derive their income from nonsense like "merit is a white colonial construct". Quit treating people differently based on race, and racist kooks will be irrelevant.

I agree with the spirit of this comment, but note that quitting treating people differently requires fixing the school system so that minorities don't consistently start off in second rate schools.

It isn't just one side that finds talking about real solutions politically unacceptable.

I think it's more precise/actionable to say that quitting treating people differently "includes" fixing discrepancies in the primary and secondary school systems, rather than "requires" it.

I strongly disagree.

But saying that it is required, I'm drawing attention to the fact that it must be done to succeed. I believe it must be done because, starting with Piaget's work, we have evidence that children go through important developmental stages. Some lessons missed at specific ages, can be missed forever.

If I had merely said included, that makes it easy to walk away thinking that it is just one of many things that advance the goal. Which takes away from a must, to a nice to have. And then we can excuse not doing it based on the price tag. While imagining that the other things we're doing somehow will add up to a real fix. A piece of imagination that we make easier by discounting the evidence of standardized tests which demonstrate exactly how badly we, as a society, are failing.

My whole point is that, since the popular rejection of school busing, neither party has been willing to try to honestly tackle this problem.

> IQ tests are also influenced by education

[citation needed]

Griggs did not make the use of IQ tests illegal. It simply required businesses to prove a job-related business necessity for requiring such a test. (And this was codified into law by the Civil Rights Act of 1991.)

Some businesses are able to prove a job-related business necessity for IQ tests, and do require applicants to take those tests for certain positions. Most businesses can't show a business necessity for any positions, and so don't require IQ tests.

To prove a job-related business necessity for IQ tests, you need a large group of people who have been through IQ tests, and whose performance you can measure. The US military has collected this data and can use that.

Your average company with < 100 employees almost certainly CANNOT have collected this kind of data. And larger companies will have trouble putting large groups through an IQ test with no apparent purpose, and so are unlikely to have ever collected the data needed to attempt to make the case. The practical effect is that such tests are usually illegal to use. Even though we know that they are very often useful.

That's still false. You don't need to have a large group of people go through IQ tests to prove a business necessity, you need to prove that IQ specifically is relevant to the specific job in some way.

And the thing is, that it's very difficult to show that IQ (as measured by an IQ test) is relevant to a specific job versus something like experience, education, etc., because "IQ" is a made up number that doesn't actually test intelligence or problem-solving abilities.

Businesses test applicants all the time. But instead of a useless IQ test, they test job-specific performance through things like coding tests, draft patents or legal documents, etc.

You ALMOST get it, but then entirely missed the point.

You need to demonstrate that the test is consistent with a business necessity. If you have a large enough people who have taken the test, and enough data on how they perform, you can make that demonstration. You've got the data, and it is enough to cover the military despite people like you who think that it "doesn't actually test intelligence or problem-solving abilities." Because, whatever it actually tests, it predicts real world performance well enough to pass legal muster.

The US military is the only organization that I'm aware of which has an IQ test with enough data that they can pass legal muster. Very specifically I'm talking about the AFQT, which is the core of the ASVAB. See https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/asvab details on the ASVP. And see https://asvabmilitarytest.com/asvab-compared-other-iq-tests to see that it really is an IQ test to tell if you're smart enough to be in the military. And not just whether you can join, but which jobs inside of the military they will allow you to pursue.

The military has documented that this is an effective way to find people who can do things like fill out paperwork properly, and follow orders in the field. The reason why other businesses can't do the same is not because the test is useless, but because they don't have the data to demonstrate how useful the test actually is.

You're simply wrong. It's not a data set size issue. The issue is that most businesses can't show a sufficient connection between an IQ test and the responsibilities of a job to establish a business necessity for having the IQ test.

If they can show a business necessity, they don't need to show that the IQ test actually predicts job performance.

Notably, the army's test is not an IQ test. It is an aptitude test which is a very different thing. An aptitude test specific things are that directly and strongly related to the job (or jobs) for which the applicant is applying.

It is an IQ test, they will tell you that. IQ predicts job performance and wealth. Sorry if that offends you but it is reality. Good luck fighting it!

