Eric Levitz in New York: This doesn’t mean that it would be good to base admissions on the SAT alone. The test’s biggest problem is that it doesn’t predict success in college very well. But as an equity matter, the SAT is one of the least-bad metrics we’ve got.
Removing the SAT would only exacerbate class-based educational inequality. The SAT can be brute-forced via lots of studying that is available for free on the internet these days. If it were removed and changed to “holistic” measures, then knowing the right extracurriculars to have, the right sports to play, the right things to say on a college essay, the right amount of money donated to the college, etc. would become far more important. Holistic admissions are a way for the failed children of the elite to maintain their power.
To say it a bit differently: it is probably true that the NBA scoring records of 6'8" players and 6'10" players aren't much different, but no one infers from that that height doesn't matter in the NBA.
The SAT was radically redesigned in the 1980s. Is there a difference between the predictive power of the two version of the test re: GPA? My understanding is that the old SAT was more G loaded/ correlated more strongly with IQ than the new version
I've given up trusting the media at all when it comes to reporting any kind of complex issue. But I am also frustrated with how accepting we are of their reporting.
I have a lot of friends and acquaintances that are very smart people, and they try to keep up with current events. But they are constantly falling into the trap of reading just the headline and maybe the first paragraph, or just remembering what they heard on the radio at lunch time, and now they are convinced they know something. But they are absolutely misinformed, and when I point this out to them, most of the time they don't care because it's too hard to understand the real issue.
It's just very frustrating, because this intellectual laziness is so common at all levels of society, and people that are making major decisions about the future of the world are some of the laziest.
The number of academics I have heard confidently state that the SAT is racist, discriminatory, measures nothing but socioeconomic status or test-taking ability, etc is astounding. This ship has sailed and I think it will be at least a generation before standardized tests are used properly again (outside of heavily STEM-focused places). In the meantime, we'll have a ridiculous, opaque, kludged-together admissions system that no one is really happy with, but at least we're not using the "racist" tests!
Fantastic explanation. In your Berkson's Paradox piece you linked, you explain that this is also known as "conditioning on a collider" which is what I know it as from Judea Pearl's excellent Book of Why on causal reasoning.
Education is full of real-world situations in which we've accidentally conditioned on a variable of interest, leading to all kinds of spurious or reversed correlations.
I agree that this is important stuff that no one is talking about. Kudos for doing so with such lucidity.
I enjoyed learning the term "restrictive data set". It's one of those "duhh" moments. Of course if you do an analysis of Harvard students gpa corelated to success it wouldn't look like it matters. Unless mommy bought a building, your SAT score was high. You started studying for it in 6th grade and you likely had the genetics for academics as well.
A standardized test is the best way to compare apples to apples. Yes, the upper echelons have advantages...so what. But the standardized test is a good way to demonstrate ability. Should it be the be all, end all...No. But it should be there and weighted heavily.
I just re-read a couple of John McWhorter's essays about college and Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action was always meant to give a leg up to disadvantaged young people of under represented racial groups. I say under represented because you can't say minority groups because Asians faced serious discrimination (Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese Internment camps). At least that was my understanding. The assumption that all Black and Latinos are somehow disadvantaged is highly prejudicial. The implication is they are inherently somehow less than Whites or Asians. Wrong.
All of this fussing over a few elite colleges is a distraction from improving the lives of 99.9% of everyone else, especially the two thirds of the country who don't go to college. I love learning and education, but college isn't the be all, end all. Who hasn't met a highly educated idiot, or a highly educated asshole?
Thank you for this thoughtful, and thought-provoking essay. Your analysis is correct, indeed. The plain truth is that standardized tests are well correlated with past academic performance and good predictors of future academic performance. I've written several articles on that topic as it applies to the ACT, for instance, in Quillette https://quillette.com/2022/07/16/the-act-discriminates/ and The James G Martin Center for Academic Renewal https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2022/09/the-act-is-still-useful/ , among others. Nonetheless, when the results of the standardized tests don't meet preferred political ideologies, the results are simply ignored. For instance, note this article:
"When ‘Black’ & ‘Hispanic’ Students Outscore ‘Asian’ & ‘White’ Students on the ACT, Nobody Notices"
The biggest threat of the SAT is that it takes away the arbitrary power from the admissions committee. Noting how pro-elite it would be to make admissions dependent on essays and recommendations is a pointless endeavor because this is primarily an intra-elite squabble anyway (with us commoners squawking at the margins).
