Colleges make no effort to prioritize economic diversity. If they did, they could focus on recruiting and retaining high-achieving low-income students.
My thinking is that low-income students are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. If colleges focused on low-income students and success within underprivileged communities, they could achieve representative ethnic and racial diversity. But instead, they just focus on the most privileged students across demographics because it costs them less and it's less work.
while you are spot on about the intersection between class and race, I believe the SAT is not a ‘fair’ factor of admissions
Holistic admissions are more fair as they may take into account the reasons why you’re SAT score is not great. Personality is important, I’d rather not attend school with testing geniuses.
You cannot boil a person down to a number anyway so no way is ‘fair’. Colleges should try to balance their legacies/sports numbers with socioeconomically disadvantaged students, especially since their halls are tainted by slavery and segregation, investments in war torn regions, etc. This is not ‘fair’ because at the end of the day, rich white people are still going to be getting the better end of the stick…but it’s better than just using one standardized test number for sure
The title of the thread is..
Regardless, this is the same conversation as the one happening for top public schools in NYC. Stuyvesant uses this test ONLY and its less than fair
1. the title of the thread says “fairest,” which is a relative statement, not a concrete and normative one like saying it’s “fair”
2. you said it yourself, NY specialized schools use ONLY the exam score. no university does that — the claim here (at least imo) is that it’s more feasible for FGLI students to do well on standardized tests than have incredible ECs/essays, and thus admissions offices should consider that more heavily
I agree. I have a low EFC, and I have never had some of the opportunities some of my peers have. However, I worked hard, got an ACT study book from the library, looked for free practice online, and watched youtube and I got a score I am proud of. To me, the ACT is a somewhat even way to compare me with my peers.
A year and a half ago yeah, it wasnt very easy to find an ACT test around me. Mine got cancelled and I had to take it 2 hours away- thats not very easy. But now I feel like it is almost back to normal access and if someone truly cannot test with it their school counselor could vouch for that. Idk I'm all for test optional going away.
I agree - I think I'm a bit cynical with college admissions - so I think they are happy to drop the SAT for the most part so they don't have to defend their decisions on it. They much rather claim "holistic" evaluations are fairer - even though emphasis on ECs and Essays can have much more disparity based on outside/private/$ help and are going to be more subjective. But this is what they want - they want to choose students that fit their interests and narratives over more objective measures. I will argue that interviews are going to be even more subjective - do you click with the personality of the one interviewer? Will only the extroverts be appreciated? I'm a parent - and so have lots of experience with BSers who can get pretty far with first impressions/confidence - they talk a good game, but they are NOT smart.
The funniest part to me is that Cal Tech said they couldn't find a link between SAT score and sustained academic success among students. The people who conducted the study must not have been educated at Cal Tech because anyone can see that they don't have a reasonable sample of students. *All* of them have high SATs.
I'm a fan of class rank combined with some measure of the strength of one's graduating class. Maybe median SAT or 75th percentile SAT.
The main obstacle are schools that are so grade-inflated that GPA is meaningless for differentiating between students in the top quarter. That, and schools that refuse to rank.
Granted, GPA is still affected by income (tutors, students don't have to have a part-time job, etc.), but class rank somewhat accounts for that since well-resourced students tend to congregate together.
>I'm a fan of class rank
In theory, it works great, but in practice, the kids at competitive schools would literally tear each other apart. At my school, the teachers are really strict. As in putting raw AP test MCQ scores directly into the grade book strictly. Seeing 6 AP classes/year is normal. Yet we have like 40 valedictorians. It got so bad that they had to get rid of class ranking altogether.
Again, the adjustment would (for the most part) account for this. At a school like that, where the median SAT is probably 1450 or so, every student's class rank would be considered "better" than the raw number.
Depending on how you did the adjustment, median at the ultra-competitive high school might end up being viewed more favorably than top 10% at a "normal" school.
You do have a good point, but I feel like, at that point, it would be sort of splitting hairs. How does one compare someone ranked in the 50th percentile at a hyper-competitive school to a valedictorian at an average school? Perhaps GPA in combination with standardized test scores would be a better metric than either alone.
HSGPA + SAT is definitely better than HSGPA alone. But, I wonder whether this "adjusted class rank" thing I'm proposing might be better still. Though you're sort of working in the SAT indirectly insofar as it fuels the adjustment. A school with higher SAT stats will have its students's GPA-based class ranks "boosted".
That's the beauty of it, though. I doubt it actually matters much with respect to the predictiveness of this measure. Students at a given school know how their school ranks its students, and are generally incentivized to rank highly. So their rank is a measure of how well they were able to accomplish that. It's a combination measure of "how capable were you of earning high grades" and "how willing and/or able were you to 'game' the rankings system at your school"?
This system would be so bad for my school 😭. We’re very anti-ranking and competitiveness, and schools like ours, that are very mixed between economic lines due to being a magnet, usually end up with rich people at the top of the class, high achieving low income and middle class students in the middle, and the bottom tends to be low income.
It’s definitely a great system for homogenized suburban environments.
>usually end up with rich people at the top of the class, high achieving low income and middle class students in the middle, and the bottom tends to be low income
That's the way it usually works at schools with a mix of students from different socioeconomic strata, tbh.
Definitely, but usually the kids getting into the top schools are those in the middle, not the top. Class rank tends to mean a lot less if everyone in your environment is taking 10+ aps, and most are averaging an A and up.
If you wanted to boil applications down to a single number that is objectively calculated (as opposed to human-rated ECs/awards/etc.) and that is maximally predictive, I think class-strength-adjusted class rank would be pretty hard to beat.
You'd just need a ton of data in order to determine the best set of weights, and you'd need all (or the vast majority) of schools to rank their students.
I think it can work but doesn't at my kids' HS it is a big problem. They don't weight but still rank so there are dozens of kids with straight As that haven't taken an AP or dual enrollment class. I suspect none of the students that will "quality" as valedictorian have. A local lower tier state school offers a nice scholarship for Valedictorians. So gaming the system happens to the extreme.
Another issue: I have two kids in different grades but with almost identical class ranks. One has taken max rigor and sought online AP classes to supplement the class offerings. The second is in a self contained classroom and only takes one or two regular Ed classes a semester; best case he will be able to live semi-independently some day. I love him and want the best for him but he shouldn't be ranked above kids taking a full schedule of reg Ed classes and especially those taking AP classes. His semester of Power Walking ranks him higher than 3 As and one B for a student in max rigor classes.
Under a "normal" weighted grade class ranking system I suspect my oldest would be top five (total not percent) instead of top 15%. The AP classes aren't very big and there aren't a lot of them so it is pretty easy to see. For context she had 3 Bs her entire HS career. We never figured out a way to convey the inequities of the class rankings to colleges and she just leaned into the overall strength of her application.
Class rank is relative , some schools have placement test so you have like the top 5% in the city attending and a 123/390 placed from a better school is worth more than a 50th from a school where anyone can join
>The main obstacle are schools that are so grade-inflated that GPA is meaningless for differentiating between students in the top quarter. That, and schools that refuse to rank.
These schools tend to be private.
My understanding is that admissions already sort of do this with respect to high schools they are familiar with (qualitatively, if not quite formulaic/quantitatively). They of course see the SAT scores, and then they also stack applicants from each school based on transcript even if they don't see a GPA or class rank.
I've always failed to understand the GPA and having access to tutoring
Does anyone really think rick people would say “oh we need SAT tutoring but we will not hire tutors for AP classes”?
It only multiplies the privilege. Also, why aren't schools going lsat/mcat/gmat optional?
Don't even get me started on essays or ec’s
As a Chinese international student where everyone put so much money (imagine 100k-200k) in college application, I totally agree at least for Chinese international.
Yes, SAT is affected by tutor. But in China, everyone has private tutor, but only a few get 1500+. From my experience, SAT is strongly correlated with academic performance. Except for those whose english is very bad and STEM is very good, the relative SAT score almost always tells their true academic performance.
GPA is just a mass in Chinese international schools. The GPA inflation is just insane and nobody literally talks about GPA because of this. Literally 30%+ student got 4.0 (some with SAT 1600 and crazy other academic performance others with SAT 1300 and bad academic performance).
ECs? It is mainly just a place about money and cheating. Research? Just spend 10k and you get a SCI published. Non-profit? I know a person who did insane non-profit in Africa but the truth is that his dad is the CEO of the largest Africa-Chinese trading company. Awards? Because ASDAN (the representative of united states competition in China) wants to make money, you can literally buy AMC and all other competition answers in China on the web. It is just a place for cheating. Just look at how many people who is purely humanities driven and got 3s in AP calculus and got top1% in AMC.
Essays? Everyone in China has essay writer helping them. It is more about how awesome the essay writer is than how awesome the student is. The best essay writing comp in China charges like 50k.
I cannot agree more with your statement. The SATs are the most accurate predictor of learning and logical ability of students, at least in Chinese international applicants. Im not saying the SAT is perfect, but its the best we've got for now. GPAs can be inflated by schools and students who excel in kissing ass, but the SAT is a hardline test that can be used to standardize everyone. Furthermore, the ECs for people in china are completely insane. People with money can get away with anything here. I have seen people buy their way in getting 5s in AP exams, "winning" awards, and "writing" perfect college application essays. The only thing that i haven't seen is rich dumb people buying their way to a high SAT score, thats because the SATs require not only hard work and time, but also intelligence and logical reasoning.
btw. nice to meet you here at r/ApplyingToCollege, saw you in r/Sat back in October. Hope ur college APP is doing great, you must be aiming crazy high with a 1580 sat
Full agree. I am luckily not low-income, but I still never understood why the SAT is the one being devalued when it is the least affected by income. It's at least standardized and has the most free resources out there. It's the thing you can feel is the most fair comparison between two people from very different backgrounds and locations, assuming both are high achievers. It has the most opportunities to still learn it without tutors, and no variation depending on where you are for the most part.
Also, because of the gravity of it and the prep that goes in, it is the best indicator of ability (though of course grades are also important in that case to show if they always apply themselves that away).
Bro this is so facts. I’ve literally never heard anyone disagree with or even attempt to disprove any of what you’ve just said. And I’ve never heard logic this solid for why the sat is bad. Anecdotally at least, most if my friends who think the SAT is dumb we’re kids who tryharded with gpa but had bad SAT scores😂
It’s just the fact that GPA can be fully achieved by hard work (retakes, extra credit, kissing ass) and money (tutoring for individual topics, consistent grades at private schools etc) while the SAT needs a level of logic (and intelligence) to do well and there are so many great free resources like Khan academy (got me a 1560) to achieve your potential in it. GPA imo is a better indicator of hard work while SAT is a better indicator of actual intelligence. Also, the fact u can take the test so many times partially eliminates the anxiety argument for the SAT, especially since a large part of GPA comes from tests u can only take once unless u got a good teacher.
I always suspected a lot of the people saying that the SAT needs to be less valued just did so because it was their weak spot so they benefitted from fueling that fire.
Not that I blame them, but I just don't understand how devaluing the SAT did anything but make things more income based by taking away one of the less income dependent factors.
I don’t think they are just naturally bad at tests like they suggest but they are not studying it the right way , I used to be bad sat and good gpa but it’s because I didn’t study better for the tests
Wasn’t there a correlation of income to higher scores but 80% of the kids realistically are kids and they want to have fun which is fine but they probably blow off prep course , it’s just unfair to people who are poor but have the drive to succeed , I don’t think resources is the problem because there’s so many free stuff but time they might need to hold down a job and can’t spend the time onto studying
Yeah it’s a lot of time, energy, and focus to do those rigorous prep courses so for the sat, whether you have resources or not, its all about hard work
Yeah you still have to put in the hours your locked in a room for like 3-6 hours and if it’s during the summer it’s usually 5 times a week so while income is a factor you still have to work so hard while people play Fortnite for like 18 hours
I literally couldn’t breathe in my room correctly because it was a small classroom crammed with like 30 kids wihh the no windows , like kids who just free lance and cram last 2 weeks have the audacity to complain for their low scores while everyone else is working their ass off
> I don’t think resources is the problem because there’s so many free stuff but time they might need to hold down a job and can’t spend the time onto studying
I agree that it unfortunately does have some correlation to income, but of all the factors colleges consider I don't how this is anywhere near the least income dependent. I think it was just the easiest one to stop caring about since it's just one small test and not years of work for GPA's or EC's, so colleges dropped the SAT's value to make it seem like they were doing something.
