Why Caltech is now requiring test scores

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s hilarious how a professors rant on 14 students warrant any of this conversation

For reals, it’s such shallow analysis too, but people here are eating it up because PhD follows the name. If a DCUM brought this same point up with the same graphs, people would mock her.

Then you have the equity warriors gaslighting the rest that Caltech gives half a rats butt about underprivileged students and that their test required policy won’t just reshuffle a few students around and kick out quite a few women from the pool. I also love that there’s no proof that these Caltech students at the bottom of the class are even test optional, just a fun assumption- cause that’s good statistics! Jesus, no wonder they can’t get a Putnam win.

It makes it hard to take you seriously when you still aren’t aware that CalTech was test blind for kids that entered in 2022. No one submitted test scores.

So then what are the students SAT scores? What's the point of extrapolating with no actual data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

It's a sanity check. There are schools out there where students can get As in AP and even post-AP courses without breaking the 750 or possibly even the 700 math barrier without dedicated prep. Hence why Caltech classes that were admitted under TO fared worse than those that didn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m on the fence about reinstating SAT. I’m all for moving toward tests as GPA’s can vary widely based on school policies/retakes/ grade inflation and vary even among teachers within schools. However, college board is a racket. It’s a poorly constructed test and frankly any test that signing up for an expensive prep course can raise your score 200 is not an effective test. I wish the US had something similar to the British school model with A levels.

The faculty are missing the mark. Correlation does not mean causation. Test blind or optional occurred at the same time during the pandemic. The sophomores that are so deficient missed foundational upper level math skills spending half their freshman and sophomore years in virtual. They jumped into junior year after 2 years of basically self learning and then crammed to get good scores on their tests and AP exams.

To get into Cal Tech, kids need AP Calc BC, Physics etc. Don’t tell me that a kid who can get an A in those classes and a 4 or 5 on the AP wouldn’t have been able to prep for the SAT.

I heavily agree and have been waiting patiently for the pro-Test crowd to begin promoting Harder tests, not just testing for testing. We need a math section that tests beyond pre cal, and there needs to be an associated level of skill with your SAT score (710 means student knows X-level of information would be a great start). Right now, I really don't think there's much difference between a 1400 scorer and a 1570 scorer, one just needs to brush up on their finding a determinant skills or read a little quicker.

But there is a big difference between 14xx scorer and a 13xx scorer, and TO Caltech was admitting the latter. Also, a harder math test already exists; it's called the AMC 12 - the only issue is awareness among both highschool students and college admissions officers.

There's also anecdotal evidence that in the SAT math, the harder sections 2 has a higher difficulty ceiling than the paper SAT - this may give the top 100 points in the math section more distinguishing power, but of course without studies this is just speculation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

NP. What is your guess as to why they went back to requiring test scores?

Reading through the full paper, seems they're a bit bitter their putnam scores aren't what they used to (which kinda confused me, since the top scorers at Caltech participating in Putnam will undoubtedly have top SAT scores). They are following MIT likely in an attempt to...take a few of the Olympiad talent from MIT. I don't think their intentions are to really educate many future poor kids if the goal is to have a class of top STEM talent.

Did you miss the whole "more students are getting Cs and Ds" thing? How would requiring test scores make the Olympiad talent choose Caltech over MIT? This doesn't pass the sniff test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

It's a sanity check. There are schools out there where students can get As in AP and even post-AP courses without breaking the 750 or possibly even the 700 math barrier without dedicated prep. Hence why Caltech classes that were admitted under TO fared worse than those that didn't.

We have no proof that these students don't have good test scores, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m on the fence about reinstating SAT. I’m all for moving toward tests as GPA’s can vary widely based on school policies/retakes/ grade inflation and vary even among teachers within schools. However, college board is a racket. It’s a poorly constructed test and frankly any test that signing up for an expensive prep course can raise your score 200 is not an effective test. I wish the US had something similar to the British school model with A levels.

The faculty are missing the mark. Correlation does not mean causation. Test blind or optional occurred at the same time during the pandemic. The sophomores that are so deficient missed foundational upper level math skills spending half their freshman and sophomore years in virtual. They jumped into junior year after 2 years of basically self learning and then crammed to get good scores on their tests and AP exams.

To get into Cal Tech, kids need AP Calc BC, Physics etc. Don’t tell me that a kid who can get an A in those classes and a 4 or 5 on the AP wouldn’t have been able to prep for the SAT.

I heavily agree and have been waiting patiently for the pro-Test crowd to begin promoting Harder tests, not just testing for testing. We need a math section that tests beyond pre cal, and there needs to be an associated level of skill with your SAT score (710 means student knows X-level of information would be a great start). Right now, I really don't think there's much difference between a 1400 scorer and a 1570 scorer, one just needs to brush up on their finding a determinant skills or read a little quicker.

