<p>Wow!!......!!</p>
<p>We're so spoiled by calculators - if the time limit was on the short side, I think a large number of us today would have trouble with it. The math itself is simplistic, but that cube root problem would get a bit hairy with guess and check!</p>
<p>There is actually a clean-ish way to do everything on that test, if you know the right tricks. Calculators have made it superfluous to know these tricks, but it wouldn't have been hard for us to learn them, had the need existed.</p>
<p>
Well, I would say it's reasonably fair to also wonder if prestigious schools in America would be the same animal they are today if that hadn't happened. Certainly, the academic prestige would still be there. But if the rich and famous did not have reliable access to the best schools... would the social prestige of attending one remain? Would attending such a school actually have the ability to so drastically alter a person's social status? It can be argued either way, but it's an interesting addendum to sakky's argument.</p>
<p>The main justification for all the fuzziness today in admissions is the lack of highly reliable indicators of extraordinary academic ability. I just don't think that the SAT is sensitive enough - it indicates strong competence, but it can't identify really unusual verbal or mathematical ability. 800 scorers in math, for instance, include both mathematical prodigies and students who would have trouble surviving an undergraduate theoretical math curriculum (I'm serious; I know some).</p>
<p>The stronger alternative measures, like olympiads and research competitions in math and science, are far better recognized amongst students at elite high schools - a huge segment of the population is disadvantaged. Letters of recommendation, while sometimes powerful, aren't necessarily too meaningful. This is, frankly, because many high school teachers aren't at a sufficiently high level in their subjects to be capable of evaluating the most prodigious students. There just isn't a consistent, fair way for colleges to get any sense of how truly talented the best students are.</p>
<p>I used to think that this was a serious problem, but now I'm not so sure. There doesn't seem to be any critical reason demanding that students be perfectly sorted according to ability in the undergraduate admission season. Despite the system's flaws, outstanding students will invariably win admission to outstanding universities. Now, a math/science genius might not have an application that accurately conveys her talent, and thus might have to settle for Harvey Mudd instead of MIT - but is that really so bad? </p>
<p>It's suboptimal in one sense, but I think that the costs of "fixing" it might be even higher. If we instituted math olympiad-level tests (or comparable evaluations for other areas) across the board to better sort students, we might just make them too test-focused and ultimately lose their creative genius. This is essentially speculative, of course, but my own experience suggests that it might hold a grain of truth.</p>
<p>In the end, grad school admissions will correct most of the "errors" in the first round. Any strong university - from your state flagship to MIT - is going to have many, many brilliant professors who can recognize brilliant students and write them brilliant recommendations.</p>
<p>The English Authors and persons questions were relativity easy. Hey, I run a Classics Book Club lol. I'm obsessed with English and World Literature. </p>
<p>On the Math I did great on Geometry and so-so on Arithmethic, Alegebra was confusing though (I only got like one or two right lol)</p>
<p>Are there entrance exams now?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well, I would say it's reasonably fair to also wonder if prestigious schools in America would be the same animal they are today if that hadn't happened. Certainly, the academic prestige would still be there. But if the rich and famous did not have reliable access to the best schools... would the social prestige of attending one remain? Would attending such a school actually have the ability to so drastically alter a person's social status? It can be argued either way, but it's an interesting addendum to sakky's argument.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What I would say to this is that universities in foreign countries tend to be largely, in many cases, WHOLLY academically oriented in terms of admission, and yet the elite foreign schools have been able to maintain significant social prestige. For example, I think that schools like Oxford or Cambridge care very little about whether you can play any sports, or about your EC's in general, yet I think we can all agree that Oxbridge still carries tremendous social prestige. </p>
<p>It is generally only in the US where clearly non-academic criteria, like having great athletic ability, actually seems to matter a great deal in terms of admission. In fact, I remember watching the movie Forrest Gump with a bunch of foreigners and then having to explain after the movie that, yes, it is true that even a mentally slow person really can win admission to an American university solely because he can run extremely fast with a football. And then of course I got peppered with the questions of "What does playing ball have to do with academics?", to which I had to explain that college admissions in the US is not really all about academics, etc. It was a tough conversation to say the least.</p>
<p>
[quote]
What I would say to this is that universities in foreign countries tend to be largely, in many cases, WHOLLY academically oriented in terms of admission, and yet the elite foreign schools have been able to maintain significant social prestige.
