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<p>Totally! SAT Verbal is a joke. I know people from Asia who do not know English very well get 700+ scores.</p>
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<p>Just because I condemn their admissions policy doesn’t mean I condemn their academic and post graduation student placement policies. Two totally different things. When the civil rights movement complained about separate seats in the bus for black they were not complaining about public transportation, now were they?</p>
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<p>Look, I really, really wish that K-12 education was strengthened to a point where no one could complain about lack of opportunity. To do that I am perfectly OK to pay much higher taxes. Today, the lack of opportunity is used to cloak racist policies. When opportunities in K-12 are made the same (somehow, using a magic wand, but let’s leave that separate for now) I still believe there will be a huge achievement gap between Asians and non-Asians, solely due to the drive of the Asian parents. But since opportunity in K-12 would be level by then, no one could take away this advantage that Asians parents confer to their kids in the name of lack of opportunity for URMs.</p>
<p>So I am all for improving K-12 education if that ends racial quotas in college admissions.</p>
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<p>Now, this is really fascinating. The SAT reasoning exam imposes a low ceiling on the math portion, thus making it difficult to distinguish yourself if you are highly gifted in math. It also, allows relatively minimal formal education in math – a subject not typically engaged in at home – to allow the student to score reasonably well and even exceptionally well in the absence of tremendous mathematical giftedness or even tremendous mathematical educational advantage.</p>
<p>The verbal section, in contrast, is not as dependent on formal school instruction and can be very readily mastered by simply growing up in a highly literate home where reading is encouraged and portrayed as entertaining and where reading material is plentiful.</p>
<p>So, yes, I would say there is something of a bias built into the SAT reasoning in that kids from low-literacy environments will have a very tough time doing well in the verbal section. Gifted math kids will have a much better chance of acing the math section, even in a poor school curriculum for math. However, those gifted math students will have a hard time differentiating from just competent math students who paid attention in class.</p>
<p>My initial take is that this structuring of the SAT benefits the kid from highly educated homes the most - they grow up with books (advantaged on the verbal) and they face an SAT math section that should allow them to perform respectably, even exceptionally, because basic math curriculum and moderate math talent will confer a good score. (That would probably describe my kids - they are good in math, not great, but score very well on the SAT in math).</p>
<p>How does the addition of the writing section play into all this?</p>
<p>Indian Parent,</p>
<p>Your disdain for the SAT is a little extreme. Yes, it has its flaws, certainly. But it’s not that easy to ace. Witness the number of 2400 composite scores last year, fewer than 400 nationwide across all test sittings. That is an extremely small set of testers. </p>
<p><a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-percentile-ranks-composite-cr-m-w-2010.pdf[/url]”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-percentile-ranks-composite-cr-m-w-2010.pdf</a></p>
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This is completely true.</p>
<p>Although I am not a huge fan of the SAT, after tutoring it at a fairly well-known agency for a few years, perfect scores are still extremely rare. It is difficult to design an exam that tests in assorted subject areas across wide ranges of ability without having some bunching at the top, particuarly in areas which are very coachable. </p>
<p>Which is why I don’t fully understand canuckguy’s point. If you really wanted to do so there are enough spaces available to admit every 800 math scorer to the Ivy League. You could seat every perfect scorer in Harvard and have spaces left over. I though the major bellyache on this thread was that they didn’t give the SAT enough weight in admissions. </p>
<p>I’m pretty sure IP doesn’t have disdain for the test. He might think it easy, but I bet he would rather give it more weight in admissions than less weight.</p>
<p>I was not talking about perfect scores (as hopefully clear from my posts). Just one mistake is enough to ruin a perfect score, and just one mistake is not indicative of lack of competency in the material. However, I believe that anyone with above average intelligence can get to 99 percentile or more (cut off ~2200) in the SAT if they practice hard for 5-6-7 years as many Asian kids do. Unfortunately, SAT is that kind of an exam. So yes, I do have a disdain for it. I never took the SAT myself, but I took the GRE and the GMAT, and found them to be equally non-inspiring. </p>
<p>I would be perfectly happy if the SAT was given absolutely no weight in college admissions. I would go a step further, and take out class rank and GPA as well. I would then replace it with a nationwide, uniformly graded, and ranked nationwide AP level exam on say 10 subjects, where kids could choose to take any 5. That would be uniform and objective, at least far more than using school ranks and GPA, where kids from less demanding schools have an advantage.</p>
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I rather like this idea. And it would encourage content studying vs “prepping”. I think that would be better for the kids in the long run.</p>
