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0 pointsraverbashing11y ago0 comments

The problem is of course in SAT and other admission tests that expect the rote learning

0 comments

Ha, this problem is nowhere near as bad as it is in China, where your admissions are nearly (outside of connections) solely based on your college admission test results.

At least in the US, the most selective universities look at other aspects of your application.

That's not to say there aren't other problems in the States, such as negative discrimination / racial quotas.

thaumasiotes11y ago

I've been talking to a few chinese college students. I'd heard that the gaokao was everything in college admissions, and I'm prepared to believe it plays a strong role, but I was a little disoriented by the results of asking four students how they got into their particular college:

复旦 student #1: My gaokao score wasn't high enough for 北大, but it was high enough for 复旦, so I came here.

复旦 student #2: My high school recommended me to 复旦, they gave me an interview, and then they offered me a place in the school of social science. Because of the offer, I didn't need a very high gaokao score.

财大 student #1: I took 财大's own entrance exam and qualified for admission, so I didn't put in any effort on the gaokao and got a low score. That meant my gaokao score wouldn't get me in to any other universities, so I came to 财大.

财大 student #2: I took the gaokao and my score was high enough for 财大, but not for 复旦, so now I'm at 财大.

So half of everyone I've asked fits the mold, but that seems like a low figure to me. The sample size here is only four; have I stumbled upon a wildly unrepresentative group?

jiaweihli11y ago

In the case of the second student, I feel there's some missing context there. My guess is it was an alumni recommendation, which would explain the circumstances.

For student #3 - I'm unaware of how popular the practice of having a test per university is (or how practical it is to take them as a prospective applicant). Maybe this is restricted to certain universities or majors, or works similarly to EA or ED in the US?

aianus11y ago

One thing I never understood about standardized testing is why do they create them in a predictable way that makes them easy to prepare for (and thus game)?

Why not create totally different tests each year with all kinds of difficult problems and then grade the whole thing on a curve? The only way to succeed is to actually understand what you're doing better than your peers.

VLM11y ago

"We are so cool here, that we exclude kids from our campus who achieved less than X score"

That PR message becomes a puzzle when X becomes a randomly distributed number from year to year. So is 1580 a great number this year while 1400 was a great number last year?

The greatest danger would be an "emperor has not clothes" moment when random test results randomly categorize random students into random schools. That might make the test irrelevant in the future, thus not taken. And the test providers income stream disappears.

aianus11y ago

The scores would be more like 99th percentile or 80th percentile etc. So the message would be "We are so cool, we only accept the top 1%" which works fine and is more meaningful than 1580 or w/e.

1 more reply

dTal11y ago

Because it's "standardized" testing, that's the whole point. If the nature of the test changes drastically yearly, how can you compare results from year to year?

aianus11y ago

It's "standardized" as in everyone gets the same test in a given year. Absolute results on something like a college admissions exam are pretty meaningless since getting into college is a zero-sum game for all but the worst schools. All that matters is doing better than X% of the population.

Seems to me like incentivizing deep learning over memorization outweighs losing the ability to compare absolute results from one year to the next.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

jiaweihli11y ago

Ha, this problem is nowhere near as bad as it is in China, where your admissions are nearly (outside of connections) solely based on your college admission test results.

At least in the US, the most selective universities look at other aspects of your application.

That's not to say there aren't other problems in the States, such as negative discrimination / racial quotas.

thaumasiotes11y ago

复旦 student #1: My gaokao score wasn't high enough for 北大, but it was high enough for 复旦, so I came here.

财大 student #2: I took the gaokao and my score was high enough for 财大, but not for 复旦, so now I'm at 财大.

So half of everyone I've asked fits the mold, but that seems like a low figure to me. The sample size here is only four; have I stumbled upon a wildly unrepresentative group?

jiaweihli11y ago

In the case of the second student, I feel there's some missing context there. My guess is it was an alumni recommendation, which would explain the circumstances.

aianus11y ago

One thing I never understood about standardized testing is why do they create them in a predictable way that makes them easy to prepare for (and thus game)?

VLM11y ago

"We are so cool here, that we exclude kids from our campus who achieved less than X score"

That PR message becomes a puzzle when X becomes a randomly distributed number from year to year. So is 1580 a great number this year while 1400 was a great number last year?

aianus11y ago

The scores would be more like 99th percentile or 80th percentile etc. So the message would be "We are so cool, we only accept the top 1%" which works fine and is more meaningful than 1580 or w/e.

1 more reply

dTal11y ago

Because it's "standardized" testing, that's the whole point. If the nature of the test changes drastically yearly, how can you compare results from year to year?

aianus11y ago

Seems to me like incentivizing deep learning over memorization outweighs losing the ability to compare absolute results from one year to the next.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse