17 ms·

Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

207 points by realbarack 6y ago

akhilcacharya 6y ago
What a weird way to attempt to be "egalitarian" - Harvard's only purpose is to be selective and exclusionary. You can't be both.
- deathgrips 6y ago
  Harvard is selective and exclusionary but it doesn't need to select the objectively best people, it just has to select people that are "good enough". Most of the value of an undergrad degree at Harvard comes from networking rather than the education itself. It's a club.
  - whymauri 6y ago
    (Unrelated, but I love, love, love your username.)
    - deathgrips 6y ago
      Thanks, I'm glad I took it.
    - hombre_fatal 6y ago
      It's just a music group.
- seisvelas 6y ago
  Maybe they found that SAT/ACT were not good criteria for selecting the best candidates.
  - andreilys 6y ago
    May or may not be related to the lawsuits they’ve been dealing with recently.
  - bsder 6y ago
    SAT/ACT tests provide "objective" data that can then be used in lawsuits to prove discrimination. Can't win the lawsuit? Eliminate the proof!
    - seltzered_ 6y ago
      You made me dig up some articles on this: Harvard did win the bias lawsuit last year (october 2019): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/harvard-ruling-admissions-racial-bias-asian-americans-latest https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/harvard-ruli... The organization challenging this is still there: https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/ https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/ Here's their latest complaint (march 2020): http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SFFA-Wisconsin-OCR-Memo-1.pdf http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c... Their latest update links to this paper (april 2020): http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/realpenalty.pdf http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c...
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      They won the lawsuit...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- whymauri 6y ago
  Don't forget that we're in a global pandemic that is severely limiting students' ability to take the test.
- SCAQTony 6y ago
  I am cynical enough to believe it's a loophole to keep overachieving Asians or Indians from owning a rightful slot instead of a son or daughter of a wealthy donor, politician, or celebrity.
  - tathougies 6y ago
    Yup. The SAT exam fee is affordable (even if expensive) to everyday people. Other qualifications like intel science fairs, extra-curriculars, trips internationally, etc are all really expensive. As the child of middle-class immigrants from Asia, it's meant to keep people like me out, and instead select for the exclusive neighborhood I now live in and the Jones's who want to keep up. Great...
  - jhowell 6y ago
    Why not both? Reconsidering the "rightful slots" of either group would diversify the institution significantly, though there are many who believe diversity is not beneficial. Perhaps Harvard sees a path to increased value in their endeavor to be more representative society.
  - eesmith 6y ago
    Is "owning" a typo for "earning"? I don't see how anyone can own a slot. To add to your cynicism, university exams started as way to select WASPy prep school students instead of "overachieving" Jewish public school students. See, the tests included a section on Latin, which was much more often taught in private prep schools than public high schools. To detract from your cynicism, the intrinsic assumption is the SATs are meaningful indicator of "rightfulness." My understanding is that at best it shows a correlation with the first year of college, and that high school grades show a better correlation than the (gameable) SAT. Don't know if the WSJ article covers any of this - don't have a subscription. But the header suggests this change is only for the next year, as a response to the pandemic, and not (yet?) a long-term change, so it likely doesn't touch on these issues.
  - vgtheone 6y ago
    Agreed.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  Would you have rejected a Harvard admit ? Are you just salty you didn't get in ?
nononono109 6y ago
A simple IQ test could separate the weeds from the chaff reasonably reliably. Of course, in these bizarre times, suggesting that an intelligence test influence admission to a top university would have many calling for my head. The cynic in me says less objective data will allow obscuring nepotism even further, so the universities would be jumping on this opportunity. Synagogue attendance will be more important than ever.
wyxuan 6y ago
important to consider distinction between test blind and test optional like harvard is doing. test blind - don't even consider SAT/ACT even if submitted test optional - will be considered if submitted, but not required. My view is that more colleges will start going test optional as August rolls around, but only colleges that have committed to eventually phasing out testing (UC system) have gone test blind for next year.
SamReidHughes 6y ago
Caltech is doing this -- actually, they're going test blind -- for two years. I think that's pretty notable, since I trust them to be interested in only admitting students that can pass their physics classes.
- deathgrips 6y ago
  I know a girl who goes to caltech. She says that they don't require you to take a compilers class to get a computer science degree. Sounds like a joke.
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    They used to require an operating systems class that used Bryant and O'Halloran. Not the Dragon book but not nothing either.
- alkibiades 6y ago
  dont worry, when the admitted student doesnt pass physics theyll say its because of systemic oppression and caltech will pad their scores to get them on their merry way
- gautamcgoel 6y ago
  I'm a PhD student at Caltech. There's also a push to eliminate the GRE as a requirement for graduate admissions, in much the same way as some people want to eliminate the SAT as a requirement for undergraduate admissions. In my opinion both proposals are well-intentioned but ultimately bad ideas.
  - memexy 6y ago
    Why are they bad ideas? I took the SAT and GRE for undergraduate and graduate schools respectively and neither was worthwhile preparation for anything I studied. If we want to put up barriers to entry then I think we can find better and more predictive ways than measuring general pattern matching skills with the SAT and GRE.
jb775 6y ago
In other words, they'll gladly accept heaps of additional application fee money while padding the "hardest college to get into" stats
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
rowawey 6y ago
Disclaimer: I didn't go to Harvard, but I did go to a private elementary school many moons ago that I mostly don't remember apart from the Apple IIe's and the mandatory shout-singing of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. This will be slightly off-topic. When my parents were shopping for private schools in the early 1980's, they said they came across a couple of schools that were still requiring pictures like Harvard and other universities did in the past. And we should all should know what that means: passive-aggressive discrimination against non-WASPs in "enlightened" 1982 Santa Clara county, California. Actually-enlightened admissions would blind the name, address, and appearance of the candidate until after they've seen what they've done, what they've written, and what they plan to do. Anything else, regardless if they drop the SAT or ACT: that reduces to bribery, legacy, appearances, connections, and/or pedigree is just social club pickiness in-order to keep "those other people" out. Someone let me know when America becomes a meritocracy based on capabilities, accomplishments, and potential rather than the folks paying lip-service to it by and claim it is already from people who have every advantage.
code4tee 6y ago
The SAT has always generally been a test showing how well you prepared for the SAT. For top schools all viable candidates had very good scores so it wasn’t much use. It was just one of those things everyone did because everyone did it. With more opting out that momentum goes away and increasingly now people are asking “so why did we use this test again?” Likely won’t be long until the SAT just disappears entirely and replaced with nothing, or subject tests or some other exams more practically linked to placement in certain programs.
- young_unixer 6y ago
  > The SAT has always generally been a test showing how well you prepared for the SAT. I don't know about the SAT specifically, but in my country we also have standardized admission tests and, from my appreciation, it's good at measuring 2 things: 1. General Intelligence. 2. How well you prepared for the test. Sure, (2) may be an undesirable artifact but I think that intelligence is a good way --if not the best-- to select people for college.
  - Traster 6y ago
    2 isn't an undesirable artifact. You want highly motivated hard working people applying to your university course. People have this idea of some genius slacker but you know what's better than a genius slacker? A genius who works hard. And frankly, most people aren't geniuses anyway.
    - eitally 6y ago
