MIT's findings on standardized tests is worth noting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

+1
You can have a goal of equity but we will not maintain a high standard of living for everyone in this country if we don’t also pursue and reward excellence.

[Anonymous]

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.

The kids who have amazing leadership qualities but somehow cannot handle simple standard tests can go to Harvard, leave mit to the nerds who can do hard math and science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

+1
You can have a goal of equity but we will not maintain a high standard of living for everyone in this country if we don’t also pursue and reward excellence.

If you look at the CEO’s of most public companies you will realize that this country has no track record of promoting excellence.

[Anonymous]

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.

The kids who have amazing leadership qualities but somehow cannot handle simple standard tests can go to Harvard, leave mit to the nerds who can do hard math and science.

They all come back together later when the MIT engineers work as coders for the Harvard grads.

[Anonymous]

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.

Ok, then why do so many elite universities, except MIT and caltech, give legacies a bump? Because that is what they are doing when they give legacies a bump -- take elite HS students and make them more elite.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Based on the bolded above, you make it sound like “the brains” are being shut out of higher education. This is simply not true. Just because someone does not get accepted into MIT does not mean they can’t get an excellent education elsewhere.

[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?

I find it interesting that you went immediately to racial diversity instead of, say, legacies, rich kids, poor white kids from Appalachia, athletes, etc. If you are going to be outraged that some URM get a benefit when it comes to admissions, at least appear to be pissed off that many others do too... Something tells me that you are fine, however, when it comes to the other kids getting into those schools though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

+1
You can have a goal of equity but we will not maintain a high standard of living for everyone in this country if we don’t also pursue and reward excellence.

If you look at the CEO’s of most public companies you will realize that this country has no track record of promoting excellence.

you won’t find me defending American CEOs, but your comment depends on how you define excellence. There is excellence that does not mean MIT brilliant in CS. CEOs are not supposed to be singularly brilliant in a narrow field. Their job is to be smart enough across disciplines to understand trends and fundamentals and to make connections across them that experts in their fields don’t see.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

+1
You can have a goal of equity but we will not maintain a high standard of living for everyone in this country if we don’t also pursue and reward excellence.

If you look at the CEO’s of most public companies you will realize that this country has no track record of promoting excellence.

you won’t find me defending American CEOs, but your comment depends on how you define excellence. There is excellence that does not mean MIT brilliant in CS. CEOs are not supposed to be singularly brilliant in a narrow field. Their job is to be smart enough across disciplines to understand trends and fundamentals and to make connections across them that experts in their fields don’t see.

I would say look at CEO pay vs shareholder value created and you’ll see that CEOs are rewarded for profoundly poor results.

[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?

I find it interesting that you went immediately to racial diversity instead of, say, legacies, rich kids, poor white kids from Appalachia, athletes, etc. If you are going to be outraged that some URM get a benefit when it comes to admissions, at least appear to be pissed off that many others do too... Something tells me that you are fine, however, when it comes to the other kids getting into those schools though.

Being called a racist by an imbecile gaslighter is a badge of honor that any sane person should wear with pride. You clearly don't have the basic grounding in logic. Colleges going TO has nothing to do with Legacies, rich kids, athletes etc. Universities have themselves acknowledged that TO was an idea for them to attract a more racially and economically diverse class. It is also very clear that TO is a disingenuous policy because not everybody who submits an application without a score is treated equally despite the universities claiming to do so. Middle class Asians and white kids from two parent households(the so called privileged kids) who submit apps without scores are more often than not summarily rejected

I am not outraged that URM's get into elite universities you moron. What I am outraged about is that in this zero sum game, they are given special treatment in terms of test scores, extra curriculars and personality scores ( as the Harvard case has demonstrated) to rig the game in their favor so that some virtue signaling white liberals can assuage their guilt and feel better about themselves. Any URM that meets the same standard as any other Asian or White kid should be considered without bias and maybe even given a slight edge. Universities don't do that. They are using specious arguments (the SAT/ACT is not a good predictor of college success, so we can ignore it, or that it is biased towards families with wealth, ignoring that applicants black families with incomes nearing $200K, score worse on the test than applicants from white families with incomes less than $40K) to implement a racially discriminatory policy

MIT's and the UC research clearly demolishes the first argument. Bringing up legacy and athletes in this discussion about the test score announcement is a complete non-sequitur made with the sole aim of gaslighting the conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

I find it interesting that you went immediately to racial diversity instead of, say, legacies, rich kids, poor white kids from Appalachia, athletes, etc. If you are going to be outraged that some URM get a benefit when it comes to admissions, at least appear to be pissed off that many others do too... Something tells me that you are fine, however, when it comes to the other kids getting into those schools though.

Being called a racist by an imbecile gaslighter is a badge of honor that any sane person should wear with pride. You clearly don't have the basic grounding in logic. Colleges going TO has nothing to do with Legacies, rich kids, athletes etc. Universities have themselves acknowledged that TO was an idea for them to attract a more racially and economically diverse class. It is also very clear that TO is a disingenuous policy because not everybody who submits an application without a score is treated equally despite the universities claiming to do so. Middle class Asians and white kids from two parent households(the so called privileged kids) who submit apps without scores are more often than not summarily rejected

I am not outraged that URM's get into elite universities you moron. What I am outraged about is that in this zero sum game, they are given special treatment in terms of test scores, extra curriculars and personality scores ( as the Harvard case has demonstrated) to rig the game in their favor so that some virtue signaling white liberals can assuage their guilt and feel better about themselves. Any URM that meets the same standard as any other Asian or White kid should be considered without bias and maybe even given a slight edge. Universities don't do that. They are using specious arguments (the SAT/ACT is not a good predictor of college success, so we can ignore it, or that it is biased towards families with wealth, ignoring that applicants black families with incomes nearing $200K, score worse on the test than applicants from white families with incomes less than $40K) to implement a racially discriminatory policy

MIT's and the UC research clearly demolishes the first argument. Bringing up legacy and athletes in this discussion about the test score announcement is a complete non-sequitur made with the sole aim of gaslighting the conversation.

And before you raise the strawman of preference for legacies and athletes, let me clearly state that I am against that as well. The admission standards should be the same for all applicants. Trying to fix inequities in society, by discriminating against some applicants in the college admission process is despicable and morally repugnant. If Universities want to fix those issues, they should spend the money to create a robust pipeline of URM applicants early in the process, but these universities will never do that. That is actually hard work, so they take the easy and hypocritical way out.

[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?

I find it interesting that you went immediately to racial diversity instead of, say, legacies, rich kids, poor white kids from Appalachia, athletes, etc. If you are going to be outraged that some URM get a benefit when it comes to admissions, at least appear to be pissed off that many others do too... Something tells me that you are fine, however, when it comes to the other kids getting into those schools though.

+1