There is definitely a cultural divide. Among most of my white and Latino classmates, the SAT was treated like an IQ test: you just show up and see what happens. For better or worse, this is probably what colleges originally intended, for the SATs to be legal and non-controversial proxy for IQ. My Asian and Indian classmates treated it like any other test, something you can study for and improve at. They expected that they could boost their scores hundreds of points between their PSATs and SATs by taking classes and studying hard.
Re:Asian-American admissions at Harvard
by skookumchuck on Saturday June 16, 2018 @03:05AM
(#17326301)
Studying hard certainly gives one an unfair advantage :-)
My high school graduating class (~15 of the ~250 were "Valedictorians" thanks to grade inflation and a lack of a weighting system; they all had 4.0s) says differently. This was in an inner city public school, mind you.
Admissions officers know individual high schools, and the different grading systems. They can separate the bullshit for the most part
In other words, if you're from a shitty high school (or even a "best in the county" high school, if it's a unexceptional county) you're shit out of luck - because now the admissions officers will just reject everyone from that school out of hand, no matter their grades.
Objective standards can really help people without the connections to succeed otherwise.
Re:Asian-American admissions at Harvard
by eanzenberg on Saturday June 16, 2018 @02:15AM
(#17326167)
That's the literal goal of the SAT. A standardized test across all schools.
As a non-American, I always found the GPA system a little strange. In high school, our marks were always scores out of 100.
As someone who's moved between states and cities all across America, GPA really should be dumped for system like that.
I've lived in schools where an A/4.00's average score was 90-100 and I lived in another school where it ranged from 95-100. 3.00 would be from 80-89 at the one school and 90-94 at the other.
From raw GPA data, students who had a 90% average would look great if they graduated from the first school, but just OK if they graduated from the latter school. And I've had friends that went to schools that had max possible GPAs of 5.0.
It's a mess.
From the part I heard, a big reason given was that you can significantly improve your SAT/ACT scores by taking test prep courses, which reduces the reliability of the test. They believe that can get a better idea of an applicant's academic potential from their grades.