      You don't even need to raise the bar that much. A normal intelligence person who works hard is much better than a genius slacker. My experience is that a lot of people at the top of their high school classes get/stay their based on 1) general intelligence, 2) memorization skills, 3) socioeconomic advantages, 4) compliance. Of those factors, only #3 has a particular bearing on future success. At university, those who tend to be most successful as students tend to be those who are intrinsically motivated to work hard and study, and also those with socioeconomic advantages. After university, those with socioeconomic advantages tend to succeed regardless of their educational background, so there are fundamental reasons to investigate the systemic unfairness and discrimination in our society. Without trying to sound snarky, this is as linked to movements like BLM as it is to Harvard's discrimination against Asian applicants.
alkibiades 6y ago
Let's talk practically, this will hurt people who did best on SAT (asians and jewish people who studied hardest, not rich white people) and help those who did poorly (blacks and hispanics). The SAT isn't perfect and you can prepare for it (to an extent), but its alot better than GPA or any other measure as atleast it's consistent between schools. It was actually introduced to help be more egalitarian and meritocratic. And its been shown to correlate pretty well with general purpose IQ tests as well as later success in life. Removing it will no doubt help them discriminate more against asians and jewish people. they introduced meritocracy and it produced a result they didnt like for certain races so theyre removing it.
contemporary343 6y ago
I'm a Canadian who went to an ivy for undergrad, and have always found the American attachment to the SAT a bit puzzling. I'm also puzzled at the widespread view that by removing the SAT some grave injustice or lowering in standards is inevitable. Canadian universities manage to admit students mostly just based on high school grades just fine. (Yes, there are provincial final exams but those scores often are not available for admissions since they're taken in the 12th grade). The SAT itself was an odd exam for me, unlike anything I ever had to take in Canada. The SAT IIs (and AP/IB exams) on the other hand seemed like they assessed things more reasonably. The SAT's heritage as a poor attempt at an IQ test which then morphed into whatever the heck it is today, makes its utility somewhat out of place compared to what most other countries do. One issue that's brought up is heterogeneity in high school grading practices, but somehow Canada manages. In any case, for "elite" schools, what has always helped the typical middle / upper-middle class applicants are AP scores (if you have a few) and of course SAT IIs as well.
- laser 6y ago
  The most competitive universities in Canada, like McGill and UBC have 46% and 52% acceptance rates. Canada has more of a culture of going to college in the province you grew up. To compare that to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. that have sub-10% admittance rates and have to review tens of thousands of applications is failing to realize the scope of the problem these schools face in selecting students.
  - contemporary343 6y ago
    I'm very familiar with the scope of the admissions challenge and it's not really an issue of number of applicants. Most universities already have an understanding of different high schools (though often biased to wealthier communities). As for Canada, specific programs at Canadian schools can be quite selective - for example EngSci at the University of Toronto has a ~10% admission rate. Other programs are more like state schools in the US. Most elite schools in the US are still pretty regional heavy. For example 35% of Stanford undergrads are from CA and something like 30-40% of Harvard undergrads are from New England and the mid-atlantic.
filereaper 6y ago
I highly recommend watching the video by Scott Galloway on The College Implosion. [1] "Colleges have become luxury brands and are adopting a strategy of artificial scarcity to create irrational margins" There's a large movement right now where many are saying the large tuition fees for Zoom lectures aren't worth it. Colleges sell themselves for the experience and are a luxury lifestyle brand almost, but with covid the lifestyle aspect of it is wiped out, so its reasonable that students are asking why they'd pay such high premiums. I think removing SAT, ACT casts a wider net and hopefully allows more students to enroll, what's the scaling limitation if everyone's doing lectures on Zoom? Presumably everyone's also getting graded electronically in some way. [1]: https://youtu.be/d8kwzSTITP0 https://youtu.be/d8kwzSTITP0
- beaner 6y ago
  I don't get it, aren't most colleges non-profits? Why do they seek such high tuition fees if they're not profiting? Or are they, somehow?
  - wespiser_2018 6y ago
    They are non-profit, but bureaucracy begets bureaucracy. The growth in higher education from raised tuition partly goes towards better facilities, but most of the money is going towards administration. That, plus a competitive environment, has almost makes a zero sum game where colleges offer more services to attract a dwindling pool of full-pay students.
  - laser 6y ago
    Incentives are a lot more complicated than simply being non-profit = altruistic mission optimizing. The president makes a million bucks a year. Faculty pursue status, power, and resources for research or personal interest. Alumni often wish to keep their institution exclusive and elite to increase the value of their degree and average member of their community, and provide resources to their institutions (Donations) as a means of control over “mission”. Of course, that’s all on the pretty cynical side and the majority of people I think are overall aligned with the mission of providing the best possible education and research environments. But, the above is where Scott is coming from, and certainly holds some water. Particularly in his area of academia ahem business schools ahem.
wespiser_2018 6y ago
This makes sense: Harvard has a huge issue with discrimination against Asian Americans, who are not represented according to their ACT/SAT score distribution. If Harvard could waive away these scores, they can continue their admissions policy that favor students from wealthy families who pay full price, and are likely to be institutional givers after graduation by focusing on admission factors that are much less accountable, like "personality". Student's for Fair Admissions is in the process of suing Harvard over discrimination, and their website (with legal filings) is probably the single best source of information on Ivy League admissions: https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/updates/ https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/updates/
- contemporary343 6y ago
  They lost the lawsuit: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/harvard-admissions-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/harvard-admissions-law...
  - graeme 6y ago
    It’s being appealed. That’s in your article.
- mtgp1000 6y ago
  >This makes sense: Harvard has a huge issue with discrimination against Asian Americans, who are not represented according to their ACT/SAT score distribution. If Harvard could waive away these scores, they can continue their admissions policy that favor students from wealthy families who pay full price, and are likely to be institutional givers after graduation by focusing on admission factors that are much less accountable, like "personality". Please. This is about affirmative action for people who aren't Asian or White. Not wealthy donors. The argument is that lack of privilege causes poor SAT scores which is preventing certain minorities from realizing their potential, and that this justifies selectively lowering the bar and allocating additional resources. But this is all based on a conflation between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity.
  - 6y ago
mtgp1000 6y ago
The only value colleges can hold comes from the rigor that ensures scarcity of degrees. Lowering the bar in a naive attempt to bring college to everyone only devalued the degree, and now we are seeing the slow decay of even our most prestigious universities. No good will come from ignoring the natural distribution of intelligence.
throwawaysea 6y ago
This recent trend of eliminating the SAT/ACT reads to me like: “Let’s eliminate these measures that allow high performing students to objectively differentiate themselves, in favor of a more opaque admissions process where we can implement discriminatory policies without scrutiny.”
- DethNinja 6y ago
  I’m originally from a third world country and those practices look unbelievably awful to me. If this happened at a corrupt country, you can bet that university would be full of students that entered there just by nepotism, it is also very effective for discriminating against minorities. I get that USA isn’t as corrupt as many of the third world countries but it is going there with slow and steady steps, removing SAT scores might make USA lose it’s scientific status in near future.
- mrlala 6y ago
  >allow high performing students to objectively differentiate themselves Except the argument by people is it's NOT objective. I think the argument goes something like this: rich kid gets full time tutor privately or through school and is able to do significantly better on the SAT/ACT because they have specifically prepared for it. It doesn't mean they are smarter, or even a better student. It means they have been prepped better for it than their peers that don't have the same luxuries. If 95% of the time a student scores higher after taking an expensive prep course, does that mean scoring higher really means much? Especially with SO many people taking the test, that little bit makes a difference where are you on the curve.. perhaps people are thinking that the kids whose parents can afford the time and money to give them a slightly advantage on the test doesn't translate into that person being a better student.
