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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

MIT dropped the SAT requirement only to bring it back a few years ago: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our....

Dropping standardized test requirements is disconcerting. Of all of the institutions that should be making decisions neutrally based on the evidence, it’s universities. The fact that even institutions like MIT changed their admissions policies according to ideas that aren’t backed by evidence.

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didn't MIT, like most other schools change this only in wake of COVID? A pandemic resulting in a significant amount of your potential applicants from applying is pretty good reason.

That was a coincidence. MIT announced it was dropping the SAT on March 20, 2020, just a day after the first statewide lockdown order. The announcement says that they had already planned to make the change before COVID: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/a-special-announcement... (“And last, but certainly not least: I know we are making this announcement during the COVID-19 pandemic. We had already been planning to make this change…”)

The UC system dropped the SAT in May 2021, in a settlement of a lawsuit that argued standardized tests were discriminatory.

Isn’t this contradictory to your point? They dropped it, collected data, and then reverted when the evidence suggested they made the wrong choice.

The data has showed that standardized tests are highly predictive for decades. Schools made the change despite the data. Then they changed back not because the data changed, but because it became apparent they couldn’t tolerate the burdens of not screening students properly.

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