
The Test Passes, Colleges Fail - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/opinion/18salins.html?em
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yummyfajitas
Statistics FAIL.

>So, here is the question: do SATs predict graduation rates more accurately
than high school grade-point averages?

That's only relevant if colleges plan to ignore GPA in favor of SAT.

The right question: Do (SAT, GPA) pairs predict graduation rates more
accurately than GPA alone?

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time_management
The SAT's not great, but it's the least broken component of the US college
admissions system by far. High school grades would be better, given that a
4-year window of performance ought to trump any evaluation over 3 hours, but
there's a lot of variance in high schools, and a lot of them aren't
challenging at all.

Detractors of the SAT don't realize that, without it, it would be impossible
(rather than merely extremely difficult) for students to be admitted to elite
schools without coming from wealthy or well-connected families. Colleges,
understandably, don't trust grades from no-name high schools, and anyone who
doesn't realize that the extracurricular/"holistic" aspect of the process is
thinly-veiled socioeconomic selection (in favor of the rich, plus a few token
poor, the latter being usually mountain-state whites) is not paying attention.

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MaysonL
Of course, given that the SAT is fairly coachable, the students whose parents
are aware of this, and willing and able to pay for the coaching (i.e., usually
parents of higher socioeconomic status) will have a substantial advantage.

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time_management
This is why I qualified the SAT as merely the "least broken" part. Rich
parents can buy extracurriculars (internships at prestigious museums, etc.) to
the nines. With the SATs, there are limits on how much improvement coaching
can bring. A rich kid with a 100 IQ will never break 1400(/2100) on the SATs,
even if he has the best tutors in the world.

