<p>Speaking of "single answer multiple choice" - I believe DA Mike Nifong (in reference to the Duke Rape Case) actually devised a "lineup" that could accurately be described that way</p>
<p>1) Avery et al had actual admission data from several years.
2) Yes, SAT is correlated with family income/wealth; I suspect being prepared for MIT is too, and that few Intel or Siemens winners come from families in the lower quartile of the income distribution.</p>
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Incidentally, I think one of my bigger problems with the SAT and other standardized tests is that a lot of kids with high scores seem to view those scores as reflective of more than the tests themselves claim to be. It's like a lot of 19th-century science -- let's find some scale that puts rich white men at the top, because obviously we know rich white men are at the top. And so smart kids who score well on the SAT put too much value on the test, because it confirms their views about the world (ie, that they're amazing).
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<p>Except, with respect to standardized test scores, it isn't rich white men that are at the top, but rather, it's Asian-Americans who are at the top. Every top school in the country is heavily heavily over-represented with Asian-Americans. In fact, I seem to recall reading a study that showed that middle-class and even lower-middle-class Asian Americans scored better on standardized tests than rich white boys. You know what they say: MIT = Made in Taiwan. </p>
<p>But Asian-Americans are not the only Asian groups that have demonstrated high levels of skill in standardized tests. I believe it was shown that Asian-Canadians, even relatively poor ones, tend to do better on standardized testing than do Canadians as a whole, and the same is true with Asian-Brits and Asian-Australians. Back when Hong Kong was still a British colony, Chinese students in Hong Kong scored better in standardized math tests than did the white students in Hong Kong despite the fact that virtually all whites in Hong Kong were extremely rich, because they were part of the colonial ruling class, and very few of the Hong Kong Chinese were rich. </p>
<p>The same has been found of the Jews - for example, evidence exists that, during the early 1900's poverty-stricken descendents of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who were crammed into the ghettos of the Lower East Side of Manhattan nevertheless still tended to test better than rich WASP's - so much so that the Ivy League schools began instituting Jewish quotas (the Numerus Clausus) because they felt they were admitting 'too many Jews', which ended up causing many Jews to change their last names and move away from New York in an effort to try to pass themselves off as not being Jewish to avoid the quotas. {The family of Larry Summers, for example, changed the family last name from Samuelson to Summers in an effort to sound less Jewish in order to avoid discrimination.}</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the point of all that is to show that not all standardized tests put the 'powers-that-be' at the top as a way of confirming the status quo of power. Asian-Americans score better than anybody, yet I would hardly say that they control the country.</p>
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The Bell Curve certainly failed miserably to give a convincing argument that the causation went mostly in their preferred direction
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<p>Well, I think that's a bit strong to say. Look, the Bell Curve was a pop-culture and pop-science book. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn't peer-reviewed, it didn't follow standard methodological techniques. Very few such books are. I would say that the book's methodology was no worse than that of most other books out there. 'The World is Flat' by Thomas Friedman isn't peer-reviewed either, and he asserts many things in that book without rigorous proof. But so what? That's just how those kinds of books are.</p>
<p>Sorry, I should have been more explicit in my analogy. I was trying to compare 19th-century science (rich white men in charge trying to find ways to justify why rich white men were the most amazing) with smart kid attitudes about the SAT (smart kids trying to find ways to numerically justify their amazingness) -- just that there's lots of circular reasoning and self-justification, not the particular ethnicities invested in defending the validity of the numbers.</p>
<p>I think the SAT, like the concept of IQ, was designed to put rich white men at the top. The fact that Asians score better than whites (and that women have better verbal scores than men) was unanticipated by the tests' original designers, and I imagine if they could have foreseen these outcomes, they would have written the tests differently.</p>
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I think the SAT, like the concept of IQ, was designed to put rich white men at the top.