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    This is a myth. Almost nobody, even among "rich kids", gets a full time tutor for the SAT/ACT. Most just use the same cheap tools everyone else does - a Barron's test prep book.
- 6y ago
charliebrownau 6y ago
Why even ask students to turn up, try and write assignments IF your going to throw out grades you already threw out effort and merit
charliebrownau 6y ago
Time to finally admit that goverment/tax payer western unis are brainwashing centres to create Global left commies in AU+NZ+UK+CA+USA
akyu 6y ago
I have a hard time understanding the logic here. GPAs are essentially useless, so what else do we have to go off of? "Hollistic admissions" processes seem to be even more skewed towards rich kids, as they have far greater opportunities outside of the class room to pad their resumes in exactly the way that colleges look for. This seems entirely backwards to me. If there is a systemic bias in test scores, it is still better to have the test score there so you can quantify it, and adjust your admissions policy to account for it. By throwing out the test entirely you are flying blind.
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  How else are you going to keep the Asians out?
  - jerf 6y ago
    Sarcastically phrased, but it's the real answer. The colleges need to shed objective measures so they can continue their social programs unimpeded by any objective standards that might reveal their increasingly obvious biases. If you want to get into Harvard, I recommend striving to demonstrate greater fealty to the hardest of hard left-wing ideals than your fellow applicants, as that will become the real criterion for admission as fast as they feel like they can make it.
    - new2628 6y ago
      You made an insightful if uncomfortable comment. You will be voted down into oblivion.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - mauflows 6y ago
      Couldn't diversity be considered an objectively good thing to strive to have? Anecdotally, I went to a technical school but some of my biggest shifts in perspective came from interacting with liberal arts and minority students.
surround 6y ago
http://archive.is/mTOUo http://archive.is/mTOUo
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
There's a lot of commentary here about larger trends towards not requiring the SAT, but Harvard says this isn't part of a larger trend. They just don't want to require students to go to a testing center in the middle of a pandemic, and nobody knows at this point what remote administration options will be available before 2021 applications are due.
tinyhouse 6y ago
Harvard can be corrupt. There's a very average girl in my town who wouldn't get admitted to grad school at Harvard if her dad wasn't a law professor at Harvard. Regarding asians. It's not about race. Diversity in academia is important for many reasons. It's not about being asian, it's about living in a rich family at a top school district, regardless of your race. A poor kid from a bad neighborhood cannot compete with that. The key is to find those who can close the gap. Taking someone's background into consideration is the right thing to do. There's some subjectivity in the process, so it's not ideal and someone would always be upset, but it's better than just looking at test scores. To give you an example. I have friends who live at one of the top school districts in MA. In the last 3 years of their daughter's high school, they optimized her acceptance to college. Spending a lot of money on private lessons, making sure she volunteers in the right places since it looks good on the college application, paying money for a local expert to help her with the admission essay, etc. This is on top of the fact that she is already at a great high school who is optimized for getting its students into top schools.
- pcurve 6y ago
  "I have a very average girl in my town who got admitted to grad school at Harvard only because her dad is a law professor at Harvard." I'm not saying Harvard isn't corrupt, but admitting professor's kid isn't really the best indicator of corruption. It's nothing unusual in many schools and they don't hide it.
  - js2 6y ago
    I can understand the employment perk of making tuition free for employees' kids, but I'm less sure about reserving a slot. If I can make an analogy: as an employee of Verizon, I get a 50% discount on service, but when a new iPhone comes out, I'm not allowed to purchase it until after it's widely available. I would think the child of a college professor likely already has an academic leg up on your average kid. Those kids maybe even more than others really should have to have the grades to get in.
    - knolax 6y ago
Vervious 6y ago
I remain skeptical that admissions committees can distinguish between great students and good students through their personal statements. (Not that the SAT would have helped there either)
- crimsonalucard5 6y ago
  The objective here isn't to identify good students. That's just the cover story. The objective is to select on criteria other than intelligence. For example, race.
  - Vervious 6y ago
    Seems like a very idealogical thing to argue without evidence
    - crimsonalucard5 6y ago
      You're not wrong. But there's no evidence arguing the contrary either.
ylem 6y ago
It's often good to question assumptions. I happened to do well on SATs/ACTs, so I could be biased in their favor. But, I was curious--what is the actual predictive value of SATs/ACTs on college outcomes such as say GPA or graduation rate. This study would suggest that it's actually more predictive (at least in Alaska) than test scores: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=4546 https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectI... Has anyone else found other studies? I would be shocked if there isn't some kind of meta-analysis. Before getting into any discussion about social issues, let's see whether the tests are actually predictive. Or, if it's just a cargo cult. My intuition was that these tests (ACT/SAT) would help to normalize for different levels of schools, but I will go with data over intuition. In some sense, this move by Harvard will allow for a natural experiment to see if there are actually changes in outcomes when GPAs are/are not considered.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  The UC system has dropped SAT/ACT as well because the Regents determined them to be racist. In spite of internal studies at UC schools that determined that the way the test scores are being used is not racist or discriminatory.
whotheffknows 6y ago
It's amazing to me ivy league universities have done this in the face of uncertainty and extreme anxiety now that we have evidence that elongated sustained anxiety and chaos in one's life can reduce someone's IQ, I just didn't think they would be so blatantly obvious to do if when something globally devastating enough happened to be distracting to even rich white people as well, when students coming from poverty are dealing with distractions that are often worse regardless. Sometimes it truly takes a rich white person to experience something before they believe it can happen to anybody else, and then they make a decision everyone else benefits from. Here's to new beginnings. I'm curious how well rich white students who have never been exposed to chaos and uncertainty of this magnitude will fair in comparison to incoming students who have been dealing with it their whole life, a much better IMHO indicator for success in this "uncertain" times.
aiisahik 6y ago
As an Asian who went to an Ivy, I welcome this change. Yes, it will mask a policy of keeping the proportion of Asians lower than a race neutral policy. Yes, it's racially discriminatory. Yes, it's somewhat unfair to Asians who are trying to get in. But no, being fair isn't the point of these schools. Nor is having the most academically excellent student population. If you want that, go to Berkeley or CalTech. The point is to provide an exclusive and desirable brand name. If the school ended up being 50% Asian like Californian colleges, it would be less diverse, less interesting place to go to school, and lose a lot of the cachet. I wouldn't want to go to a college that is 50% Asian and 1% black over a college that reflected the demographics of the country. Asians parents need to learn that life isn't just about testing better and having a better resume. Their kids will learn that lesson later on in life but time they learned it earlier.
- msrmthehomeless 6y ago
  > The point is to provide an exclusive and desirable brand name Brand names are fundamentally based on merit, not by implementing some initiative that any school can do in a year. Harvard is Harvard and not some no-name college because of adherence of its incredibly selective hiring process over the years
- tikthot 6y ago
  > The point is to provide an exclusive and desirable brand name Brand names are fundamentally based on merit, not by implementing some initiative that any school can do in a few months. Harvard is Harvard and not some no-name college because of its adherence to a incredibly selective admission process over the years.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  Yep, Asians need to learn how to play the race politics card. All those white politicians didn't get into the white house because they had good grades, but because they knew how to play to the crowd. In a democratic society, if you don't know how to get others to like you you'll always be screwed by someone who does. Remember, the employee that gets promoted isn't the one that works the hardest, but the one that their coworkers like the best. Reality isn't school, you aren't judged by the letters on a report card but how well you can navigate through a society made of other individuals. Whether that's by kissing up to white male bosses on wall street or being surrounded by minority activists on main street, social manipulation skills gives much more leverage than hard technical skills.