The elite ideal of the elite college has gone from: (1) social club for rich white men to (2) academic powerhouses that fosters social clubbiness to (3) social club for elite liberal coalition
But - if SATs are accurate, and Whites a bit better with Asians a lot better -- then "white superiority" in SAT test scores is also true. And in college performance, and post-college jobs, on average.
Very important: "There are a lot of people who did shitty in college and who went on to all kinds of creative, intellectual, and political success. " Even more true for life success and without college at all. Still a majority of 30 year old Americans without a college degree (~37 - 48%?)
We need a society where non-college grads are valued more highly than is currently done, today. Especially by college grad elites.
Most people don't score in the top range, by definition, and those people just aren't going to like these tests. They will be motivated to find reasons to get rid of them. It seems enough of them have gained the power to do away with them in some places.
Is there cope analysis for people denying the validity of the SAT? I truly wonder if the anti-SAT animus is partially driven by people who didn't do that well on it, and cope by denying its validity at all.
But it's a total lmao on making GPA and admissions essays even more prominent. GPA inflation has been driven by the same school of though that gives a minimum 50% to students even if they do 0% of the work. If they get 50% for free, what's wrong with a teacher giving a B student a 5% boost into an A, if it has rather important effects on that kid's future? This is actually one of the reasons I didn't become a teacher. I couldn't bear not bending the grading rules for deserving kids.
Admissions essays are an overly performative joke. There's an arms race to make yourself seem extremely oppressed and put upon so that the essay can resolve on you overcoming extreme difficulty. If I was prepping HS seniors on the subject, I would openly and explicitly tell them to heavily embellish their lives to make a good story, if not outright lie.
Don't worry, the SAT will be gradually adjusted until it produces the **right** results. Then we'll be back to relying on divination and inspiring stories produced by AI.
Removing the SAT would only exacerbate class-based educational inequality. The SAT can be brute-forced via lots of studying that is available for free on the internet these days. If it were removed and changed to “holistic” measures, then knowing the right extracurriculars to have, the right sports to play, the right things to say on a college essay, the right amount of money donated to the college, etc. would become far more important. Holistic admissions are a way for the failed children of the elite to maintain their power.
To say it a bit differently: it is probably true that the NBA scoring records of 6'8" players and 6'10" players aren't much different, but no one infers from that that height doesn't matter in the NBA.
The SAT was radically redesigned in the 1980s. Is there a difference between the predictive power of the two version of the test re: GPA? My understanding is that the old SAT was more G loaded/ correlated more strongly with IQ than the new version
Controlling for test scores, college admissions give a slight bump to the poor and a massive boost to the super-rich.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/07/the-admissions-game.html
I've given up trusting the media at all when it comes to reporting any kind of complex issue. But I am also frustrated with how accepting we are of their reporting.
I have a lot of friends and acquaintances that are very smart people, and they try to keep up with current events. But they are constantly falling into the trap of reading just the headline and maybe the first paragraph, or just remembering what they heard on the radio at lunch time, and now they are convinced they know something. But they are absolutely misinformed, and when I point this out to them, most of the time they don't care because it's too hard to understand the real issue.
It's just very frustrating, because this intellectual laziness is so common at all levels of society, and people that are making major decisions about the future of the world are some of the laziest.
The number of academics I have heard confidently state that the SAT is racist, discriminatory, measures nothing but socioeconomic status or test-taking ability, etc is astounding. This ship has sailed and I think it will be at least a generation before standardized tests are used properly again (outside of heavily STEM-focused places). In the meantime, we'll have a ridiculous, opaque, kludged-together admissions system that no one is really happy with, but at least we're not using the "racist" tests!
Fantastic explanation. In your Berkson's Paradox piece you linked, you explain that this is also known as "conditioning on a collider" which is what I know it as from Judea Pearl's excellent Book of Why on causal reasoning.
Education is full of real-world situations in which we've accidentally conditioned on a variable of interest, leading to all kinds of spurious or reversed correlations.
I agree that this is important stuff that no one is talking about. Kudos for doing so with such lucidity.