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<p>Mollie -- Unfortunately, this is an example in which the inconvenient facts get in the way of your convenient story. The history is exactly the oppostie of what you say. The SAT was instituted by an idealistic education reformer, James Bryant Conant, who wanted to expand scholarship opportunities to students of all classes and races, not just the New England prep school elite that had previously had the only viable way into the Ivy League. By having a standard aptitude test (as opposed to the Greek and Latin tests that had been the norm), he opened up the Ivy League to those who could not afford an expensive private education.</p>
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James Bryant Conant believed in creating a governing, intellectual elite, chosen by standardized tests and specially educated. His ideal was a classless and democratic society.</p>
<p>Appointed president of Harvard College in 1933, Conant aimed to make the school a more egalitarian institution. Soon after his appointment, Conant established a scholarship program for students from modest backgrounds. He ordered two assistants, Wilbur Bender and Henry Chauncey, to find a way to assess the academic promise of the potential scholarship students. Chauncey eventually recommended the Scholastic Aptitude Test, developed by Carl Brigham, a psychology professor at Princeton.</p>
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<p>Incidentally, the SAT did have the egalitarian effect that Conant sought, and less liberal elements in the Ivies spent the next half-century trying to counteract it.</p>
<p>Intelligence testing has been a tremendous tool for equalizing opportunity. It's sad that smart people like you swallow that mealy pablum about how intelligence tests were rigged up to reinforce the established social order. These claims are sometimes flat wrong (as here), and sometimes careful airbrushings of a much more complicated history.</p>
<p>The real reason liberals (of whom I am one) fulminate against the SAT and invent reasons (as above) to hate it is that it reflects the persistent inequalities of intelligence and potential in our society. It's much easier to blame the thermometer than to cure the fever, but I think we can do better than that.</p>
<p>Well, I apologize on the SAT end, then.</p>
<p>The information I've read is mostly on the IQ side of things, where there is less room for doubt about the reasons for designing the test the way it was designed. Steven Jay Gould outlines the history of the IQ test pretty devastatingly in The Mismeasure of Man.</p>
<p>At any rate, I'm not entirely sure it matters whether the test was explicitly designed to be a sexist, racist instrument or not if the outcome is the same. I do understand that it's logistically more simple to rail against the test than against the social inequalities that lead to disparate scores on it. Still, I don't think it logically follows that we should accept test results without skepticism -- I think for the time being, we should realize that test scores don't reflect some concrete thing in the head, and for the long term, we should seek to rectify the persistent cultural problems that underlie subgroup underperformance. Blame the thermometer and cure the fever simultaneously.</p>
<p>What are some ways we can give everybody (regardless of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, or gender) an equal shot at good performance on the test? Obviously that's the million-dollar question, but I'm interested in hearing what other people think; I'm cynical enough that I don't get too far trying to answer that question by myself.</p>
<p>Perhaps the SAT does need a few restructuring of its questions, but the idea is still great. In my experience, it's the most egalitarian part of the whole process. The essays and app you can hire people to do for you, but for SATs the most you can do is study.</p>
<p>I also don't understand why people support the ACT so much, especially since I don't see how the ACT is a better indicator than SATs/SAT IIs and APs...</p>
<p>Also we must be careful about asserting that an instrument is racist or sexist just based on the fact that it gives different results for different races and sexes. But, more importantly...</p>
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I think for the time being, we should realize that test scores don't reflect some concrete thing in the head, and for the long term, we should seek to rectify the persistent cultural problems that underlie subgroup underperformance.
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<p>I agree with this almost completely. At the same time, there needs to be some sort of countercultural movement to extol the virtues of intelligence tests like the SAT and point out all that they help us to do (like weed out people who can buy every other part of their application, as Kamikazewave points out). I nominate Larry Summers for leader.</p>
<p>I suspect while MIT approach to SAT is more statistical while Caltech tends to be more deterministic. This may be due to the fact that Caltech is rather small in comparison and its undergraduate admission is mainly decided by faculty. I heard that way way back, their admission committee even make prediction about what each student's average Calculus grades would be during their first two years.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if any schools do in fact track their accepted students through the years to try to correlate their academic performance with their high school GPAs, SATs, etc.?? It would be fascinating if there were real statistical proof that certain scores demonstrate future "success" (and yeah, we can get into a fulsome discussion of what "success" is --) while with other scores, there is no correlation.</p>
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I suspect while MIT approach to SAT is more statistical while Caltech tends to be more deterministic.
