The US has plenty of exams, starting in early primary school. All states have Standards of Learning (SOL) exams every few years on the main subjects. Then, starting in high school, you have a combination of Advanced Placement (AP) subject exams (college level, often granting college credit) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exams, Scholastic Aptitude (SAT) or American College Test (ACT), SAT2 subject exams, and probably a few I've forgotten.

The SAT or ACT are technically the only ones "required" for college, but most of the elite schools expect AP or IB (which tends to give the students a year or two of calculus, a fourth year of foreign language, and some deeper dives into other sciences or social studies).

But, because it's split across so many tests, there's no single "score poorly and your life is ruined" exam.

IB may become important for US college admissions over time, but that's more aspirational so far.

True, I only listed it because, at least where I live, high schools often do one program or the other. If it's an IB school, you end up taking the APs on your own (ie, there isn't a class focused on that content, though the IB curriculum should, in theory, end up covering the same stuff, at least for the major subjects).

Your single exam performance doesn't forever assign you to a class of people, you still have an opportunity to redo the exam next year or to be successful even without a degree. That's not possible in China nor Korea. Even in Germany flunking a class might ban you from ever retaking it at any other German university.

I am currently living in Japan, and it seems that they follow the American style exams. I don't know if it is a result of the post-war occupation, or it was already like that before WW2.

Back home in Spain we follow the same style of a single national-level exam that you mentioned though.

Everyone has a tendency to support the system they went through. I've done it numerous times for standardized tests and I went through them. I think the information value of a person who was certified capable by system X recommending system X is probably low.

After all, if you flipped the script and the US used standardized tests and you were then told that China uses a committee of experts that will certify incoming applicants' stated political positions, race, and cultural background in order to "craft a class" (as an admissions officer calls it in SAT Wars) with a carve-out for the children of those who have already attended, you would be informed of the need for meritocracy, the tendency towards nepotism, and the obvious racial biases that will affect individuals in such a system.

Likewise, you would doubtless be informed that the East's more holistic look at the total student is a superior form of student selection since it is driven by a Confucian focus on the gestalt human rather than on the reductive metrics of the West.

What is interesting to me is to hear from those who have succeeded in some system but nonetheless wish it were different.

There's millions of Chinese diaspora who went through relatively zero-sum gaokao and have their kids go through western systems. IMO general consensus will will tell you centralized test will produce superior results but it's so tough / high stakes they won't want to put their kids through it. Many of them are also gaokao flunkies who had alternate pathways in era where with more easy/shady opportunities that are now gated behind actual gaokao performance, and they know statistically their kids can't hack it. So course they want system to be different in the same way US system is different - some nebulous holistic system, aka one where there's ample opportunities for their money to corrupt/capture. TBH last 1000s of years of Chinese history is interrogation of monied merchant class trying to capture (more) merited scholar class, the lessons learned (repeatedly) is venturing away from standardized/merit is just opening up to deregulated corruption.

I don't know how this exam is in China and Poland, but from what I've seen about the south Korean one it is much harsher on the students than the french one, even in my time

We have the SAT and ACT, and those are objective. The wealthy still pass disproportionately due to better tutoring specifically oriented to those tests. It’s Goodhart’s law.

Wouldnt wealthy people on average be better educated and potentially more intelligent than the poorest group?

I would expect wealthy to always be well represented.

> potentially more intelligent than the poorest group

It's easy to think this but its not true. There is just a ton of privilege involved in life. There are groups in India who purely tutor slum kids to the top IITs(the JEE exams in India are very hard).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_30

They said "on average". Selecting 30 of the most talented from the poorest group does not contradict that.

On average more educated? Yes. More intelligent? Nah I see no data. Given the same access to resources I expect the kid from a poor family and a kid from a rich family to perform similarly.

I do not. Where do unintelligent people exist in your society?

And at a certain point the argument about equal access is entirely hypothetical. For example can’t redo early childhood. So if that impacts your ability then it’s been impacted.

> Where do unintelligent people exist in your society?

Everywhere? Both in rich and poor households.

> For example can’t redo early childhood. So if that impacts your ability then it’s been impacted.

Ah I thought the argument was more about genes(aka born smart) and not something like nutrition.

I think a good thought experiment is Formula 1. Most top F1 racers come from super rich backgrounds. Does that mean that more money == better driver? Its mostly a accessibility problem.

Which premise do you disagree with?

1. Financial and career success are correlated with good test skills.

2. Good test skills are strongly influenced by genetics or early childhood.

If you agree with both then you expect some correlation between wealth and test performance.

I disagree that being born to rich parents == you have better genetics.

It's mostly privilege. And just being born in America is one of the biggest privileges wrt career and wealth.

Well I’ll be charitable and interpret == as correlation as we are talking about averages.

From your conclusion you’re telling me wealth is completely random or the capabilities of children is completely random. Neither of those holds up to any scrutiny.

I don’t know what being born in the US has to do with the conversation.

Sorry I’m not familiar with Indian culture and power structures.

better educated I get, but more intelligent? That doesn't track.

Yes, very unintelligent people tend to not do well financially.

The problem seems to be that intelligence is not entirely heritable; that just because unintelligent people fail to do well financially doesn't mean that their children are doomed to the same fate.

Not entirely heritable? Or has no genetic correlation?

> just because unintelligent people fail to do well financially doesn't mean that their children are doomed to the same fate.

Correct, my statement is about expectation of averages. Not a claim that we should exclude an individual because of who their parents are.

