I believe he is talking about indicators that are actually predictive of student success at MIT.
GPA in less rigorous classes at a low-performing high school is probably not one of those indicators.
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You’re absolutely right that a lot of is determined by kindergarten—influenced particularly by things like food and housing security; access to health care; exposure to pollution; access to safe, reliable, and supportive childcare.
What advantages families have (or don’t have) is absolutely the result of political decisions.
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Thanks! I was quite confused.
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Sounds like grad school grading, where a C is essentially failing.
In terms of total numbers, I am pretty sure that is inaccurate.
But in terms of percentages, sure, that is the problem MIT faces.
I agree with this 100%.
Our local public school is demanding to the point that students rarely struggle at any college, even those known for being rigorous like Columbia or MIT.
There are dozens each year that apply to MIT and could thrive there. But only one or two get in each year.
On the flip side, I have coached some low income and/or URM students who applied to MIT. Those that are academically qualified by MIT’s standards get in at high rates.
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The advice I give is to look at the scores from 2020, the last year when most schools required tests.
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Nowadays some TO schools are leaving test scores off the CDS (so, no 25%, 50%, 75% breakdowns). I noticed that when taking a look at a couple of the schools DS is interested in.
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Some don’t report the composite range for SAT. All highly selective schools that I’ve seen, that are not test blind, do report at least the section scores, either in the CDS or at IPEDS, at least from fall 2022 freshmen/2022-23 CDS. (For universities. I haven’t looked at LACs.) Which ones are you missing? I might happen to have a spreadsheet that includes many scores from 2020-21 CDS. Edit, looking back, some schools that do report current scores skipped that year for whatever reason, and I never filled in the whole list I have in the spreadsheet, but lmk if I can help.
This only works though if schools aren’t giving contradictory advice as to when to submit scores.
Two current examples: BC saying to only submit 34+ ACT, and Tulane 32+ higher (although I heard that this year Tulane is saying to submit anything that starts with a 3…perhaps someone here can confirm that?). Many AOs will give guidance to students who ask as well…so it’s part guessing game, part game theory.
Yes. It’s like Perchik said. Everything’s political. 
For those that do not remember:
Perchik: There’s a question… A certain question I want to discuss with you.
Hodel: Yes?
Perchik: It’s a political question.
Hodel: What is it?
Perchik: The question of… marriage.
Hodel: Is this a political question?
Perchik: Well, yes. Yes, everything’s political.
…Which is to say, not everything is explained by exposure to pollution and similar popular scapegoats. There are studies showing multiple educational, economic, and social benefits accruing to children growing up in intact families, for example. But I am sure we do not want to open that can of worms.
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Choose the other parent of your kids wisely.
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…and just as I was writing that
In the most recent Program for International Student Assessment tests in math, or PISA, U.S. students scored lower than their counterparts in 36 other education systems worldwide. Students in China scored the highest. Only one in five college-bound American high school students is prepared for college-level courses in STEM, according to the National Science and Technology Council.
This is not a problem that is going to be solved by going test-optional any more than a fever is going to be cured by going thermometer-optional.
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The PISA is the actual thermometer, of course. The SAT/ACT are more like a hand on the forehead.
Generally, we’ve known forever the US early childhood through secondary school system has some major competitiveness issues. At its best, it is very good. But at its worst, or really even at its median, it is not very good.
And so we have tried chipping away at it, with some limited success in some schools. But at a high level we continue to have all sorts of problems.
And we know why. The way we fund and govern schools is hyperlocalized, including curriculums and evaluations. The resulting lack of standardization and massive differences in resources leads to this very wide distribution of outcomes, and indeed concentration of better outcomes into a minority fraction of students.
But changing that would require changing a lot about how we do politics and government.
Anyway, parents with resources and savvy try to make sure their kids go through an early childhood through secondary school experience that will prepare them well for college, including in terms of math. Other parents do the best they can but their kids do not get the same preparation. And I agree colleges are then stuck in a bad situation because it is too late to try to fix all of that difference in “13th grade”.
But there is some wiggle-room. Colleges that devote real resources to it are finding they can help some students successfully transition. Again, there is only so much they can do, but they can do some, and I think public college systems in particular are obligated to do what they can.
