Re:It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel
by barry-cotter on Sunday June 13, 2021 @08:50PM
(#27498107)
I’m aware of the general wisdom. If you can find any research supporting it my email is in my profile. Selecting by SAT and GPA alone would be very much against the interests of the socially elite. They wouldn’t be able to stop so many Asians getting in. See what happened in California after ending affirmative action in college admissions, a 20% jump in Asian admissions. That is the reason for the big push against the SAT and ACT. You can pay for higher grades by selecting the school with lower standards, you can pay for all the extracurriculars you want, you can lean on your connections for letters of recommendation but the gains from SAT tutoring and coaching are trivial no matter how much you pay. Holistic admissions is for the less gifted children of privilege.
The SAT, GRE, LSAT and similar lightly disguised IQ tests are designed to be as close to culture fair and uncoachable as possible and they do pretty well. Mostly the children of the well educated and rich get higher scores on them than the less fortunate for the same reason the children of professional basket players are tall. People resemble their parents.
The anecdote you recount about a question with a yacht never happened. The analogy question was removed in 2005[1].
[1] https://www.clearchoiceprep.com/sat-act-prep-blog/the-most-i...
That doesn't tell us if the economic diversity is increasing or decreasing. My understanding is that it is significantly increasing for (at least some) elite schools, but I don't have cites so ...
> Selecting by standardized test scores would result in a substantially less socially elite student body than the current system.
That is certainly counter to the general wisdom, which is why (as I understand it) they stopped requiring the tests. The tests were considered biased toward the socially elite, and IIRC there was plenty of research behind it, because the elite have the time and money (tutors, classes, etc.) to prepare test-taking skills - which is not a skill the colleges seek - and the questions were written about elite culture (e.g., 'You are sailing your yacht into the wind ...').