But there is a big difference between 14xx scorer and a 13xx scorer, and TO Caltech was admitting the latter. Also, a harder math test already exists; it's called the AMC 12 - the only issue is awareness among both highschool students and college admissions officers.

There's also anecdotal evidence that in the SAT math, the harder sections 2 has a higher difficulty ceiling than the paper SAT - this may give the top 100 points in the math section more distinguishing power, but of course without studies this is just speculation

Evidence? The paper doesn't say any of this. It is merely guessing around, because no one is submitting test scores. I know a person who had an excellent 1600, who failed out of Caltech-it's not an easy place to go to college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do people in this thread think that math scores are the main way admissions officers look for promisiing math talent? How naive. Colleges, including MIT, will let you waltz in if you do well on the IMO

Ascribing poor performance in the Putnam to test-optional is a bit rich. The general pool of kids with high SAT scores aren't going to do well in the Putnam. MIT does well in Putnam because the team has multiple IMO medalists or MOP Team Selection Test qualifiers. I guess these kids (about 20/year, with 5-6 seniors each year) aren't opting for Caltech? According to my kid, this year's TST senior pool is largely going to MIT.

Caltech lost the battle for Putnam when they cancelled their merit scholarships. Even Liberal arts college students don't want to go to a college with only 200 students per class. If they did, they'd go to Harvey Mudd. Caltech should greatly consider increasing its size if it at all wants to compete with MIT on attracting IMO students.

They can't do that without losing the extremely low student to professor ratio that makes it perfect for future academics/professors

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

It's all such BS. Most of the poor kids going to colleges like Caltech or MIT do not attend disadvantaged high schools-they are products of the privileged poor and have access to better educational opportunities than some of our children in this thread. If Caltech cared that much about quantitative skill, they'd make their own exam for admissions that tested it or required 5s on AP Calc BC. It's virtue signalling to pretend that Caltech has any substantial poor kid population.

This seriously needs more coverage. Very few tech schools are accepting anyone from a disadvantage background

Caltech is a Questbridge partner; Harvard (a founding member) is not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

NP. What is your guess as to why they went back to requiring test scores?

Isn’t the answer in the petition? The professors don’t really know how to teach. They rely on students being extraordinary. Reading between the lines, they need the kind of students who can teach material to themselves if the prof misses or can’t teach it properly on their own.

Exactly. Caltech isn't Harvey Mudd and the researchers there aren't interested in undergraduate training. This professor makes the environment sound awful for anyone who isn't an independent genius, which...is that the point of undergrad?

Only for a very small group of students, which is exactly who Caltech is for

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

NP. What is your guess as to why they went back to requiring test scores?

Isn’t the answer in the petition? The professors don’t really know how to teach. They rely on students being extraordinary. Reading between the lines, they need the kind of students who can teach material to themselves if the prof misses or can’t teach it properly on their own.

No, that’s not what they say. They say the mission is to teach extraordinary students at an extraordinary level, and that it is in fact no possible to make the non-extraordinary students extraordinary. There are plenty of other school where the failing students would be at the top or where the mission is to meet them where they are at.

Can you explain how the SAT remedies their issue? They have an applicant pool filled with math competition winners and students with advanced coursework beyond BC calc. They reasoned students are falling behind because a class that typically has 10-15 students resulted in poor scores within the Electrical Engineering department-not even a core class. Then, they also don't mention any other contexts-what's the change in class composition? As someone noted, their current class coming up is going to be 50% women, that's not typical for Caltech. For a long time they didn't let anyone in with a sub 700 SAT score, then they dropped that. What happened during that period? So much missing context from the writers, it's shocking that this is a professor.

I think it's obvious that the students failing those EE classes are not math olympiad winners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

NP. What is your guess as to why they went back to requiring test scores?

Isn’t the answer in the petition? The professors don’t really know how to teach. They rely on students being extraordinary. Reading between the lines, they need the kind of students who can teach material to themselves if the prof misses or can’t teach it properly on their own.

No, that’s not what they say. They say the mission is to teach extraordinary students at an extraordinary level, and that it is in fact no possible to make the non-extraordinary students extraordinary. There are plenty of other school where the failing students would be at the top or where the mission is to meet them where they are at.

Can you explain how the SAT remedies their issue? They have an applicant pool filled with math competition winners and students with advanced coursework beyond BC calc. They reasoned students are falling behind because a class that typically has 10-15 students resulted in poor scores within the Electrical Engineering department-not even a core class. Then, they also don't mention any other contexts-what's the change in class composition? As someone noted, their current class coming up is going to be 50% women, that's not typical for Caltech. For a long time they didn't let anyone in with a sub 700 SAT score, then they dropped that. What happened during that period? So much missing context from the writers, it's shocking that this is a professor.

I think it's obvious that the students failing those EE classes are not math olympiad winners.

