Reply to The Best Public High Schools in the U.S. by SAT & ACT Scores

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Please await next years’ scores - the class of 25 will be the first coming out of the new and improved process.  [/quote]

I’m the loudest and most well-informed advocate for TJ admissions on this thread. I’ve probably sent a thousand replies and posts over the last few years talking about the critical importance of opening TJ to the entire spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds represented in Northern Virginia. And I will go to war with anyone on here about the fact that things are going really well at TJ three years into the new process.

But I expect standardized exam scores to go down somewhat next year because [i]we are no longer overselecting for test taking ability in the admissions process.[/i]

In the old process you literally could not become a semifinalist without strong test-taking skills. Students could be absolutely brilliant but if they were not strong in a standardized test environment, for whatever reason, they were cut out of the process.

So yes, the scores will go down slightly, almost for certain. And it doesn’t matter, but you’ll get a bunch of myopic trolls on here with an archaic and limited idea of the concept of merit who think it does. And they’ll needlessly insult thousands of kids in the process.[/quote]

Even if your argument is right (that the prior admissions process overselected for test taking), how do you know that the current admissions brings in a more meritous population?  "Not overselecting" is not congruent to "more meritous."

As evidence, note that SAT scores are highly correlated to college success outcomes, so there is a strong positive correlation between test taking skills and college success.  To the extent that these are correlated, admitting worse test takers means admitting worse college-succeeders (on average).[/quote]

I’m not arguing that the new population is [i]more[/i] meritorious. I’m merely arguing that they’re not inherently less so.[/quote]

But statistically, they are less meritorious. [b] Noisy as it is, test (SAT) scores are positively correlated with merit (or aptitude, or whatever non-observable measure of ability you want to call it)[/b]. Removing test scores from an admissions process will thus lower the admitted population's average merit, all else equal. If the substitute admissions process doesn't have a measure that is more positively correlated with merit than test scores, the new population will be less meritorious*.

* I'm using "college success" as the observable instrument for measuring merit.  Feel free to suggest other observable measures.  [/quote]

This is where you ran into difficulty. "Merit" is simply not a concept that is observable in such a way that everyone will agree on it and truly evaluating it depends entirely on context. It just does and every single business in America understands this.

Say you have two students that you're evaluating for admission to your elite school. You are trying to predict which of these students is going to be the best endorsement for your school in four years when they graduate and in ten, twenty, and thirty years down the road. You have space for only one and these two are the only two candidates.

Student A comes from a wealthy, two-parent family and has attended the best advanced programs in the area. Their older sister attended your school. On your standardized exam this student gets a 93/100 and when asked why they want to attend your school, they respond "because it's the best school in the area and my sister went there".

Student B comes from a disadvantaged background and only has one parent in the house who works two jobs. No one from their school has ever attended your school, nor even applied. On your standardized exam this student gets an 89/100 and when asked, they reply "because it's always been my dream to study the thing you specialize in at the highest level and I want to use my studies to solve this problem that exists in my community and others like it".

If you understand admissions at all, you select Student B 100% of the time - not because you're trying to do a favor for kids from disadvantaged communities, but because it's fairly obvious that [i]Student B is going to contribute more to your school and probably by a mile[/i].[/quote]

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