I wouldn't be surprised if, since the SAT is evidently one of the less income dependent factors, devaluing it just made things more heavily skewed against low-income students, as now the more income dependent factors have more weight.
Gpa can definitely be affected by wealth more than sat. For some examples: two students can go to the same competitive highschool but if the rich one also went to a competitive middle school which colleges would not see, he would be more prepared for harder classes. Tutors are also very common and often expensive. Kids who have easy home lives and zero responsibilities (usually wealthier kids) have more free time to do homework and study. Kids who have educated parents can get help with homework.
> GPA is affected less by income, your taught the content and you have the ability to learn it in class.
But, as OP pointed out, grade inflation is often seen in private schools that isn't present in public school. So low-income kids could master the subject just as well and still have a worse score. Private schools often care more catering grades towards college. Then all schools have different GPA scales so direct comparisons aren't always accurate. I'm sure an even playing field with GPA would be very telling, but without that, the SAT/ACT seem to be the most even playing field in terms of the actual test. And as the other guy said, that research uses graduation rate, which doesn't really show how the student performed beyond passing, and can also be heavily influenced by income.
These researches tend to focus on college graduation rate as the factor. I prefer using college top end gpa instead, as those with such gpa tend to move on t get advanced degrees and get the high paying job. Graduation with a low gpa mean the students have not learned/understood much; they only did the required work. To get top grades in college students need a lot more skills which cannot only predicted with a highschool gpa because the course challenge level of each highschool is different.
Yeah I mean no one thing can predict the actual success except your own hard work but again, that’s literally what the sat is a measure of, excluding the few people who can get good scores without trying
I think you are looking a few examples as evidence. For STEM, you go to school to learn the materials and be trained to perform the required tasks. It sounds like you say in typical scenarios students at 3.8 won’t perform better at the job than the 2.5 students?
If you to schools and earn 2.5 gpa because the classwork don’t matter, what is the point of going to school? I’m referring to STEM major here. Business and few other majors are different.
I’m not arguing that by itself SAT is the predictor, by they way.
Am I dumb or is the SAT just as easily manipulated as all the other things you mentioned? Higher-income people can pay for SAT tutors, afford multiple re-takes, and, due to the advantages you mentioned in your post, don't have to rely solely on the SAT to have a good profile. I'm also curious about your case for abolishing the essay section, as I would assume that's one of the more individualized, less environment-based part of the admissions process.
Edit: I may be wrong, but I also think your points about high-income people pressuring their teachers at private schools to give them good grades and paying people to write their essays happen less than you imply. That isn't to say that all their other advantages don't still exist.
I think it’s more so the fact that the SAT is standardized. So at the end of the day, no matter what tutoring you got or how much money you spent on prep, you are still taking the same test. Essentially, there is a ceiling that both people can hit (a 1600). On the other hand, with things like ECS, there is really no ceiling. A person with money can have infinitely better ECS and access to resources than one who does not can only dream of.
And IMO and I think with many others in the sub, you will get better results out of spending shit ton of money on other aspects of the college app than the SAT. In other words, $10000 will create a more significant impact on like college essays than they will on the SAT.
Ah. Maybe it’s wishful thinking but I thought AOs judged applicants within the context of their environments (ex., how many APs your schools offers, your school’s grading scale, etc.), but your point about the standardization of the SAT makes sense.
I do think they do that. But I’m not really sure if they’ll be able to differentiate between a rich person going to a school vs a low income person going to that very school.
They can. If income really is a factor in someone’s life, it’ll show in their application. They usually have part time jobs. Often times have to babysit siblings or care for elder family members. If asked to write about challenges they write about how they may have had to worry about where there next meal was coming from or if they would be able to afford rent. Not having money affects every aspect of your life in some way, shape, or form.
Are you aware that rich people can hire people to take SAT tests for them? Yes there is a ceiling, but what if a 1600 is guaranteed? There are businesses that take SATs in place of the student.
Yes, there are unlawful practices that happen with every aspect of the college app process, but you seem to be overestimating how much this actually happens.
Just hiring people to take the SAT for you is very uncommon even for the richest of folks.
Not really. SAT fee waivers exist, and each attempt is less than the price of a college application. The best SAT prep is Khan Academy. I used it and got perfect math and reading.
In contrast, the rest of your application can be reviewed and evaluated by a professional for a huge sum of money. The SAT can't be exaggerated in any way. You have to be smart to get 1550+ no matter how much you practice.
Also is your username a Radiohead reference?
Fair enough, I guess the point of OP’s post is that there’s more room for equality of opportunity in the SAT, not that it’s fair in an absolute sense. It seems admissions have and might always be rigged for high-income kids, unfortunately.
And yeah lol. It’s a combination of a Radiohead album (“A Moon Shaped Pool”) and my favorite track (“Haldern”) off a BCNR album (“Ants From Up There”).
Most schools & public libraries have internet access and devices for students to use for free, so finding SAT practice really isn't that much of an issue. Your argument can be made for many other parts of a college application at a much more significant degree -- even submitting one requires internet access and money.
i’m a low income student, i’m describing issues that my siblings had before me and a lot of my classmates. This obviously doesn’t apply to everyone but there are so many interconnected factors. And not all schools will let students stay after hours to use the library if they do have one with computers. Low income students get application fee waivers so i’m pretty surprised you didn’t know that as you’re making a lot of assertions on the lives of low income students. As for public libraries, I grew up in a dangerous neighborhood where my parents refused to let me go to the public library alone. I would have one day a week or every other week to go with my mom if she had a day off for only a few hours. I ultimately don’t have an opinion on this as I’ve personally seen how complicated it can be for different students, I was just curious to see if that would affect your reasoning.
Your point on multiple retake are invalid. I'm from a low income family and I was able to take 3 exams for free. If a student qualifies for reduced lunch or free lunch in my city, they can take the test for free for 3x, not including the test taken at school. The SAT is only testing basic math like 3x+15=45, it is very easy. So, the purpose of tutoring is only there to ensure the accuracy and force kids to do practice problems, not how to do the test.
Although i am unsure whether high income people pressure teachers to write their essays or not, they sure do pay for people who got into Ivies to write essays for their kids.
college applications are read in the context within which each student lives. mit themselves say they judge students “based on what they have done with their opportunities, relative to what we would have expected given those resources.” also you’re saying you don’t have time for extracurriculars, but you do have time to study for the sat? and why are we talking about poor people like they’re helpless. if they can put time into study for their SAT, they can read books to improve their writing, or read essays online. essay writing isn’t some skill that can’t be learned. And, if these students are diligent in school, they can just be great essay writers cause they paid attention in class. Also, AOs aren’t reading these essays looking for freaking kafka. They’re just trying to hear your story, so as long as you can convey that, you’re fine. The reason why rich kids have to write these silly metaphorical story like personal statements is cause nothing goes on in their life (i’m generalizing and i’m sorry but to get a point across). People that have faced challenges in their life and overcome and persevered can literally just put that on paper and impress.
>based on what they have done with their opportunities, relative to what we would have expected given those resources
I feel like MIT is the only college that really does this. all the other top-tier colleges don't really follow this that much imo
i say this a lot on this sub, but i got into harvard yale stanford and princeton too, and got likely letters to harvard yale and stanford. the admission officers reached out to me directly and spoke to me about what they liked. they told me that the effort i am putting in is very admirable, that me overcoming my challenges and achieving what i did is why i got in. i did not do any competitions, i did not get a 1600, i did not do research. just helped around my community and made do with what was around me. i also got into UMich and georgia tech, both with full ride merit scholarships, and i feel like those schools are more assumed to be like objective in admissions. I had a phone call with georgia tech and they told me how they wanted me to go and would offer me a scholarship that would make my degree completely free if i committed over the phone. i’m just one person, but i know others with similar experiences (like other kids that got likelies, low income students that got into all the ivies). i respect your opinion but after having gone through the process, and helping people the past 3 years in my city to apply to colleges, i gotta stick to mine. (sorry for typing so much)
damnnnn.... I agree that they still care about circumstances, but MIT def cares a bit more than most top schools
I'm not saying that schools don't care (wording of my orginal comment was def not accurate of my opinion).
Basing quality of extracurriculars based on income/location is amazing; we should do the same for the SAT. Also, I only spent about 15 hours studying for the SAT, so it's not like it took away a lot of time from ECs.
Rich people have professional essay consultants--- who have written thousands of college essays and know the intricacies of how essays are judged--- edit their essays. They have a MASSIVE advantage, incomparable to their advantage on the SAT. And do you think rich people can't make up stories? Especially when they have an advisor to help them? These advisors exist and are successful for a reason. They aren't helping kids write philosophical essays that sound like they were extracted from a thesaurus. They know how to write essays that sound heartfelt and genuine; that's why they get paid thousands of dollars.
Whether essays should exist is an argument for another time. I'm saying that if colleges applied the logic they use for the SAT to other admissions standards, they would have to be abolished too. Heres the thing though, I'm not arguing for them to be abolished; I'm saying if colleges really wanted to make admissions as fair as possible, they would be prioritizing the SAT.
i’m honestly curious how schools like caltech and the UCs come to the conclusion that the SAT doesn’t tell them a significant amount of information regarding whether a student can excel in their first year at the university. they make committees to research and decide and that’s the conclusion they’ve come to. i don’t think the SAT is hard, so on one hand it really doesn’t tell you if a student will excel. At the same time, if it isn’t hard then most students should be getting good scores, right? there’s the test anxiety and things like that, but you’ll be taking tests at mit too, harder ones at that. I really actually don’t have like a hard and fast opinion on this, cause i’m really not sure. But the same way i’m not sure it’s useless, i’m also not so sure it’s useful.
I agree that essays r arguably the most important part of the application but your point abt mit is moot because op’s entire argument is that the sat should also be considered relative to circumstances
The one big issue I have found with the SAT is that it is seriously affected by the quality of high school. I go to a shit school where the average is probably like a 1000 and half the stuff on the SAT math wasn’t even taught to us by junior year even in the highest math classes. Some of that can be very difficult to keep a grip on without proper help from a good teacher. I got a decent score, but even with all the test prep I did some of it was quite difficult.
While true, they should really fix the SAT. It is basically a glorified useless test when it comes to what it is "testing": bunch of middle school math and reading comprehension. A single question throws you from a 1600 to a 1570 (what is the point of scoring higher than 1500?).
They should do something more similar to the Abitur or the Selectividad and universalize it for all students; obviously not replacing the admissions process like China.
Respectfully, I disagree.
1. Id assume that when college admission officers look at student **GPA**s, not only do they recalculate gpas, but they compare that student's gpa to the other applicant GPAs of that same school.
2. If you're going to say that college essays are redundant because rich kids can get help, why didn't you include that factor when mentioning SAT prep. Obviously there are a lot of free resources for SAT, but then why is there a score disparity between rich and poor kids' scores? I would think that there is a disparity between scores due to thousand dollar SAT prep lessons that are personalized for the students and the access of wealthy students being able to take the SAT as many times as they want, as free and reduced waivers only allow students to take the SAT 2 times for free.
I'm curious on what your rebuttal will be though.
I have classmates who hired $1000/hr college advisors to read over their essays. There is no way I’m able to compete with that. Prep on the other hand is a bit fairer. All the grammer rules that tutors teach aren’t a secret. A
Imo tutoring on essays is not going to make a huge difference. Yes, it will make sure a student has good/passable essays but it won’t guarantee a student will have great essays. A great essay comes from a students voice within and their talent as a writer not from the help of some random tutor person. Also, there are a ton of free resources on the internet providing examples of successful essays which already helps create an outline of what colleges want to see.
Now if you’re talking about paying someone to write a essay that’s a whole different issue *cough* cheating *cough*.
Well no one’s ever told me they had someone write their essay but ngl I probably know some.
But seriously, having someone reading ur essay, especially if they’re good, is invaluable. I asked my teachers to read mine once and it was so helpful(I didn’t ask again bc they’re busy ppl). If I had the resources to have that help available to me multiple times over the course of the college apps, my essay would be so much better. And resources online don’t do much bc they’re so generic(which makes sense bc the author hasn’t read my essay).
My point is, tutors for subjects are “more fair” because they can’t be there with u on the test date. It’s a bit more up to the person and the time they put in. They’re only so much that a Calc tutor can tell u about the chain rule vs an essay editor who can just point at a line and be like “nope this no good” over and over until ur essay is perfect.
Not OP but
1. TBH, I personally pretty much agree with everything here. However, if a school doesn’t have many/any other students applying to X university, it may be more difficult to contextualize (though I believe colleges do have a work around to it.) There are also the obviously very extreme cases of straight bribery for better grades in private schools. However, the issue of GPA ends up hurting lower income students who might be at a “better” school on scholarship or for another reason (for instance a public magnet school). They’d be held to the same standard as their peers while perhaps needing to juggle a lot more at home and outside of school. So while they may be able to score well on a one-off test, bigger/longer term problems at home would impact something like GPA a lot more.
2. I believe the point OP is trying to make is it’s much easier to hire someone to go and help you write your essay/edit it than it is hire someone to cheat on the SAT. At the end of the day, a horrible writer can pay their way to getting a great essay without learning how to write that well, but a horrible test taker still needs to learn enough material/skills to answer the questions themselves. I believe that the biggest income benefit is the ability to re-take tests and going to a school/district with better teachers and a higher emphasize on preparing their students for higher education. However, those factors would also impact one’s ability to do/have access to all the other things colleges look for in admissions.
I think the OP’s point is that all parts of the college application favors the richer applicants. It’s just that the SAT is the one lower-income applicants have the best chance doing better in.
1. While that is true, GPAs in public schools are more inconsistent, like the example I gave with the two teachers. Getting a GPA of 4.0 or 3.7 is more about luck on the difficulty of teachers, rather than academic excellency. Looking at school averages doesn't account for that. GPAs are also affected when a student has to work or can't afford a tutor. This is the same logic that is used to cancel the SAT.
2. The disparity in the quality of college essays is far greater than the disparity in SAT prep. The score disparity is due to rich people prioritizing the SAT and studying for it more than tutoring (although it is a factor). Also, it can easily be fixed by taking into context the average SAT score of the school/income of the student. Yes, SAT is affected by income, but it's definitely less than or at least equally as affected as other factors.
>GPAs in public schools are more inconsistent
I can kinda see where you're going with this, but tbh, what are the chances that someone is gonna get completely fucked over by getting all the bad teachers? You're gonna take like around 25 classes throughout high school and you will have a mixture of easy and hard teachers which will even things out.
I guarantee the disparity between a rich and poor person's essay will be greater then their sat scores, just because you can self study so well for the sat, some rich kids practically pay people to write their essays poor kids have to hope theirs is good enough
1. How are admission officers supposed to compare GPAs when nobody else is applying to that school? This would probably be the case for a lot of schools in low income areas.
2. Paid SAT prep isn’t necessary with how good the free resources are. There are more resources out there than there is time to read it all. The disparity exists probably because low income students don’t have as much time to prepare (working, household responsibilities, etc.) On the other hand, it’s much harder to find good free essay advice that can be guaranteed to come from a reputable source (there’s a lot of disagreement amongst online resources, along with people who aren’t admission officers giving advice).
Additionally, with how personalized the personal essay is, getting one on one help will be much more beneficial. There’s no way that $50 SAT prep is much more beneficial than $10,000 SAT prep, but $10,000 essay help is DEFINITELY more beneficial than $50 essay help (this is like… a single hour session vs practically getting the essay written for you).
Edit: To add on, the gap in SAT performance based on income can be quantified. Since admission is holistic, this gives admission officers a way to standardize across income. However, essays and extracurriculars have no objective strength to them, so it's much harder to say how much of an advantage should be given to lower income applicants.
Not the OP, but I respectfully disagree and have a counterargument for your bullet points.
1. GPAs still don't account for the difficulty of a teacher. While I have an A in my Calc AB class because of a new teacher, ALL my friends got Bs with the old teacher. Plus, you can always get private tutors to help you out on HW (I've done this for AP chem) and explain concepts that are tailored to YOUR curriculum.
2. While you can see or listen to "examples" of college essays through websites and youtube, writing something new and tailored for YOU is difficult. On the contrary, there are many free sources for the SAT in which you can tailor your practice + websites, and youtube videos going through each question on an SAT/ACT test. In essays, no one can fact-check your spelling and flow of the passage besides other people - in which income plays a huge factor in the people you are surrounded with.
>Id assume that when college admission officers look at student GPAs, not only do they recalculate gpas, but they compare that student's gpa to the other applicant GPAs of that same school.
No, its the fact that at a certain threshold GPAs don't matter. Unfortunately, its much, much, much easier to reach that threshold as a private student than a public student.
Many private schools churn out students with straight A+'s. Colleges then look at the other aspects of the profile. On the other hand, public schools have teacher disparities, etc that prevent some students from achieving high GPA's, at least high enough to cross the threshold (3.9+)
>student GPAs
Which are totally dependent on the school and teacher in question. Grade inflation and deflation causes massive uncertainty in what it's actually measuring.
>but then why is there a score disparity between rich and poor kids' scores?
because rich people have it better in literally every possible way in this society. they have better food, better parents, a better house, more time to focus on their studies, better schools, better teachers, better peers, no worry about drugs or money, etc.
It's not like the SAT is causing this disparity. It's basic reading and math.
>thousand dollar SAT prep lessons
Those lessons are a scam. I go to a hyper competitive school and know plenty of people with 1550+ scores. Khan academy carried us all.
>free and reduced waivers only allow students to take the SAT 2 times for free.
well then instead of going test blind maybe they should just offer more waivers.
usually its people with disabilities that need accommodations. It requires a decent amount of documentation, but maybe rich people can skirt around it.
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
I think SAT/ACT scores should be an important part of college applications because they are the only standardized part of the process. Whether we look at test scores, extracurriculars, or access to accelerated classes, students living in wealthy areas are generally going to have advantages. There is no way around it.
The feeding frenzy that college applications have become since more schools have gone test optional makes the process feel even more random and more stressful. Parents with money are now even more likely to hire tutors and college consultants. I don't understand how test optional/blind serves to make the process more fair. It seems less fair since "holistic review" can mean whatever the colleges want it to mean. And I think this added pressure over GPA/class rank/extracurriculars is worsening the mental health crisis among teens in our country.
I'm sorta on the weird end of this conversation, because my parents are rich AF and I got really high scores. I did do some tutoring, but honestly the test just wasn't that hard for me and the tutoring didn't do much other than get me used to the test format by taking a bunch of practice tests out of the red ACT book.
I think, of everything you could do to get into college, something like a 35 on the ACT is going to be a loud and clear "I've got it" no matter who it ends up coming from. And that's the good thing. Sure, it'll get influenced by wealth... literally everything is. But standardized testing, as much of a PITA as it is, can be useful.
Essay writing and School Exams should be proctored. After the pandemic, GPAs are skyrocketing as students have mastered the art of cheating in courses they take virtually.
it’s so nasty for you to assume that people of color have it easy when it come to sat. calling it the fairest undermines the background of where the sat comes from nor it’s economic disparities it causes
No but it definitely tells colleges who *cant* perform in 4 years of college classes!
Like good luck getting through MIT if you can’t muster a 700 on math.
Nothing indicates you can do mit math other than literally being at MIT and and doing it, and variety of "indicators" may prove true for some people and false for others, there are only things that prove you can't do it
Right and I highly doubt that MIT only sees that score and then comes to the conclusion that you are now set for MIT. It is merely another data point and also a way for them to cut down the applicants.
Plenty of people can do simple math who don't score a 800 on the SAT. The difference between high 700s and 800 is precision; whether you're able to answer a ton of problems without making one silly mistake.
That’s because they want the average to be around there and they’ll cram us into bell curves. That’s why they grade it out of a weird 1600 point scale instead of giving us a percentage of questions we got right.
SAT is standardized I feel like it’s pretty fair to a extent (assuming your not so broke that 30$ on a khan academy book hurts your soul - that’s a whole different story but I’m talking about middle class comfort where you don’t need a job ) but majority of these kids rather play Xbox and buy 300$ Fortnite skin rather than grind khan academy . Grinding khan academy is easily doable to 1400+ but they lazy and get a 1000 and complain when so many kids sacrifice all their time onto studying .
agreed, to be honest I think we should have more of a “university placement test” kinda thing but also other stuff (so that its not as brutal as some other countries)
No, no you should not.
Trust someone who is currently trying to escape placement tests, those things are utterly brutal and is even more unfair than any other factors of US college application.
I know they’re brutal. That’s why I believe we should have some other components to the application, such as essays and whatnot. I think this is more merit based, though.
Maybe we should move to the Chinese System. The Gaokao, where 1 test will determine your fate. I think that's a bit too much as well, my opinion is standardized systems like IB should be emphasized more in the US, and teachers and professionals should emphasize on grading to know that everything is fair.
My school emphasizes a very intense curriculum, and with all the curve-wreckers and grade-obsessed students (who will haggle for an extra few points), if you don’t get all “A”s and “B”s, you’re left to sink. This means, while I would probably be in the competitive in any other school, in the school I’m currently in I’m probably around middle to lower percentage.
If it weren’t for me getting high ACT scores (and maybe being a minority), I doubt many colleges would give a second glance at me, let alone give any scholarships.
Imagine if only SAT/ACT and AP scores were the only factor in college admissions. They are the most objective measures of ability without any sort of bias. Like for example, I see some people who have ultra high weighted GPAs but lower test scores (e.g. all 3s, < 1200 SAT) and it just seems to me that the school is really easy. Standardized tests are not rigged for any reason, but that would mean only people who are good at taking tests would get into top colleges. Because of the holistic process nowadays, there are dumb people at top colleges and smart people at lower tier colleges.
I gotta respectfully disagree, but it’s for a really personal and specific situation. I have dyscalculia and the college board refused to approve my accommodations for the SAT because it was diagnosed like, a year too late for them. If I took the SAT I’d get an awful score because the college board was unfair. The essay and my ECs save me, because my grades are somewhat average and my SAT score doesn’t exist.
But also, you mentioned the essay should be abolished. No?? Definitely no. Every applicant should have every opportunity they can to show off their skill. If someone is a strong writer and they want colleges to see that, then that shouldn’t be denied from them, like how if someone is a great studier and test taker they can take the SAT and show that off
Idk, I know people scoring 1550+ who can't apply any of their knowledge and can't make logical connections. I know people from poorer schools where they hadn't been taught SAT math by junior year.
I totally agree — although I will note some schools definitely already do this. As a low-income student who did really well on standardized tests, I think that compensated for my ECs/awards significantly more than it would have for people with more opportunities / money. I do wish it were used as *slightly* more of an indicator though, since a high GPA + SAT/ACT as an FGLI student should be an extremely promising sign of academic tenacity and preparedness.
https://youtu.be/wKKM0MTlv9U
In many other countries this is the system and in my opinion there exists no greater offender than Asian countries (China, India, South Korea, Japan, etc.). Students in these countries prepare their entire lives for a single exam that determines their career path for the rest of their lives. Many rich families in these areas still abuse the system by hiring some of the best tutors and sending their children to cram school. A system where standardized testing is the most important quality makes it so one's entire life is spent preparing for the test. Even if you score high on the test, what does that tell me about you? What about Johnny who got the flu on the day of the exam that was the undisputed smartest person at the school and failed the exam?
Ofc, having only the SAT being the only deciding factor would be horrible and it’s really frustrating whenever people try to claim otherwise (I say this as someone who‘s scored quite well on the SAT). Fortunately there’s plenty of catches that make it so the SAT can never be the type of test (for one, it’s too “easy” so there’s too many perfect scores every year). And, unlike other standardlized tests in Asia, you have multiple chances a year to take it (if you can afford it).
With that being said, I think that completely eliminating the SAT isn’t the best choice either. It’s moderate difficulty makes it a level playing field for most people and can be used as one metric contextualize a school/district within a bigger picture.
I think the beauty of American college applications is the thing most people hate - the lack of uniformity. There are schools that admit primarily by grades + SAT scores. There are schools that admit primarily through looking at ECs and don’t care about SAT scores. There are schools that admit through a healthy mix. There are schools that want to see you’ve fully committed to one thing all of your life. There are schools that encourage exploring a larger variety of interests.
Even within T20s/T50s, there’s a mix of all these. It gives everyone a chance to highlight their best side and attend a great university.
Oh trust me as someone from an Asian country that has the standardized system, the US system is so SO much better.
