[starchild_3001]

Cancelling SAT (especially subject exams) is the stupidest decision I've seen anywhere. Make access more fair? Sure. Cancel it? Plain wrong!

How do I know? I'm one of those students who didn't have stellar high school grades, but I excelled in subject exams --- those subjects were genuinely interesting to me (math, science). I didn't find the rest of high school interesting, and I wasn't a nerd nerd studying anything my parents told me to study. I turned out "ok" (graduated as the top my class in college, then had a successful career in top tech companies). Without that final exam that gave me the opportunity, I probably wouldn't be typing this message today.

I'm not even counted as "diverse" (because I'm not black or hispanic) despite coming from a muslim family and middle eastern background. I can only select "white", though I'm not really white (european).

Today's admission debates and anti-racist treatments are wrong at so many levels, I don't know where to start.

[paulpauper]

Agree. when we hear about 'promoting opportunity' , what they mean is is we need more of groups X and Y and less Z. Motte and bailey at its finest.

[Spivak]

Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others.

There will always be some controversy over whether any change actually makes it fairer or whether the changes were made to achieve a specific outcome.

[roamerz]

At a superficial level yes. The actual impact to people and society I think is far greater and will have an overall negative affect on society and interracial relationships. Putting myself in the shoes of someone that was bumped out of something they earned through hard work and dedication because my skin color was not correct would make me bitter to those that implemented the policy as well as (hopefully less so) the person that got my seat. So now whoever made this policy has just maybe added a little racist chip on my shoulder where one did not exist previously. Multiply this many times over and all of a sudden we have a more racist society and reversing what I think the direction we have been going.

[Akronymus]

Not to forget that a when person who fits the criteria get in, they can most likely never be sure whether they deserved it or if it is because of their skin colour.

[vagrantJin]

Theres a certain thing about race, that we can threaten to be racists if things don't go our way. Is being a racist somehow a good thing? I'm not implying we should hold hands and sing kumbaya, far from it.

But why threaten to become a racist particularly?

We need discourse, demonstrations and solutions, that insititions should very well look for and nuture young talent from wherever it may come from.

But to threaten to be actively racist, without ecploring any other solution is truly telling.

[username90]

When you are racist against people then they will likely become racist. It isn't a threat, that is just how the world works. You can't just impose policies without evaluating them holistically, if you don't take into account that the people you are racist against might become more racist then you aren't doing your job properly.

[mk81]

>But to threaten to be actively racist, without exploring any other solution is truly telling.

I assume you're referring to the practice of requiring higher scores for Asian students? And then doing away with the standardized tests altogether when it got too hard to get the outcomes you want? That active racism?

[roamerz]

Maybe I am misunderstanding your comment or I didn’t do a good enough job writing mine. I was simply trying to put myself in that position and analyze what I might be feeling and then extrapolate that to what overall affect there might be to society.

[rayiner]

> Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others.

That embeds some really questionable assumptions about “some groups.”

[imwillofficial]

No it doesn’t. It’s simply stating the realty of a trade off.

[nonethewiser]

Which is why chosing by merit is the only fair way

[jjeaff]

There are several problems with choosing by merit.

One, you have to define merit and whether it really is merit. If a rich kid scores higher because he got an expensive private tutor that taught him how to do better on the test really more meritorious than the smarter poor kid who scored lower because she didn't have said private tutor?

Second, you have historically marginalized groups that lose out because their ancestors were systematically abused, not allowed to be educated, not allowed into most institutions.

Saying that it should all just be a meritocracy now is like someone that gets a big headstart in a race and then once that headstart is pointed out, they start calling for fair play.

[faeriechangling]

I don't support getting rid of standardized tests to undermine the rich because standardized testing REDUCED the wealthy's grip on higher education which before standardized testing was very much restricted to the wealthy.

Even in a racial quota based admission system, the elimination of standardized testing from each racial "tranche" only helps the wealthy. It's simply more expensive to fill a admission full of impressive extracurriculars and such than to do well on a test. Standardized testing was brought in to favor the intelligent over the wealthy to begin with, and while test scores and wealth are correlated this is in part because the entire point was to give better testers access to wealth and test taking ability is heritable.

[1123581321]

So solve tutor and education access issues earlier in the education process. Everyone suffers when the world’s best institutions aren’t allowed to make the most of the world’s most promising graduates.

[ralusek]

There is a deontological perspective here in which you seem to be uninterested. Not everything is best viewed from the perspective of how various groups would be impacted by a given system.

[908B64B197]

> I'm not even counted as "diverse" (because I'm not black or hispanic) despite coming from a muslim family and middle eastern background. I can only select "white", though I'm not white white.

Should that even matter for admission purposes?

[BitwiseFool]

My high-school's college admissions advisors told us, in no uncertain terms, if you are non-white or mixed race, make sure you declare that because it will help your chances.

[klipt]

Unless you're Asian, in which case declaring your race will lower your admission chances even relative to white people.

[908B64B197]

I recall hearing in casual conversation "ohh this guy is Asian and went to X so you know he's good". I was shocked.

It must create a weird dynamic to have two identifiable groups where you know one got there on merit alone, while the other one maybe benefited from a quota.