Safe to say if you've never done competition math and can't tell the difference between that and Electrical engineering at a research institute...sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do people in this thread think that math scores are the main way admissions officers look for promisiing math talent? How naive. Colleges, including MIT, will let you waltz in if you do well on the IMO

Ascribing poor performance in the Putnam to test-optional is a bit rich. The general pool of kids with high SAT scores aren't going to do well in the Putnam. MIT does well in Putnam because the team has multiple IMO medalists or MOP Team Selection Test qualifiers. I guess these kids (about 20/year, with 5-6 seniors each year) aren't opting for Caltech? According to my kid, this year's TST senior pool is largely going to MIT.

Caltech lost the battle for Putnam when they cancelled their merit scholarships. Even Liberal arts college students don't want to go to a college with only 200 students per class. If they did, they'd go to Harvey Mudd. Caltech should greatly consider increasing its size if it at all wants to compete with MIT on attracting IMO students.

They can't do that without losing the extremely low student to professor ratio that makes it perfect for future academics/professors

Just push the students harder. It's not like they need good professors, just give the students difficult problem sets like they have been. Increasing to 2k students would greatly increase demand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

It's all such BS. Most of the poor kids going to colleges like Caltech or MIT do not attend disadvantaged high schools-they are products of the privileged poor and have access to better educational opportunities than some of our children in this thread. If Caltech cared that much about quantitative skill, they'd make their own exam for admissions that tested it or required 5s on AP Calc BC. It's virtue signalling to pretend that Caltech has any substantial poor kid population.

This seriously needs more coverage. Very few tech schools are accepting anyone from a disadvantage background

Caltech is a Questbridge partner; Harvard (a founding member) is not.

And yet Harvard supports more low income students in its college than the Institute, as a share of population and overall.

[Anonymous]

There were a ton of disadvantaged kids accepted into MIT and CALTECH from my high school (Bronx Science)….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m on the fence about reinstating SAT. I’m all for moving toward tests as GPA’s can vary widely based on school policies/retakes/ grade inflation and vary even among teachers within schools. However, college board is a racket. It’s a poorly constructed test and frankly any test that signing up for an expensive prep course can raise your score 200 is not an effective test. I wish the US had something similar to the British school model with A levels.

The faculty are missing the mark. Correlation does not mean causation. Test blind or optional occurred at the same time during the pandemic. The sophomores that are so deficient missed foundational upper level math skills spending half their freshman and sophomore years in virtual. They jumped into junior year after 2 years of basically self learning and then crammed to get good scores on their tests and AP exams.

To get into Cal Tech, kids need AP Calc BC, Physics etc. Don’t tell me that a kid who can get an A in those classes and a 4 or 5 on the AP wouldn’t have been able to prep for the SAT.

I heavily agree and have been waiting patiently for the pro-Test crowd to begin promoting Harder tests, not just testing for testing. We need a math section that tests beyond pre cal, and there needs to be an associated level of skill with your SAT score (710 means student knows X-level of information would be a great start). Right now, I really don't think there's much difference between a 1400 scorer and a 1570 scorer, one just needs to brush up on their finding a determinant skills or read a little quicker.

You just need to hang out with more pro-test people. And look! Here I am, available. We should do lunch.

The SAT is a *much* weaker test than it used to be, and has been trending worse. Some of the recent changes to the verbal side included switched out longer passages for sentence or two quotations. Also, the SAT doesn't really do the job any more of differentiating between very smart and extremely smart kids -- far too many 1600s. Further, it has been intentionally made more "coachable" to encourage students to take it again and again, boosting the College Board's coffers. And let's not get started on junking the free response and "no calculator" math questions...

However, despite the nonsense, it still has predictive power.

Note that 1400 vs 1570 is more than a standard deviation -- there's going to be a significant difference in academic horsepower between people who score at those different levels.

For what it's worth, I am really looking forward to data released over the next couple of years as the Annapolis-based CLT becomes more established. They're coded as right-wing, but if you actually *look* at their sample tests, instead of going straight to "Ew, Those People" the question variety is good, the reading passages are vastly longer than what's now on the SAT, and thus far there has only been one student who maxed it out.

Other than the CLT, I'm stuck with the hope that some other country's tests gain traction. No need to translate the Gaokao -- the West African Examination Council produces solid test content in English, and unless I am confusing it with the JAMB, they did announce that they would start offering their tests at a location or two in the US.

When I took it and looked at the site a while back there was no scaling - your raw score was what's reported. So when (not if, when) they accidentally make a particularly hard or easy section, the students who take that section would have been unfairly penalized or benefited, respectively. Glad that changed, but it's a bit strange that anyone making a test wouldn't make sure it's scaled to start off with. One issue is that the scaled score is the same format as the raw score (out of 120) which may lead to confusion

Also I didn't find it to be any harder than the SAT, and the harder second half of the SAT is likely to be significantly harder than the overall CLT and thus possibly better at distinguishing among top students. I don't see any evidence that the CLT has a higher ceiling.