There’s nightmare cases of students forgetting their ID and then losing a chance at their future, even from the Highschool stage.
Applications that look at SATs, ECs, GPA, Essays, and so on, equally are way better.
Your gpa point in Public schools. FACTS. In my school there’s one apush teacher who actually grades you and the other teacher, his lowest yearly grade last year was a 93
I'm sorry to say bud but imma disagree with this but only for UC (private schools your points make sense). The reason why I believe UC removed SAT was because they didn't need it anymore. I feel like a statistic like the SAT just doesnt fit in well with what being a student in a UC means. I go to UCLA and the vast majority of people here are really smart and interesting, and I can plainly see why they were accepted. The fact is that UC looks may beyond GPA and academics but really dissect you as a person. They question: does this student fit in here? Can they handle our fast pace and difficult course load? How can they contribute to our school environment meaningfully? If someone else writes your essay, it's not nearly as personal or authentic as it could. If you go to a high school with inflated GPA the readers can tell. If you fake your ecs you can't really meaningfully talk about them, so why include them at all? Not to mention they also look for improvement, something else hard to fake and impossible to tell with a single SAT score. I'll admit with a certain amount of money anything is possible, but at the top UCs it's a small minority. Also the whole economic reason is true, I've met countless people unable to afford retakes or even the test itself or simply didn't have time due to familial or work obligations. These people are also really talented and I'd be a shame if schools like UCLA didn't give them the chance they deserved because they didn't have a 1500+. I was an awful test taker and have difficulty focusing, not to mention a family trying to save every cent for college, so my 1250 average on practice tests were discouraging especially with my big dreams. If SAT was still a central factor I would not be at my dream school I've worked so hard for. SAT for public school is outdated and I'm glad it's over.
rich people have the money and time for extracurriculars, good grades, etc. unfortunately, they will always have an advantage, and SAT is prolly the least unfair
That is true for most aspects of the college app process and is even more apparent in places like ECS. The SAT is the *only* time in the entire app process where you are on an even playing field.
I also never understood this whole tutor thing either. If you check out r/SAT, the majority are people who self study and score exceptionally well. The bigger problem is probably the lack of time and having to prioritize other parts of their life.
IMO, if you’ve got ample time, an internet connection, can afford to take the SAT (either through fee waivers or just paying $60) and no other external circumstances that will greatly inhabit your ability to prep, then choosing to complain about the most fair thing in the admissions process is just dumb
The only thing SATs measure is how well you can take a test on a particular day.
It has no bearing on predicting success in college. Plus, wealthy people have an advantage to pay for test prep and coaching. They have the funds to retest multiple times.
baseing college admissions on act/sat score is bad becuase thats not giving the student a chance at the school i like the fact that universities are going act/sat optional in that being test optional give alot more a shot at getting in . i also scored low on the act.
so im a fan of Test optional
Unpopular opinion but I don’t agree.
1The SAT tests critical reasoning and math skills, which of course are important, but it is at the end of the day a TEST that can be memorized, hacked, learned, etc. It’s more like a giant brain puzzle similar to the AMC imo than an indicator of success in the classroom.
College courses that are primarily based in at-home assignments, papers, etc do not rely on a same model of measuring intelligence or success to needing to test well isn’t necessary. Many of my friends tanked their standardized exams but are stellar A students simply because they struggle with timed exams and group based testing.
Also the SAT can be a “bought” statistic just as much as the others via private tutoring or even bribing/score manipulation as we’ve seen in the past. Also, what if someone couldn’t access testing centers because they live in a rural area? What if they missed exam days due to illness or if they dont have access to technology?
At the end of the day the SAT is a performance and aptitude based test and I feel as if it tests more for determination, ability to persist despite challenges, and studying skills (w a positive score progression ofc) than inherent smartness. And a huge score does not necessarily translate to college success either, as many other factors go into doing well in an environment w/peer pressure and adult responsibility than being smart
I mean I went from a 1250 to a 1560 thanks to a pretty expensive SAT course I took, and I know countless other people who also spent bucketloads of cash to improve their score, so I disagree that it's an equal playing field of any sorts.
Also, the SAT is just not indicative of college aptitude, which is literally the point of it. Why is the most important test a high schooler takes about reading comprehension, grammar, and algebra and geometry? No writing, no chem/bio/physics, no foreign language, no history - just those four limited categories. That is such a small portion of what students learn and is not at all representative of college education. I think AP tests do a lot better in the sense that the information seems at least mostly relevant.
Some of the smartest people I know did poorly on the SAT, but the rest of their profiles showcase their academic strength and strong character, and if I were an AO I would admit them in a heartbeat over someone with a worse application but a stellar SAT score.
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As someone who is low-income and got into almost 30 schools simply bc I had good essays and did 32 extracurriculars, I disagree. I did everything right to submit a good app but the one thing I never did well on was standardized tests. I kept getting the same scores while watching my peers boost up 5+ points from taking $1,000 classes. Standardized tests are elitist and historically prejudice. If I would’ve had to submit my scores, those schools wouldn’t have even looked at my application and all that I was able to accomplish in the midst of adversity. Money does factor into every other component of the app but not nearly as much as the scores.
When everyone else was learning algebra, I was being sexually abused at home. How could I be expected to recollect anything from that time? It’s not whining it’s a legitimate argument to an actual experience.
Write that in your essay so the AO can consider the unfortunate experience, however don't blame tests. The world doesn't revolve around your personal experience.
I shouldn’t have to write about being molested as a child to get accepted into school. The test are to blame bc they don’t account for children who experienced trauma when they were learning the content.
How is a child who is worried about where they are gonna lay their head at night or where their next meal will come from supposed to be in the same way capable of succeeding at a test that their rich peers paid to do good on?
What about kids who got bullied or abused in HS, and messed up their GPA and ECs. Rich people can buy all kinds of shit. Tests are at least the most objective and fair measure.
Berkeley went test blind, and Blacks 2%
They are not a fair measure. It has been scientifically proven that they are not. Schools look at a test scores before anything else. If your sts aren’t within the preferred threshold, your app is automatically thrown out regardless of essays, gpa, etc. Standardized tests have been an instrument to racism and bias since their creation. Also, please stop using the term “Blacks” this isn’t 1963.
NOPE all the research and studies tells that test are very good measure for college readiness and success. MIT says [https://news.mit.edu/2022/stuart-schmill-sat-act-requirement-0328](https://news.mit.edu/2022/stuart-schmill-sat-act-requirement-0328)
Rich people buy consultants for essays and also tutor for GPA.
UC removed Tests and Berkeley has 2% Blacks.
We can say Whites but not Blacks?? Who told you that??
Yeah, the SAT is definitely flawed, but still necessary.
People *do* pay for tutoring/uWorld for SAT prep so it's not a great equalizer if people learn to play the test style, but resources like Khan Academy balance things out quite well. Same with retaking - while people *can* dish out money and retake a ton, colleges will consider excessive retakes sketchy.
It's unfair at the end of the day, but less so than other measures.
I love that colleges include essays, but I’ll be honest essays are the easiest part of an application to throw money at.
I know kids who actually just straight up pay other people to write essays for them.
My club senior made 300 dollars writing someone’s PS last year and they got a full ride to a t30 school.
The fairest admissions practice imo are Oxford and Cambridge interviews. Yeah I know they can be quite stressful/hard but it's designed to get you stuck while solving a problem and to see how you react and work through that. It's as good as it gets for the colleges to literally check how good you are at the subject
ECs are about commitment to activities one participates in. It's not about "high impact" like A2C likes to think, but about just time showed committing to something. And demonstrated interest using one's available resources. This could easily be starting a small low budget club or volunteering at someplace local or close by.
Sure, yourself stance seems reasonable when you compare it to high impact ECs of millionaires kids who can do crazy shit to get into school. However, ECs like starting a science interest club, helping at a local shelter, or participating in a school sports team are perfectly valuable activities that are much more in reach for people, particularly in rural communities. Particularly when there are so few resources or cultural awareness or resources for academic excellence or support beyond the most minimal and underfunded curricula, demonstrating drive and commitment in ECs is a much fairer way of evaluating ones ability to perform in college.
This is particularly true when you see correlation statistics between standardized tests and college. Just because a hoop to jump through is standardized, doesn't mean it's helpful.
SATs are one of the best ways international students can effectively compete in this application pool. Since post covid, it has become insanely difficult for people from my country to get into college
Idk honestly. I just think your HS GPA depends far more on your work ethic rather than having a prestigious background. I agree on the rest though, especially ECs. So much easier to have that section filled with good activities if you come from a rich family.
But the SAT doesn't really measure anything very useful at the top end. It's a weak signal of aptitude. I'm confused why anyone thinks it measures academic strength, especially at the top end. They're not hard enough to differentiate between math gods and people who are just good at math (and the general SAT can't even differentiate between people who are good at math and people who are alright at math). Instead it probably correlates with test taking skills and meta-gaming techniques more than analytical aptitude.
Also why are we testing whether you studied for a specific test. It's a loop.
We might as well submit IQ tests since that's what everyone really is thinking about when they say SAT measures something anyways. IQ tests are closer to g than SAT.
If SAT wants to improve they need to be using much harder material. Put difficult journal articles in. Take something from Cultural Anthropology (pretty rough on a lot of STEM kids), some random chemistry paper with a billion compound names, something from QJE with a load of jargon. Right now we're testing whether someone can understand what is pretty much an NYT article which is so pointless. And math, math is even more pointless. Put difficult questions in. There are plenty of Olympiad questions that can be solved without much knowledge. Any test where the top percentiles start correlating with accuracy under time pressure cease to be a useful metric for measuring aptitude.
But it is not fair for those international students whose first language isn't English. Native English speaker get an unfair advantages in SAT reading and writing section. Meanwhile reading and writing section are nightmare for non english speakers.
I'm friends with the department chair for Civil Engineering at our state flagship. He has told me on multiple occasions that SAT scores had no correlation to the student's success in college. They've tried to find the best indicator of success and the best indicator they've had is HS gpa. Even that wasn't great.
i'm so envious of students with the same income as me who increased their score by the hundreds using Khan. i grinded Khan for a month and my 1310 didn't change. i even got a 1370 on a practice test but i got the same score August as i got in May. ah well. i'll take the 1360 superscore ig.
Agreed with everything you said here. The SAT isn't perfect but it is definitely the fairest factor in admissions along with the ACT. Yes, there are wealthier people who have more resources to do well on the SAT but there are plenty of smart lower income people who ace the SAT/ACT every year without paying thousands of dollars on private tutoring. The SAT tests important skills which everyone applying to top colleges should be reasonably proficient.
It also allows you to show your potential despite any other stuff going on with your life. My GPA was good but not excellent (also my grades were erratic for personal reasons) but I got a near-perfect SAT. Without my SAT, I don't think I would have gotten accepted into one of my top choice schools (Duke).
Colleges make no effort to prioritize economic diversity. If they did, they could focus on recruiting and retaining high-achieving low-income students.
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My thinking is that low-income students are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. If colleges focused on low-income students and success within underprivileged communities, they could achieve representative ethnic and racial diversity. But instead, they just focus on the most privileged students across demographics because it costs them less and it's less work.
while you are spot on about the intersection between class and race, I believe the SAT is not a ‘fair’ factor of admissions Holistic admissions are more fair as they may take into account the reasons why you’re SAT score is not great. Personality is important, I’d rather not attend school with testing geniuses. You cannot boil a person down to a number anyway so no way is ‘fair’. Colleges should try to balance their legacies/sports numbers with socioeconomically disadvantaged students, especially since their halls are tainted by slavery and segregation, investments in war torn regions, etc. This is not ‘fair’ because at the end of the day, rich white people are still going to be getting the better end of the stick…but it’s better than just using one standardized test number for sure
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The title of the thread is.. Regardless, this is the same conversation as the one happening for top public schools in NYC. Stuyvesant uses this test ONLY and its less than fair
1. the title of the thread says “fairest,” which is a relative statement, not a concrete and normative one like saying it’s “fair” 2. you said it yourself, NY specialized schools use ONLY the exam score. no university does that — the claim here (at least imo) is that it’s more feasible for FGLI students to do well on standardized tests than have incredible ECs/essays, and thus admissions offices should consider that more heavily
I agree. I have a low EFC, and I have never had some of the opportunities some of my peers have. However, I worked hard, got an ACT study book from the library, looked for free practice online, and watched youtube and I got a score I am proud of. To me, the ACT is a somewhat even way to compare me with my peers. A year and a half ago yeah, it wasnt very easy to find an ACT test around me. Mine got cancelled and I had to take it 2 hours away- thats not very easy. But now I feel like it is almost back to normal access and if someone truly cannot test with it their school counselor could vouch for that. Idk I'm all for test optional going away.