[waterhouse]

Absolutely. This is one of the reasons affirmative action is poisonous—it creates rational reasons for discrimination. Which will, of course, be exaggerated by actual racists; but it's much harder to argue "Discriminating against group X is bad" when it's public knowledge that group X has passed a lower bar.

[menzoic]

Affirmative action doesn't require a lower bar. Why do people keep saying that? It's also been banned in California since the 90s.

[diognesofsinope]

Funny story in Malaysia it's well known that if you get sick you want a Chinese doctor because the Malaysian government discriminates heavily against the Chinese, and thus the ones that actually become doctors are only the elite.

[zdbrandon]

Merit alone? In America?

[BitwiseFool]

We actually had a few Pacific Islanders express anxiety with selecting "Asian American/Pacific Islander" because they were worried that identifying as such would subject them to more competition. They were advised to do it anyways.

[temp8964]

I read somewhere says "Asian American/Pacific Islander" is a totally made up term by the federal government and basically has no root in reality.

[dragonwriter]

All human “races” are social constructs with no basis in reality other than the social perceptions of the group delineating them.

So, yeah, that's true of API, but its just as true of, say, White.

[BurningFrog]

The long shared history between Fijians and Turks is sadly not taught in US schools.

[rayiner]

The term “Asian American” was made up by Berkeley activists to cultivate left-wing identity among unrelated people: https://time.com/5837805/asian-american-history/

[imwillofficial]

When the policies enacted to attempt to be less racist, have people scared to be honest about their race, I think you’ve blown it.

[lordlimecat]

I have worked at companies where their referral bonus schedule rewards white males at one-quarter the rate of female Asians.

But the application of course states that race and gender are not considered....hmmm.

[daddylongstroke]

Haha. Yep, same here. Just saw an email from our corporate HR head saying that we're paying an extra $1500 per referral for people considered a "minority" by the federal government definitions. I work at a tech co. where white people are a minority (less than 39%), so not sure what type of gobment subsidy they're after now?

[lordlimecat]

It's not generally government subsidy, its "corporate ethics" which is to say PR and investor relations. It "looks good" and attracts business, especially government.

[daddylongstroke]

Nah, it's specifically related to government contracts according to the recruitment email footer.

[dcow]

No it shouldn't, but as a society we seem to want it to so it does.

Sowell has an interesting take on AA and believes it actually does more harm than good because it pits those subject to it against scenarios they have not been prepared to handle and thus in turn results in over-stress, higher rates of failure, and ultimately disillusionment.

[dcow]

The means at which we arrive upon AA is even suspect:

A: We want equality, why are white people successful?

B: Clearly because they went to a good college.

C: Okay easy, let’s put the underprivileged into good colleges, that should fix ‘er right up.

It doesn't seem like anybody is interested in solving the hard problem of why underprivileged communities aren’t producing good high school graduates. Maybe it has something to do with, IDK, the fact that they’re under served and underprivileged? Maybe primary education is a more important factor than the name at the top of your college transcript? Maybe good communities produce outstanding colleges and universities, not the other way around? Yet we can’t seem to spend money on primary education or figure out how to help struggling communities. Why is that?

[gjhh244]

Exactly. From an European perspective America's obsession with race seems absolutely idiotic. Progressive taxation and major help for poor communities and families regardless of skin colour is obviously the only sensible solution.

[zozbot234]

Racial groups are used as vote banks by the two major parties - that's all there is to it. It has nothing to with wanting to help the poor or improve social cohesion, rather the opposite. A divided society is great for the most incompetent politicians since it provides them an easy way to whip up their constituents against other groups and fish for more votes.

[washadjeffmad]

So change FPTP to ranked choice and end the age of American extremism.

[curryst]

As an American, I think it's because the treatments for racism are far cheaper and more tolerable than the treatments for poverty. Minorities were kept out of any opportunity to create generational wealth for a long time, due to racism. The problem we need to solve to reverse that is deprivation of generational wealth for decades, not racism from 60 years ago. We don't want to talk about that, though, because most of the solutions end up looking like wealth redistribution. There isn't a way to cheat poverty that I've seen. You either have enough money or you don't, and the only way out is to have enough money.

That's not to say that racism isn't a problem; it is, and we should fix it. It's not going to magically solve problems like graduation rates and income gaps, however.

[dcow]

You could start by closing tax loopholes or introducing a corporate community/education support tax. We leak a lot of wealth IMO that could be captured and distributed to those in need but we don’t because we live in a corrupt society that’s lost it’s backbone.

The supposition we’re exploring in this sub-thread is that AA is not actually a treatment for racism and more of a signal of virtue collectively by society. Real treatment would be to do the expensive and disruptive thing, yes.

[xyzzyz]

You might not be aware of this, but taxation in the US is much more progressive than it is in Europe.

[Spooky23]

Sociologists or whatever correlate good outcome with education. 90% of rich people went to college, therefore college good. That’s true, but one dimensional.

I coach little league, and have been following a group of now ten year olds since 2016 or so. They are all awesome, but the cracks that come from family life and environment are starting to show up. I fear for a few of them.