fortran77 6y ago
I suspect this will help "privileged" kids more than disadvantaged ones. They have parents that can pull strings to get high school grades inflated or attend special schools for "bright" kids that inflate grades and have the support to get good extracurricular activities to appear well-rounded. And they have help writing college application essays, etc.
retortio 6y ago
Ah, those pesky standardized tests. Sure they're the hardest part of admissions to game and are a major part of establishing an even intellectual playing field for applicants, but it just looks so bad when we discard a much higher proportion of qualified Asian applicants than qualified applicants from other groups! We were even sued over this issue and the suit is going to appeal! And we're trying so hard to increase the numbers of admitted applicants from other groups but their standardized testing scores just aren't up to snuff... I know! Let's just get rid of the tests! Then we can enforce whatever arbitrary (and race based) standards we want without annoying complaints that we're discriminating against qualified applicants. What's that? By enforcing artificial "race" quotas we're just further dividing people based on race? Nonsense, our humanities department tells us that reifying race and obsessing over it is the best way to achieve a post racial society!
- kory 6y ago
  The problem is that standardized tests worsen the gap between the privileged and not. Test performance correlates strongly with how much prep you receive. Wealthy, white & asian students have the advantage there. Not to mention that I am not convinced these tests strongly correlate with one’s ability to successfully complete an undergrad degree.
  - retortio 6y ago
    What's harder: gaining admission to a prestigious private high school that costs $50,000 a year or getting a few cheap SAT test books, watching some free YouTube videos and practicing for a few weeks? The point is that the SAT can be practiced for (to a small extent), but the resources necessary to improve one's score are cheap and widely available. It's one of the most equitable aspects of college admissions we have.
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    > Not to mention that I am not convinced these tests strongly correlate with one’s ability to successfully complete an undergrad degree. I'm pretty sure that they do, at least if you're looking at the set of all students and not "students who got into university X". (If you only look at students who got in, you get issues like this [0] where height does not correlate with performance in the NBA, likely because short guys in the NBA had to be more skilled to get there in the first place) After all, the ACT/SAT are largely poor IQ tests, and IQ really does predict academic success... 0: https://twitter.com/page_eco/status/1160900306588164096 https://twitter.com/page_eco/status/1160900306588164096
mikekoscinski 6y ago
I struggle to understand how this benefits applicants. So long as SAT/ACT is accepted at all, students should (and, mostly likely, will) continue to take them. This is a very obvious illustration of game theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma. [1] Refusing to accept SAT/ACT scores would cause a profound change. Whether or not that is advisable is a separate discussion. The question begs, if we eliminate the SAT/ACT, and we decry GPAs as non-standardized, then what? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
tombert 6y ago
Very mixed feelings on this. I got terrible grades throughout high school (despite taking AP classes), and the only reason I was able to attend college was because I had very high ACT scores (perfect in English, and 2 points away from perfect in Math). The way I see it there are two kind of perspectives you can take on this: A) I was a lazy kid who skated by and short-circuited my way through college or B) the school system failed me and I shouldn't be punished by not being able to attend college. Honestly, I tend to gravitate toward option A, but it does make me wonder how much weight we should really assign to GPAs.
mathattack 6y ago
“Not requiring” is about ratings. It allows schools to increase the amount of applicants making the school seem more selective. Meanwhile, they only report the test scores of good test takers, so the average increases too. For a school like Harvard, once you’re in it’s hard to fail out. If you have a 4.0 GPA, the SATs won’t help you keep from failing. So better for them to only report the 1500s and not the 1300s.
macspoofing 6y ago
That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque from the point of view of the applicant. Also, the applicant pool will rise because there is no SAT filter. Having said that, I don't think it's a big deal because nobody needs to go to Harvard. In fact, if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or if you don't have a full scholarship, Harvard tuition is not worth the degree and student loans you end up with.
- defen 6y ago
  Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. If you can't afford Harvard tuition it's free - e.g. if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. So yes, it's actually massively worth it if you can get in, because you graduate with no debt and have a name-brand diploma and access to an extremely well-connected group of people. It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier institutions and take on massive debt who should reconsider college, not the ones going to Harvard. https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet
  - L_Rahman 6y ago
    As someone who was accepted and got to see their financial aid package, I have to mention that it's extremely generous as well. They don't just cover room and board and tuition, there's an understanding that you're poorer than your peers at the university so there's general spending money, money to buy winter clothes, money to fly home 2x-3x a year. This is a rounding error for Harvard, but I didn't realize how limiting not having that would be at the school I ended up going to (which only covered tuition and most of room and board).
    - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
      So where was better than Harvard for you?
      - 6y ago
Hitton 6y ago
Very considerate of them. Now the affluent parent won't need to abase themselves to bribing and fabricating sports credentials[0], it will just work out on its own. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_bribery_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber...
rb808 6y ago
There are two conflicting attitudes for Prestige universities A) Ivies/Standford are better than regular universities because they have resources, powerful alumni and well connected students B) They should let XYZ in because they have great test scores If B was really the most important A would no longer be true.
zarkov99 6y ago
So now they can have exactly the demographics they want. Those pesky objective criteria kept creating inequality.
wildermuthn 6y ago
Predicting a human being’s ability to “succeed”, regardless of domain, is very difficult. The insights from YC’s process might be useful. While intelligence is important, it isn’t the most important variable. What matters most is a determined-to-succeed-at-all-costs team. In the case of education, it makes sense to have some kind of threshold for general competence (GPA for instance) which is required, but subsequently to focus more on the “team” aspect of education. What kind of culture are you attempting to build on your campus? What kind of people are you trying to form? That’s the purpose of education, not technical mastery (that comes later). Having said that, even a group like YC could use a standardized test to accurately measure that intangible force behind grit/determination, the force that drives a person to be a creatively unstoppable force of success. Of even more value would be a measurement contextual to environmental factors: i.e., higher or lower scores depending on what kind of people you are surrounded by, what kind of tasks you are confronted by. To do that you’d probably have to model (predict) society itself, and then you’d have implemented Foundation. In other words, this is a problem much harder than whether or not to use standardized tests for college applicants. We don’t know how to predict the future of individuals and societies. It may be impossible. But if you’re looking for an embarrassingly ambitious startup idea, this sure seems like a good candidate.
diebeforei485 6y ago
Ultimately this gives the admissions committee a lot less transparency in terms of whom they choose to admit. In light of recent scandals, I am not sure that is a good thing. It may be well-intentioned today, but will ultimately be to the benefit of legacy and donor applicants, and to the detriment of others. Perhaps Harvard with its endowment doesn't need the money and won't give in to the temptation, but this also sets the standard for other universities - and many of them could use the money.
kvnnews 6y ago
Keyword seems to be require. I would think it’s still a factor. If you forego the tests you should be prepared to prove yourself by other means I guess. I wouldn’t take those chances though if I wanted in to Harvard. Although maybe I don’t understand the function of 21st century university anymore.

