The "Super SAT" - the solution to the Ivy Admissions Quagmire

College Confidential Community
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<p>They have to change the SAT score system so that tough questions get more points than the easy ones.</p>

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<p><<<they have=“” to=“” change=“” the=“” sat=“” score=“” system=“” so=“” that=“” tough=“” questions=“” get=“” more=“” points=“” than=“” easy=“” ones.=“”>>></they></p>

<p>Not a bad idea, although I think the Super SAT would provide a much more definititive stratification.</p>

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<p>You’ve made a number of questionable assumptions:

  1. That the SAT or your Super SAT measures “intelligence”. It doesn’t.
  2. That the only kind of intelligence that is of value to Ivies is measurable by a multiple choice or even an essay test. SATs don’t measure creativity, artistic ability, empathy, leadership or any other of the multiple types of intelligences.
  3. That small differences on a standardized test are statistically significant. Generally, they’re not, just as the difference between a 5.0 and 4.995 weighted GPA is not statistically significant (which is why many high schools have stopped ranking students - the difference between #1 and #15 in the class can be so small as to be meaningless.) Merely widening the gap in measurement (your “definitive stratification”) does not increase the validity of the difference. Missing 2 out 100 questions does not make one “less intelligent” than missing 1 or 0 out of 100 questions, no matter how precise the stratification.</p>
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<p><<<<3) That small differences on a standardized test are statistically significant. Generally, they’re not, just as the difference between a 5.0 and 4.995 weighted GPA is not statistically significant (which is why many high schools have stopped ranking students - the difference between #1 and #15 in the class can be so small as to be meaningless.) Merely widening the gap in measurement (your “definitive stratification”) does not increase the validity of the difference. Missing 2 out 100 questions does not make one “less intelligent” than missing 1 or 0 out of 100 questions, no matter how precise the stratification.>>>></p>

<p>You kind of missed my point. The problem with the SAT, for the brightest kids, is that, as you said, you can’t measure the statistical difference between the kid who misses one question and the one who misses two questions.</p>

<p>However, with the Super SAT since it is much more difficult, these very same kids would miss 30 questions and 60 questions..which would then allow you to now differentiate between the two students. </p>

<p>Regarding whether or not Ivies care about SAT’s, it seems that they do and that’s why they are required for admission and, ceteris paribus, they will continue to accept the group of students with the higher SAT’s over those with lower SAT’s.</p>

<p>Since they DO use the SAT as a screening criteria, they would happily use the Super SAT to accept the student who scored 2350 on his SAT and 1800 on his Super SAT over the student who scored 2370 on his SAT and only 1400on the Super SAT. </p>

<p>Ivy League applicants know how to spell “cat” and “dog”…why test them on this?</p>

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<p>

And there is the fatal flaw in your argument. They don’t do that now, as kids with 2400’s are rejected and kids with 2100 and 2200’s are accepted. </p>

<p>And if it were such a problem for them, why haven’t the genuises at the Ivy League school thought of it? Oh, right - they have, and rejected it.</p>

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<p>the SATs already are very much about how good you are at test taking. i am a good test taker, and i have scored higher than many who i know for a fact are “smarter” than me.</p>

<p>Making the SATs harder would put even more emphasis on test taking skills and less emphasis on intelligence. The SAT is a test that is not knowledge based (it does test general knowledge such as grammar, vocab, and basic math). The only way to make it more difficult is to make it trickier than it already is, and in doing so, put good test takers at an even larger advantage.</p>

<p>Do ivies want kids who ace SATs and multiple choice? nope. otherwise theyd take me.</p>

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<p>This is yet another manifestation of the annoyance felt by some people that those with the highest “stats” are sometimes denied admission to highly selective schools while those with lower stats are admitted, based on fuzzy, subjective criteria. I can understand this annoyance–but the problem isn’t really that the stats don’t discriminate closely enough, but rather that the schools really do prefer to take the fuzzy, subjective criteria into account. I can understand why somebody with top scores (and who might have even tip-toppier scores on a “Super-SAT”) resents it when a person with lower scores gets in because he also plays the bagpipes.</p>

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<p>Anyone who thinks that the person with the highest SAT score is the brightest person, is not very bright.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Yes, because quantitative evidence is never flawed and is actually a measure of intelligence. <em>rolls eyes</em></p>

<p>Go read Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man”. Go read up on stereotype threat and stereotype activation, and its impact on test scores. Go read about the “G factor” intelligence controversy - as in, whether intelligence as a single quantity even exists. For that matter, go read about the SAT’s actual accuracy as a predictor of college performance.</p>

<p>Standardized tests can be a useful but flawed tool among many, all of which are flawed in some way, in making admissions decisions. That’s about the extent of it, though.</p>

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<p>My suggestion is to make eveyone to take SAT test once in junior year.</p>

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<p>I think Hunt’s reply in post #27 hits it on the head most succinctly.
This has been a somewhat stimulating exercise but probably has run its course. Each camp has drawn its lines – no one is crossing over to the other side.</p>