[UncleMeat]

> It doesn't seem like anybody is interested in solving the hard problem of why underprivileged communities aren’t producing good high school graduates.

The same people who are seeking equity in college are seeking it in high school and elementary school and preschool. The same opponents and arguments come out against them at all of these phases.

I have personal experience with this work in both the elementary school and high school levels. What you are saying here is simply false.

[username90]

So why is affirmative action still needed at college level if they get so much help in all the years before?

[UncleMeat]

They don't get "so much help" in all the years before because of the same forces that resist change at later ages. My family got a lot of hatred and resistance for just pushing back on the idea that it was okay that many of the schools (you can guess which ones) in our district simply never sent a single application to the 3rd grade GT system because their principals didn't believe that any application would ever succeed. They were wrong, of course.

[blackgirldev]

Are you the UncleMeat from Netslaves?

[UncleMeat]

No. I don't know what that is.

UncleMeat is a Zappa album title so I'm certain that others use it as a handle.

[maroonblazer]

I thought AA meant that, when given two equally qualified applicants, where one is caucasian and the other is a minority, the seat should go to the minority.

In light of that, Sowell's take makes no sense.

[dcow]

If that’s what it once meant it’s since been perverted. Many places use a point system that gives additional points to under privileged applicants. And then there are programs that straight up take groups of inner city kids and give them full rides. Pretty equitable on the surface but perhaps not as effective or fair as intended in the long run. These type of AA programs are what Sowell is critiquing. In his opinion these groups of students would be better served at community, city, and state colleges with the option for less demanding programs where they could celebrate more success.

[throwaway210222]

> In his opinion these … students would be better served at … colleges with … less demanding programs where they could celebrate more success.

The author is missing the point of this education.

For almost ALL students the aim is to get a prestigious certificate as this is the gateway to a upper middle class lifestyle.

The education is largely irrelevant. (Most are going to end up as real estate agents of financial advisors anyway).

Which is why a bunch of rich Hollywood folk were recently bust for bribing their way into top Californian colleges. It was not for the calculus.

Fear not for the kids: these top universities handle the intellectual demands with soft courses, grading on a curve, supplementary exams, oral exams, etc.

The only real challenge is to get in. Politicising it is the best approach for a large demographic.

[dcow]

You should read Sowell to get the full picture.

Yes, in many cases a prestigious college degree is just a social signal. But that doesn’t materially change anything. Let’s concede for a moment that all college degrees are simply a ticket to an upper middle class lifestyle. Then that seems to imply the students receiving the degree were already essentially prepared for upper middle class lifestyle upon entrance to college. Those being thrown into the mix from underprivileged communities majorly are not. It’s even worse than the charitable interpretation whereby colleges confer essential skills to their graduates. You're just giving people a fancy suit and hoping they figure out how to use it to get a job.

I’ve experienced this first hand with the posse program. One of my closest friends in college was a posse member. It has been heart breaking to watch them struggle and regress after college. My friend group and I have tried to help, motivate, and encourage, the best we could exiting college and at various points since. We helped them get into TFA. They gave up after 6 months. We tried to get him jobs. Nothing and now they’ve essentially disappeared and rarely interface with us anymore. This person has a special wit about them, they’re bright and deserving as any of a successful life. The college ticket simply isn’t enough for this person because so much of their identity is tied to the community of people they developed in the first 18 years of life. 4 years and a degree is too little too late.

So this is the entire point: it’s incredibly naive and reeks of a search for an an easy out to sit back any say that college is the only thing that matters the challenge is simply getting people in so let’s just skip the challenge and fudge the numbers and “get them in”. I don't care if your provocative econ class taught you college is just a signaling process, that’s a rash short sighted response to an intense submission to “white” guilt. The challenge is solving the challenge. The challenge is providing resources required to hoist entire communities out of their rut so they can be held to the same standards as everyone else, the answer is not to trash our standards (as we’re literally doing by removing standardized tests from admission processes) and regress our expectations to the lowest common denominator.

[908B64B197]

> given two equally qualified applicants

I wonder if that push toward diminishing the impact of measurable, standardized testing isn't an attempts at generating more "equally qualified applicants"

[curryst]

There are complaints that standardize testing isn't equal. Basically that some portions of the testing reflect white culture, which puts minorities at a disadvantage. I read the article a while back, but one of the examples they gave was the choice of words to test on the SAT. One of the questions was asking for a synonym for "armoire". The article posited that that term was far more likely to be recognized by white students because their family was more likely to actually own one, and further to refer it to as an armoire instead of simply a wardrobe or cabinets. I think there was another question that involved boats that was similar.

I think the article also noted that in many cases, the questions really discriminated more against poverty than race. Race gets dragged in because people of color are drastically overrepresented in poverty, so anything impacted by poverty will also show an effect along racial boundaries (at least when aggregated).

The underlying question is whether the score boost you get from being born into a high enough social class to have wide exposure to things like that actually makes you more qualified or not. It certainly boosts your test scores, but does knowing what an armoire is actually make you more qualified, or does it just keep poor people out?

[dcow]

If you frame it as a fight against poverty we’re making incredible progress. Now we can ask the question in a way that might lead to a real solution. The solution could either be fix the biased vocabulary in the test or give everyone armoires. Or overhaul the economic system so that more families can afford armoires.

