I grew up poor and I achieved some of the highest scores state wide in my country's standardised tests as a child (we get tested at ~8,10,12,14). A lot of my peers at my school were from social housing. My assessment is that their biggest issue wasn't money but their homelife. Parents who didn't value education, or even a basic respect for rules/authority. The kids were wild because their parents were kind of wild themselves. Money wouldn't fix scores for these kids.

If you wish to make a political correct stance, I wouldn't go the money route. I'd say that these kids are victims of intergenerational poverty cycles.

Same. My family was below the US poverty line, but my parents were college educated and most of the extended family placed tremendous emphasis on education, academic performance, and college prep. I always get very annoyed with modern discourse that reduces all successes, even staying out of prison, to family income and nothing else. Most of the people I went to school with were from poor or working class families, and I guess a “normal” proportion went to college, and a “normal” proportion were “smart kids.” Based on my observations, a large factor that I never see discussed is religion. Although I’m an atheist, I think the religiosity of the communities I grew up in was a highly effective mitigator of common social ills.

I think the benefit of religion is that a religious mother/father is less likely to be off on 3-day meth binge compared to a non-religious one. There's a social network to help support people. The social network also encourages a reduction/removal of typical vices that are going to affect a families children (alcohol, drugs, etc).

I agree, and it's not the job of MIT to fix these kids.

>but the idea of standardised testing being equivalent across all factors just strikes me as being fundamentally untrue.

What's your take on MIT's stance?

our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT 02 Our research shows this predictive validity holds even when you control for socioeconomic factors that correlate with testing.

Not GP, but you should approach this using Bayes' Theorem just like anything else. If one study from MIT causes you to completely flip on any of your beliefs, you need to rethink how you form these kinds of opinions.

MIT's conclusions should cause you to adjust your priors by a certain amount, but they should not cause you to completely flip by themselves -- particularly if you're not in the camp that thinks literally every decision MIT makes is correct by virtue of it being MIT.

If you wouldn't have looked at MIT's original plan of abandoning SAT scores as proof that they didn't matter, you probably also shouldn't look at them picking up SAT scores again as proof that they do matter. MIT's conclusions should lead you to update your priors by some amount dependent on how much you trust you currently have in the accuracy of college admissions processes when they assess student qualifications and outcomes.

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My personal take on this is that I do absolutely buy that SAT scores could be a leveling factor between kids from different socioeconomic backgrounds and that they could be a better metric than GPA for determining admission. But of course, that's a pretty low barrier of entry to clear, GPA scores are probably close to meaningless when compared across schools. It seems to me that there's a lot of room here for SAT scores to be simultaneously mostly meaningless and at the same time also a reliably better predictor of school success than GPAs.

It's also important to ask what exactly MIT is measuring -- what does it mean by academic success and how much does that definition overlap with "fits in when placed in an environment optimized for people who are good at standardized testing?" And again, even if they are kind of circular or if they're measuring the wrong things, it's still plausible that they're more reliable than GPAs; it's a low bar to clear.

My take is exactly what I said.

The same factors that lead to success for SATs can lead to further academic success.

I believe that MIT is probably right, in fact, I'm quite certain of it. Many people will drop out of university or perform poorly than their peers for socio-economic reasons, the person working while studying will probably do worse than the person who just studies.

MIT wants the most graduates and especially the most successful graduates, so the institution is right to do this, but I do still think it's more inhumane than I'm personally comfortable with -- but this is part of why I live in Europe where university students in general are seen as an investment by the state and not so much a business to be optimised.

> this is part of why I live in Europe where university students in general are seen as an investment by the state and not so much a business to be optimised

In this specific case, though, I don't think these two things are in conflict at all. By selecting the best candidates on the basis of merit, MIT is doing what's best for both MIT as well as the broader society.

We all benefit from living in a country that produces top-tier scientists and engineers, and MIT benefits from being a place that is known for producing top-tier scientists and engineers.

Funny that you bring up Europe. As far as I know European countries don’t rely on extracurriculars and other nebulous measures as much as US colleges do.

What's "inhumane" about trying to select those who will benefit most from your program?

Doesn't most of Europe also rely on standardized testing for university admissions? My country definitely does so, and has for decades, both ore and post communist times. I also know France has the famous Bacalaureat at the end of high school.

> Doesn't most of Europe also rely on standardized testing for university admissions?

They sure do. So does India. In fact, a lot of other countries rely on testing a whole lot more than the U.S. which has interviews, essays, sports, teacher recommendations, etc.

We have to read the sentence very carefully. It's saying that regardless of socioeconomic factors, the number correlates with graduate success rate. This seems like a very easy "duh". The way I read that is "if a student gets in the 99th percentile regardless of whether they grow up rich or poor, they are likely to do well at MIT". This doesn't talk about acceptance rates based on socioeconomic factors.

The point in question is whether the students in a lower socioeconomic situation even has a chance to get into MIT.

It's not saying regardless, it's says controlled for. A subtle distinction, but the former is a raw comparator and latter is an adjustment, which implies even with a bias that still doesn't account for substantive change.

I was hoping someone had more insight into process or metrics on it.

Your own post has an implicit accusation that lower socioeconomic situations preclude high testing, which has all kinds of implications about the quality of education and living standards as a prior for acumen. I suppose my own bias shows in drawing that conclusion though. As Henry said though,

"If I had seven peasants, I could make seven lords. But if I had seven lords, I could not make ONE Holbein."