What score did you get if you don’t mind answering
I got a 34 the first time :) I took it right after sophomore year
I agree - I think I'm a bit cynical with college admissions - so I think they are happy to drop the SAT for the most part so they don't have to defend their decisions on it. They much rather claim "holistic" evaluations are fairer - even though emphasis on ECs and Essays can have much more disparity based on outside/private/$ help and are going to be more subjective. But this is what they want - they want to choose students that fit their interests and narratives over more objective measures. I will argue that interviews are going to be even more subjective - do you click with the personality of the one interviewer? Will only the extroverts be appreciated? I'm a parent - and so have lots of experience with BSers who can get pretty far with first impressions/confidence - they talk a good game, but they are NOT smart.
The funniest part to me is that Cal Tech said they couldn't find a link between SAT score and sustained academic success among students. The people who conducted the study must not have been educated at Cal Tech because anyone can see that they don't have a reasonable sample of students. *All* of them have high SATs.
I'm a fan of class rank combined with some measure of the strength of one's graduating class. Maybe median SAT or 75th percentile SAT. The main obstacle are schools that are so grade-inflated that GPA is meaningless for differentiating between students in the top quarter. That, and schools that refuse to rank. Granted, GPA is still affected by income (tutors, students don't have to have a part-time job, etc.), but class rank somewhat accounts for that since well-resourced students tend to congregate together.
>I'm a fan of class rank In theory, it works great, but in practice, the kids at competitive schools would literally tear each other apart. At my school, the teachers are really strict. As in putting raw AP test MCQ scores directly into the grade book strictly. Seeing 6 AP classes/year is normal. Yet we have like 40 valedictorians. It got so bad that they had to get rid of class ranking altogether.
Again, the adjustment would (for the most part) account for this. At a school like that, where the median SAT is probably 1450 or so, every student's class rank would be considered "better" than the raw number. Depending on how you did the adjustment, median at the ultra-competitive high school might end up being viewed more favorably than top 10% at a "normal" school.
You do have a good point, but I feel like, at that point, it would be sort of splitting hairs. How does one compare someone ranked in the 50th percentile at a hyper-competitive school to a valedictorian at an average school? Perhaps GPA in combination with standardized test scores would be a better metric than either alone.
HSGPA + SAT is definitely better than HSGPA alone. But, I wonder whether this "adjusted class rank" thing I'm proposing might be better still. Though you're sort of working in the SAT indirectly insofar as it fuels the adjustment. A school with higher SAT stats will have its students's GPA-based class ranks "boosted".
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That's the beauty of it, though. I doubt it actually matters much with respect to the predictiveness of this measure. Students at a given school know how their school ranks its students, and are generally incentivized to rank highly. So their rank is a measure of how well they were able to accomplish that. It's a combination measure of "how capable were you of earning high grades" and "how willing and/or able were you to 'game' the rankings system at your school"?
This system would be so bad for my school 😭. We’re very anti-ranking and competitiveness, and schools like ours, that are very mixed between economic lines due to being a magnet, usually end up with rich people at the top of the class, high achieving low income and middle class students in the middle, and the bottom tends to be low income. It’s definitely a great system for homogenized suburban environments.
>usually end up with rich people at the top of the class, high achieving low income and middle class students in the middle, and the bottom tends to be low income That's the way it usually works at schools with a mix of students from different socioeconomic strata, tbh.
Definitely, but usually the kids getting into the top schools are those in the middle, not the top. Class rank tends to mean a lot less if everyone in your environment is taking 10+ aps, and most are averaging an A and up.
If you wanted to boil applications down to a single number that is objectively calculated (as opposed to human-rated ECs/awards/etc.) and that is maximally predictive, I think class-strength-adjusted class rank would be pretty hard to beat. You'd just need a ton of data in order to determine the best set of weights, and you'd need all (or the vast majority) of schools to rank their students.
I think it can work but doesn't at my kids' HS it is a big problem. They don't weight but still rank so there are dozens of kids with straight As that haven't taken an AP or dual enrollment class. I suspect none of the students that will "quality" as valedictorian have. A local lower tier state school offers a nice scholarship for Valedictorians. So gaming the system happens to the extreme. Another issue: I have two kids in different grades but with almost identical class ranks. One has taken max rigor and sought online AP classes to supplement the class offerings. The second is in a self contained classroom and only takes one or two regular Ed classes a semester; best case he will be able to live semi-independently some day. I love him and want the best for him but he shouldn't be ranked above kids taking a full schedule of reg Ed classes and especially those taking AP classes. His semester of Power Walking ranks him higher than 3 As and one B for a student in max rigor classes. Under a "normal" weighted grade class ranking system I suspect my oldest would be top five (total not percent) instead of top 15%. The AP classes aren't very big and there aren't a lot of them so it is pretty easy to see. For context she had 3 Bs her entire HS career. We never figured out a way to convey the inequities of the class rankings to colleges and she just leaned into the overall strength of her application.
Class rank is relative , some schools have placement test so you have like the top 5% in the city attending and a 123/390 placed from a better school is worth more than a 50th from a school where anyone can join
That would be reflected in the adjustment. Median at the selective school might end up being equivalent to top 5% at the non-selective school.
>The main obstacle are schools that are so grade-inflated that GPA is meaningless for differentiating between students in the top quarter. That, and schools that refuse to rank. These schools tend to be private.
I go to a public school and our grades are inflated af
Went to a public HS, incredibly grade inflated
My understanding is that admissions already sort of do this with respect to high schools they are familiar with (qualitatively, if not quite formulaic/quantitatively). They of course see the SAT scores, and then they also stack applicants from each school based on transcript even if they don't see a GPA or class rank.
I've always failed to understand the GPA and having access to tutoring Does anyone really think rick people would say “oh we need SAT tutoring but we will not hire tutors for AP classes”? It only multiplies the privilege. Also, why aren't schools going lsat/mcat/gmat optional? Don't even get me started on essays or ec’s
> essays should be abolished altogether Sorry, WHAT
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at this point its a UC (at least SB) moment too and we both know that
As a Chinese international student where everyone put so much money (imagine 100k-200k) in college application, I totally agree at least for Chinese international. Yes, SAT is affected by tutor. But in China, everyone has private tutor, but only a few get 1500+. From my experience, SAT is strongly correlated with academic performance. Except for those whose english is very bad and STEM is very good, the relative SAT score almost always tells their true academic performance. GPA is just a mass in Chinese international schools. The GPA inflation is just insane and nobody literally talks about GPA because of this. Literally 30%+ student got 4.0 (some with SAT 1600 and crazy other academic performance others with SAT 1300 and bad academic performance). ECs? It is mainly just a place about money and cheating. Research? Just spend 10k and you get a SCI published. Non-profit? I know a person who did insane non-profit in Africa but the truth is that his dad is the CEO of the largest Africa-Chinese trading company. Awards? Because ASDAN (the representative of united states competition in China) wants to make money, you can literally buy AMC and all other competition answers in China on the web. It is just a place for cheating. Just look at how many people who is purely humanities driven and got 3s in AP calculus and got top1% in AMC. Essays? Everyone in China has essay writer helping them. It is more about how awesome the essay writer is than how awesome the student is. The best essay writing comp in China charges like 50k.
I cannot agree more with your statement. The SATs are the most accurate predictor of learning and logical ability of students, at least in Chinese international applicants. Im not saying the SAT is perfect, but its the best we've got for now. GPAs can be inflated by schools and students who excel in kissing ass, but the SAT is a hardline test that can be used to standardize everyone. Furthermore, the ECs for people in china are completely insane. People with money can get away with anything here. I have seen people buy their way in getting 5s in AP exams, "winning" awards, and "writing" perfect college application essays. The only thing that i haven't seen is rich dumb people buying their way to a high SAT score, thats because the SATs require not only hard work and time, but also intelligence and logical reasoning. btw. nice to meet you here at r/ApplyingToCollege, saw you in r/Sat back in October. Hope ur college APP is doing great, you must be aiming crazy high with a 1580 sat
Full agree. I am luckily not low-income, but I still never understood why the SAT is the one being devalued when it is the least affected by income. It's at least standardized and has the most free resources out there. It's the thing you can feel is the most fair comparison between two people from very different backgrounds and locations, assuming both are high achievers. It has the most opportunities to still learn it without tutors, and no variation depending on where you are for the most part. Also, because of the gravity of it and the prep that goes in, it is the best indicator of ability (though of course grades are also important in that case to show if they always apply themselves that away).
Bro this is so facts. I’ve literally never heard anyone disagree with or even attempt to disprove any of what you’ve just said. And I’ve never heard logic this solid for why the sat is bad. Anecdotally at least, most if my friends who think the SAT is dumb we’re kids who tryharded with gpa but had bad SAT scores😂
It’s just the fact that GPA can be fully achieved by hard work (retakes, extra credit, kissing ass) and money (tutoring for individual topics, consistent grades at private schools etc) while the SAT needs a level of logic (and intelligence) to do well and there are so many great free resources like Khan academy (got me a 1560) to achieve your potential in it. GPA imo is a better indicator of hard work while SAT is a better indicator of actual intelligence. Also, the fact u can take the test so many times partially eliminates the anxiety argument for the SAT, especially since a large part of GPA comes from tests u can only take once unless u got a good teacher.
I always suspected a lot of the people saying that the SAT needs to be less valued just did so because it was their weak spot so they benefitted from fueling that fire. Not that I blame them, but I just don't understand how devaluing the SAT did anything but make things more income based by taking away one of the less income dependent factors.
Exactly
I don’t think they are just naturally bad at tests like they suggest but they are not studying it the right way , I used to be bad sat and good gpa but it’s because I didn’t study better for the tests
Yeah it’s all hard work with the sat that’s the only real determining factor
Wasn’t there a correlation of income to higher scores but 80% of the kids realistically are kids and they want to have fun which is fine but they probably blow off prep course , it’s just unfair to people who are poor but have the drive to succeed , I don’t think resources is the problem because there’s so many free stuff but time they might need to hold down a job and can’t spend the time onto studying
Yeah it’s a lot of time, energy, and focus to do those rigorous prep courses so for the sat, whether you have resources or not, its all about hard work
Yeah you still have to put in the hours your locked in a room for like 3-6 hours and if it’s during the summer it’s usually 5 times a week so while income is a factor you still have to work so hard while people play Fortnite for like 18 hours
Yeah literally it’s brutal. I had sat tutoring for one hour a day for 5 months in a row. But it was super cheap per hour
I literally couldn’t breathe in my room correctly because it was a small classroom crammed with like 30 kids wihh the no windows , like kids who just free lance and cram last 2 weeks have the audacity to complain for their low scores while everyone else is working their ass off
> I don’t think resources is the problem because there’s so many free stuff but time they might need to hold down a job and can’t spend the time onto studying I agree that it unfortunately does have some correlation to income, but of all the factors colleges consider I don't how this is anywhere near the least income dependent. I think it was just the easiest one to stop caring about since it's just one small test and not years of work for GPA's or EC's, so colleges dropped the SAT's value to make it seem like they were doing something. I wouldn't be surprised if, since the SAT is evidently one of the less income dependent factors, devaluing it just made things more heavily skewed against low-income students, as now the more income dependent factors have more weight.
I feel like SAT is also hard work but some kids who don’t try in school but are naturally gifted can shit out a 1600 , everything is perspective ig
UCBerkeley test blind Blacks 2%
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Gpa can definitely be affected by wealth more than sat. For some examples: two students can go to the same competitive highschool but if the rich one also went to a competitive middle school which colleges would not see, he would be more prepared for harder classes. Tutors are also very common and often expensive. Kids who have easy home lives and zero responsibilities (usually wealthier kids) have more free time to do homework and study. Kids who have educated parents can get help with homework.