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The “real world” examples of higher ed trying to fix the ills of K-12 aren’t encouraging. CUNY took what had been a crown jewel – City College- and pretty much took an axe to it by moving to an open enrollment system. Ask any professor “back in the day” what it was like transitioning from teaching the best and the brightest of New York’s immigrant and first gen students to teaching pretty much anyone who had a subsidized subway pass…
Slowly New York is moving to fix all the damage- a robust system of community colleges which are better suited to remedial class work than an actual research university; earlier identification of LD’s and differentiated instruction, etc. But it can take decades to build a public university of note- and only a few years to ruin it.
I think the model of “successful transition” is changing as well. You can help a kid who has never heard of Lenin, Chaucer, Stalin fill in those blanks at the university level. It’s much harder to teach “verb, noun, adjective” or “solve for X” if the kid got an A in algebra but never saw a word problem.
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One of the biggest issues we face in terms of providing a high quality education across all disciplines is the localized nature of public education. I live in MA where the quality of public education, while not perfect, is very good - in the past, kids from MA have performed highly on PISA (scoring particularly high in science) and well above US averages. My SIL lives in Louisiana and her children’s educational experience (by my observation) was much, much less rigorous starting in elementary school. We have no national standards, so states can do as they like. Often that results in sub-par education. I’ll also add - teachers in many states are severely underpaid (not to mention the lack of respect) which makes it difficult to attract the best people - let alone people with outstanding math skills. I have no answer to this problem, but it troubles me because we can’t just rely on a handful of states to turn out the kind of well educated work force that we need.
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Haha. Or how’s that for an analogy: if you can’t fog a mirror in 12th grade (math ACT<34), it really is too late for MIT to provide CPR.
Well… No. It’s not really all that good even at its best.
This CNN interview with Bill Schmidt, the interim director of the Institute for Research on Mathematics and Science Education, was recorded in 2011, but not much has changed:
How the U.S. lags in math, science education, and how it can catch up
"In the United States, I don’t think we are getting a particularly good math and science education. What we know from the international studies is that other countries have much higher demands on their students, especially during the middle grades – grades six, seven and eight. In those countries, they study algebra, geometry, physics and chemistry. In this country, our kids, most of them at least, are still studying basic arithmetic and they’re doing very elementary, descriptive science; I call it ‘rocks and body parts.’
"In both mathematics and science, U.S. students’ performance ranges anywhere from simply mediocre to extraordinarily poor. And that is true in both our national tests as well as our international tests.
“One international study of 12th-graders found that for those students in mathematics who were at the highest level – the kids who take calculus, AP calculus or regular college-level calculus – essentially came near the bottom of the international distribution against their peers. In science and physics, we were dead last. So even those students who we think of as our absolute best are not competitive internationally.”
“Rocks and body parts” has been an ongoing smack in our household ever since 
Earlier in the interview he talks about some of these things we all know are still as wrong now as they were then, and will remain the same another dozen years hence.
"I think one of the most disturbing realities about the American educational system is the inequalities that exist within that system. Where you live happens to be important. What state you live in, what district within that state you live in, what school within that district you go to, even what classroom within a given school … it really matters. And what I mean by that is, you are not necessarily expected to learn the same parts of mathematics at that grade level or the same science.
“The system is not such that children in all places in this country get the same opportunity to learn the same mathematics at the same grade level. And that can be very hard on their learning. Now in Europe, Asia, most of these other countries, they have national standards. And so, it is common across all schools within that country [to] have the same opportunities to learn the same content. This is not the reality in the United States.”
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Well…only if the colleges are also looking at it that way. If colleges are taking their current median test scores seriously, it is not good advice. Standardized tests are slowly becoming completely meaningless.[quote=“hebegebe, post:171, topic:3643428, full:true”]
The advice I give is to look at the scores from 2020, the last year when most schools required tests.
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We, too, live in a flyover state you would generally be right to think about as one of the worst in terms of public education. And even though in our particular neck of the woods we have gifted programs that haven’t yet been gutted in the name of equity, and that I would put against the best ones in the country (see their bragsheet below from my elder’s graduating class, redacted for privacy) - or perhaps precisely because of it - I feel fairly qualified to say this:
The American kids that are truly competitive internationally do not owe it to American schools.
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A friend who is a teacher at a highly regarded NYC private school told me that in 11th grade, all of a sudden, about 40% of the grade are approved for extra time. She was particularly upset at what this does to the kids who actually need extra time. One more reason why standardized tests are becoming completely meaningless.
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