207 points by realbarack 6y ago

What a weird way to attempt to be "egalitarian" - Harvard's only purpose is to be selective and exclusionary. You can't be both.

deathgrips 6y ago
Harvard is selective and exclusionary but it doesn't need to select the objectively best people, it just has to select people that are "good enough". Most of the value of an undergrad degree at Harvard comes from networking rather than the education itself. It's a club.
- whymauri 6y ago
  (Unrelated, but I love, love, love your username.)
  - deathgrips 6y ago
    Thanks, I'm glad I took it.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    It's just a music group.
seisvelas 6y ago
Maybe they found that SAT/ACT were not good criteria for selecting the best candidates.
- andreilys 6y ago
  May or may not be related to the lawsuits they’ve been dealing with recently.
- bsder 6y ago
  SAT/ACT tests provide "objective" data that can then be used in lawsuits to prove discrimination. Can't win the lawsuit? Eliminate the proof!
  - seltzered_ 6y ago
    You made me dig up some articles on this: Harvard did win the bias lawsuit last year (october 2019): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/harvard-ruling-admissions-racial-bias-asian-americans-latest https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/harvard-ruli... The organization challenging this is still there: https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/ https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/ Here's their latest complaint (march 2020): http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SFFA-Wisconsin-OCR-Memo-1.pdf http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c... Their latest update links to this paper (april 2020): http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/realpenalty.pdf http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c...
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    They won the lawsuit...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
whymauri 6y ago
Don't forget that we're in a global pandemic that is severely limiting students' ability to take the test.
SCAQTony 6y ago
I am cynical enough to believe it's a loophole to keep overachieving Asians or Indians from owning a rightful slot instead of a son or daughter of a wealthy donor, politician, or celebrity.
- tathougies 6y ago
  Yup. The SAT exam fee is affordable (even if expensive) to everyday people. Other qualifications like intel science fairs, extra-curriculars, trips internationally, etc are all really expensive. As the child of middle-class immigrants from Asia, it's meant to keep people like me out, and instead select for the exclusive neighborhood I now live in and the Jones's who want to keep up. Great...
- jhowell 6y ago
  Why not both? Reconsidering the "rightful slots" of either group would diversify the institution significantly, though there are many who believe diversity is not beneficial. Perhaps Harvard sees a path to increased value in their endeavor to be more representative society.
- eesmith 6y ago
  Is "owning" a typo for "earning"? I don't see how anyone can own a slot. To add to your cynicism, university exams started as way to select WASPy prep school students instead of "overachieving" Jewish public school students. See, the tests included a section on Latin, which was much more often taught in private prep schools than public high schools. To detract from your cynicism, the intrinsic assumption is the SATs are meaningful indicator of "rightfulness." My understanding is that at best it shows a correlation with the first year of college, and that high school grades show a better correlation than the (gameable) SAT. Don't know if the WSJ article covers any of this - don't have a subscription. But the header suggests this change is only for the next year, as a response to the pandemic, and not (yet?) a long-term change, so it likely doesn't touch on these issues.
- vgtheone 6y ago
  Agreed.
mav3rick 6y ago
Would you have rejected a Harvard admit ? Are you just salty you didn't get in ?

nononono109 6y ago

A simple IQ test could separate the weeds from the chaff reasonably reliably. Of course, in these bizarre times, suggesting that an intelligence test influence admission to a top university would have many calling for my head. The cynic in me says less objective data will allow obscuring nepotism even further, so the universities would be jumping on this opportunity. Synagogue attendance will be more important than ever.

wyxuan 6y ago

important to consider distinction between test blind and test optional like harvard is doing. test blind - don't even consider SAT/ACT even if submitted test optional - will be considered if submitted, but not required. My view is that more colleges will start going test optional as August rolls around, but only colleges that have committed to eventually phasing out testing (UC system) have gone test blind for next year.

SamReidHughes 6y ago

Caltech is doing this -- actually, they're going test blind -- for two years. I think that's pretty notable, since I trust them to be interested in only admitting students that can pass their physics classes.

deathgrips 6y ago
I know a girl who goes to caltech. She says that they don't require you to take a compilers class to get a computer science degree. Sounds like a joke.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  They used to require an operating systems class that used Bryant and O'Halloran. Not the Dragon book but not nothing either.
alkibiades 6y ago
dont worry, when the admitted student doesnt pass physics theyll say its because of systemic oppression and caltech will pad their scores to get them on their merry way
gautamcgoel 6y ago
I'm a PhD student at Caltech. There's also a push to eliminate the GRE as a requirement for graduate admissions, in much the same way as some people want to eliminate the SAT as a requirement for undergraduate admissions. In my opinion both proposals are well-intentioned but ultimately bad ideas.
- memexy 6y ago
  Why are they bad ideas? I took the SAT and GRE for undergraduate and graduate schools respectively and neither was worthwhile preparation for anything I studied. If we want to put up barriers to entry then I think we can find better and more predictive ways than measuring general pattern matching skills with the SAT and GRE.

jb775 6y ago

In other words, they'll gladly accept heaps of additional application fee money while padding the "hardest college to get into" stats

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

rowawey 6y ago

Disclaimer: I didn't go to Harvard, but I did go to a private elementary school many moons ago that I mostly don't remember apart from the Apple IIe's and the mandatory shout-singing of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. This will be slightly off-topic. When my parents were shopping for private schools in the early 1980's, they said they came across a couple of schools that were still requiring pictures like Harvard and other universities did in the past. And we should all should know what that means: passive-aggressive discrimination against non-WASPs in "enlightened" 1982 Santa Clara county, California. Actually-enlightened admissions would blind the name, address, and appearance of the candidate until after they've seen what they've done, what they've written, and what they plan to do. Anything else, regardless if they drop the SAT or ACT: that reduces to bribery, legacy, appearances, connections, and/or pedigree is just social club pickiness in-order to keep "those other people" out. Someone let me know when America becomes a meritocracy based on capabilities, accomplishments, and potential rather than the folks paying lip-service to it by and claim it is already from people who have every advantage.

code4tee 6y ago

The SAT has always generally been a test showing how well you prepared for the SAT. For top schools all viable candidates had very good scores so it wasn’t much use. It was just one of those things everyone did because everyone did it. With more opting out that momentum goes away and increasingly now people are asking “so why did we use this test again?” Likely won’t be long until the SAT just disappears entirely and replaced with nothing, or subject tests or some other exams more practically linked to placement in certain programs.

young_unixer 6y ago
> The SAT has always generally been a test showing how well you prepared for the SAT. I don't know about the SAT specifically, but in my country we also have standardized admission tests and, from my appreciation, it's good at measuring 2 things: 1. General Intelligence. 2. How well you prepared for the test. Sure, (2) may be an undesirable artifact but I think that intelligence is a good way --if not the best-- to select people for college.
- Traster 6y ago
  2 isn't an undesirable artifact. You want highly motivated hard working people applying to your university course. People have this idea of some genius slacker but you know what's better than a genius slacker? A genius who works hard. And frankly, most people aren't geniuses anyway.
  - eitally 6y ago
    You don't even need to raise the bar that much. A normal intelligence person who works hard is much better than a genius slacker. My experience is that a lot of people at the top of their high school classes get/stay their based on 1) general intelligence, 2) memorization skills, 3) socioeconomic advantages, 4) compliance. Of those factors, only #3 has a particular bearing on future success. At university, those who tend to be most successful as students tend to be those who are intrinsically motivated to work hard and study, and also those with socioeconomic advantages. After university, those with socioeconomic advantages tend to succeed regardless of their educational background, so there are fundamental reasons to investigate the systemic unfairness and discrimination in our society. Without trying to sound snarky, this is as linked to movements like BLM as it is to Harvard's discrimination against Asian applicants.

