MIT's findings on standardized tests is worth noting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When MIT reinstated standardized testing again last week, they released the following statement. There is a small footnote here on the efficacy of these tests that if worth reading


https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-requirement-for-future-admissions-cycles/

Our research shows this predictive validity holds even when you control for socioeconomic factors that correlate with testing. It also shows that good grades in high school do not themselves necessarily translate to academic success at MIT if you cannot account for testing. Of course, we can never be fully certain how any given applicant will do: we're predicting the development of people, not the movement of planets, and people always surprise you. However, our research does help us establish bands of confidence that hold true in the aggregate, while allowing us, as admissions officers, to exercise individual contextual discretion in each case. The word 'significantly' in this bullet point is accurate both statistically and idiomatically] is signifhcantly improved by considering standardized testing especially in mathematics alongside other factors


This is the truth that elite colleges are deliberately choosing to ignore or obfuscate in their quest for racial diversity. How can these colleges teach our kids to think straight and speak the truth, when they are unwilling or unable to acknowledge it themselves?

This is a silly post.

I personally am a white person who got waitlisted at MIT and who have a white son who might have liked to go there but didn’t bother to apply.

First, MIT looks at test scores on a pass-meh-fail basis; it doesn’t directly prefer kids with math scores of 800 over kids with scores of 780, because it knows that, statistically, those scores are roughly the same scores.

Second, MIT gets many applications from Black kinds with great SATs, and it rejects most of those applicants. Black kids with math SATs over 750, nearly straight A’s, plenty of AP tests and relevant but meh extracurriculars do not normally get into MIT. They need great ECs to get in. And the big difference between Black kids and other kids who get into MIT is the nature of their activities and awards, not their stats. Other kids who get in tend to have newsworthy activities and awards.

And, third, it’s simply terrible for kids in a world where racism is one of the top social problems to go to schools with nearly all-white classes. I remember being the pro-integration child of pro-integration parents, in schools that, legally, were integrated, but, in practice, were deeply segregated. Sometimes there would be one Black student in a class, and all of those Black students were terrific students. When I went to college, there were some Black students who were living on my dorm floor, and those were the first Black people my age that I’d ever talked to outside of the classroom. Who knows whether the college was good for them, but their presence was really important for me, because it gave me some chance to learn about a world where some other people weren’t from the same mold.

Because I grew up in such a segregated environment, my brain is neurologically racist. No matter what political views I hold, how enthusiastically I support reparations and affirmative action, and how nice I try to be, my brain simply reacts differently to Black people than it does to white people.

Still another issue here is that race and class matter in high-level STEM.

The math might be race-neutral. But race can affect issues such as which equally high-stats grad school applicants get into which grad schools, how we choose research funding priorities, which research proposals actually get funded, who ends up on which fancy academic committees, and how the risks involved with, for example, academic nuclear reactors are handled.

So, it’s fine to say that stats matter. Different people might see the data in different ways, but it seems as if people with 750 on the math SATs might have a different level of math ability than people with math scores of 550.

But it’s unreasonable to see that as a reason to harass the Black kids at MIT. They are there because they are high-stats students, they’re generally brilliant, they deserve to be there, and MIT, the research community and society as a whole need for them to be there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When MIT reinstated standardized testing again last week, they released the following statement. There is a small footnote here on the efficacy of these tests that if worth reading


https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-requirement-for-future-admissions-cycles/

Our research shows this predictive validity holds even when you control for socioeconomic factors that correlate with testing. It also shows that good grades in high school do not themselves necessarily translate to academic success at MIT if you cannot account for testing. Of course, we can never be fully certain how any given applicant will do: we're predicting the development of people, not the movement of planets, and people always surprise you. However, our research does help us establish bands of confidence that hold true in the aggregate, while allowing us, as admissions officers, to exercise individual contextual discretion in each case. The word 'significantly' in this bullet point is accurate both statistically and idiomatically] is signifhcantly improved by considering standardized testing especially in mathematics alongside other factors


This is the truth that elite colleges are deliberately choosing to ignore or obfuscate in their quest for racial diversity. How can these colleges teach our kids to think straight and speak the truth, when they are unwilling or unable to acknowledge it themselves?

This is a silly post.

I personally am a white person who got waitlisted at MIT and who have a white son who might have liked to go there but didn’t bother to apply.

First, MIT looks at test scores on a pass-meh-fail basis; it doesn’t directly prefer kids with math scores of 800 over kids with scores of 780, because it knows that, statistically, those scores are roughly the same scores.

Second, MIT gets many applications from Black kinds with great SATs, and it rejects most of those applicants. Black kids with math SATs over 750, nearly straight A’s, plenty of AP tests and relevant but meh extracurriculars do not normally get into MIT. They need great ECs to get in. And the big difference between Black kids and other kids who get into MIT is the nature of their activities and awards, not their stats. Other kids who get in tend to have newsworthy activities and awards.