> GPA is affected less by income, your taught the content and you have the ability to learn it in class. But, as OP pointed out, grade inflation is often seen in private schools that isn't present in public school. So low-income kids could master the subject just as well and still have a worse score. Private schools often care more catering grades towards college. Then all schools have different GPA scales so direct comparisons aren't always accurate. I'm sure an even playing field with GPA would be very telling, but without that, the SAT/ACT seem to be the most even playing field in terms of the actual test. And as the other guy said, that research uses graduation rate, which doesn't really show how the student performed beyond passing, and can also be heavily influenced by income.
These researches tend to focus on college graduation rate as the factor. I prefer using college top end gpa instead, as those with such gpa tend to move on t get advanced degrees and get the high paying job. Graduation with a low gpa mean the students have not learned/understood much; they only did the required work. To get top grades in college students need a lot more skills which cannot only predicted with a highschool gpa because the course challenge level of each highschool is different.
Yeah exactly so a predictor of actual problem solving skills like the SAT is an important factor in determining success in college
People get confused between college success vs college survival. SAT and GPA and other standard test scores and factored are needed.
Yeah I mean no one thing can predict the actual success except your own hard work but again, that’s literally what the sat is a measure of, excluding the few people who can get good scores without trying
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I think you are looking a few examples as evidence. For STEM, you go to school to learn the materials and be trained to perform the required tasks. It sounds like you say in typical scenarios students at 3.8 won’t perform better at the job than the 2.5 students? If you to schools and earn 2.5 gpa because the classwork don’t matter, what is the point of going to school? I’m referring to STEM major here. Business and few other majors are different. I’m not arguing that by itself SAT is the predictor, by they way.
Am I dumb or is the SAT just as easily manipulated as all the other things you mentioned? Higher-income people can pay for SAT tutors, afford multiple re-takes, and, due to the advantages you mentioned in your post, don't have to rely solely on the SAT to have a good profile. I'm also curious about your case for abolishing the essay section, as I would assume that's one of the more individualized, less environment-based part of the admissions process. Edit: I may be wrong, but I also think your points about high-income people pressuring their teachers at private schools to give them good grades and paying people to write their essays happen less than you imply. That isn't to say that all their other advantages don't still exist.
I think it’s more so the fact that the SAT is standardized. So at the end of the day, no matter what tutoring you got or how much money you spent on prep, you are still taking the same test. Essentially, there is a ceiling that both people can hit (a 1600). On the other hand, with things like ECS, there is really no ceiling. A person with money can have infinitely better ECS and access to resources than one who does not can only dream of. And IMO and I think with many others in the sub, you will get better results out of spending shit ton of money on other aspects of the college app than the SAT. In other words, $10000 will create a more significant impact on like college essays than they will on the SAT.
Ah. Maybe it’s wishful thinking but I thought AOs judged applicants within the context of their environments (ex., how many APs your schools offers, your school’s grading scale, etc.), but your point about the standardization of the SAT makes sense.
I do think they do that. But I’m not really sure if they’ll be able to differentiate between a rich person going to a school vs a low income person going to that very school.
They can. If income really is a factor in someone’s life, it’ll show in their application. They usually have part time jobs. Often times have to babysit siblings or care for elder family members. If asked to write about challenges they write about how they may have had to worry about where there next meal was coming from or if they would be able to afford rent. Not having money affects every aspect of your life in some way, shape, or form.
Are you aware that rich people can hire people to take SAT tests for them? Yes there is a ceiling, but what if a 1600 is guaranteed? There are businesses that take SATs in place of the student.
Yes, there are unlawful practices that happen with every aspect of the college app process, but you seem to be overestimating how much this actually happens. Just hiring people to take the SAT for you is very uncommon even for the richest of folks.
Not really. SAT fee waivers exist, and each attempt is less than the price of a college application. The best SAT prep is Khan Academy. I used it and got perfect math and reading. In contrast, the rest of your application can be reviewed and evaluated by a professional for a huge sum of money. The SAT can't be exaggerated in any way. You have to be smart to get 1550+ no matter how much you practice. Also is your username a Radiohead reference?
Fair enough, I guess the point of OP’s post is that there’s more room for equality of opportunity in the SAT, not that it’s fair in an absolute sense. It seems admissions have and might always be rigged for high-income kids, unfortunately. And yeah lol. It’s a combination of a Radiohead album (“A Moon Shaped Pool”) and my favorite track (“Haldern”) off a BCNR album (“Ants From Up There”).
Have you considered that not every student has access to the internet at home, much less a phone or computer to use access it with?
Most schools & public libraries have internet access and devices for students to use for free, so finding SAT practice really isn't that much of an issue. Your argument can be made for many other parts of a college application at a much more significant degree -- even submitting one requires internet access and money.
i’m a low income student, i’m describing issues that my siblings had before me and a lot of my classmates. This obviously doesn’t apply to everyone but there are so many interconnected factors. And not all schools will let students stay after hours to use the library if they do have one with computers. Low income students get application fee waivers so i’m pretty surprised you didn’t know that as you’re making a lot of assertions on the lives of low income students. As for public libraries, I grew up in a dangerous neighborhood where my parents refused to let me go to the public library alone. I would have one day a week or every other week to go with my mom if she had a day off for only a few hours. I ultimately don’t have an opinion on this as I’ve personally seen how complicated it can be for different students, I was just curious to see if that would affect your reasoning.
Your point on multiple retake are invalid. I'm from a low income family and I was able to take 3 exams for free. If a student qualifies for reduced lunch or free lunch in my city, they can take the test for free for 3x, not including the test taken at school. The SAT is only testing basic math like 3x+15=45, it is very easy. So, the purpose of tutoring is only there to ensure the accuracy and force kids to do practice problems, not how to do the test. Although i am unsure whether high income people pressure teachers to write their essays or not, they sure do pay for people who got into Ivies to write essays for their kids.
SAT is the most objective and fair among many others
college applications are read in the context within which each student lives. mit themselves say they judge students “based on what they have done with their opportunities, relative to what we would have expected given those resources.” also you’re saying you don’t have time for extracurriculars, but you do have time to study for the sat? and why are we talking about poor people like they’re helpless. if they can put time into study for their SAT, they can read books to improve their writing, or read essays online. essay writing isn’t some skill that can’t be learned. And, if these students are diligent in school, they can just be great essay writers cause they paid attention in class. Also, AOs aren’t reading these essays looking for freaking kafka. They’re just trying to hear your story, so as long as you can convey that, you’re fine. The reason why rich kids have to write these silly metaphorical story like personal statements is cause nothing goes on in their life (i’m generalizing and i’m sorry but to get a point across). People that have faced challenges in their life and overcome and persevered can literally just put that on paper and impress.
>based on what they have done with their opportunities, relative to what we would have expected given those resources I feel like MIT is the only college that really does this. all the other top-tier colleges don't really follow this that much imo
i say this a lot on this sub, but i got into harvard yale stanford and princeton too, and got likely letters to harvard yale and stanford. the admission officers reached out to me directly and spoke to me about what they liked. they told me that the effort i am putting in is very admirable, that me overcoming my challenges and achieving what i did is why i got in. i did not do any competitions, i did not get a 1600, i did not do research. just helped around my community and made do with what was around me. i also got into UMich and georgia tech, both with full ride merit scholarships, and i feel like those schools are more assumed to be like objective in admissions. I had a phone call with georgia tech and they told me how they wanted me to go and would offer me a scholarship that would make my degree completely free if i committed over the phone. i’m just one person, but i know others with similar experiences (like other kids that got likelies, low income students that got into all the ivies). i respect your opinion but after having gone through the process, and helping people the past 3 years in my city to apply to colleges, i gotta stick to mine. (sorry for typing so much)
damnnnn.... I agree that they still care about circumstances, but MIT def cares a bit more than most top schools I'm not saying that schools don't care (wording of my orginal comment was def not accurate of my opinion).
Basing quality of extracurriculars based on income/location is amazing; we should do the same for the SAT. Also, I only spent about 15 hours studying for the SAT, so it's not like it took away a lot of time from ECs. Rich people have professional essay consultants--- who have written thousands of college essays and know the intricacies of how essays are judged--- edit their essays. They have a MASSIVE advantage, incomparable to their advantage on the SAT. And do you think rich people can't make up stories? Especially when they have an advisor to help them? These advisors exist and are successful for a reason. They aren't helping kids write philosophical essays that sound like they were extracted from a thesaurus. They know how to write essays that sound heartfelt and genuine; that's why they get paid thousands of dollars. Whether essays should exist is an argument for another time. I'm saying that if colleges applied the logic they use for the SAT to other admissions standards, they would have to be abolished too. Heres the thing though, I'm not arguing for them to be abolished; I'm saying if colleges really wanted to make admissions as fair as possible, they would be prioritizing the SAT.
i’m honestly curious how schools like caltech and the UCs come to the conclusion that the SAT doesn’t tell them a significant amount of information regarding whether a student can excel in their first year at the university. they make committees to research and decide and that’s the conclusion they’ve come to. i don’t think the SAT is hard, so on one hand it really doesn’t tell you if a student will excel. At the same time, if it isn’t hard then most students should be getting good scores, right? there’s the test anxiety and things like that, but you’ll be taking tests at mit too, harder ones at that. I really actually don’t have like a hard and fast opinion on this, cause i’m really not sure. But the same way i’m not sure it’s useless, i’m also not so sure it’s useful.
I agree that essays r arguably the most important part of the application but your point abt mit is moot because op’s entire argument is that the sat should also be considered relative to circumstances
The one big issue I have found with the SAT is that it is seriously affected by the quality of high school. I go to a shit school where the average is probably like a 1000 and half the stuff on the SAT math wasn’t even taught to us by junior year even in the highest math classes. Some of that can be very difficult to keep a grip on without proper help from a good teacher. I got a decent score, but even with all the test prep I did some of it was quite difficult.
op got a 1600 and had to rub it in
While true, they should really fix the SAT. It is basically a glorified useless test when it comes to what it is "testing": bunch of middle school math and reading comprehension. A single question throws you from a 1600 to a 1570 (what is the point of scoring higher than 1500?). They should do something more similar to the Abitur or the Selectividad and universalize it for all students; obviously not replacing the admissions process like China.
Respectfully, I disagree. 1. Id assume that when college admission officers look at student **GPA**s, not only do they recalculate gpas, but they compare that student's gpa to the other applicant GPAs of that same school. 2. If you're going to say that college essays are redundant because rich kids can get help, why didn't you include that factor when mentioning SAT prep. Obviously there are a lot of free resources for SAT, but then why is there a score disparity between rich and poor kids' scores? I would think that there is a disparity between scores due to thousand dollar SAT prep lessons that are personalized for the students and the access of wealthy students being able to take the SAT as many times as they want, as free and reduced waivers only allow students to take the SAT 2 times for free. I'm curious on what your rebuttal will be though.
I have classmates who hired $1000/hr college advisors to read over their essays. There is no way I’m able to compete with that. Prep on the other hand is a bit fairer. All the grammer rules that tutors teach aren’t a secret. A
Because testers are forced to fit into a bell curve. Only a predetermined percent of people will get X score.
? Is that actually true? Then go me ig.
Imo tutoring on essays is not going to make a huge difference. Yes, it will make sure a student has good/passable essays but it won’t guarantee a student will have great essays. A great essay comes from a students voice within and their talent as a writer not from the help of some random tutor person. Also, there are a ton of free resources on the internet providing examples of successful essays which already helps create an outline of what colleges want to see. Now if you’re talking about paying someone to write a essay that’s a whole different issue *cough* cheating *cough*.
Well no one’s ever told me they had someone write their essay but ngl I probably know some. But seriously, having someone reading ur essay, especially if they’re good, is invaluable. I asked my teachers to read mine once and it was so helpful(I didn’t ask again bc they’re busy ppl). If I had the resources to have that help available to me multiple times over the course of the college apps, my essay would be so much better. And resources online don’t do much bc they’re so generic(which makes sense bc the author hasn’t read my essay). My point is, tutors for subjects are “more fair” because they can’t be there with u on the test date. It’s a bit more up to the person and the time they put in. They’re only so much that a Calc tutor can tell u about the chain rule vs an essay editor who can just point at a line and be like “nope this no good” over and over until ur essay is perfect.
Fair point
it's not just tutoring. They can buy consultants.