It demonstrates how wishy-washy and irrational these entities are.

They jumped on the "standardized testing is racist" train against their own interests. As soon as that was no longer politically expedient, they reversed course. This took place in a matter of a few years, hardly enough time to gather requisite data. But that was never the goal.

> They jumped on the "standardized testing is racist" train against their own interests. As soon as that was no longer politically expedient, they reversed course. This took place in a matter of a few years, hardly enough time to gather requisite data. But that was never the goal.

That's not what happened. From the article: "When the coronavirus pandemic scrambled testing, Yale and many other colleges dropped requirements that applicants submit standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT." Now that the pandemic is over, they're reassessing.

It should be concerning that Yale as an institution is dumber than the majority of people here who called this out as such.

>> The decision comes after officials found that the scores were the single best predictor of students’ academic performance and that not considering them could be a disadvantage for those who have already faced daunting challenges.

> Neither half of this sentence is surprising. Some people love to hate on standardized testing, despite it having been repeatedly shown to have high predictive capability.

What's surprising is what's not in the sentence.

How could an Ivy League school's administrators have not figured that out before the policy change?

What actually caused the policy reversion, because it wasn't the sudden discovery of obvious facts?

How much of a black eye is this for Yale's reputation? They're clearly playing a game of nobody being responsible . . . because who could have known! That indicates that it's not nothing. What's the impact of this?

These are also some questions an actual journalist should have been asking. I guess we don't have those anymore, though. Does "access journalism" extend beyond politics to academic administrators now? H.L. Mencken spins in his grave.

It’s too late. Ivy League schools are a joke. They’ve been coasting on the accomplishments of alumni from 50 years ago. Serious kids of the current generation should not worry about trying to get into Ivies.

Why would you go to an Ivy? Do you think you’re going to learn calculus better than you would at flagship state U? You aren’t. Do you think you’re going to work with famous professor there? You aren’t. They wouldn’t touch an undergrad with a 10 ft pole. They will hand off all your classes to adjuncts and grad students. Don’t waste your money on a fancy brand.

financial aid

look, I'm a public school guy through and through, but to say people who go to Harvard don't get any benefit from going there is pretty silly.

The results of people going to Ivies is significantly better. You make better contacts and you have access to better resources.

This would be better described as Ivy+ which is the usual Ivies and colleges that are considered at that tier such as Stanford.

Putting it another way, if you are going to college and you had an Ivy+ college as an option, why would you not choose that?

>The results of people going to Ivies is significantly better.

The studies I’ve seen contradict this. Students who are accepted to elite colleges but instead go to “lesser” schools do just as well as their Ivy counterparts. The exception is extremely poor students who do better by going to elite schools; researchers speculate that is due to networking effects. But that effect doesn’t generalize well like your comment implies.

Note: I can't find the article on this, so no data unfortunately.

The reason for this (at least from what I've heard) is that when you've got the credentials to get into an Ivy, the limiting factor for your success is "being able to complete your degree."

If you choose an "easier" school, your odds of completing a degree go up by a lot. You also stand a chance of being one of the best students there, further bolstering your transcript and opportunities for doing research while at the university.

There's quite a number of variables that go into college selection, and just because you qualify for a bunch doesn't mean that the "most elite" would be the best. Sometimes it is better to be the big fish in the small pond; other times you're better off being smaller in a bigger pond.

Part of the problem is trying to work all this out at an age where you're not even allowed to vote, let alone buy a beer or a gun.

One of the surest things to aim for, in my opinion, is minimizing external debt carried afterwards, which for low income but high achieving students, may mean aiming at the very top, where full scholarships are available.

The argument that I’ve heard is that we confuse causality. I.e., elite schools select for successful people, not that they add anything to make people successful.

Surrounding yourself with the smartest people possible, during the most formative years of your life, is always a good idea. Get into the best school you can

Are they the smartest people possible? Recent court cases have exposed that “smartest possible” is not what Ivies are selecting for.

I’ve yet to be surrounded by better people in any environment than when I was at MIT (not an Ivy, but is what people often mean colloquially).

