How will the pandemic affect MIT admission this year?

1NJParent
Sun, 06 Sep 2020 11:34:18 +0000

sherimba03:

I am of the opinion that it would be a shame to not consider the scores of kids who took the SAT or ACT last fall. That was not due to luck but instead to the student being someone who showed more initiative than your average high school junior. Isn’t that exactly the kind of student MIT would favor?

I actually hold the opposite view. If the goal of these achievement tests is to objectively measure how much a student has learned in a given subject area, then these tests should be given nearly simultaneously, and ideally without preparation for the sole purpose of achieving better test results. The current tests are already nearly useless in differentiating among top students in a school like MIT. Why would it value some applicants achieving high test scores through early and undue preparation?