[dcow]

Wonder no more. It very explicitly is.

Here’s the “logic”: If we give a standardized test to a random selection of people and then look at the results and add a racial overlay, white people (allegedly) disproportionately succeed. Therefore the test itself is racist. It is an unwanted artifact that encodes the privileged (alleged) majority’s innate biases and confers structural racism upon future generations. These artifacts must be purged. This is the way.

Let’s concede for a moment the definition of structural racism and agree it’s worth addressing in the admissions process. The problem then is not the desire to address the perceived oppression, but rather the conclusion that we should just tear down the racist institution without a viable replacement on hand. If we tear down pillars of rational society (or, western liberalism), then what remains is not ideologically consistent.

[nonameiguess]

This article is specifically about the UC system, which has been banned by Proposition 209 since 1996 from considering an applicant's race when making admissions decisions. It might matter at private schools or in other states, though.

It might surprise people who only know California by reputation and assume it is completely full of raging lefties, but affirmative action measures have been pretty soundly rejected by voters many times in the past three decades and the state has not been allowed to implement any of them.

[diognesofsinope]

That's because Richard Sander from UCLA Law has demonstrated fairly well that there's a really good chance that affirmative action is a net negative for those it's trying to help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sander

They should oppose it because it likely harms black people.

[mannerheim]

California has a significant Asian population. In my experience, many older Chinese Americans are completely apolitical, but one thing they do care about is that their children get into a good college. They exerted significant pressure the last time repealing Prop 209 was proposed by calling and writing their elected officials.

[crackercrews]

The last time 209 was up for repeal was last year. Elected officials were not involved. It was up for popular vote, and it failed. I think the margin was even wider than when 209 was first put in place.

The pro-209 campaign was outspent something like $27M to $1.6M but still prevailed.

[usaar333]

It was a legislature introduced constitutional amendment; the legislature was heavily involved by virtue of voting to put it on the ballot.

[mannerheim]

Ah, my mistake, I was thinking of the attempt in 2012.

[an_opabinia]

Dropping the SAT is an affirmative action measure.

[xwdv]

Absolutely not. Any attributes like race and gender should play no consideration in a fair admissions process. It should not even be public information.

[tdhz77]

The color blind thinking modal has a long history of helping the majority stay the majority. What you propose is to continuing allow the status quo, which has already by statistical aggregation of college entrance proved to allow under performing “whites” in. Have you not seen the news where Aunt Becky got her kid in? Without tough affirmative action rules, Aunt becky’s kids get in and your kids don’t.

This thinking model is best to be dropped into the dustbins of history.

[rayiner]

Black, Latino, and Asian people all oppose racial preferences in admission: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americ.... For example Latinos say that race and ethnicity shouldn’t be even a “minor factor” in college admissions by a margin of 2:1.

Like many things, this is in large part about liberal white people wanting to engage in social engineering on behalf of minorities who mostly don’t support their policy. Like “defund the police.”

[gjhh244]

Members of certain minorities aren't underrepresented because of their skin colour, but because they are more likely to be poor and lack access to quality education at childhood and youth. Racial discrimination against whites and Asians in higher education is not the best way to fix any of this. Progressive taxation, better childhood/youth education for everyone on the other hand could make a big difference.

[temp8964]

Not just poor and lack access, also different culture.

[mbostleman]

So racism is fundamentally good and the tool to use, but it just needs to be carefully guarded to be safe - sort of like nuclear power?

[zozbot234]

> Have you not seen the news where Aunt Becky got her kid in? Without tough affirmative action rules, Aunt becky’s kids get in and your kids don’t.

This whole controversy is about a handful of the most elite schools in the nation. I find it more than a bit silly tbh, since whatever admissions policy they choose it's not going to be even close to affecting "the majority" of prospective students. We should be working to expand access to education at every level, not just focusing on such a tiny minority.

[akomtu]

That's an intellectually lazy rhetoric inspired by probably those ibram kendi's books. People who promote it really deserve to live in a society where dentists, surgeons, engineers making cars and bridges, all get their jobs because they are "underprivileged minorities" of some sort and not the best and most competent in their field.

[imwillofficial]

> The color blind thinking modal has a long history of helping the majority stay the majority.

Come on guys, to be less racist we must be MORE racist!

[tdhz77]

Or the alternative or your reality.. ignore Jim Crow existed?

[imwillofficial]

What the heck are you talking about?

[cmh89]

Deciding whether or not the SAT is equitable, fair, or valuable shouldn't have any anecdotal component. For every one person with a story like yours, there is someone who had a bad experience with it for reasons outside of their control. I did exceptionally well in take home or book assignments because I understand the subject matter, but never was a good test taker. I took the ACT and did 'fine' but I could have done much better in an untimed, open book environment. What are we trying to measure with these tests? Your memory? Your ability to devote time to studying?

At the end of the day, tests like the ACT/SAT will always privilege people who can afford to spend more time on it. Lots of kids do better because their parents spend thousands on tutoring. Other kids of the same skill level do worse because they work 25 hours a week to help their family make rent. No amount of change in 'access' can overcome that.