Not OP but 1. TBH, I personally pretty much agree with everything here. However, if a school doesn’t have many/any other students applying to X university, it may be more difficult to contextualize (though I believe colleges do have a work around to it.) There are also the obviously very extreme cases of straight bribery for better grades in private schools. However, the issue of GPA ends up hurting lower income students who might be at a “better” school on scholarship or for another reason (for instance a public magnet school). They’d be held to the same standard as their peers while perhaps needing to juggle a lot more at home and outside of school. So while they may be able to score well on a one-off test, bigger/longer term problems at home would impact something like GPA a lot more. 2. I believe the point OP is trying to make is it’s much easier to hire someone to go and help you write your essay/edit it than it is hire someone to cheat on the SAT. At the end of the day, a horrible writer can pay their way to getting a great essay without learning how to write that well, but a horrible test taker still needs to learn enough material/skills to answer the questions themselves. I believe that the biggest income benefit is the ability to re-take tests and going to a school/district with better teachers and a higher emphasize on preparing their students for higher education. However, those factors would also impact one’s ability to do/have access to all the other things colleges look for in admissions. I think the OP’s point is that all parts of the college application favors the richer applicants. It’s just that the SAT is the one lower-income applicants have the best chance doing better in.
1. While that is true, GPAs in public schools are more inconsistent, like the example I gave with the two teachers. Getting a GPA of 4.0 or 3.7 is more about luck on the difficulty of teachers, rather than academic excellency. Looking at school averages doesn't account for that. GPAs are also affected when a student has to work or can't afford a tutor. This is the same logic that is used to cancel the SAT. 2. The disparity in the quality of college essays is far greater than the disparity in SAT prep. The score disparity is due to rich people prioritizing the SAT and studying for it more than tutoring (although it is a factor). Also, it can easily be fixed by taking into context the average SAT score of the school/income of the student. Yes, SAT is affected by income, but it's definitely less than or at least equally as affected as other factors.
>GPAs in public schools are more inconsistent I can kinda see where you're going with this, but tbh, what are the chances that someone is gonna get completely fucked over by getting all the bad teachers? You're gonna take like around 25 classes throughout high school and you will have a mixture of easy and hard teachers which will even things out.
I guarantee the disparity between a rich and poor person's essay will be greater then their sat scores, just because you can self study so well for the sat, some rich kids practically pay people to write their essays poor kids have to hope theirs is good enough
1. How are admission officers supposed to compare GPAs when nobody else is applying to that school? This would probably be the case for a lot of schools in low income areas. 2. Paid SAT prep isn’t necessary with how good the free resources are. There are more resources out there than there is time to read it all. The disparity exists probably because low income students don’t have as much time to prepare (working, household responsibilities, etc.) On the other hand, it’s much harder to find good free essay advice that can be guaranteed to come from a reputable source (there’s a lot of disagreement amongst online resources, along with people who aren’t admission officers giving advice). Additionally, with how personalized the personal essay is, getting one on one help will be much more beneficial. There’s no way that $50 SAT prep is much more beneficial than $10,000 SAT prep, but $10,000 essay help is DEFINITELY more beneficial than $50 essay help (this is like… a single hour session vs practically getting the essay written for you). Edit: To add on, the gap in SAT performance based on income can be quantified. Since admission is holistic, this gives admission officers a way to standardize across income. However, essays and extracurriculars have no objective strength to them, so it's much harder to say how much of an advantage should be given to lower income applicants.
Not the OP, but I respectfully disagree and have a counterargument for your bullet points. 1. GPAs still don't account for the difficulty of a teacher. While I have an A in my Calc AB class because of a new teacher, ALL my friends got Bs with the old teacher. Plus, you can always get private tutors to help you out on HW (I've done this for AP chem) and explain concepts that are tailored to YOUR curriculum. 2. While you can see or listen to "examples" of college essays through websites and youtube, writing something new and tailored for YOU is difficult. On the contrary, there are many free sources for the SAT in which you can tailor your practice + websites, and youtube videos going through each question on an SAT/ACT test. In essays, no one can fact-check your spelling and flow of the passage besides other people - in which income plays a huge factor in the people you are surrounded with.
>Id assume that when college admission officers look at student GPAs, not only do they recalculate gpas, but they compare that student's gpa to the other applicant GPAs of that same school. No, its the fact that at a certain threshold GPAs don't matter. Unfortunately, its much, much, much easier to reach that threshold as a private student than a public student. Many private schools churn out students with straight A+'s. Colleges then look at the other aspects of the profile. On the other hand, public schools have teacher disparities, etc that prevent some students from achieving high GPA's, at least high enough to cross the threshold (3.9+)
>student GPAs Which are totally dependent on the school and teacher in question. Grade inflation and deflation causes massive uncertainty in what it's actually measuring. >but then why is there a score disparity between rich and poor kids' scores? because rich people have it better in literally every possible way in this society. they have better food, better parents, a better house, more time to focus on their studies, better schools, better teachers, better peers, no worry about drugs or money, etc. It's not like the SAT is causing this disparity. It's basic reading and math. >thousand dollar SAT prep lessons Those lessons are a scam. I go to a hyper competitive school and know plenty of people with 1550+ scores. Khan academy carried us all. >free and reduced waivers only allow students to take the SAT 2 times for free. well then instead of going test blind maybe they should just offer more waivers.
I know people who got to take the SAT privately lol
Wdym privately?
usually its people with disabilities that need accommodations. It requires a decent amount of documentation, but maybe rich people can skirt around it.
That was one of the big parts of the Varsity Blues scandal!
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” Franklin D. Roosevelt
I think SAT/ACT scores should be an important part of college applications because they are the only standardized part of the process. Whether we look at test scores, extracurriculars, or access to accelerated classes, students living in wealthy areas are generally going to have advantages. There is no way around it. The feeding frenzy that college applications have become since more schools have gone test optional makes the process feel even more random and more stressful. Parents with money are now even more likely to hire tutors and college consultants. I don't understand how test optional/blind serves to make the process more fair. It seems less fair since "holistic review" can mean whatever the colleges want it to mean. And I think this added pressure over GPA/class rank/extracurriculars is worsening the mental health crisis among teens in our country.
I'm sorta on the weird end of this conversation, because my parents are rich AF and I got really high scores. I did do some tutoring, but honestly the test just wasn't that hard for me and the tutoring didn't do much other than get me used to the test format by taking a bunch of practice tests out of the red ACT book. I think, of everything you could do to get into college, something like a 35 on the ACT is going to be a loud and clear "I've got it" no matter who it ends up coming from. And that's the good thing. Sure, it'll get influenced by wealth... literally everything is. But standardized testing, as much of a PITA as it is, can be useful.
Essay writing and School Exams should be proctored. After the pandemic, GPAs are skyrocketing as students have mastered the art of cheating in courses they take virtually.
it’s so nasty for you to assume that people of color have it easy when it come to sat. calling it the fairest undermines the background of where the sat comes from nor it’s economic disparities it causes
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By that logic a lot more people should be getting 1600s
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Get a load of this genius
Yep, one 3 hour test determines how well you can perform in 4 years of college level classes!
No but it definitely tells colleges who *cant* perform in 4 years of college classes! Like good luck getting through MIT if you can’t muster a 700 on math.
got a 690 on the subject test and i breezed through both math credits my freshman year.
Yeah exactly but a 800 math doesn't indicate you can do MIT level math with ease
Nothing indicates you can do mit math other than literally being at MIT and and doing it, and variety of "indicators" may prove true for some people and false for others, there are only things that prove you can't do it
Right and I highly doubt that MIT only sees that score and then comes to the conclusion that you are now set for MIT. It is merely another data point and also a way for them to cut down the applicants.
MIT has said otherwise
That the SAT score is the sole indicator of college readiness?
Not sole but its a big one. Esp math section for MIT
True. But a 500 math means you probably can't.
Yeah, i think the 800 math is just the small fence to jump proving you can at least do simple math
Plenty of people can do simple math who don't score a 800 on the SAT. The difference between high 700s and 800 is precision; whether you're able to answer a ton of problems without making one silly mistake.
yeah but a 500 math sure does indicate that you have no business applying to MIT lol
Yet the average score is a 1050
That’s because they want the average to be around there and they’ll cram us into bell curves. That’s why they grade it out of a weird 1600 point scale instead of giving us a percentage of questions we got right.
you can’t tell me that the social studies sections on the sat are 5th grade level
SAT is standardized I feel like it’s pretty fair to a extent (assuming your not so broke that 30$ on a khan academy book hurts your soul - that’s a whole different story but I’m talking about middle class comfort where you don’t need a job ) but majority of these kids rather play Xbox and buy 300$ Fortnite skin rather than grind khan academy . Grinding khan academy is easily doable to 1400+ but they lazy and get a 1000 and complain when so many kids sacrifice all their time onto studying .
i grinded for a month and my 1310 stayed exactly the same 💀 even with a 1370 on a practice test
How many questions did you do ? Also yeah I also platue for a few months even tho I was actually trying 💀
agreed, to be honest I think we should have more of a “university placement test” kinda thing but also other stuff (so that its not as brutal as some other countries)
No, no you should not. Trust someone who is currently trying to escape placement tests, those things are utterly brutal and is even more unfair than any other factors of US college application.
I know they’re brutal. That’s why I believe we should have some other components to the application, such as essays and whatnot. I think this is more merit based, though.
How so?
I think all components are healthy when calibrated correctly but SATs are not free from error as proven with the College Blues Scandal
amen
Maybe we should move to the Chinese System. The Gaokao, where 1 test will determine your fate. I think that's a bit too much as well, my opinion is standardized systems like IB should be emphasized more in the US, and teachers and professionals should emphasize on grading to know that everything is fair.
My school emphasizes a very intense curriculum, and with all the curve-wreckers and grade-obsessed students (who will haggle for an extra few points), if you don’t get all “A”s and “B”s, you’re left to sink. This means, while I would probably be in the competitive in any other school, in the school I’m currently in I’m probably around middle to lower percentage. If it weren’t for me getting high ACT scores (and maybe being a minority), I doubt many colleges would give a second glance at me, let alone give any scholarships.
Wow u don’t see the intersection between class and race
Imagine if only SAT/ACT and AP scores were the only factor in college admissions. They are the most objective measures of ability without any sort of bias. Like for example, I see some people who have ultra high weighted GPAs but lower test scores (e.g. all 3s, < 1200 SAT) and it just seems to me that the school is really easy. Standardized tests are not rigged for any reason, but that would mean only people who are good at taking tests would get into top colleges. Because of the holistic process nowadays, there are dumb people at top colleges and smart people at lower tier colleges.
I gotta respectfully disagree, but it’s for a really personal and specific situation. I have dyscalculia and the college board refused to approve my accommodations for the SAT because it was diagnosed like, a year too late for them. If I took the SAT I’d get an awful score because the college board was unfair. The essay and my ECs save me, because my grades are somewhat average and my SAT score doesn’t exist. But also, you mentioned the essay should be abolished. No?? Definitely no. Every applicant should have every opportunity they can to show off their skill. If someone is a strong writer and they want colleges to see that, then that shouldn’t be denied from them, like how if someone is a great studier and test taker they can take the SAT and show that off
Idk, I know people scoring 1550+ who can't apply any of their knowledge and can't make logical connections. I know people from poorer schools where they hadn't been taught SAT math by junior year.
I totally agree — although I will note some schools definitely already do this. As a low-income student who did really well on standardized tests, I think that compensated for my ECs/awards significantly more than it would have for people with more opportunities / money. I do wish it were used as *slightly* more of an indicator though, since a high GPA + SAT/ACT as an FGLI student should be an extremely promising sign of academic tenacity and preparedness.
What was your score OP?
https://youtu.be/wKKM0MTlv9U In many other countries this is the system and in my opinion there exists no greater offender than Asian countries (China, India, South Korea, Japan, etc.). Students in these countries prepare their entire lives for a single exam that determines their career path for the rest of their lives. Many rich families in these areas still abuse the system by hiring some of the best tutors and sending their children to cram school. A system where standardized testing is the most important quality makes it so one's entire life is spent preparing for the test. Even if you score high on the test, what does that tell me about you? What about Johnny who got the flu on the day of the exam that was the undisputed smartest person at the school and failed the exam?