When did you go there?

> Why would you go to an Ivy?

It’s not got much to do with the quality of teaching as you point out; it’s largely for signalling purposes.

Apparently there are now would-be students getting into Ivy League colleges with no intention of ever matriculating and paying the vast fees. They simply attach their offer as proof of their intellectual potential/elite group membership to their CV and get a job where they’ll learn far more than they would in four years at an old academic institution (and get paid to do it!).

If you ever wanted proof that the certification is worth more than the experience itself, that must be it.

Wow, the snake eating its own tail!

Good thing Harvard has a $50bn endowment to carry them into the future. /s

This is very divorced from reality. Past a certain point your classes and professors don't matter much.

You go there to be surrounded by smarter people, with better connections, better extracurricular programs, and the name brand recognition to get a headstart on adult life.

It’s true. There are brainless hiring managers who will greenlight anyone with a fancy school on their resume just like there are consumers who will fork over a month’s salary for a handbag with right logo. If you want to work for people like that, by all means, knock yourself out jumping through Ivy school hoops.

If you care about results, focus on results and the rest will follow.

I mean, the Ivies have a pretty darn good track record of 'results' too.

Where do you think are places with better 'results'?

Not trolling here, I am genuinely curious as to your metric and the places/things that fit it.

Kids that just graduated don't have any results to look at, besides the schooling they've managed to complete. With no other knowledge, if you had to choose between a kid with a stanford degree and a kid with a south harmon institute of technology degree, which would you imagine is more capable?

I am probably quite wrong on this, but I have always believed that the people smart enough to get into MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc. were probably smart enough that they didn't even truly need to go there. It's more for connections and a formality than for pure educational attainment.

For example, Bill Gates left Harvard after two years. He did quite fine without graduating by most metrics. I imagine he would have been quite successful, perhaps in a different way, had he not attended at all.

They may not have needed to go, but they almost certainly received advantages for having gone.

Even Billy G would have had two years of knowledge of people whom he could tap - and if you go back and research early Microsoft, I bet you'd see evidence of that.

Billy G had mommy :) Look her up on wikipedia.

Harvard works more for people like steve ballmer than it does for bill gates.

I go to Cornell so I want to provide my perspective on this:

1. Do you think you’re going to learn calculus better than you would at flagship state U? - No. There might be a small difference but I would not claim to have received an education that is significantly better than any state university. I was able to take very specific grad-level classes and learn basically whatever niche subject I wanted to - which might be an issue at schools which do not have comparable funding. But overall, not significantly better than a state U.

2. Do you think you’re going to work with famous professor there? - In my experience every student who was competent and wanted to work on a research project was able to - even as soon as their second semester in freshman year (might not get the exact professor and project you want - but in my experience all professors have an incredible reputation and you will gain a lot out of whoever you get to work with)

3. They will hand off all your classes to adjuncts and grad students. - In all my classes, grad students have been responsible for grading assignments and exams, but never for teaching - only the professors teach.

4. Don’t waste your money on a fancy brand - I didn't. Coming from a low-income household, Cornell covered all my expenses and I have not paid a single cent my entire 4 years (and no loans). It is significantly more likely for an Ivy League university to provide full financial aid as they have the endowment to do so.

Additionally, the biggest advantages for me with regards to the brand name were: 1. Recruiting - recruiters from FAANG and other top companies come to you - pretty much everyone I know was going into FAANG or a top fintech company their sophomore or junior year internship. 2. Networking - Since there are so many alumni already at top firms, it is significantly easier to get referrals.

We’re talking about Ivy League schools here, not Cornell.

Cornell is ivy league.

I mean sure, technically, yeah.

Yeah, it's funny, that Cornell while being Ivy League does not get any of the blame. I guess it is because they are doing something right.

Is this not a deeply cynical reason to go to an Ivy league school? Recruiters target those schools so you get a job that will allow you to make more money, and simply because you get access to better connected people (again to make more money)? It's not about the quality of education at all, then.