Knowledge and skill is complicated and trying to boil it down to a timed test isn't a particularly useful measure.

[rayiner]

That kid working 25 hours a week to help their family make rent is going to have an easier time buckling down for one test than keeping up their GPA over four years. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/03/23/sta...

[SamoyedFurFluff]

How does that work? You’re saying a child being literally homeless can focus on keeping GPA up?

[BeFlatXIII]

You got the point of the parent comment backward. It’s specifically easier for a bright child in poverty to ace one test than to maintain a GPA for four years.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

But how can it be better for child study to ace the test when they’re homeless rather than they work to help avoid homelessness and maybe not study so much?

[nonethewiser]

You're 100% correct but people will argue SAT performance is more a function of privelege than being bright.

[cmh89]

I agree that there are issues with GPA too, but despite saying that it's easier to take one test than it is to maintain a high GPA throughout high school, that's opinion. Teachers can work with over extended students to help them while they are in school

I can't really speak to your opinion piece because its behind a paywall

[rayiner]

Privileged kids have an even bigger advantage in GPA. They can afford to harangue teachers for retakes, accommodations, etc. The kid working in his parents restaurant can afford prep, but his parents can’t afford time to game GPA.

[blackgirldev]

Not just that his parents don’t have time; in many places, parent’s social standing has an impact on the teacher’s willingness to be flexible.

[spaced-out]

>Teachers can work with over extended students to help them while they are in school

They can, but will they? Plus, it seems like GPA would be even easier for the wealthy to game, many fancy prep schools sell themselves on their ability to place kids in good colleges. If those kids no longer need to perform well on a standardized tests they just need a high GPA, that seems even easier from the school to guarantee.

[ZeroGravitas]

It's written by a contributer to the National Review, if that helps you decide whether you're missing out on anything important:

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-...

[cmh89]

Ah, so it's the digital equivalent of trying to read soiled toilet paper. Got it

[JPKab]

The SAT is an extremely high predictor for IQ. It correlates incredibly well.

I grew up in a trailer park, and didn't have access to the test prep industry, so I understand that wealthier kids had a big edge. That being said, nobody is talking about the SAT being biased against poor kids. They are pretending that it's purely a racist, culturally-biased test due to its outcome of having average scores that are hundreds of points lower for certain ethnic groups. And like all hamfisted efforts at "equity", it will benefit the most privileged members of the favored class at the expense of the least privileged members of the disfavored class.

Rich Black kids will gain the most, and poor Asian and White kids will lose the most. Poor Asian kids are already getting screwed. My best friend is the child of dirt poor Cambodian refugees, but the college admissions people treated him as if he was the son of college educated Korean immigrants.

Obama's daughters will never be held back in life, and this ideology makes no room for that fact, or the fact that a pale kid born to a single mom in a trailer park is, statistically, screwed.

[unishark]

> I grew up in a trailer park, and didn't have access to the test prep industry, so I understand that wealthier kids had a big edge.

Test prep does not give much of a an edge. It certainly isn't comparable to those point-differences between groups (and therefore the effective "bonus points" often given for being a member of certain groups).

Everything they teach in those prep courses is available in books you can get for a few bucks (like 12-16). If you're really strapped, you can probably get prior years' books for next-to-nothing (this is what I did in the days before the internet, finding them at thrift stores for pennies). I suspect if you compared test prep takers to people who actually worked through the books (or comparable info from the internet) and practice tests the advantage would disappear (if not reverse).

[cmh89]

Plenty of people recognize that the SAT is bias against poor kids

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/07/why-po...

The reason that the racial component comes out is that Black children are over-represented in poor communities due to systemic racism

[atweiden]

What JPKab said is entirely true. The SAT is known to correlate strongly with general intelligence, which is determined almost exclusively by hereditary factors outside a person’s control [1]. The data clearly suggests lower class persons of east asian descent will disproportionately suffer the consequences of this policy.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/16/books/what-is-intelligenc...

[1]: https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/1994/10/16/books/what-is-...

[livinginfear]

SAT results correlate highly with IQ, and IQ correlates highly with success in life. Still, people engage in all kinds of postmodern mental gymnastics to explain why an intuitively obvious fact is somehow false.

[mrh0057]

Your statement immediately has a problem. How do you define success? Then you have a second problem when you state a person taking one test is also good on a different test.

Going much over 100 has little correlation with wealth which is what most studies use. Then you run into correlation doesn’t equal causation problem too.

[inglor_cz]

"How do you define success?"

Let us look at the USA of today and its social ills. Quality of a random person's life is undeniably better if they manage:

* to avoid going into jail/prison, * to always have a home, * to be drug-free, or at least drug addiction-free, * to be fit (= not obese), * to be employed or self-employed, * to finish their high school education at least.

Those points might sound modest, but if someone can tick off all of them, they are already sorta successful, especially compared to someone who can only tick off one or two.

A nation of people who could tick off 5 of 6 would probably be much happier than contemporary America.

Do all those points correlate with IQ? I would guess yes, but IANA Social Scientist.

[JPKab]

IQ is the single most studied, and statistically proven, quantitative measure in all of social science and psychology.

