Aren’t there more, and better, reasons to choose the Ivy than the remote possibility (and it is still remote coming from an Ivy) of ending up at Jane Street? And, as to Jane Street and the like, I’m not sure when working there became the benchmark for success.
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Ha ha 
I would actually say we’re arguing two completely different points. But as I said, not worth pursuing here.
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Absolutely. In my personal opinion, the main criterion in choosing a school is peer group. Everything else is distant second at best.
And, to bring the discussion back on topic, what deliberate dilution of objective metrics of academic excellence (of which SAT is but one) does is it inevitably spreads out top talent more thinly among more places. And maybe it’s a good thing in some ways, but it’s not a good thing for those trying to optimize for the peer group.
As for what is and isn’t success, in my opinion, one of the hallmarks of success is having many good options.
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I have first hand knowledge of a place (like the ones being discussed) that only hired from half a dozen schools most of the time, all of the time for certain roles. They considered themselves very data oriented so I asked if they had proof that restricting hiring to those schools resulted in better, more productive hires – was there data out there they were using, did they ever hire outside that circle and measure the results other hires from those schools, etc? And they didn’t and hadn’t. It basically boiled down to two things: 1) They were interested in competing for the same talent their peers were competing for; 2) It was more efficient to credit the process that led to those students being at those schools than it was to take a chance on an lesser known quantity.
To keep this on topic, FWIW, this place also required to see SAT/ACT scores of applicants (even years out of college).
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It is efficient, just as using SAT scores as a proxy is efficient. Yes, one might miss otherwise qualified candidates who do not score well or attend elite schools, but if one has 100 candidates for each position anyway, it won’t matter.
In some industries it is common for customers to receive the resumes of those working on their account, which would include educational achievements.
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Absolutely - options are key! I hear the peer group argument and I hope that wherever S24 lands he can find a strong peer group, academically. He learns very quickly and hasn’t been as challenged in HS as he could have been (despite receiving a very solid education) so I’m hoping for more of a challenge in college. We’ll see.
Exactly. If you know with certainty that 75% of the class has top math scores, and you are quant-oriented firm, it’s much easier to send your Recruiters out to that college for recruiting.
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And returning to a point made earlier in the thread, this is a good example of US colleges emphasizing “holistic” considerations over objective measures like test scores, which all serves to make admission outcomes less predictable than in other countries. That’s a particular problem for those families with less knowledge of the system, less resources to spend on college counselors or poorer advising in high school.
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Yep and holistic admissions ends up really helping males, because males on average have lower GPAs than females, and fewer males than females are applying to college. So, some schools admit males with relatively low GPAs in order to get better gender balance in their class…Jeff Selingo talked about this in his book, and there are any number of articles on the subject too.
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My point is that you then need to make admissions even more “holistic” and unpredictable to counterbalance the SAT score being optional (or worse ignored). And some colleges (like the UCs) are forbidden from using gender.
It would also not be a surprise if legislative and legal actions to forbid other forms of admissions discrimination by private colleges (legacies etc) are extended to cover gender, since the language of Prop 209 (“The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin”) clearly resonates with many voters, even in a liberal state like California. So what then?
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Fix the underlying problems with the system that leads to a need for the use of holistic admissions to counterbalance inequities of access?
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OTOH, places like Caltech (59/41) and especially MIT (49/48) would also be much farther away from gender parity, but in a different direction.
(Caltech reports sex assigned at birth vs self-reported one at MIT, hence <100% there)
Good luck with that…
More seriously, would it lead to any of those opposed to requiring SAT scores changing their position? It doesn’t seem to have done in CA (though I suspect awareness of this issue is very low).
…and so the race to the bottom continues, papering over the deep underlying problems further and further away from their source.
Already there is a movement for “citation justice”:
“Citation Justice is the act of citing authors based on identify to uplift marginalized voices with the knowledge that citation is used as a form of power in a patriarchal society based on white supremacy.”
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Are holistic admissions solely to mitigate inequities? I think that is a part, but it also allows AOs to build the kind of class they want based on multiple factors, rather than just stats. That is not always about inequities, but about including different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives that will enhance everyone’s experience. That can be but is not necessarily linked to marginalization: diversity exists beyond marginalization and inequity. And I think holistic admissions is a good system for accounting for that.
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How is this a “race to the bottom”? I had never heard of citation justice before, but reading this link, it seems to me a reasonable position to take. I don’t see how this “cheapens” or “degrades” academic work (if that is how you define a “race to the bottom”). Done correctly, it can potentially strengthen academia and academic research - a very positive thing, in my opinion.
It is the same phenomenon at work that led to widespread abandonment of standardized tests in college admissions.
The underlying problem is, certain minorities aren’t performing well academically by objective measures of achievement. Whatever the causes of this might be, you can deal with the causes, or you can say that the measures of underperformance themselves are flawed.
This is all well and good, but if you choose the second approach, you will inevitably find that without addressing the underlying causes, the gap persists downstream.
But at that point you are committed to not addressing the underlying problems, so you have no choice but double down on declaring any other objective metrics that demonstrate underperformance to be racially biased.
SAT? Biased.
College admissions? Biased.
Citations? Biased.
Medical licensing exams? BIASED!
So now what? Now medical lisensing exams are pass/fail, that’s what.
And guess what?
“The study reveals a notable decline in pass rates following the transition to pass/fail scoring”
Race to the bottom.
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Even if this is true - and I have never looked at the numbers so have no idea - then it is not true on an individual level, which is where citations of research take place. Citation justice doesn’t mean lowering any standards, it means expanding your research to include more points of view which, ultimately, should lead to sounder conclusions, more interesting studies, etc., in addition to fairness of inclusion. And to me that’s what DEI in general is really about: yes, it is about fairness and equity but, when done correctly, enhances everyone’s experience because it broadens the kinds of perspectives being included, which I personally find very, very valuable - not just for the direct beneficiaries, but for everyone. I see that as true for holistic admission, for DEI policies in general, and for this topic of citation justice. That is my personal opinion of it.
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This is simply insane. I hope the budding opposition to such craziness continues to build.
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No. It has nothing to do with points of view. It very explicitly means, and I quote again, “citing authors based on identify”.
…In mathematics, for example, there are no “points of view”. You will never hear two mathematicians say “let’s agree to disagree” to each other on their subject matter. Every assertion should be proven to the satisfaction of everyone in the field. It also happens to be a field where URMs are most underrepresented.
And now the citation police wants to start gathering the ethnicity data of publishing scientists so they can impose equality by fiat.
The Harrison Bergeron story no longer looks so far-fetched.
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