| As someone who went to a boarding school on scholarhsip after moving from a bad public highschool and couldn't afford the $1600 SAT prep classes that preprogrammed in solvers in your calculator, I agree with you in general and deeply resonate with this argument. However, my initial thought was that MIT maybe has so many perfect scores it's useful at this point and not really a differentiating factor. For example they can afford to have a perfect 1:1 ratio of men to women for a tech school and I don't think they lower their standards for that. On the contrary, I went to a highly ranked engineering school of the same limitations (limited other genres of degrees) and it was 30% females overall roughly, but actually in general it was more like 6%-8% females in the actual engineering degrees. I worked in the admissions office one summer and was hard pressed to find a B on any Q4 report cards which was one of my summer tasks to ensure no early admission students entirely flunked out. I got to see other things like scores and in general I have to say even at a lesser well ranked school, and reading the averages of every incoming class, my notion is not that there is a difference between the scores of smart hard working lower middle class vs the upper rich as much as there is an over emphasis on the exam as a whole. I agree objective results are very important, and I don't have an answer for a way to calibrate across schools. I think AP exam scores are better indicators but not all schools have AB or IB classes, etc. It is really at the end of the day like most things about your commitment and ability to get something done regardless of how tangential you think it is to your core goals or study. In real life it is the same way there are lots of silly things people have to do all the time to get where they want to be and the weeding out is those who don't stop trying vs those who find a comfortable spot and stay there and blame everyone else for not having the right priorities. Regardless, I still fill like even amongst high ranking SAT scorers, students are good at acing them now. My theory though I'm not confident is true is that studying for them has been systemized so much that it is actually difficult for MIT to tell above a certain threshold of score what the bell curve is. This is all with the exception we need to realize that the SAT is not objective or perfect (the top comment this one is in response to) it was only less than five yrs ago they pulled sailing terminology from the reading and vocabulary portions after having to admit children growing up in the Bronx indeed might not have casually sailed not had sailing related literature in their curriculums, making this a bit unreasonable even for "guessing from context". |
I've never been sailing but had no problem with the terminology because I read books. Books reflecting our civilization's Greco-Roman and Anglo-American historical ties to seafaring.
It's a form of cultural genocide to foment linguistic amnesia regarding the source domain for so many metaphors and narratives.
Nice use of "the Bronx" as a dog whistle for 'muh poor helpless minority yoof chilldrunz'. Guess what, smart kids of any color can read Treasure Island. Even in the Bronx, you can check out a copy of Moby Dick and 20000 Leagues Under the Sea. Even in landlocked Iowa, HS classes read Homer's Oddesy and Kon-Tiki.
Your unreasonable, emotional bleating about how we all need to lower our expectaions of non-sailing children is insulting to those of use who bothered to learn everything we could in spite of divorce, poverty, etc. and came out ahead.
Your unkind assumptions are full of holes and don't hold water; they are not seaworthy and should be scuttled forthwith.
The idea one can only learn about nautical terminology by literally being on the water is asinine and untrue. If you can't learn sailing terminology except by acutally sailing, you lack the capacity for abstract thought required for scholastic aptitude.
Removing sailing terminology is a way to subsidize illiteracy and pretend non-sailing kids are so stupid they need to be coddled with softened expectations.