The US military developed it not as a tool to exclude, but to INCLUDE as many males in the draft as possible during World War I and after.

The determination was that anyone below 85 IQ is literally a net drag on performance in the battlefield, and is unable to add value without a quantity of supervision that is detrimental to a fighting unit.

The harsh realities of IQ go against the grain of both of the major US political parties:

The GOP myth of everyone working hard to uplift themselves simply can't apply to about 10% of the population. There is simply nothing a person born with an 85 IQ can do to succeed in the modern world without a lot of help and assistance that almost certainly needs to come from some form of collective, probably the government.

The Democratic myth is that, given enough help, and with obstacles such as racism removed, everyone can succeed. Therefore, they believe that unequal outcomes are evidence of some form of systemic discrimination. There is no level of discrimination you can remove that is going to help the 10% of the population at or below 85% succeed in the modern world. Cash payments to this population are simply not going to ever yield any form of self-sufficiency in a post-industrial economy.

It's a miserable reality that I hate to think about, and simply makes me sad. Any one of us reading this comment could have been born with this affliction, and I think we should be extremely hones when assessing how to correct this injustice of birth and give these human beings a life that is as meaningful and happy as possible. The lies we tell ourselves do them no favors.

[livinginfear]

> " How do you define success?"

Surely you jest. It really doesn't matter how you define success, IQ is a valid predictor of pretty much any definition of success you can think of. Income, academic achievement, you name it.

[JPKab]

The confidence with which you assert "systemic racism" as being the key factor causing Black kids to be overrepresented in poor communities is fascinating. Historical racism, which was woven into law, is the actual reason for this. Historical factors are also why White southerners are overrepresented in poverty statistics compared to Whites in the midwest and New England.

Historical racism isn't the same thing as the nebulous, impossible to define "systemic" racism, which basically means whatever the activist group pushing it wants it to mean. Typically, they look at any discrepancy in outcomes between two groups, ignore the complex multi-variate nature of said issue, and reduce it down to race, making the claim of "systemic" racism. The vast majority of CS grads from universities are males, but you never see this mentioned in claims of "systemic sexism" in the tech industry. Gender activism, like race activism, only goes in one direction, always.

The same activist groups tend to ignore factors such as 50% of all murders in the US being perpetrated by, and victimizing, Black Americans. This kind of statistic is inconvenient for their narrative of police deliberately arresting people based on race, vs. the fact that they commit crimes disproportionately. Also, constantly cited is the discrepancy in crack penalties vs. cocaine penalties. This ignores the fact that crack and meth (a drug used predominantly by Whites) have equivalently harsh penalties, and also ignores the fact that these harsh penalties were demanded and campaigned for by Black politicians in the 90's, reacting to the destruction of their communities by the crack epidemic. There is a clear record of this, as evidenced by Joe Biden being a huge proponent of the Crime Bill. He and other Democrats were being urged to push the Crime Bill by his own party's Black politicians.

Growing up in the rural south in a trailer park, the subculture of White people I belong to commit crimes at vastly higher rates than Whites in other parts of the country. They are arrested and shot by police at equally higher rates as well. Again, the low-resolution, activist driven narrative ignores all of this, treating White people in New York City and in Kentucky as being part of a homogenous group, instead of correctly identifying the vast cultural differences between the two going back to the completely different European cultures they are descended from (Dutch/wealthy English vs. dirt poor Ulster Scots emigrants).

[bookofsand]

For a less US-centric perspective, regional differentials in development persist even for countries with 'homogenous' populations. Italy is a canonical example, with significant differences between the rich North and the poor South. By US ethnic standards, Northern and Southern Italians are basically indistinguishable clones, though Italians themselves may beg to differ. See also Germany, Belgium, Poland or Romania.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Italian_regio...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_GRP_p...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Belgian_provinces_by_G...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_A_and_B

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Romania_-_Nominal_GD...

[JPKab]

Question:

Do you think that targeting people based on income level would be a superior way to address this issue? If it was based on income, rather than skin color, wouldn't it disproportionately help Black children while simultaneously not leaving other disadvantaged groups out in the cold?

[temp8964]

What? The article you linked does not address SAT at all!

[hedora]

The article presents a lot of relevant data. In particular, about half the people that got in with high test scores but low grades were from under privileged groups. I’d wager that such groups are less than half the population of admitted students.

[starchild_3001]

Not sure what data you're talking about. What I've seen so far: SAT <-> Income are correlated => let's not rely on SAT? That's such a BS argument.

Anything related to income will be (statistically speaking) associated with intelligence and other personal traits (perseverance etc). Any of this will be obviously correlated with your kid's SAT --- it's called genetics.

Any other, more sensible data to look at?

[dsr_]

It's never the kid's income, though. It's always the parents' income.

[tdeck]

> Anything related to income will be (statistically speaking) associated with intelligence and other personal traits (perseverance etc). Any of this will be obviously correlated with your kid's SAT --- it's called genetics.

No, it's called social darwinism.

[starchild_3001]

tdeck, genetics is a statistical phenomena. Your parents being smart/strong/fast runner/good in music etc doesn't turn you into one of these instantly, but they're statistically correlated with you having similar abilities and traits.