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You make a very good point. Haha, Forrest Gump would an interesting movie to have to explain!</p>
<p>I think the harder part to explain was not only that Forrest Gump got admitted to college (the University of Alabama) despite being mentally slow, just because he could run like the wind while carrying a football, but that, in the movie, he actually managed to graduate. You may remember the scene where he graduated and is the immediately approached by an Army recruiter who asks him what he's going to do with his life, and then subsequently Forrest gets shipped off to bootcamp and then to Vietnam. It was hard to explain to foreigners how a guy like that could even get into a US college, and it was even harder to explain how he could actually graduate. In fact, it was so hard that I myself began to doubt whether this could really happen. Then I remembered the story of how NFL star Dexter Manley managed to graduate from Oklahoma State University and then after his football career was over, revealing that he never knew how to read. Yet somehow OSU gave him a degree anyway. So I guess this sort of thing really can happen - that you really can get a degree from a US college while knowing nothing and doing nothing.</p>
<p>Well, at many DI football schools, football players are not only in the notoriously easy majors, but they have tutors to "help" them with their homework.</p>
<p>But at any rate, graduation rates of DI athletes at many schools are almost unbelievably low, so apparently not many of them are even availing themselves of the homework fairies.</p>
<p>This is an interesting tangent and I feel I can comment, coming from a football town myself. The movie never really implies whether Forrest graduated legitimately or with "under the table" help, but I know that in my high school, there were two ways to pass, guaranteed - either you studied and did the work, or you were on the football team. The subjective classes were easiest, because even papers with horrible grammatical errors would somehow receive high marks because they "had a strong argument and showed clear understanding of the material", and even the objective classes like math offered endless test retakes or even outright excused some tests because the students did not show up to class the day they were given! Or they would allow the student to retake it days later, after the correct answers had been given out to the class (and were clearly available to the student). It isn't right, but I don't have any difficulty believing that this could have happened similarly at a state university for a football star - if he wanted to graduate, there was a system in place to make it possible for him.</p>
<p>The real difficulty for me was not understanding how all this could happen. It was explaining this entire system of athletic admissions and graduation to foreigners and then suffering their withering incredulity and outright contempt.</p>
<p>Trust me, it's not fun to be an American trying to defend this system to foreigners. Not that I was really defending it, mind you.</p>
<p>I see what you're saying. It just goes to prove that many American systems have a back door method of entry!</p>
<p>I would die :-(</p>
<p>"Well, at many DI football schools, football players are not only in the notoriously easy majors, but they have tutors to "help" them with their homework."</p>
<p>Quick, how many points does a 3-point field goal account for in a basketball game?</p>
<p>That was an actual question from a class for basketball players at the University of Georgia...</p>
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It was explaining this entire system of athletic admissions to foreigners and then suffering their withering incredulity and outright contempt.
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</p>
<p>It's just a different way of thinking. Chinese and Taiwanese students who have grown up with Gaokao and Shweitzer, respectively - cannot comprehend why a basketball player with 1700 SAT can get into schools like Stanford. It doesn't just seem fair, in the Asian perspective. But the Taiwanese system is evolving, as there is now "affirmative action" for aborigines, handicapped, certain students with great hardship, and Tzenshr (basically the US system of preferential admission for talented musicians/athletes) to major universities now. But still, probably 97% of the college population still gets into college with traditional method of examinations. On the other hand, I think it may take more than a decade for Chinese admission methods to evolve, however, given the incredible amount of students applying. </p>
<p>(Another interesting point is that the Taiwanese education ministers seem to lament the fact that the university admit rate in Taiwan was something like 96% this year. In the US, where virtually everyone could attend college if they wanted to, this phenomenon of decrying too many students getting into college seems rather weird, IMO. But I'm digressing too much.)</p>
<p>Back to the topic. haha. It's rather refreshing to see those "Suppose x men can paint a room in y days, working z hours a day. How many days does it take t men to paint the same room, if they worked s hours a day?" questions hail all the way from 1876.</p>
<p>And I wished that English portion was the equivalent of our SAT CR =p...but what does "parse" mean? o_____o</p>
<p>the argument was made earlier in the thread that olympiads and research competitions are bad measures of achievement because they unfairly advantage students from elite high schools. i find this uncompelling. first, it's empirically denied. many homeschooled students and kids from non-elite public schools do well in these contests. talented, motivated students can accomplish great things even when they don't have the resources that exist at schools like exeter and tj. moreover, the internet has made knowledge of these contests rather commonplace, so ignorance isn't a good reason anymore. even worse, it's borderline patronizing to assert that kids who happen to be born in a certain geographical region or in a certain socioeconomic bracket can't compete with kids from privileged backgrounds unless we stack the cards in their favor. second, it's a self-correcting problem. kids will realize the old formula doesn't work anymore if they stop getting into college, so they will take measures to do better in areas that count. great athletic programs can be found in all socioeconomic strata, in part because it gives people another means of accessing higher education. there's no reason why successful programs in physics or creative writing or fields more relevant to academic achievement couldn't develop in the same way if the same incentives existed... if there's money to spend on helmets and shoulder pads, there's money to spend on textbooks.</p>
<p>entirely entrance-exam based procedures like the gaokao are flawed because there is no way that one examination can possibly separate out the most talented candidates. the status quo american system is flawed because it often unfairly rewards achievement in areas that are entirely irrelevant to academics and because it gives weight to arbitrary factors that are entirely beyond applicants' control (race, legacy status, etc.). in an ideal system, we would be able to ascertain which applicants have the greatest potential for future achievement and are the most motivated to pursue their goals. things that aren't indicative of these qualities don't belong in college admissions criteria. this includes vague, meaningless notions of "well-roundedness," athletic prowess, your race, and your legacy status.</p>
<p>focusing educational institutions' evaluative mechanisms in this way would make the process more predictable and effective while avoiding hypercompetitiveness and preserving creativity, etc.</p>
<p>they still have this system is almost all of asia.</p>
<p>Its still the same in India.. Not to say that its much better though.. Around 300000 students compete for around 3000 seats in college, especially for top notch colleges. So if you just suck at test taking, or had a bad day on that particular day, you're as good as dead :(</p>