And, third, it’s simply terrible for kids in a world where racism is one of the top social problems to go to schools with nearly all-white classes. I remember being the pro-integration child of pro-integration parents, in schools that, legally, were integrated, but, in practice, were deeply segregated. Sometimes there would be one Black student in a class, and all of those Black students were terrific students. When I went to college, there were some Black students who were living on my dorm floor, and those were the first Black people my age that I’d ever talked to outside of the classroom. Who knows whether the college was good for them, but their presence was really important for me, because it gave me some chance to learn about a world where some other people weren’t from the same mold.

Because I grew up in such a segregated environment, my brain is neurologically racist. No matter what political views I hold, how enthusiastically I support reparations and affirmative action, and how nice I try to be, my brain simply reacts differently to Black people than it does to white people.

Still another issue here is that race and class matter in high-level STEM.

The math might be race-neutral. But race can affect issues such as which equally high-stats grad school applicants get into which grad schools, how we choose research funding priorities, which research proposals actually get funded, who ends up on which fancy academic committees, and how the risks involved with, for example, academic nuclear reactors are handled.

So, it’s fine to say that stats matter. Different people might see the data in different ways, but it seems as if people with 750 on the math SATs might have a different level of math ability than people with math scores of 550.

But it’s unreasonable to see that as a reason to harass the Black kids at MIT. They are there because they are high-stats students, they’re generally brilliant, they deserve to be there, and MIT, the research community and society as a whole need for them to be there.

PP sounds really bitter about her MIT reject.

[Anonymous]

I’d like to see the extracurriculars that a kid can’t just join on their own like Scouts de-prioritized in favor of testing & rigor. Also would like to see extracurriculars that require k-8 parent involvement to be de-prioritized in admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many of you seem to suppose that the mission of MIT and other elite universities is to take the most elite HS students and make them more elite. I’m not sure that is, or should be the case. Kids coming from elite high schools with top grades can get their best education at dozens and dozens of American universities. For those kids, education is much more a function of input, than the system itself. The best use of SAT/ACT is to screen out. Probably 80-90% of kids with 4.0s can do the work at MIT. The test can screen out for the anomaly who is really not prepared. It should not be a race to get 1570 to qualify.

You clearly have not taken economics in college. These universities have the best resources and they are not unlimited resources. The best way to help a country is to efficiently allocate scarce resources to those who will exploit and benefit from these resources the most. This means matching the most academically gifted kids with the most academically gifted institutions, specially when these institutions take massive subsidies from the state.

But who am I kidding.... This has never been about what is good for the long term prosperity of the country. It has been about virtue signaling about how good some privileged white folks are by misallocating resources so that they are not called racist

If this is what you truly believe then why aren’t you railing against athletic recruiting (which MIT does), legacy or donor admits? Could that be because they overwhelmingly benefit the only class of people you think “deserves” admission? Rich whites?

The pool of smart, talented kids far exceeds the number of open spots. There is no rational way to order applicants from 1-50,000. You seem to do it by automatically assuming anyone who isn’t white (and maybe Asian) belongs at the bottom of the list.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When MIT reinstated standardized testing again last week, they released the following statement. There is a small footnote here on the efficacy of these tests that if worth reading


https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-requirement-for-future-admissions-cycles/

Our research shows this predictive validity holds even when you control for socioeconomic factors that correlate with testing. It also shows that good grades in high school do not themselves necessarily translate to academic success at MIT if you cannot account for testing. Of course, we can never be fully certain how any given applicant will do: we're predicting the development of people, not the movement of planets, and people always surprise you. However, our research does help us establish bands of confidence that hold true in the aggregate, while allowing us, as admissions officers, to exercise individual contextual discretion in each case. The word 'significantly' in this bullet point is accurate both statistically and idiomatically] is signifhcantly improved by considering standardized testing especially in mathematics alongside other factors


This is the truth that elite colleges are deliberately choosing to ignore or obfuscate in their quest for racial diversity. How can these colleges teach our kids to think straight and speak the truth, when they are unwilling or unable to acknowledge it themselves?

This is a silly post.

I personally am a white person who got waitlisted at MIT and who have a white son who might have liked to go there but didn’t bother to apply.

First, MIT looks at test scores on a pass-meh-fail basis; it doesn’t directly prefer kids with math scores of 800 over kids with scores of 780, because it knows that, statistically, those scores are roughly the same scores.

Second, MIT gets many applications from Black kinds with great SATs, and it rejects most of those applicants. Black kids with math SATs over 750, nearly straight A’s, plenty of AP tests and relevant but meh extracurriculars do not normally get into MIT. They need great ECs to get in. And the big difference between Black kids and other kids who get into MIT is the nature of their activities and awards, not their stats. Other kids who get in tend to have newsworthy activities and awards.