I would not say it's not about the quality of education at all - it's not hugely better than state universities but definitely not worse. I firmly believe I could not have received a better education anywhere else (except maybe even better institutions like MIT or Stanford).

As an individual, my decision then is: do I want to choose a place that sets me up for a high paying job and with connections I can rely on for life, and does not take my money for it, while also not having any downsides (that I can see) compared to a state university? Choosing a school for these reasons seems like the most rational choice anyone could make in that scenario.

Please correct me if I am misunderstanding your argument.

I think at an individual level it is logical to make the choice to go to an ivy if you have the chance.

But ivy league schools don't present themselves as just a networking opportunity. They present themselves as a way to get a much higher quality education than other universities (and this is why you should hire their alumni).

It would be more honest to present themselves as a marginally better education experience, and also a place where powerful people send their children, thus allowing better networking.

As a society, it doesn't make sense to put that much weight behind the ivy stamp on your resume, if the education is the same as a flagship state school.

I agree completely; the fact that so much weight is put behind the school reputation is a symptom of a deep societal issue.

Nearly every school will give you a quality education, but elite schools will allow you to put that education to better use. There's nothing cynical about thinking of your education as an investment you'd want to optimize, indeed many people suffer for years because they spent way more on an education than they actually valued it.

> It's not about the quality of education at all, then.

As the saying goes, "It ain't the grades you make, but the hands you shake."

It's literally the main reason to go. It's most explicit in the MBA schools, where the admissions office of various schools would tell me "we're great if you're going for this area, or live in this area, otherwise we recommend another school". The MBA teaching is almost the same everywhere, what you learn - but the whole value is who you meet.

> Coming from a low-income household, Cornell covered all my expenses and I have not paid a single cent my entire 4 years (and no loans).

For students in your situation, it makes sense to go to a private college with lots of financial aid, since there's basically no downside. For middle class students, it makes much less sense since they and their families have to take on huge loans. Even for wealthy students, it's not as clear a case as for low-income students. You have to be very wealthy for your family to be able to easily afford $320k per kid.

This is an absolutely valid point.

Youve completely missed the point of ivies. It's not to get a better education. Its not to do research or have better professors. The point of ivies is to be around the other students who got in. The alumni network at these institutions is unbelievably valuable, and theyre full of rich legacies who can boost the careers of the whole network.

It’s not to get a better education. It’s not to do better research. Yes, you are proving my point.

There's a massive advantage for likely-to-succeed students to be embedded in an environment where they will primarily interact with other likely-to-succeed students. Somewhat perversely, it doesn't really matter WHY they're likely to succeed, which creates the situation that rich parents buying their kid's spot actually creates a net benefit to the students who got in on merit.

THAT's why you go to an Ivy. It's where the successful go.

> THAT's why you go to an Ivy. It's where the successful go.

I'd rephrase that as 'going to an Ivy (or equal non Ivy notable school like Stanford) - gives you - all things equal - a better chance of success' (by various points made by others who have replied to the parent comment).

Now what's interesting is the parent comment 'why would anyone ... a joke' clearly shows that they don't understand at all the value or branding. As if it's some type of mass delusion of stupid people.

The value of branding. An interesting concept. What value does branding provide? Does it make you smarter? More competent? Or does it just convince people to give you more money for no reason?

Interesting that you place such a high value on branding compared to actually being able to do your job.

You seem to be now arguing that prestigious universities provide a WORSE education than lower-tier institution. That's very different from what you said in your original comment, which is that they're no better. The latter is probably true, or at the very least not dramatically better. They certainly don't offer a worse education, though.

So the additional competency from direct instruction is negligible. That doesn't mean that the value of attending a top-tier university is negligible, because the direct instructional education is only a small part of what someone gains access to at a university.

There's the social network aspect: There is a lot of value in having personal connections with other successful people. People need business partners, investors, advisors, etc. in order to be successful, and top tier universities intermingle you with others who are likely to be helpful in those regards. At top tier universities, the majority of people you interact with will either talented, wealthy, or both. At a lower tier university, the pool is far more diluted, reducing the utility of your social network in pursuing success.