<p>Agree that gpa and even coursework rigor are far too variable to really extract much meaning from them.</p>
<p>[Indian</a> Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institute_of_Technology_Joint_Entrance_Examination]Indian”>Joint Entrance Examination – Advanced - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>This is what the idea is based on. The one in the link is for STEM only, but can easily be extended to LA.</p>
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<p>Fwiw, you could be absolutely correct that anyone with above average intelligence could score well on the SAT, provided he or she had been trained for that purpose for more than 5 years. This is not different from making someone solve IQ puzzles or the crosswords puzzles for a number of years. After a while, the patterns and repetitions make the exercise trivial. But here is the problem … the SAT was not designed to evaluate someone’s ability to ace it through years of practice; it was designed to provide an assessment of someone’s aptitude (or something along those lines) at the end of high school. As it grew, the aim of the test became cloudy leading it to drop all attempts to have the acronym stand for … anything. All we know now, is that the test DOES evaluate one’s ability to reason. Yet, this ability comes naturally to some (the few who have aced most standardized tests since birth) or can be developed through a combination of dedicated practice, active deconstruction of the tests, expert help in trivializing the hardest patterns, and unfortunately … gaining access to unreleased material or even organized cheating.</p>
<p>There are two ways of looking at this. One is that ANYONE has the freedom to slave through years of practice and that the result is a testament to one’s dedication and assiduity. The other angle is that this obsessive focus amounts to gaming a system that was developed to evaluate an entire population of high schoolers with a centered base of 500. </p>
<p>Fwiw, the fact that the SAT (and ACT to a smaller degree) can be gamed, and IS the subject of active gamesmanship and cheating is not a problem that ETS or the College Board can easily solve without imposing more drastic security measures. Measures such as eliminating the availablity of foreign centers would be viewed as xenophobic. Adding heightened security would be expensive and will simply move the bar for the people who are determined to cheat all the while annoying the 99 percent who view this test as just another test. </p>
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<p>For this to work, you’d have to have better designed battery of tests than the current AP one mile-wide and one-inch deep boondoggle that rewards rote memorization of trivial details. IMHO, the solution would entail to switch the AP exam system to a year long system comparable to the current SAT administration, and use the two weeks currently devoted to the AP to a revamped SAT examination that would be required extended testing of PRIMARY materials in English and Mathematics, with a definitive focus on the verbal elements.</p>
<p>Fwiw, it is extremely doubtful that we would find anything worth emulating in the admissions tests offered in India or Korea. Since the French Bac has been the subject of much criticism also, it is obvious that what is needed is a test tailored to the (very broad) American system of education, and not some watered down version of foreign tests that have a microcospic focus.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I think very few of the 99 percentile are foreigners who got there by cheating. The overwhelming majority are Americans taking the test on US soil. However, I would agree that most of the 99 percentile folks also prepared hard for the test. You can call it gaming the system, but frankly it is no different that an athlete starting to prepare for the national gold medal from age 5. At any rate, the test is too simple, which is why it can be gamed.</p>
<p>Let’s take the math exams that lead to the USAMO. They start at AMC8, continue on to AMC10, then to AIME, and then to USAMO. Some of them are multiple choice, others are not. Success in these exams is a true mark of mathematical scholarship. They still need lots of practice, but they can’t be gamed by the merely above average. Frankly, I have sometimes had math and physics PhDs have trouble answering all the questions in those exams within the time frame.</p>
<p>I am proposing such a high level AP exam, for all the subjects. The problem I see is that there will be huge clustering at the low end.</p>
<p>Now that people seem to have some idea of a solution, I will wait for my grandkids to make use of it in 25 years if it ever gets implemented. :p</p>
<p>It will never get implemented. If anything, the college entrance examinations will be further diluted to make room for those without merit.</p>
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<p>I would have agreed with that, if I thought the American K-12 system is actually a good one. I don’t, so I pulled my kid out of that system and put in an IB system. But I agree that if we do not reform the K-12 system then this type of exam that I proposed will be hugely unfair to large swaths of the population.</p>
<p>Note however that while I took the model from India, I used a 100% American examination, the AMC system that leads to the US Math Olympiad team, as the baseline for the actual examinations. I am sure there are similar exams for the English side, or for history and political science and economics. Definitely there are similar examinations for the science side.</p>
