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by tetromino_ 2924 days ago
> ... because they have not been as able to take advantage of the test prep industrial complex.

I must disagree. In my brief experience with the "test prep industrial complex", I saw that most of the families putting their kids through it are immigrants - especially South Asian and East Asian immigrants. Minorities who arrived in the US with little money and no local support network.
1 comments
Latteland 2924 days ago
I really meant the economically depressed people I knew when I was a kid in my urban high school in the south. My parents went to college and knew about preparing for those tests (like taking the psat and prep books, that's as far as I went). But plenty of my fellow students at my high school never really escaped the urban environment and didn't get a chance to go to college and beyond. If their parents were more prepared for this world, or they were lucky and able to navigate it on their own they might have had very different lives. I was not particularly savvy about the college world but my parents knew what to do. There are no doubt plenty of asian immigrants who also didn't have those parents who helped them get started in colleges, just like non-immigrant americans had parents who didn't help them get out to college.
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tetromino_ 2923 days ago
If all your fellow high school students who didn't prepare for tests were magically granted admission and loans to go to a top 10 university, what percentage of them would you expect to have done well there and been able to repay their loan?

I assume the answer is greater than 0% and less than 100%. In which case, the second question is, what signal other than test scores could the top 10 universities use to accurately distinguish between those in your particular cohort who would most likely succeed and those who wouldn't?

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Latteland 2923 days ago
I don't think they'd all succeed, but all well prepared college students don't succeed. I think they'd have a harder time than an "average" student because at least they can't fall back on their parents for as much experience based advice or money.

I don't know what universities should use other than test scores. But I do want them to do more.

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