There's the branding advantage: if you're choosing between two people, and one has someone you trust vouching for them that they're competent, and the other doesn't, you're going to go with the first person every single time. A top-tier university is basically that third party, vouching for its graduates: they're more likely to be successful, and people want to surround themselves with successful people.

And then there's the educational advantage: If you're surrounded by other smart, motivated people, you're going to gain real educational advantages by cooperating with them. You learn from each other, bounce ideas off each other, etc. If you're by far the smartest person in the room, you don't get nearly the same added value out of your education. At a top-tier university, you're going to be surrounded by substantially more high-quality students than at a lower-tier school.

And yeah, convincing people to give you money is BY DEFINITION valuable. As measured by the value of the money they're giving you.

This is essentially the premise of good k-12 public schools. The good schools are the schools with the good students. In some states, the worst schools are the most funded, and they continue to be the worst schools.

You don't go to an Ivy League to learn calculus. You go to an Ivy League for the prestige and to build a network of connections with people who are likely to be successful.

And would you say it’s a good thing that this is the reason as compared to actually learning calculus?

Ultimately, you’re going to have to drive across a bridge someday designed by John or Jane Q. Ivyleageue. Would you prefer they got the bridge designing contract because they were good at calculus or because their college roommate’s uncle was in charge of awarding the contract?

The people at Ivy Leagues still do learn calculus. You're not sacrificing anything academically to go to a better school, the perks are on top of a first rate education.

Sure,ok. Look at the state of things run by Ivy League graduates in the US and carefully reconsider that. The financial system. The cost disease in infrastructure projects. Government. Healthcare. Are you sure about that?

Show me a country where institutions are run by people who went to mediocre institutions that is dramatically outperforming the US. Indeed show me any evidence of elite education attainers underperforming.

I can see the argument that the perks of elite education do not justify the increased cost, but I've never seen anyone argue that elite education is actually of substantially lower quality.

Believe it or not a larger percentage of students at an IVY (or otherwise notable university say Stanford) have busted their ass to get into that school and not coasted 'oh I don't want to work that hard'. Absolutely there are people who have been admitted that have not (family, money, legacy whatever). Just the same there are the same type of students who have gone to a non notable school that may have been Ivy material and not gotten admitted for various reasons (didn't care, couldn't afford, family, whatever).

The thing is about the student body at a top school (IVY or notable again) is the percentage and general feel of the student body that fits the 'busted their ass to get to that school' instead of not caring that much. And really living working and dreaming about going to the top school including but not limited to sacrifices that they might have made.

> Do you think you’re going to learn calculus better than you would at flagship state U?

Yes. Compare this Harvard Calc I final [0] to that of UNC Charlotte [1]. The test format of the Harvard exam works in the student's favor, but the questions are more difficult, more conceptual, and encompass optional topics that are not in a typical Calc I course (PDFs, Midi function). The Harvard class also requires students to demonstrate competency in various proofs that would not be required in a purely computational Calc I class.

[0] https://people.math.harvard.edu/~knill/teaching/math1a2020/f...

[1] https://math.charlotte.edu/sites/math.charlotte.edu/files/me...

Don't think "Midi function" is an actual thing. It looks like $f(x) = 440e^{(x-69)/12}$ literally maps the number of a note in the MIDI standard to the actual frequency. I guess this question is a bonus to people who paid attention in a particular lecture in class (or who know music and can recognize the significance of 440 and of 12 in the exponent).

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." - Winston Churchill

I know a lot of people will take this negatively, I actually think this is a very good compliment to the American culture.

That.. did not last long. In my opinion it was a disastrous thing to even attempt. There is really no way to judge a random person's ability to learn, or even address the act of learning, without a standardized test. The ACT and SAT will always need work as culture changes, but throwing it out in search of restorative justice is extremely unwise.

> throwing it out in search of restorative justice is extremely unwise.

I see this claim a lot, but it seems partially true at best. As per the article and conversations with friends in admissions departments, the testing requirement at many elite schools was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the debate over how tests impact disadvantaged students may be why "many schools continued their test-optional policies even as the public health crisis eased" as per the article, so you're partially right that it probably played a role in why some schools have dragged their feet. (Contrast to schools like MIT which also dropped their testing requirement during the pandemic but reinstated it more quickly afterwards.)