alkibiades 6y ago

Let's talk practically, this will hurt people who did best on SAT (asians and jewish people who studied hardest, not rich white people) and help those who did poorly (blacks and hispanics). The SAT isn't perfect and you can prepare for it (to an extent), but its alot better than GPA or any other measure as atleast it's consistent between schools. It was actually introduced to help be more egalitarian and meritocratic. And its been shown to correlate pretty well with general purpose IQ tests as well as later success in life. Removing it will no doubt help them discriminate more against asians and jewish people. they introduced meritocracy and it produced a result they didnt like for certain races so theyre removing it.

contemporary343 6y ago

I'm a Canadian who went to an ivy for undergrad, and have always found the American attachment to the SAT a bit puzzling. I'm also puzzled at the widespread view that by removing the SAT some grave injustice or lowering in standards is inevitable. Canadian universities manage to admit students mostly just based on high school grades just fine. (Yes, there are provincial final exams but those scores often are not available for admissions since they're taken in the 12th grade). The SAT itself was an odd exam for me, unlike anything I ever had to take in Canada. The SAT IIs (and AP/IB exams) on the other hand seemed like they assessed things more reasonably. The SAT's heritage as a poor attempt at an IQ test which then morphed into whatever the heck it is today, makes its utility somewhat out of place compared to what most other countries do. One issue that's brought up is heterogeneity in high school grading practices, but somehow Canada manages. In any case, for "elite" schools, what has always helped the typical middle / upper-middle class applicants are AP scores (if you have a few) and of course SAT IIs as well.

laser 6y ago
The most competitive universities in Canada, like McGill and UBC have 46% and 52% acceptance rates. Canada has more of a culture of going to college in the province you grew up. To compare that to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. that have sub-10% admittance rates and have to review tens of thousands of applications is failing to realize the scope of the problem these schools face in selecting students.
- contemporary343 6y ago
  I'm very familiar with the scope of the admissions challenge and it's not really an issue of number of applicants. Most universities already have an understanding of different high schools (though often biased to wealthier communities). As for Canada, specific programs at Canadian schools can be quite selective - for example EngSci at the University of Toronto has a ~10% admission rate. Other programs are more like state schools in the US. Most elite schools in the US are still pretty regional heavy. For example 35% of Stanford undergrads are from CA and something like 30-40% of Harvard undergrads are from New England and the mid-atlantic.

filereaper 6y ago

I highly recommend watching the video by Scott Galloway on The College Implosion. [1] "Colleges have become luxury brands and are adopting a strategy of artificial scarcity to create irrational margins" There's a large movement right now where many are saying the large tuition fees for Zoom lectures aren't worth it. Colleges sell themselves for the experience and are a luxury lifestyle brand almost, but with covid the lifestyle aspect of it is wiped out, so its reasonable that students are asking why they'd pay such high premiums. I think removing SAT, ACT casts a wider net and hopefully allows more students to enroll, what's the scaling limitation if everyone's doing lectures on Zoom? Presumably everyone's also getting graded electronically in some way. [1]: https://youtu.be/d8kwzSTITP0 https://youtu.be/d8kwzSTITP0

beaner 6y ago
I don't get it, aren't most colleges non-profits? Why do they seek such high tuition fees if they're not profiting? Or are they, somehow?
- wespiser_2018 6y ago
  They are non-profit, but bureaucracy begets bureaucracy. The growth in higher education from raised tuition partly goes towards better facilities, but most of the money is going towards administration. That, plus a competitive environment, has almost makes a zero sum game where colleges offer more services to attract a dwindling pool of full-pay students.
- laser 6y ago
  Incentives are a lot more complicated than simply being non-profit = altruistic mission optimizing. The president makes a million bucks a year. Faculty pursue status, power, and resources for research or personal interest. Alumni often wish to keep their institution exclusive and elite to increase the value of their degree and average member of their community, and provide resources to their institutions (Donations) as a means of control over “mission”. Of course, that’s all on the pretty cynical side and the majority of people I think are overall aligned with the mission of providing the best possible education and research environments. But, the above is where Scott is coming from, and certainly holds some water. Particularly in his area of academia ahem business schools ahem.

wespiser_2018 6y ago

This makes sense: Harvard has a huge issue with discrimination against Asian Americans, who are not represented according to their ACT/SAT score distribution. If Harvard could waive away these scores, they can continue their admissions policy that favor students from wealthy families who pay full price, and are likely to be institutional givers after graduation by focusing on admission factors that are much less accountable, like "personality". Student's for Fair Admissions is in the process of suing Harvard over discrimination, and their website (with legal filings) is probably the single best source of information on Ivy League admissions: https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/updates/ https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/updates/

contemporary343 6y ago
They lost the lawsuit: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/harvard-admissions-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/harvard-admissions-law...
- graeme 6y ago
  It’s being appealed. That’s in your article.
mtgp1000 6y ago
>This makes sense: Harvard has a huge issue with discrimination against Asian Americans, who are not represented according to their ACT/SAT score distribution. If Harvard could waive away these scores, they can continue their admissions policy that favor students from wealthy families who pay full price, and are likely to be institutional givers after graduation by focusing on admission factors that are much less accountable, like "personality". Please. This is about affirmative action for people who aren't Asian or White. Not wealthy donors. The argument is that lack of privilege causes poor SAT scores which is preventing certain minorities from realizing their potential, and that this justifies selectively lowering the bar and allocating additional resources. But this is all based on a conflation between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity.
- 6y ago

mtgp1000 6y ago

The only value colleges can hold comes from the rigor that ensures scarcity of degrees. Lowering the bar in a naive attempt to bring college to everyone only devalued the degree, and now we are seeing the slow decay of even our most prestigious universities. No good will come from ignoring the natural distribution of intelligence.

throwawaysea 6y ago

This recent trend of eliminating the SAT/ACT reads to me like: “Let’s eliminate these measures that allow high performing students to objectively differentiate themselves, in favor of a more opaque admissions process where we can implement discriminatory policies without scrutiny.”