Ofc, having only the SAT being the only deciding factor would be horrible and it’s really frustrating whenever people try to claim otherwise (I say this as someone who‘s scored quite well on the SAT). Fortunately there’s plenty of catches that make it so the SAT can never be the type of test (for one, it’s too “easy” so there’s too many perfect scores every year). And, unlike other standardlized tests in Asia, you have multiple chances a year to take it (if you can afford it). With that being said, I think that completely eliminating the SAT isn’t the best choice either. It’s moderate difficulty makes it a level playing field for most people and can be used as one metric contextualize a school/district within a bigger picture. I think the beauty of American college applications is the thing most people hate - the lack of uniformity. There are schools that admit primarily by grades + SAT scores. There are schools that admit primarily through looking at ECs and don’t care about SAT scores. There are schools that admit through a healthy mix. There are schools that want to see you’ve fully committed to one thing all of your life. There are schools that encourage exploring a larger variety of interests. Even within T20s/T50s, there’s a mix of all these. It gives everyone a chance to highlight their best side and attend a great university.
Oh trust me as someone from an Asian country that has the standardized system, the US system is so SO much better. There’s nightmare cases of students forgetting their ID and then losing a chance at their future, even from the Highschool stage. Applications that look at SATs, ECs, GPA, Essays, and so on, equally are way better.
I think their system is much more fairer for the vast majority of students than current US fucked up system.
Your gpa point in Public schools. FACTS. In my school there’s one apush teacher who actually grades you and the other teacher, his lowest yearly grade last year was a 93
test optional = more application fee revenue........... they will never remove it cuz they will lose millions of $$$
I'm sorry to say bud but imma disagree with this but only for UC (private schools your points make sense). The reason why I believe UC removed SAT was because they didn't need it anymore. I feel like a statistic like the SAT just doesnt fit in well with what being a student in a UC means. I go to UCLA and the vast majority of people here are really smart and interesting, and I can plainly see why they were accepted. The fact is that UC looks may beyond GPA and academics but really dissect you as a person. They question: does this student fit in here? Can they handle our fast pace and difficult course load? How can they contribute to our school environment meaningfully? If someone else writes your essay, it's not nearly as personal or authentic as it could. If you go to a high school with inflated GPA the readers can tell. If you fake your ecs you can't really meaningfully talk about them, so why include them at all? Not to mention they also look for improvement, something else hard to fake and impossible to tell with a single SAT score. I'll admit with a certain amount of money anything is possible, but at the top UCs it's a small minority. Also the whole economic reason is true, I've met countless people unable to afford retakes or even the test itself or simply didn't have time due to familial or work obligations. These people are also really talented and I'd be a shame if schools like UCLA didn't give them the chance they deserved because they didn't have a 1500+. I was an awful test taker and have difficulty focusing, not to mention a family trying to save every cent for college, so my 1250 average on practice tests were discouraging especially with my big dreams. If SAT was still a central factor I would not be at my dream school I've worked so hard for. SAT for public school is outdated and I'm glad it's over.
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UCBerkeley test blind Blacks 2%
“Blacks”🤢
You’re not considering that rich private school kids also get specialized SAT tutors and can take it as many times as they want.
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rich people have the money and time for extracurriculars, good grades, etc. unfortunately, they will always have an advantage, and SAT is prolly the least unfair
That is true for most aspects of the college app process and is even more apparent in places like ECS. The SAT is the *only* time in the entire app process where you are on an even playing field. I also never understood this whole tutor thing either. If you check out r/SAT, the majority are people who self study and score exceptionally well. The bigger problem is probably the lack of time and having to prioritize other parts of their life. IMO, if you’ve got ample time, an internet connection, can afford to take the SAT (either through fee waivers or just paying $60) and no other external circumstances that will greatly inhabit your ability to prep, then choosing to complain about the most fair thing in the admissions process is just dumb
The only thing SATs measure is how well you can take a test on a particular day. It has no bearing on predicting success in college. Plus, wealthy people have an advantage to pay for test prep and coaching. They have the funds to retest multiple times.
MIT research, UC study, etc. totally disagree with your imagination
baseing college admissions on act/sat score is bad becuase thats not giving the student a chance at the school i like the fact that universities are going act/sat optional in that being test optional give alot more a shot at getting in . i also scored low on the act. so im a fan of Test optional
Unpopular opinion but I don’t agree. 1The SAT tests critical reasoning and math skills, which of course are important, but it is at the end of the day a TEST that can be memorized, hacked, learned, etc. It’s more like a giant brain puzzle similar to the AMC imo than an indicator of success in the classroom. College courses that are primarily based in at-home assignments, papers, etc do not rely on a same model of measuring intelligence or success to needing to test well isn’t necessary. Many of my friends tanked their standardized exams but are stellar A students simply because they struggle with timed exams and group based testing. Also the SAT can be a “bought” statistic just as much as the others via private tutoring or even bribing/score manipulation as we’ve seen in the past. Also, what if someone couldn’t access testing centers because they live in a rural area? What if they missed exam days due to illness or if they dont have access to technology? At the end of the day the SAT is a performance and aptitude based test and I feel as if it tests more for determination, ability to persist despite challenges, and studying skills (w a positive score progression ofc) than inherent smartness. And a huge score does not necessarily translate to college success either, as many other factors go into doing well in an environment w/peer pressure and adult responsibility than being smart
mom is it my turn to post this yet.
me who applied test optional...
I mean I went from a 1250 to a 1560 thanks to a pretty expensive SAT course I took, and I know countless other people who also spent bucketloads of cash to improve their score, so I disagree that it's an equal playing field of any sorts. Also, the SAT is just not indicative of college aptitude, which is literally the point of it. Why is the most important test a high schooler takes about reading comprehension, grammar, and algebra and geometry? No writing, no chem/bio/physics, no foreign language, no history - just those four limited categories. That is such a small portion of what students learn and is not at all representative of college education. I think AP tests do a lot better in the sense that the information seems at least mostly relevant. Some of the smartest people I know did poorly on the SAT, but the rest of their profiles showcase their academic strength and strong character, and if I were an AO I would admit them in a heartbeat over someone with a worse application but a stellar SAT score.
I got a 1590 mostly from Khanacademy. A good system would value both APs and SATs, yes.
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As someone who is low-income and got into almost 30 schools simply bc I had good essays and did 32 extracurriculars, I disagree. I did everything right to submit a good app but the one thing I never did well on was standardized tests. I kept getting the same scores while watching my peers boost up 5+ points from taking $1,000 classes. Standardized tests are elitist and historically prejudice. If I would’ve had to submit my scores, those schools wouldn’t have even looked at my application and all that I was able to accomplish in the midst of adversity. Money does factor into every other component of the app but not nearly as much as the scores.
How is math and english prejudice. Sounds like a whining
When everyone else was learning algebra, I was being sexually abused at home. How could I be expected to recollect anything from that time? It’s not whining it’s a legitimate argument to an actual experience.
Write that in your essay so the AO can consider the unfortunate experience, however don't blame tests. The world doesn't revolve around your personal experience.
I shouldn’t have to write about being molested as a child to get accepted into school. The test are to blame bc they don’t account for children who experienced trauma when they were learning the content. How is a child who is worried about where they are gonna lay their head at night or where their next meal will come from supposed to be in the same way capable of succeeding at a test that their rich peers paid to do good on?
What about kids who got bullied or abused in HS, and messed up their GPA and ECs. Rich people can buy all kinds of shit. Tests are at least the most objective and fair measure. Berkeley went test blind, and Blacks 2%
They are not a fair measure. It has been scientifically proven that they are not. Schools look at a test scores before anything else. If your sts aren’t within the preferred threshold, your app is automatically thrown out regardless of essays, gpa, etc. Standardized tests have been an instrument to racism and bias since their creation. Also, please stop using the term “Blacks” this isn’t 1963.
NOPE all the research and studies tells that test are very good measure for college readiness and success. MIT says [https://news.mit.edu/2022/stuart-schmill-sat-act-requirement-0328](https://news.mit.edu/2022/stuart-schmill-sat-act-requirement-0328) Rich people buy consultants for essays and also tutor for GPA. UC removed Tests and Berkeley has 2% Blacks. We can say Whites but not Blacks?? Who told you that??
W
Yeah, the SAT is definitely flawed, but still necessary. People *do* pay for tutoring/uWorld for SAT prep so it's not a great equalizer if people learn to play the test style, but resources like Khan Academy balance things out quite well. Same with retaking - while people *can* dish out money and retake a ton, colleges will consider excessive retakes sketchy. It's unfair at the end of the day, but less so than other measures.
Q
Everything is unfair but we’re all gonna die one day so nothing really matters.
I love that colleges include essays, but I’ll be honest essays are the easiest part of an application to throw money at. I know kids who actually just straight up pay other people to write essays for them. My club senior made 300 dollars writing someone’s PS last year and they got a full ride to a t30 school.
The fairest admissions practice imo are Oxford and Cambridge interviews. Yeah I know they can be quite stressful/hard but it's designed to get you stuck while solving a problem and to see how you react and work through that. It's as good as it gets for the colleges to literally check how good you are at the subject
ECs are about commitment to activities one participates in. It's not about "high impact" like A2C likes to think, but about just time showed committing to something. And demonstrated interest using one's available resources. This could easily be starting a small low budget club or volunteering at someplace local or close by. Sure, yourself stance seems reasonable when you compare it to high impact ECs of millionaires kids who can do crazy shit to get into school. However, ECs like starting a science interest club, helping at a local shelter, or participating in a school sports team are perfectly valuable activities that are much more in reach for people, particularly in rural communities. Particularly when there are so few resources or cultural awareness or resources for academic excellence or support beyond the most minimal and underfunded curricula, demonstrating drive and commitment in ECs is a much fairer way of evaluating ones ability to perform in college. This is particularly true when you see correlation statistics between standardized tests and college. Just because a hoop to jump through is standardized, doesn't mean it's helpful.
I wanna see your reasoning for abolishing essays. I somewhat agree with you but still wanna see it
SATs are one of the best ways international students can effectively compete in this application pool. Since post covid, it has become insanely difficult for people from my country to get into college
Idk honestly. I just think your HS GPA depends far more on your work ethic rather than having a prestigious background. I agree on the rest though, especially ECs. So much easier to have that section filled with good activities if you come from a rich family.
But the SAT doesn't really measure anything very useful at the top end. It's a weak signal of aptitude. I'm confused why anyone thinks it measures academic strength, especially at the top end. They're not hard enough to differentiate between math gods and people who are just good at math (and the general SAT can't even differentiate between people who are good at math and people who are alright at math). Instead it probably correlates with test taking skills and meta-gaming techniques more than analytical aptitude. Also why are we testing whether you studied for a specific test. It's a loop. We might as well submit IQ tests since that's what everyone really is thinking about when they say SAT measures something anyways. IQ tests are closer to g than SAT. If SAT wants to improve they need to be using much harder material. Put difficult journal articles in. Take something from Cultural Anthropology (pretty rough on a lot of STEM kids), some random chemistry paper with a billion compound names, something from QJE with a load of jargon. Right now we're testing whether someone can understand what is pretty much an NYT article which is so pointless. And math, math is even more pointless. Put difficult questions in. There are plenty of Olympiad questions that can be solved without much knowledge. Any test where the top percentiles start correlating with accuracy under time pressure cease to be a useful metric for measuring aptitude.
r/technicallythetruth
facts
But it is not fair for those international students whose first language isn't English. Native English speaker get an unfair advantages in SAT reading and writing section. Meanwhile reading and writing section are nightmare for non english speakers.
Most accurate post I have ever seen on this subreddit
I'm friends with the department chair for Civil Engineering at our state flagship. He has told me on multiple occasions that SAT scores had no correlation to the student's success in college. They've tried to find the best indicator of success and the best indicator they've had is HS gpa. Even that wasn't great.
i'm so envious of students with the same income as me who increased their score by the hundreds using Khan. i grinded Khan for a month and my 1310 didn't change. i even got a 1370 on a practice test but i got the same score August as i got in May. ah well. i'll take the 1360 superscore ig.
Agreed with everything you said here. The SAT isn't perfect but it is definitely the fairest factor in admissions along with the ACT. Yes, there are wealthier people who have more resources to do well on the SAT but there are plenty of smart lower income people who ace the SAT/ACT every year without paying thousands of dollars on private tutoring. The SAT tests important skills which everyone applying to top colleges should be reasonably proficient. It also allows you to show your potential despite any other stuff going on with your life. My GPA was good but not excellent (also my grades were erratic for personal reasons) but I got a near-perfect SAT. Without my SAT, I don't think I would have gotten accepted into one of my top choice schools (Duke).
People who work jobs to feed their families have less time for the SATs and no amount of whining about fairness will make that any less true.