I enjoyed learning the term "restrictive data set". It's one of those "duhh" moments. Of course if you do an analysis of Harvard students gpa corelated to success it wouldn't look like it matters. Unless mommy bought a building, your SAT score was high. You started studying for it in 6th grade and you likely had the genetics for academics as well.
A standardized test is the best way to compare apples to apples. Yes, the upper echelons have advantages...so what. But the standardized test is a good way to demonstrate ability. Should it be the be all, end all...No. But it should be there and weighted heavily.
I just re-read a couple of John McWhorter's essays about college and Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action was always meant to give a leg up to disadvantaged young people of under represented racial groups. I say under represented because you can't say minority groups because Asians faced serious discrimination (Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese Internment camps). At least that was my understanding. The assumption that all Black and Latinos are somehow disadvantaged is highly prejudicial. The implication is they are inherently somehow less than Whites or Asians. Wrong.
All of this fussing over a few elite colleges is a distraction from improving the lives of 99.9% of everyone else, especially the two thirds of the country who don't go to college. I love learning and education, but college isn't the be all, end all. Who hasn't met a highly educated idiot, or a highly educated asshole?
It looks like removing the SAT from UC admissions exacerbated the college enrollment gender gap as well: https://taboo.substack.com/p/forecasting-college-enrollment
Thank you for this thoughtful, and thought-provoking essay. Your analysis is correct, indeed. The plain truth is that standardized tests are well correlated with past academic performance and good predictors of future academic performance. I've written several articles on that topic as it applies to the ACT, for instance, in Quillette https://quillette.com/2022/07/16/the-act-discriminates/ and The James G Martin Center for Academic Renewal https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2022/09/the-act-is-still-useful/ , among others. Nonetheless, when the results of the standardized tests don't meet preferred political ideologies, the results are simply ignored. For instance, note this article:
"When ‘Black’ & ‘Hispanic’ Students Outscore ‘Asian’ & ‘White’ Students on the ACT, Nobody Notices"
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/when-black-and-hispanic-students Thank you again for a great essay.
The biggest threat of the SAT is that it takes away the arbitrary power from the admissions committee. Noting how pro-elite it would be to make admissions dependent on essays and recommendations is a pointless endeavor because this is primarily an intra-elite squabble anyway (with us commoners squawking at the margins).
The elite ideal of the elite college has gone from: (1) social club for rich white men to (2) academic powerhouses that fosters social clubbiness to (3) social club for elite liberal coalition
Excellent graphs, and importantly true. As usual.
But - if SATs are accurate, and Whites a bit better with Asians a lot better -- then "white superiority" in SAT test scores is also true. And in college performance, and post-college jobs, on average.
Very important: "There are a lot of people who did shitty in college and who went on to all kinds of creative, intellectual, and political success. " Even more true for life success and without college at all. Still a majority of 30 year old Americans without a college degree (~37 - 48%?)
We need a society where non-college grads are valued more highly than is currently done, today. Especially by college grad elites.
Most people don't score in the top range, by definition, and those people just aren't going to like these tests. They will be motivated to find reasons to get rid of them. It seems enough of them have gained the power to do away with them in some places.
Is there cope analysis for people denying the validity of the SAT? I truly wonder if the anti-SAT animus is partially driven by people who didn't do that well on it, and cope by denying its validity at all.
But it's a total lmao on making GPA and admissions essays even more prominent. GPA inflation has been driven by the same school of though that gives a minimum 50% to students even if they do 0% of the work. If they get 50% for free, what's wrong with a teacher giving a B student a 5% boost into an A, if it has rather important effects on that kid's future? This is actually one of the reasons I didn't become a teacher. I couldn't bear not bending the grading rules for deserving kids.
Admissions essays are an overly performative joke. There's an arms race to make yourself seem extremely oppressed and put upon so that the essay can resolve on you overcoming extreme difficulty. If I was prepping HS seniors on the subject, I would openly and explicitly tell them to heavily embellish their lives to make a good story, if not outright lie.
Thank you for returning to this point, even if it's for the umpteenth time.
Don't worry, the SAT will be gradually adjusted until it produces the **right** results. Then we'll be back to relying on divination and inspiring stories produced by AI.