How can you argue against this? Isn't this obvious? Isn't this what genetics is all about --- parents' genes being passed to offspring?

You're either blinded by your ideology... or maybe don't understand biology.

[BurningFrog]

> At the end of the day, tests like the ACT/SAT will always privilege people who can afford to spend more time on it. Lots of kids do better because their parents spend thousands on tutoring.

This i true, but the effect is small. The studies I've seen mentioned say 50-100 points.

[ericd]

Seriously, most of the gains you get from test prep are from taking a few practice tests to get comfortable with the format and the question types. I found a $20 test prep book more useful than the course I took (which mostly consisted of giving us a practice tests anyway). If I’d needed help with fundamental Algebra and Geometry, to the point of needing tutoring, a selective college would not have been the right place for me, frankly.

The problem is much more fundamental, we need to try to solve the severe economic stresses for underprivileged kids’ families if we want them to have a fair shot at higher education and the success it supposedly grants, not these little tactical band-aids. They need economic opportunities and safety nets.

[nonethewiser]

Even if all of that is true it's not an SAT problem.

[jbluepolarbear]

I took the SAT the first year they added the essay. It wasn’t optional and they had no accommodations for people with disabilities. I would have much rather had a score of 1500/1600 than the dumb 1700/2400 I got.

[cactus2093]

Same, we must be about the same age, but interestingly I had the opposite experience there. That newly added section was only partly the essay and the other part was grammar. I got a pretty mediocre score on the essay and thought it would bring down my score but I did perfect on the grammar and got the full 800 points for the section.

In addition to disability issues you point out, I would expect that there was also a very strong racial/class correlation with that section. I'm from a middle class white family and my parents both went to college and speak "proper" english with minimal slang. I didn't study at all the for the grammar section and just chose the option that sounded right to me and I aced it. I'm sure it was more difficult for people from communities that speak different dialects/vernacular.

[jbluepolarbear]

I got all multiple choice questions right, I got all writer questions wrong. It wasn’t because of my English comprehension that I did poorly.

[google234123]

I dont think the essay can bring down the score that much.

[jbluepolarbear]

It was a third of the score and was a minimum of 200 points. I got the minimum because I attempted. They changed the scoring at some point to make the written section not count as much.

[junar]

Seconding this. The former Writing section was not just the essay: it also had multiple-choice questions. Effectively, the essay itself was worth between 100 and 200 points, and the multiple-choice made up the rest.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-score-chart-raw-score-conve...

[jbluepolarbear]

That’s the second version of the writing section. I’m talking the one given in 2005 which was different.

[junar]

The post I cited is from 2015, which still describes a 3-section SAT. As far as I know, the SAT format remained the same from 2005 until March 2016.

[dragontamer]

You should have been like me and...

1. Take the test the year before they added the essay, so you'd have the "non-essay" exam grade recorded. Even if you were in 9th or 10th grade, that's still useful.

2. Take the test again with the essay. But when you do so, have AP classes worth of "knowing how to write against a graded rubric" experience so that you beat everyone else's writing score. (Thank you AP World History teacher that I've forgotten... I'm pretty sure she taught me how to beat an essay portion on any test)

[jbluepolarbear]

I have illegible hand writing. I was able to type all other standard tests I had taken up to that point. How was I supposed to know that they changed the test? When I signed up there was no mention of the essay and a lot of kids were surprised by the essay at the time of the test. I’m sure I would have rocked the essay had I been able to type it. I planned to major in English because i enjoyed writing. I haven’t written for fun since that test.

[dragontamer]

Its so weird to hear that.

My entire college-bound peer group took the SAT twice, once without the essay and once with the essay. Literally all of us, every single friend/acquaintance in my year. Most of us took the PSAT (practice SAT) to get used to the "timing" of multiple choice. (When you're low on time, its time to start guessing and moving way quicker)

The exceptions were the military dudes, who left for the Iraq / Afghanistan wars. So they had no need to take the SATs.

We all were worried about how the essay would be graded, whether or not colleges would accept the essay score, or whatever. Some of us even took alternative tests (ACT) in addition to the SAT (I only took the SAT twice).

For us, the essay thing was announced long-in-advance and we literally strategized our college acceptance plans around it. I don't know who figured out the essay announcement, but... it was very well known in my bubble.

[jbluepolarbear]

I took the presat and got one of the highest scores in my city. I wasn’t in any college group, I barely had the attention span to go to school. I was told by my counselor that I should take the sat to get into college, so I did. I was a senior at the time of taking it (2005) and there was a lot of controversy around the test that year. My family was so poor that I didn’t even know if college was going to be an option for me. because of this test I was unable to get any scholarships for English programs, but, since my math score was in the 95th percentile, I was able to get a small amount of engineering scholarships. I still ended up accruing a lot of student loan debt and ultimately dropped out because I never wanted to do engineering.

[satyrnein]

Your differing experiences are an interesting data point in the question of whether the SAT is a fair and neutral evaluation.

[the-smug-one]

In Sweden there is a university exam you can take which functions similarly. You get a curved score between 0.0 and 2.0 with which you can apply to unis with. You can take it however many times you want at a cost of about 80 USD (I think).