<p>To BTB: best of luck to you on your college choices.</p>

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<p>To the OP: Did you get rejected from an Ivy with a perfect SAT score, or do you have a friend with a similar SAT score who got into an Ivy and you didn’t? If the Ivys felt that this was a problem, then they wouldn’t reject people with perfect scores and accept those with out perfect scores. I think you have more of a problem with this situation than any top school. Please stop defending your self when you know that your Super SAT idea will help no one but your self.</p>

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<p>I think you need to check your numbers. </p>

<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/413821-sat-score-frequencies-freshman-class-sizes.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/413821-sat-score-frequencies-freshman-class-sizes.html&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Anyway, Harvard (and all of its peers) are on record saying that they look for selection factors other than test scores. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.college.harvard.edu/deans_office/NCAASelfStudy.pdf[/url]”>http://www.college.harvard.edu/deans_office/NCAASelfStudy.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Adding to Hunt’s good point above, ALL colleges that use the Common Application are required by the Common Application membership rules to consider issues other than test scores. </p>

<p><a href=“https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/BecomeMember.aspx[/url]”>https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/BecomeMember.aspx&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>And they do in practice.</p>

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<p>Oh, yes, how could I forget this link? </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/377882-how-do-top-scorers-tests-fail-gain-admission-top-schools.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/377882-how-do-top-scorers-tests-fail-gain-admission-top-schools.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>its a stupid idea with an even more stupid name</p>

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<p>bobbythebrain: I sense you have a difficulty understanding scale. Remember the amplifier whose volume knob “goes to 11!”</p>

<p>The Ivy League, S,M, Caltech, Pomona, etc. are already differentiated in scoring, and the separation is fairly steady from one year to the next. The 25th/75th percentile aveage at Harvard is 1490. At Yale and Princeton it is 1480. At Caltech it is 1520. MIT 1470. When scores are compressed like this, where the minimum point difference is 5 points, one learns to understand the value of 5 points, or 10 points, or 100 points. It is all in context. Ten points means something. So you go from Caltech 1520 to Harvard 1490, and you say… “Wow, that is a huge separation”. And it is. And from Dartmouth’s 1450 to Cornell’s 1385 is another very large gap. 65 points is really significant when 10 points has meaning. You find schools laddering down the scale, separated by another five or ten points, until you get into the low 1300s at publics like Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley. You learn that 10 points means something, and that 50 points is a large spread, and that 100 points is huge.</p>

<p>I get the feeling you think the 200 point difference under a more spread scall is twenty times more separation than a 10 point difference now. Just ain’t so.</p>

<p>All you are suggesting is that 10 points now becomes 200 points with the Super SAT. Why? They will mean the same. It won’t mean any more for a score to be 1800 vs. 1600, as compared to 1490 vs. 1480 now.</p>

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<p><<<<<The Ivy League, S,M, Caltech, Pomona, etc. are already differentiated in scoring, and the separation is fairly steady from one year to the next. The 25th/75th percentile aveage at Harvard is 1490. At Yale and Princeton it is 1480. At Caltech it is 1520. MIT 1470. When scores are compressed like this, where the minimum point difference is 5 points, one learns to understand the value of 5 points, or 10 points, or 100 points. It is all in context. Ten points means something. So you go from Caltech 1520 to Harvard 1490, and you say… “Wow, that is a huge separation”. And it is. And from Dartmouth’s 1450 to Cornell’s 1385 is another very large gap. 65 points is really significant when 10 points has meaning. You find schools laddering down the scale, separated by another five or ten points, until you get into the low 1300s at publics like Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley. You learn that 10 points means something, and that 50 points is a large spread, and that 100 points is huge.</p>

<p>I get the feeling you think the 200 point difference under a more spread scall is twenty times more separation than a 10 point difference now. Just ain’t so.</p>

<p>All you are suggesting is that 10 points now becomes 200 points with the Super SAT. Why? They will mean the same. It won’t mean any more for a score to be 1800 vs. 1600, as compared to 1490 vs. 1480 now.>>>></p>

<p>No..you miss my point. What I am saying is that students seeking acceptance to the top universities should be judged on a different standard. Permit me to provide an example:</p>

<p>You have twenty college seniors competing for placement in a graduate school chemistry program based on their results on an exam. Would you give them an exam from a 7th grade physical chemistry textbook? Of course not, because all of the students would get perfect scores and, as a result, you couldn’t figure out who you’d want to accept.</p>

<p>Similarly, why give Ivy League caliber high school students a plain old SAT exam when the average from THIS group knows 98% of the answers? Wouldn’t it be better to give them an exam where the average from this group would only know 50% of the answers? Wouldn’t you think that the student who got 98% correct on THIS test was something special? That way you could really determine the smartest of the smart…the Super SAT.</p>

<p>The score compression we have now at the top end of the SAT fails to separate out the top performers. That’s all I’m saying.</p>

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<p>This is the most ■■■■■■■■ Idea I have ever heard.</p>

<p>A Holistic approach is the best possible approach - not some fascist anti-human completely numbers based crap. This is not China, and I pray to God that it shall never descend into that pit of tyranny and inhumanity.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/229607-required-sat-subjects-tests-class-2011-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/229607-required-sat-subjects-tests-class-2011-a.html&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/371690-colleges-request-ap-scores-their-application-forms.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/371690-colleges-request-ap-scores-their-application-forms.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;