DethNinja 6y ago
I’m originally from a third world country and those practices look unbelievably awful to me. If this happened at a corrupt country, you can bet that university would be full of students that entered there just by nepotism, it is also very effective for discriminating against minorities. I get that USA isn’t as corrupt as many of the third world countries but it is going there with slow and steady steps, removing SAT scores might make USA lose it’s scientific status in near future.
mrlala 6y ago
>allow high performing students to objectively differentiate themselves Except the argument by people is it's NOT objective. I think the argument goes something like this: rich kid gets full time tutor privately or through school and is able to do significantly better on the SAT/ACT because they have specifically prepared for it. It doesn't mean they are smarter, or even a better student. It means they have been prepped better for it than their peers that don't have the same luxuries. If 95% of the time a student scores higher after taking an expensive prep course, does that mean scoring higher really means much? Especially with SO many people taking the test, that little bit makes a difference where are you on the curve.. perhaps people are thinking that the kids whose parents can afford the time and money to give them a slightly advantage on the test doesn't translate into that person being a better student.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  This is a myth. Almost nobody, even among "rich kids", gets a full time tutor for the SAT/ACT. Most just use the same cheap tools everyone else does - a Barron's test prep book.
6y ago

charliebrownau 6y ago

Why even ask students to turn up, try and write assignments IF your going to throw out grades you already threw out effort and merit

charliebrownau 6y ago

Time to finally admit that goverment/tax payer western unis are brainwashing centres to create Global left commies in AU+NZ+UK+CA+USA

akyu 6y ago

I have a hard time understanding the logic here. GPAs are essentially useless, so what else do we have to go off of? "Hollistic admissions" processes seem to be even more skewed towards rich kids, as they have far greater opportunities outside of the class room to pad their resumes in exactly the way that colleges look for. This seems entirely backwards to me. If there is a systemic bias in test scores, it is still better to have the test score there so you can quantify it, and adjust your admissions policy to account for it. By throwing out the test entirely you are flying blind.

travisoneill1 6y ago
How else are you going to keep the Asians out?
- jerf 6y ago
  Sarcastically phrased, but it's the real answer. The colleges need to shed objective measures so they can continue their social programs unimpeded by any objective standards that might reveal their increasingly obvious biases. If you want to get into Harvard, I recommend striving to demonstrate greater fealty to the hardest of hard left-wing ideals than your fellow applicants, as that will become the real criterion for admission as fast as they feel like they can make it.
  - new2628 6y ago
    You made an insightful if uncomfortable comment. You will be voted down into oblivion.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mauflows 6y ago
    Couldn't diversity be considered an objectively good thing to strive to have? Anecdotally, I went to a technical school but some of my biggest shifts in perspective came from interacting with liberal arts and minority students.

surround 6y ago

http://archive.is/mTOUo http://archive.is/mTOUo

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

There's a lot of commentary here about larger trends towards not requiring the SAT, but Harvard says this isn't part of a larger trend. They just don't want to require students to go to a testing center in the middle of a pandemic, and nobody knows at this point what remote administration options will be available before 2021 applications are due.

tinyhouse 6y ago

Harvard can be corrupt. There's a very average girl in my town who wouldn't get admitted to grad school at Harvard if her dad wasn't a law professor at Harvard. Regarding asians. It's not about race. Diversity in academia is important for many reasons. It's not about being asian, it's about living in a rich family at a top school district, regardless of your race. A poor kid from a bad neighborhood cannot compete with that. The key is to find those who can close the gap. Taking someone's background into consideration is the right thing to do. There's some subjectivity in the process, so it's not ideal and someone would always be upset, but it's better than just looking at test scores. To give you an example. I have friends who live at one of the top school districts in MA. In the last 3 years of their daughter's high school, they optimized her acceptance to college. Spending a lot of money on private lessons, making sure she volunteers in the right places since it looks good on the college application, paying money for a local expert to help her with the admission essay, etc. This is on top of the fact that she is already at a great high school who is optimized for getting its students into top schools.

pcurve 6y ago
"I have a very average girl in my town who got admitted to grad school at Harvard only because her dad is a law professor at Harvard." I'm not saying Harvard isn't corrupt, but admitting professor's kid isn't really the best indicator of corruption. It's nothing unusual in many schools and they don't hide it.
- js2 6y ago
  I can understand the employment perk of making tuition free for employees' kids, but I'm less sure about reserving a slot. If I can make an analogy: as an employee of Verizon, I get a 50% discount on service, but when a new iPhone comes out, I'm not allowed to purchase it until after it's widely available. I would think the child of a college professor likely already has an academic leg up on your average kid. Those kids maybe even more than others really should have to have the grades to get in.
  - knolax 6y ago

Vervious 6y ago

I remain skeptical that admissions committees can distinguish between great students and good students through their personal statements. (Not that the SAT would have helped there either)

crimsonalucard5 6y ago
The objective here isn't to identify good students. That's just the cover story. The objective is to select on criteria other than intelligence. For example, race.
- Vervious 6y ago
  Seems like a very idealogical thing to argue without evidence
  - crimsonalucard5 6y ago
    You're not wrong. But there's no evidence arguing the contrary either.

ylem 6y ago

It's often good to question assumptions. I happened to do well on SATs/ACTs, so I could be biased in their favor. But, I was curious--what is the actual predictive value of SATs/ACTs on college outcomes such as say GPA or graduation rate. This study would suggest that it's actually more predictive (at least in Alaska) than test scores: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=4546 https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectI... Has anyone else found other studies? I would be shocked if there isn't some kind of meta-analysis. Before getting into any discussion about social issues, let's see whether the tests are actually predictive. Or, if it's just a cargo cult. My intuition was that these tests (ACT/SAT) would help to normalize for different levels of schools, but I will go with data over intuition. In some sense, this move by Harvard will allow for a natural experiment to see if there are actually changes in outcomes when GPAs are/are not considered.

pnw_hazor 6y ago
The UC system has dropped SAT/ACT as well because the Regents determined them to be racist. In spite of internal studies at UC schools that determined that the way the test scores are being used is not racist or discriminatory.

whotheffknows 6y ago

It's amazing to me ivy league universities have done this in the face of uncertainty and extreme anxiety now that we have evidence that elongated sustained anxiety and chaos in one's life can reduce someone's IQ, I just didn't think they would be so blatantly obvious to do if when something globally devastating enough happened to be distracting to even rich white people as well, when students coming from poverty are dealing with distractions that are often worse regardless. Sometimes it truly takes a rich white person to experience something before they believe it can happen to anybody else, and then they make a decision everyone else benefits from. Here's to new beginnings. I'm curious how well rich white students who have never been exposed to chaos and uncertainty of this magnitude will fair in comparison to incoming students who have been dealing with it their whole life, a much better IMHO indicator for success in this "uncertain" times.

aiisahik 6y ago

As an Asian who went to an Ivy, I welcome this change. Yes, it will mask a policy of keeping the proportion of Asians lower than a race neutral policy. Yes, it's racially discriminatory. Yes, it's somewhat unfair to Asians who are trying to get in. But no, being fair isn't the point of these schools. Nor is having the most academically excellent student population. If you want that, go to Berkeley or CalTech. The point is to provide an exclusive and desirable brand name. If the school ended up being 50% Asian like Californian colleges, it would be less diverse, less interesting place to go to school, and lose a lot of the cachet. I wouldn't want to go to a college that is 50% Asian and 1% black over a college that reflected the demographics of the country. Asians parents need to learn that life isn't just about testing better and having a better resume. Their kids will learn that lesson later on in life but time they learned it earlier.

msrmthehomeless 6y ago
> The point is to provide an exclusive and desirable brand name Brand names are fundamentally based on merit, not by implementing some initiative that any school can do in a year. Harvard is Harvard and not some no-name college because of adherence of its incredibly selective hiring process over the years
tikthot 6y ago
> The point is to provide an exclusive and desirable brand name Brand names are fundamentally based on merit, not by implementing some initiative that any school can do in a few months. Harvard is Harvard and not some no-name college because of its adherence to a incredibly selective admission process over the years.
magicsmoke 6y ago
Yep, Asians need to learn how to play the race politics card. All those white politicians didn't get into the white house because they had good grades, but because they knew how to play to the crowd. In a democratic society, if you don't know how to get others to like you you'll always be screwed by someone who does. Remember, the employee that gets promoted isn't the one that works the hardest, but the one that their coworkers like the best. Reality isn't school, you aren't judged by the letters on a report card but how well you can navigate through a society made of other individuals. Whether that's by kissing up to white male bosses on wall street or being surrounded by minority activists on main street, social manipulation skills gives much more leverage than hard technical skills.