> Not entirely heritable? Or has no genetic correlation?

My understanding is that there is some genetic correlation but it's not a certainty; smart/rich parents can have dumbass kids and vice versa.

It's hard to quantify because a direct "IQ" measurement is fraught with issues and trying to measure by "success" has its own issues. If you've not met a lawyer/doctor/PhD that you'd put in the "dumbass" category, you probably haven't met many.

Agreed. All children of smart people are not smart. All financially successful people are not smart.

Yeah it'd be very slight, but things like stress and nutrition can affect your memory in the long term which is a part of intelligence.

Assuming that’s true, wouldn’t that mean you are less capable?

Yes. There as difference between unfair and unreal; someone who is malnourished when growing up will forever likely be weaker than someone who received a proper sequence of meals.

We should perhaps recognize that and try to compensate for it, and it's not a value judgement on the person so afflicted, but pretending it doesn't exist just confuses matters.

If the difference is real I don’t think the test is the place to compensate as its function is to select people who will succeed in that area.

That's been the entire fight over the last 20+ years, does the test identify anything real and if so, what should be done with it (equality of outcomes vs equality of opportunity, e.g.).

That's fair, but... What's the alternative? Obviously someone's going to have better academic performance if you have tutors, there's no way around. Still, if you have good academic performance - you have it.

American system feels more unfair when you're given points for extracurriculars like playing instruments or sports, like that's not going to hold poorer children even more (also how's that related to academic performance at all? Unis should not care about unrelated things)

The university will argue that a well-rounded student body improves the experience for everybody. IE, a college that's 100% "nerds" won't be as good as college that's 80% "nerds", 10% "smart jocks", and 10% "band geeks" (or whatever other categories you want).

I probably agree with that, but also acknowledge there's no good way to make that completely objective.

In Europe, university is treated as education for adults, not your entire life. Most universities are not campus resorts like in the US, but just buildings in the city itself, students live a normal life in the city, they rent a apartment or live in a dorm, take public transit to get to places, do sport at a sport place independent of the university, etc. You can live a well rounded life that way. The university is there so you learn your specialization. Of course people make friends there, but it doesn't have to be your entire life, and the university administrators job is not to meddle with people's social lives to make them "interesting", but to allow learning.

Our oldest unis are generally "downtown" or similar - Harvard, Princeton, UVA (sort of - Charlottesville is a really small city), etc. Though most do still have their own dormitory housing, at least for underclassmen.

The large campus-style uni is fairly recent creation - many came out of the land grant system during/after the Civil War. And even as newer unis have been created, they've followed that general design (even though they aren't land grant institutions).

All of those universities you mention still immerse students in the university setting round the clock, though.

> I probably agree with that, but also acknowledge there's no good way to make that completely objective.

Even worse, rich kids have far more means to engage in extracurriculars than poor kids.

This just means US universities are for networking and partying as much as they are for learning.

Universities in the US and other countries are not the same, and comparing them is not really fruitful.

US universities do care about extracurriculars and GPA and other things because they aren’t optimizing for raw academic performance, they’re optimizing for various other things like an interesting student body (that attracts donors, professors, and future students), real-world networks, and so on.

In other words an extra four years of day care before those students have to function independently as adults.

No, that’s not even remotely close to what I wrote, at any level. In fact, it’s closer to the opposite, because selecting purely based on an abstract exam has nothing to do with being a real-world adult, whereas extracurriculars, internships, etc. do to some level.

Camus life is not good preparation for post campus life, unless Google and Facebook are still modeling their work environments to imitate campus life.

Pure lottery for all slots? Seems that it would be fairest possible alternative. Anything else being less fair.

One important thing is whether the tutoring is making better students, or just gaming the test.

And after graduation they can grind leetcode, and after that they can practice social cues to get in the management class. It's gamed tests all the way down.

For people who choose that career path. Still, somewhere somebody is doing some work.

The uggos I guess

Are those independent?

That's tricky. I think it depends on what kind of gaming and what kind of test.

Good schools for everyone

>and it's the same in the entire EU

That's not true.

Yeah, I definitely didn't do any kind of entrance exam to get into University so unless there have been more recent changes to it it's not needed for all subjects. And its also not needed if you can just filter out bad students via normal exams in the first semesters.

Because they want to say that China is bad. When, as you say, US is the outlier in inventing strange ways to admit kids to college. I'm from Brazil and the entrance is exam is similar to China, there is a single exam and the note is used to determine which college you can go.

I don’t really find it strange, if anything a slavish obsession to test scores strikes me as strange. School is just an artificial institution like any other, it’s not as if getting good grades is equivalent real-world success or “true” intelligence.

The US also has the best universities in the world, by and large, (even if the regular education system is lacking), so I am pretty skeptical of the idea that raw test scores as the sole criterion would lead to better outcomes.

Raw test scores are a good idea in many countries because it reduces scope for corruption + gives even the poorest kids a chance. Though I would argue there needs to be multiple chances a year and not just 1.

Wow! So advanced! Does the rest of the world do the same with jobs (a single exam to determine if you get hired to any company), or does it invent strange ways to interview and hire applicants well?

China IS bad though.

Why glaze China so much when you can be impressed by the west instead.

All these zoomers grow up on a China propaganda app.

How is China bad? Their education system did take them from absolute poverty to #2 superpower in a few decades.

Oh, no it is very impressive.

I mean from a moral and "care about me" perspective.

Yes Trump bad but USA has done more for EU than China.

Its basically anything that sticks by saying "China Bad, USA Good".