[smoldesu]

> I'm one of those students who didn't have stellar high school grades, but I excelled in subject exams

I'm in the same boat. If it weren't for my SAT scores, most colleges wouldn't take me seriously.

[GaryTang]

This is precisely why alternatives to traditional education are accelerating now and will eventually replace all but the boys club institutions and capital intensive science programs.

[spoonjim]

Who could argue with you if you selected “African American?” Just say that you feel African as a result of your Middle Eastern heritage.

[limeblack]

Forgive me but what is wrong with the AP classes/exams. And yes you can take them with out taking the class(I did.)

[wpasc]

This is not my opinion, but critiques against AP classes point to the correlation between the resources a high school has and the amount of AP classes and resultant tests available. More focus on AP classes would likely exacerbate economic inequality in admissions (so the [not my] argument says).

[kevin_thibedeau]

AP classes aren't an inherent problem if they're providing longer duration intensive study for more advanced students. There is, however, no reason for an external testing industry to validate a student's knowledge in fine grained subject areas. I went through high school before private testing had metasticized into its current form. AP classes had the benefit of a +1 bump in GPA. Nobody was left standing at the gate because of lack of resources.

[JPKab]

All of this revolves around a selective assumption that a disproportionate outcome (if the outcome isn't favorable to a group with a large activist base in US universities) is evidence of discrimination. Note that I say "selective".

Males are disproportionately incarcerated and killed by police, but nobody is saying police are systemically bigoted towards males, because it's blatantly obvious that males disproportionately commit crimes vs. women. However, the same depth of thought is ignored the minute the discussion turns towards discrepancies where women/Black/etc are on the "losing" end.

At the end of the day, the ideology is shallow, and equates to something very similar that emerged in the waning days of the Weimar Republic:

Group X (German Jews) has more on average than Group Y (German Gentiles), and this must be because those with more are rigging the system and taking from Group Y. They ignored the cultural differences that make Ashkenazi Jews vastly more successful than other ethnic groups wherever they go, because that would have forced German gentiles to look inward, rather than externalizing blame.

I grew up in a mostly Black county, and didn't sit in a classroom where I wasn't in the minority until I left to college. By all definitions, my mostly Black school was underfunded and fit the narrative of "systemic racism". But this ideology makes no allowances for the non-Black students who attended my school. Was I a victim of systemic racism because I attended the same schools? I lived in a trailer park, and my family's income put us squarely below the federal poverty line. But this ideology makes race the primary and essential reason for all things bad in the world, ignoring the complexity of life that emerges when viewing it at high resolution. Like all fundamentalist ideologues/religions, it constructs a low-resolution narrative, and places blame for all bad things in the world on a nebulous superstructure (Satan, White Supremacy). And predictably, it is filled with clerics who desperately try to blow up any incident into evidence that the nebulous superstructue "great evil" is far more prevalent than it really is. In the 80's it was devil worshippers, and today it's "White supremacists". The desperation is readily apparent in attempts to frame a wave of anti-Asian violence that was primarily perpetrated by young Black men into a narrative of newly ascendant White supremacy.

The worst part of this ideology to me has been it's utterly US-centric focus, where things like objective testing, education, and work ethic have been labelled as "White", ignoring the numerous cultures throughout the world, such as your Middle Eastern ancestors or China, who were conducting Civil Service entrance exams while my ancestors in northern Europe were running around the woods with bows and arrows chopping each other's heads off.

The biggest element of White privilege that I possess is not having a tiny group of useless, whiny, unelected activists get put on a pedestal by corporate media as personifying and representing my views on the world. Al Sharpton doesn't speak for Black Americans, and was never elected to do so. BLM doesn't speak for them either. They only claim to do so, and are convenient tools for White elites to shift the conversation from discussions on economic class to purely race. For an ideology based in Marxism, it's amazing how much it undermines the ability to organize unions. After all, Jeff Bezos just had to make s few donations here and there, put a few words on his website, and was let off scot free by the media for his awful treatment of workers and aggressive union busting.

[andrekandre]

  For an ideology based in Marxism, it's amazing how much it undermines the ability to organize unions

is it based on marxism? i thought marx was interested in class relations not race?

(sorry, im a little rusty on this subject)

[dragonwriter]

> Cancelling SAT (especially subject exams) is the stupidest decision I've seen anywhere. Make access more fair? Sure. Cancel it? Plain wrong!

UC doesn’t control access to the SAT, it does control whether it uses the SAT. Not using it in its current form is the strongest influence it has to incentivize change.

[waterhouse]

So is your position that, while the SAT is still the best choice for admissions, UC should stop using it for some years in the hopes that this will motivate College Board to improve it more quickly, after which UC should resume using the SAT? That the impact (on future applicants and everyone else involved) of using a worse admissions process for some years is less than the bargaining-chip value?

[dragonwriter]

> So is your position that [...] the SAT is [...] the best choice for admissions

No

[nickff]

What did you mean by your second sentence?

>"Not using it in its current form is the strongest influence it has to incentivize change."

What change (and by whom) is/should UC incentivize?