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.
Especially institutions like MIT... one would expect that they have a solid understanding of data analysis.
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."
"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
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.
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?
Not really. It started with the pandemic, which messed up everything, including testing.
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...
What schools did not drop the requirement during the pandemic would be more interesting.
It might be interesting... if you named any.
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.
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.
Probably for the same reason Oregon decided to decriminalize most drugs thinking it would reduce usage and harm (it didn't).
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.
The wrong reason to go…
Things like the citation scandal are a signal for the kind of problem that lead to that.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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.
Presumably, so is job performance?
It isn't just one side that finds talking about real solutions politically unacceptable.
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.
[citation needed]
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I wonder what the best predictor of high scores is?