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<p>Up until today, the point of countless threads on here and several studies is if the colleges were to use the current admissions scores (SATs, ACTs, SAT 2 and AP) and solely the current admissions scores to determine admissions they could do away with much of the bias against Asian applicants. THey could also use those math competition exams you seem so enamored of, if they chose to. In fact, many students list them on their applications. </p>
<p>Now, the claim is that the current exams are actually biased?</p>
<p>The point is that the universities don’t want a test only admissions policy.</p>
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<p>IP, the unfortunate part of any discussions about this subject is that people focus excessively on the mention of cheating. Most people who have been active in the test prep world do know how it shows its ugly head and who are the usual perpetrators. </p>
<p>Fwiw, your sentence “I think very few of the 99 percentile are foreigners who got there by cheating. The overwhelming majority are Americans taking the test on US soil.” would be a wonderful sentence for the SAT to be analyzed. Do Americans represent the overwhelming majority of the 99 percentile or the majority of the cheaters? </p>
<p>I am afraid I cannot agree with the Olympics analogy as preparing for this event is not on the calendar of most students in the country. Otoh, taking the SAT or ACT is expected from about every college student. The 5 year who is groomed like Tiger Woods was will compete against athletes who are part of a small and selective group. </p>
<p>As far as the test being too simple, it is important to look again at the intent to norm the test toward a 500 mean. May I remind you that the test needed to recentered a few years ago because of sagging averages. I fully understand the argument of the test making few to no difference among testers who have a legitimate chance of acing it. I do, however, also know that their representation is minimal in the grand scheme of things. That is the realm of standardized tests!</p>
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<p>Our K-12 does indeed present many deficiencies, but the absence of an IB program is hardly one of them. The IBO organization has done a masterful job in convincing the US educational system that the IB is beneficial. Something that is entirely debatable, but seems to please all the people who believe in a school-within-a-school system and believe that the segregation that could not be accomplished through separate schools has been given a new (a more devious) lease on life. When you see schools that cannot break an SAT average of 500 offering mega AP and an IB program to its students, you know something is rotten! </p>
<p>Fwiw, our education problems are hardly represented by our lack of offering AP/IB and catering the above average students. Our biggest problem show up on the extreme sides of the distribution: on the one hand, an extremely small number of highly gifted students and on the other hand a huge number of students we “prefer” to ignore.</p>
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<p>I am making neither of the claims. I am making two independent and unrelated claims.</p>
<p>1) SAT is a rather easy examination to ace, and hence not an indicator of true academic potential. Nor are class ranks or grades. An unified, high level exam is needed, which can be based on the exams like USAMO for math, and other similar exams for other subjects. I like math, my kid loves math, but I have a high respect for any other exam in any other subject that is at a similar level as USAMO.</p>
<p>2) I am OK with colleges using any objective and open criteria as long as it doesn’t include race.</p>
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<p>Actually, I totally agree with you! AP/IB is not the solution at all. I like the IB system because it at least stretches the average curriculum a bit. It is still not at par with some international standards, for example the one I grew up with in India. But it is more challenging than the US public school K-12 system. But IB is not a magic system, and neither is AP. The curriculum can be made challenging without either. </p>
<p>Now, what’s the upside of stretching the curriculum? It really challenges and hence grows the high end, who are otherwise bored. What’s the downside? It kills the low end and frankly also challenges the middle tier to an extent that US parents are not comfortable with. So, what is the solution? There can’t be a single curriculum that is right for students of all aptitude and parental drive and engagement.</p>
<p>Hence, we need a school-within-a-school instead of dragging down the kids who are at the high end. Germany does it. Americans won’t like it, as it is fundamentally orthogonal to the basic principle in this country, that everyone is equal and should get the same opportunity. However, they only way to enable everyone to get the same opportunity is to prevent some from reaching their full potential. That in turn is not exactly good for the nation in the long run either, I would think.</p>
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<p>I don’t know. What do you think?</p>
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<p>Agreed, and I believe that the HYPSM are - or should be - that small and selected group. </p>
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<p>That’s why we have so many colleges, and so few HYPSM.</p>
<p>Well, how are the Indian Universities? Are they eclipsing American universities because of superior entrance exams?</p>
<p>Sorry. Yesterday was the 4th so I’m still in my patriotic mode.</p>