[cyberax]

> the whole package of grades+activities+honors societies+test scores

This is _also_ a very US thing. Without true competition, students have to fluff their "resumes" with nonsense to get admitted into good colleges.

Other countries have tougher tests that can provide a better signal.

> We're selecting for robots.

I disagree. We're selecting for people who can set a goal and follow it.

Apply the same arguments to sports. Should we not stop all the competitions until the age of 25?

[annzabelle]

I didn't really state my whole view, but hard exams like Oxford and Cambridge use make sense for elite colleges to use (rather than unrelated extracurriculars), but reforming the whole education system to be oriented around a single high stakes test like in China or Korea has its own severe costs. I do not want high schoolers to spend 20 hours a week at hagwons, and the current resume filler system is also terrible. I do not think declining admissions rates at elite universities reflect that the students are any smarter or more prepared than they were 20 years ago, but rather they are much more cutthroat about many things that are orthogonal to being successful adults.

Ideally we'd follow a more exam focused system more like the UK, though I wouldn't want to require all students to only study 3-4 subjects towards the end of high school. But something in the european model of IB/Abitur/A Levels, where there are serious exams in various subjects at the end of high school for all uni bound students, plus some special higher level exams for the most elite unis (in the vein of Cambridge's Sixth Term Examination Paper). We could probably repurpose AP exams to fill a similar admissions role to A Levels, and possibly use the AMC/AIME/USAMO more explicitly for admission.

Edit: this doesn't let me reply again, I think the chain got too deep. But the point is that we're not just using AP exams and USAMO scores, we're also using a pile of other metrics around extracurriculars, GPA, and honors societies, and the end result is stressed out children and not actually having better outcomes than we did two decades ago. Declining admissions rates at elite colleges do not reflect smarter and more productive incoming students.

[cyberax]

Yeah, Chinese-style gaokao would be impossible in the US. And I think it goes _too_ far into the "competitive high pressure" direction.

There are many ways to make a more competitive and objective system. I honestly don't have a lot of professional experience with any particular one, so I don't have strong opinions on a particular form it should take. A European model is good, some kind of mix of Chinese+European would also be great. And ultimately, these systems would be more fair for applicants.

And the current topic just highlights the ridiculousness of the status quo. For most people in the US, SAT is the _only_ objective test score that they have.

[alephnerd]

> We could probably repurpose AP exams to fill a similar admissions role to A Levels

They are already being used like that in college admissions today.

> possibly use the AMC/AIME/USAMO more explicitly for admission

Already in use explicitly at most of the top CS programs today

> I do not think declining admissions rates at elite universities reflect that the students are any smarter or more prepared than they were 20 years ago, but rather they are much more cutthroat about many things that are orthogonal to being successful adults

The cutthroatness is what we should be optimizing for long term. Competition is what begets innovation.

Also, even at solid middle tier universities like UC Riverside, the calibre of student has increased dramatically over the past decade [0]

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39369724