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<p>Not really. I'm on the admissions committee and nobody thinks the SAT "determines" anything.</p>
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This may be due to the fact that Caltech is rather small in comparison and its undergraduate admission is mainly decided by faculty...
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<p>... but the faculty aren't, you know, stupid, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.</p>
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I heard that way way back, their admission committee even make prediction about what each student's average Calculus grades would be during their first two years.
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<p>Not Calculus -- overall GPA. This ended about 20 years ago.</p>
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Not really. I'm on the admissions committee and nobody thinks the SAT "determines" anything.
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<p>By deterministic, I mean treat each person more as an individual rather than as a statistic. Thus SAT number determining something, as to what is this something, it rely on wisdom of committee to judge individual rationally, rather than treat it as a blackbox. Another analogy of "statistical" vs "deterministic" is like hiring four begining faculty and expect one to survive vs hiring one and expect one to be tenured. </p>
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... but the faculty aren't, you know, stupid, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
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<p>They are of course most intellegent. Thus I believe that they are capable of selecting student base on their individual accomplishment.</p>
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Not Calculus -- overall GPA. This ended about 20 years ago.
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<p>The person told us this certainly fit into this age group. He did mentioned that they predicted his Ma1/Ma2 average grade to be 2.0, which turn out to be accurate,as he progressed from D to A. He end up got his Nobel in physics.</p>
<p>Oh, now I see what you mean. And that is a good story -- I love our alums.</p>
<p>My statistics prof last term happened to be on the admissions committee way back when, and he discussed this prediction they did as a class example. Apparently the R^2 in their model was only about .4, so it wasn't that great, but I do like that they tried to rigorously think about what SAT, SAT II, high school GPA, etc. predicted.</p>
<p>Oh -- one small remark. To be fair, I don't think MIT treats anyone as a statistic. I think it's one of the few "big" places where admissions strives to be truly personal, still. But they do have large datasets that I'm jealous of.</p>
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To be fair, I don't think MIT treats anyone as a statistic. I think it's one of the few "big" places where admissions strives to be truly personal, still. But they do have large datasets that I'm jealous of./
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<p>No doubt MIT is a great institution and I did use those adjectives such as "more" and "tend to". I agree that MIT admission strives to be personal. Caltech's approach is unique and is only possible because of its small size.</p>
<p>right i just spent a good fifteen minutes reading through these posts. I have a question. Would a 2400 after taking no prep courses (and somehow subtly mentioning that on your app) count at all more than a 2250?</p>
<p>and incidentally i'm not a 'rich white kid' quite the opposite, a VERY poor, pakistani kid</p>
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Would a 2400 after taking no prep courses (and somehow subtly mentioning that on your app) count at all more than a 2250?
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<p>If you achieved a 2400 with no prep courses, I think that it's tacky to even subtly mention that fact on your app because it's like trying to tell the admissions officers - "hey look, i really AM smart, i didn't even have to take expensive prep courses to get my 2400!!", which sounds immature. IMHO, you shouldn't dilute your application essays with small asides like that - you probably have more meaningful things to emphasize on your essays :) best of luck!</p>
<p>lol true. thanks</p>
<p>Leave aside the question of whether the SAT is flawed.</p>
<p>The original question was "Are deferrals of 2400s absurd?" </p>
<p>I say no. When Harvard released its numbers last year there was a big reaction to the fact that three out of four 2400s got rejected. That still means that 25% got in. That percentage is much higher than the average.</p>
<p>The SATs aren't so relevant to colleges that a 750 and an 800 are so different. MIT in particular is looking for math skills that are higher than those tested by the SAT, so that section is not as relevant.</p>
<p>What the MIT admissions officer said at my info session was the best thing I've heard. She said the reason that 750s were equivalent to 800s in decisions was because both scores demonstrated proficiency. "If you already have a 750," she said, "we'd rather see that you have better things to do with your Saturdays than take a four-hour test."</p>
<p>I got a 2400 on my SATs and a 2270 on my PSATS. Did I get smarter in the intervening month and a half? No. I bought a book of practice tests and got better at taking the SATs.</p>
<p>In the end, your score matters a lot less than what you do with your knowlege. Give me an enthusiastic 2250 over a test-obsessed 2400 anyday!</p>