I think what was more prevalent was a "unequal outcomes can be explained away by this standardized test" and then we got a chance to experiment with it and learn new data.

Agreed that an across-the-board change to admissions policies like this is an opportunity to test the thesis, although the pandemic had many other confounding impacts that may be hard to isolate.

Still, I don't know anyone who works in higher ed admissions who wants to get rid of standardized testing for "restorative justice" reasons. Rigorous schools need to be able to ensure they don't admit students who have no hope of graduating and competitive schools need to winnow down the number of applications to a number that they can actually review.

My impression is that the objections to standardized testing typically come from groups outside universities like the NEA, FairTest, teachers unions, parents, activists, etc.

I know I am operating as a bad scientist when I am happy that the data supports my bias.

I admire that they actually stuck with it and tried it, but it's still crazy to me that anyone thought this was a good idea.

I don't know how anyone who spent decades within school and then academia could convince themselves and others "let's get rid of the one part of the Kabuki theatre application process that isn't a massive performative time suck". In the name of equality!

> In the name of equality!

No, that's not why. From the article: "When the coronavirus pandemic scrambled testing, Yale and many other colleges dropped requirements that applicants submit standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT."

That's a bit revisionist. Covid was justification at the time, but the idea clearly didn't happen in a vacuum, and the policy was reinstated several times even after testing resumed.

> That's a bit revisionist. Covid was justification at the time

Many colleges suspended the requirement simultaneously in 2020, citing the pandemic, and you're claiming that it's revisionist? Occam's razor suggests the cited justification was the reason, and with the pandemic over, this explains why many colleges are now going back to requiring test scores.

the movement was well underway before covid hit - you are trying to rewrite history.

> you are trying to rewrite history.

No, I'm not. Yale (along with a number of college colleges) suspended the testing policy in 2020 due to the pandemic. That's an indisputable historical fact.

"For nearly four years Yale’s undergraduate admissions process has been test-optional. The experience, originally necessitated by the pandemic, has been an invaluable opportunity to think deeply about testing policy and to generate new data and analyses. With testing availability now fully restored for prospective applicants around the world, we have reevaluated our policy with the benefit of fresh insights." https://admissions.yale.edu/test-flexible

Let me put it this way: before the pandemic there was already a work-from-home movement. But when countless companies suddenly decided to do WFH in 2020, it wasn't because of the movement! It was because of the pandemic. And a lot of those companies are now calling for return-to-office.

It's the exact same thing with standardized testing. There's literally no difference between the two cases. We don't need a political conspiracy theory when there's a very obvious and logical explanation for what happened. The pandemic was a forced experiment for WFH and a forced experiment for many other things, such as the omission of standardized testing. We had students taking classes from home too!

> The experience, originally necessitated by the pandemic, has been an invaluable opportunity to think deeply about testing policy and to generate new data and analyses.

You are kind of ignoring everything Yale themselves said after the words "originally necessitated by the pandemic".

Nothing in their long, thoughtful writeup says "it was only done for convenience, sorry". If anything, it's a carefully worded and researched examination of them earnestly pursuing the policy on academic grounds and examining why the policy failed.

It's funny how your tone has changed from the scornful "it's still crazy to me that anyone thought this was a good idea" to praising Yale for "their long, thoughtful writeup" and "a carefully worded and researched examination of them earnestly pursuing the policy on academic grounds".

1) It wasn't a crazy idea. As ejb999 noted, a number of colleges had already done it before the pandemic.

2) It wasn't crazy to suspend the testing requirement during the pandemic.

3) It wasn't crazy to continue an experiment that had already been in progress in order to get conclusive results.

4) Yale didn't say the policy was a disaster. They simply decided that the other policy is better for them, in light of the empirical results.

5) There was no official end date of the pandemic. Thus, different institutions will move at a different pace. And Yale also mentioned as a factor for them, "With testing availability now fully restored for prospective applicants around the world".