fortran77 6y ago

I suspect this will help "privileged" kids more than disadvantaged ones. They have parents that can pull strings to get high school grades inflated or attend special schools for "bright" kids that inflate grades and have the support to get good extracurricular activities to appear well-rounded. And they have help writing college application essays, etc.

retortio 6y ago

Ah, those pesky standardized tests. Sure they're the hardest part of admissions to game and are a major part of establishing an even intellectual playing field for applicants, but it just looks so bad when we discard a much higher proportion of qualified Asian applicants than qualified applicants from other groups! We were even sued over this issue and the suit is going to appeal! And we're trying so hard to increase the numbers of admitted applicants from other groups but their standardized testing scores just aren't up to snuff... I know! Let's just get rid of the tests! Then we can enforce whatever arbitrary (and race based) standards we want without annoying complaints that we're discriminating against qualified applicants. What's that? By enforcing artificial "race" quotas we're just further dividing people based on race? Nonsense, our humanities department tells us that reifying race and obsessing over it is the best way to achieve a post racial society!

kory 6y ago
The problem is that standardized tests worsen the gap between the privileged and not. Test performance correlates strongly with how much prep you receive. Wealthy, white & asian students have the advantage there. Not to mention that I am not convinced these tests strongly correlate with one’s ability to successfully complete an undergrad degree.
- retortio 6y ago
  What's harder: gaining admission to a prestigious private high school that costs $50,000 a year or getting a few cheap SAT test books, watching some free YouTube videos and practicing for a few weeks? The point is that the SAT can be practiced for (to a small extent), but the resources necessary to improve one's score are cheap and widely available. It's one of the most equitable aspects of college admissions we have.
- DuskStar 6y ago
  > Not to mention that I am not convinced these tests strongly correlate with one’s ability to successfully complete an undergrad degree. I'm pretty sure that they do, at least if you're looking at the set of all students and not "students who got into university X". (If you only look at students who got in, you get issues like this [0] where height does not correlate with performance in the NBA, likely because short guys in the NBA had to be more skilled to get there in the first place) After all, the ACT/SAT are largely poor IQ tests, and IQ really does predict academic success... 0: https://twitter.com/page_eco/status/1160900306588164096 https://twitter.com/page_eco/status/1160900306588164096

mikekoscinski 6y ago

I struggle to understand how this benefits applicants. So long as SAT/ACT is accepted at all, students should (and, mostly likely, will) continue to take them. This is a very obvious illustration of game theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma. [1] Refusing to accept SAT/ACT scores would cause a profound change. Whether or not that is advisable is a separate discussion. The question begs, if we eliminate the SAT/ACT, and we decry GPAs as non-standardized, then what? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

tombert 6y ago

Very mixed feelings on this. I got terrible grades throughout high school (despite taking AP classes), and the only reason I was able to attend college was because I had very high ACT scores (perfect in English, and 2 points away from perfect in Math). The way I see it there are two kind of perspectives you can take on this: A) I was a lazy kid who skated by and short-circuited my way through college or B) the school system failed me and I shouldn't be punished by not being able to attend college. Honestly, I tend to gravitate toward option A, but it does make me wonder how much weight we should really assign to GPAs.

mathattack 6y ago

“Not requiring” is about ratings. It allows schools to increase the amount of applicants making the school seem more selective. Meanwhile, they only report the test scores of good test takers, so the average increases too. For a school like Harvard, once you’re in it’s hard to fail out. If you have a 4.0 GPA, the SATs won’t help you keep from failing. So better for them to only report the 1500s and not the 1300s.

macspoofing 6y ago

That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque from the point of view of the applicant. Also, the applicant pool will rise because there is no SAT filter. Having said that, I don't think it's a big deal because nobody needs to go to Harvard. In fact, if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or if you don't have a full scholarship, Harvard tuition is not worth the degree and student loans you end up with.

defen 6y ago
Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. If you can't afford Harvard tuition it's free - e.g. if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. So yes, it's actually massively worth it if you can get in, because you graduate with no debt and have a name-brand diploma and access to an extremely well-connected group of people. It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier institutions and take on massive debt who should reconsider college, not the ones going to Harvard. https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet
- L_Rahman 6y ago
  As someone who was accepted and got to see their financial aid package, I have to mention that it's extremely generous as well. They don't just cover room and board and tuition, there's an understanding that you're poorer than your peers at the university so there's general spending money, money to buy winter clothes, money to fly home 2x-3x a year. This is a rounding error for Harvard, but I didn't realize how limiting not having that would be at the school I ended up going to (which only covered tuition and most of room and board).
  - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
    So where was better than Harvard for you?
    - 6y ago

Hitton 6y ago

Very considerate of them. Now the affluent parent won't need to abase themselves to bribing and fabricating sports credentials[0], it will just work out on its own. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_bribery_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber...

rb808 6y ago

There are two conflicting attitudes for Prestige universities A) Ivies/Standford are better than regular universities because they have resources, powerful alumni and well connected students B) They should let XYZ in because they have great test scores If B was really the most important A would no longer be true.

zarkov99 6y ago

So now they can have exactly the demographics they want. Those pesky objective criteria kept creating inequality.

wildermuthn 6y ago

Predicting a human being’s ability to “succeed”, regardless of domain, is very difficult. The insights from YC’s process might be useful. While intelligence is important, it isn’t the most important variable. What matters most is a determined-to-succeed-at-all-costs team. In the case of education, it makes sense to have some kind of threshold for general competence (GPA for instance) which is required, but subsequently to focus more on the “team” aspect of education. What kind of culture are you attempting to build on your campus? What kind of people are you trying to form? That’s the purpose of education, not technical mastery (that comes later). Having said that, even a group like YC could use a standardized test to accurately measure that intangible force behind grit/determination, the force that drives a person to be a creatively unstoppable force of success. Of even more value would be a measurement contextual to environmental factors: i.e., higher or lower scores depending on what kind of people you are surrounded by, what kind of tasks you are confronted by. To do that you’d probably have to model (predict) society itself, and then you’d have implemented Foundation. In other words, this is a problem much harder than whether or not to use standardized tests for college applicants. We don’t know how to predict the future of individuals and societies. It may be impossible. But if you’re looking for an embarrassingly ambitious startup idea, this sure seems like a good candidate.

diebeforei485 6y ago

Ultimately this gives the admissions committee a lot less transparency in terms of whom they choose to admit. In light of recent scandals, I am not sure that is a good thing. It may be well-intentioned today, but will ultimately be to the benefit of legacy and donor applicants, and to the detriment of others. Perhaps Harvard with its endowment doesn't need the money and won't give in to the temptation, but this also sets the standard for other universities - and many of them could use the money.

kvnnews 6y ago

Keyword seems to be require. I would think it’s still a factor. If you forego the tests you should be prepared to prove yourself by other means I guess. I wouldn’t take those chances though if I wanted in to Harvard. Although maybe I don’t understand the function of 21st century university anymore.