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A comment on MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions. Parent comment

Re:MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions... by knzhou on Friday March 20, 2020 @04:10PM (#22641163)
> By the way, isn't depending on SAT for years and everyone bitching about SAT is a gross failure of our education system? Take any serious test, be it STEM competitions, JEE, or NCEE, multiple-choice questions are the easiest part. The differentiating questions are all kinds of word problems. Yet the US can't afford such test, but countries like India and China can.

We do have this kind of system in place, I'm closely involved in it. The Olympiads in the US basically fill the vacuum of objective assessment at a high level. The entry round for each Olympiad is pretty similar in level to, e.g. what you would get in JEE-Advanced. But they're also far less popular...

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Re:MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions... by hintymad on Friday March 20, 2020 @05:14PM (#22641726)
Yeah, the Olympiad in the US is well organized. Probably the best in the world. I'm more concerned with the middle tier, to which the majority of the students belong. The best students in the US have access to vast resources, the academically challenged students do not feel the same harsh pressure as kids in other countries do. It is the middle majority that suffer from insufficient training.
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