And, third, it’s simply terrible for kids in a world where racism is one of the top social problems to go to schools with nearly all-white classes. I remember being the pro-integration child of pro-integration parents, in schools that, legally, were integrated, but, in practice, were deeply segregated. Sometimes there would be one Black student in a class, and all of those Black students were terrific students. When I went to college, there were some Black students who were living on my dorm floor, and those were the first Black people my age that I’d ever talked to outside of the classroom. Who knows whether the college was good for them, but their presence was really important for me, because it gave me some chance to learn about a world where some other people weren’t from the same mold.

Because I grew up in such a segregated environment, my brain is neurologically racist. No matter what political views I hold, how enthusiastically I support reparations and affirmative action, and how nice I try to be, my brain simply reacts differently to Black people than it does to white people.

Still another issue here is that race and class matter in high-level STEM.

The math might be race-neutral. But race can affect issues such as which equally high-stats grad school applicants get into which grad schools, how we choose research funding priorities, which research proposals actually get funded, who ends up on which fancy academic committees, and how the risks involved with, for example, academic nuclear reactors are handled.

So, it’s fine to say that stats matter. Different people might see the data in different ways, but it seems as if people with 750 on the math SATs might have a different level of math ability than people with math scores of 550.

But it’s unreasonable to see that as a reason to harass the Black kids at MIT. They are there because they are high-stats students, they’re generally brilliant, they deserve to be there, and MIT, the research community and society as a whole need for them to be there.

An honest post and pretty much spot on. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’d like to see the extracurriculars that a kid can’t just join on their own like Scouts de-prioritized in favor of testing & rigor. Also would like to see extracurriculars that require k-8 parent involvement to be de-prioritized in admissions.

I'd like 50 million bucks.

In other words, it "ain't" happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d like to see the extracurriculars that a kid can’t just join on their own like Scouts de-prioritized in favor of testing & rigor. Also would like to see extracurriculars that require k-8 parent involvement to be de-prioritized in admissions.

I'd like 50 million bucks.

In other words, it "ain't" happening.

Why? As I said, I think that standardized testing is better for achieving equity than measuring whose parents had the time & means to put them in scouts or violin.

[Anonymous]

OP, did you even read the entire statement? You are drawing ridiculous conclusions about race and standardized tests based on one small footnote. Ridiculous (and racist).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, did you even read the entire statement? You are drawing ridiculous conclusions about race and standardized tests based on one small footnote. Ridiculous (and racist).

They have their conclusion and are grasping at anything to support it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, did you even read the entire statement? You are drawing ridiculous conclusions about race and standardized tests based on one small footnote. Ridiculous (and racist).

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Their research is specific to MIT. They have no idea how TO is working out at other schools. The colleges aren’t striving for racial equity, that’s the big myth fed to Asians so they get upset at the few Black and Latinos at the school.

+1

Schools are bending over backward to expand representation of URMs but they will only lower standards so much. Don’t confuse that with equity which would by definition be race blind.

Thats not the definition of equity. Equity means equality of outcome. You cannot have equality outcome without discrimination, including racist discrimination. The underlying theory behind equity argues as much: race blind practices under the guise of meritocracy is the cause for inequality in our society.

[Anonymous]

That is simply not equity.

[Anonymous]

Diversity does not equal lack of merit. There are over 2500 high schools in this country, your snowflake isn’t the only smart kid around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Their research is specific to MIT. They have no idea how TO is working out at other schools. The colleges aren’t striving for racial equity, that’s the big myth fed to Asians so they get upset at the few Black and Latinos at the school.

+1

Schools are bending over backward to expand representation of URMs but they will only lower standards so much. Don’t confuse that with equity which would by definition be race blind.

Thats not the definition of equity. Equity means equality of outcome. You cannot have equality outcome without discrimination, including racist discrimination. The underlying theory behind equity argues as much: race blind practices under the guise of meritocracy is the cause for inequality in our society.

No it doesn’t. It means dispersing resources based on individuals’ needs rather than giving everyone the same quantity of a resource.

[Anonymous]

As a research scientist, long used to laughing at studies confirming what's obvious to everyone, this is "duh" level of obvious.

Universities have exploited the "racial and socio-economic equity" movement (woke is much pithier, but more loaded) for their own profit, so they can cherry-pick the candidates they want, to reflect exactly what they need, and not what the country needs long-term, which is brains. Universities exist to fund themselves. They do not necessarily seek the most intellectually qualified candidates - they seek to burnish their image, fill their coffers, pander to the well-connected, and sure, accept a handful of top students every year.

In my field, there are more foreigners than Americans. The ones who are prepared to spend years earning PhDs, or MD/PhDs, then work 100hrs a week as post-docs earning a pittance, then work in government-funded research finding a cure for cancer, which hardly ever pays for than 100K a year... those are foreigners. And the brain drain won't last much longer if China and India develop as first world countries and can offer more to their own citizens.

We need to grow our own brains here. We never know who our allies might be in the next war, which high-technology item we'll desperately need to defend ourselves or pass along to an ally. We need all the homegrown brains we can. And university admissions need to reflect that.