Several states did not cite slavery as a reason for seceding from the US, but it would be foolish not to read the context.

Given the thousands of op-eds and the barrels of ink spilled over the situation at the time, the organization surely knew the context of the decision they were making, especially given they extended the policy several times.

> it would be foolish not to read the context.

Indeed, it would be foolish not to read the context, and the context in 2020 was a global pandemic.

Serious question: are you denying that the pandemic disrupted the administration of standardized tests? It certainly disrupted education in general, at every level.

No, but most state universities still found a way to proctor tests temporarily. Especially by 2022. And by the time classes resumed, so did the College Board test centers - if anything, the tests were easier to conduct than classes during Covid.

> Especially by 2022. And by the time classes resumed

You're already tacitly granting the fact that the testing requirement was suspended in 2020 because of the pandemic.

I think it was a pretty healthy mix of both. Look at these two articles from the same day in 2020:

https://www.nytimes.com/article/sat-act-test-optional-colleg... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/university-california-...

One focuses on the pandemic related reasons, one focuses on equality concerns.

It's not quite that simple. "In March, UC temporarily suspended the current standardized test requirement for fall 2021 applicants to mitigate impacts of COVID-19 on students and schools, effectively making UC “test-optional” for that year." So the May decision had no immediate practical effect, since the requirement was already suspended.

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/university...

In this case there was a coincidence, because California had started reconsidering the test requirement back in 2018, and the process happened to reach culmination in 2020... but not until after the pandemic started.

The decision was also very much about guaranteeing spots for California residents in California schools.

Ahem, it's equity now. That old word was replaced when you weren't looking.

most of these progressive measures is about getting rid of one framework and leaving an absence of any frameworks

a void

when you ask about that you’ll hear “doing something is better than doing nothing”, where “nothing” includes planning, and something is addressing an inequality that needs to go away immediately

in this case, people are misreading the University’s stance out of their own giddiness, the University lacks a better way to assess people. Both the university and the activists have accurately identified the problem, they haven’t identified a solution and scrapping the tests wasnt a solution

Standardized nationwide tests, or entry exams that are the same for everyone are the only fair and equal ways of choosing who is admitted to study and who isn't. Anything else leads to corruption and discrimination.

Helping those who are disadvantaged to achieve better educational outcomes should happen already way earlier, starting from their childhood. Proper teacher training, social services and extra funding for schools in poorer areas (regardless of race/ethnicity of population) is a good way to do that. That's basically how Nordic welfare states work, and the results are pretty good in terms of social mobility.

Seems like an important thing to do: it gives smart people, no matter the background, and chance to show their stuff.

That said, we should be putting work in to level the "prep" playing field. Some people have the resources to do a lot of prep, some not so much. The more the prep situation is addressed, the better these tests are.

And MIT: https://news.mit.edu/2022/stuart-schmill-sat-act-requirement...

Ironic I am researcher at MIT and a college dropout lol.

A crucial proviso, though, is that they're comparing the applicant's test scores to their high school peers rather than to other applicants.

> They don't know that their 1400 might be a great score given the challenges of their neighborhood and educational environment.

"standardized testing—when assessed using the local norms at a student's high school—is a valuable element of Dartmouth's undergraduate application" https://admissions.dartmouth.edu/apply/update-testing-policy

FDB predicted this: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/why-the-fuck-do-you-tru...

> You can’t make college admissions fair by getting rid of the SAT because colleges admissions can’t be “fair.” College admissions exist to serve the schools. Period. End of story. They always have, they always will.

Elite colleges exist to get donations from graduates. If said graduates are stupid because of lack of meritocracy in the admissions process, they will be poor donors (because they're poor post-graduation).

In Ontario, Canada we don't have standardized tests to get into university. Grade inflation is the worst it's ever been. We don't even have GPAs because it's too coarse a distinction. Virtually all serious competitors to top schools graduate with a 97-99% average in their top 6 grade 12 courses. Many graduate with 100%. Even then most students with 98s get rejected from schools like Waterloo in Computer Science.

If taken at face-value, that means students can't make any mistakes in their last year of high school. That's across two semesters worth of tests in several subjects. Imagine if failing a test worth 10% of a course was enough to prevent you from going to a good university because it dropped your average across 6 courses from a 98% to a 97%. (10%/6 = 1.67%)

Some teachers will give easy tests that are difficult to not get 100% on. Other teachers will make up the numbers entirely.

Regardless you still have to spend time and money on extracurriculars since the 98% is a bare minimum. This means student activities and clubs aren't for socializing. They have been co-opted as a mechanism to create 10-person executive bodies so students can show they had leadership roles when applying to uni. A club that actually meets for its stated purpose imposes too much of a time commitment since competitive students need multiple leadership roles on their application.

The University of Waterloo has an entire series of math competitions as a sneaky way to administer standardized testing to potential CS or math students. This gives them a competitive advantage over other schools. Waterloo also has a comprehensive dataset of "adjustment factors" to weigh your average differently depending on your high school. This has been in place for a decade.

Schools like the University of Toronto force you to apply to computer science after your first year. They admit everyone but only a small amount of students get to continue into high-demand programs such as CS (this is called POSt). This incentivizes you to sabotage your classmates to look better, especially when many classes' grades are curved. Why would you attend a study group and help your competitors? This creates a high-pressure and negative environment. e.g. Three people killed themselves in the same computer science building at U of T in the two years before the pandemic.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/students-criticize-u-of-t-a...

Our top universities select for undergraduates that are skillful at creating fake leadership roles for themselves and sabotaging others to look better by comparison.

At least standardized tests require you to study.

>>Regardless you still have to spend time and money on extracurriculars since the 98% is a bare minimum. This means student activities and clubs aren't for socializing. They have been co-opted as a mechanism to create 10-person executive bodies so students can show they had leadership roles when applying to uni. A club that actually meets for its stated purpose imposes too much of a time commitment since competitive students need multiple leadership roles on their application.

Granted it's been over 25 years since I graduated, but I remember that Canadian universities (across the country) had a relatively "bare" set of requirements to get in, namely your grades. Extracurriculars, from what I recall, had no bearing on a high school graduate's university application. This also made it somewhat impersonal, but at least it was straightforward.

Have things changed now that (perhaps only Ontario) universities will also look at extracurricular to decide between candidates on the bubble?

>>Waterloo also has a comprehensive dataset of "adjustment factors" to weigh your average differently depending on your high school. This has been in place for a decade.

Rumour was that this was also in full force over 25 years ago for all Canadian universities, not only Waterloo, and not just in the last decade.

>>Extracurriculars, from what I recall, had no bearing on a high school graduate's university application. This also made it somewhat impersonal, but at least it was straightforward.

Ontario universities love extracurriculars now as the grades have inflated. The competitive top-tier programs require supplementary applications for each school. The Waterloo AIF in particular gets graded and then added to your adjusted high school mark, and is required for CS and engineering. I think other schools have supplementary ones that are sometimes optional if a program is less competitive.

When you have thousands of students with a 98%+ it becomes impossible to differentiate. Over 40% of Waterloo students graduated high school with a 95 or above.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/an-explosion-in-a-students-...

It's hard to do a cutoff when you're working with the top 5 percentage points of the scale. Too much noise in the signal.

>>Rumour was that this was also in full force over 25 years ago for all Canadian universities, not only Waterloo, and not just in the last decade.

You're probably right but it's only been public for about a decade. People started making FOI requests for the list and posting it online for anxious high school students. For context the numbers are the expected percentage points your mark will drop by from HS to university.

https://github.com/aayushh-patell/Waterloo-Adjustment-Factor...

how would you describe the 21, 22, and 23 vintages?

Lucky

if they recenter the GPA distribution for every class year, one should be more discerning when hiring 21-23 yale kids, since the distribution won't be comparable to the pre/post cohort.

It's a bit ironic they've managed to dampen the one signal that's embedded in a yale degree. It's almost as if reality doesn't want to cooperate with these ___ Justice efforts.

More likely to leave college/university with debt, but no degree.

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