Split SAT scores as a measure of your potential and college worthiness

[Derec]

The SAT does not include any questions about medical science.

They are given to high schoolers, so why should they? They do test general mathematical and verbal skills though for college admissions.
MCAT, a test for med school admissions, tests physics, chemistry, biology, psych/soc and reading comprehension. It provides a standardized way to test prospective med students because colleges vary very widely in terms of rigor. Even taking similar classes, a 3.9 at Bumfuck State may be equivalent to 3.6 at Flagship State and even lower at some very selective private university. A standardized test provides the same meter stick against which all students are tested. What's wrong with that?

Why should I care how good my surgeon was at memorizing random trivia about Math and English when they were 17?

Math section is not really about memorizing, much less random trivia. There is more memorization in the verbal section, but even that is easier to study for if a student is well read coming in, as their vocabulary is broader. It goes to general academic aptitude. There is a lot of reading in med school and complicated terminology to not only memorize but also understand. I think a good grasp on language and math skills at 17 is a good predictor of mastering medical school skills at 23.

How would you select people for medical schools? Let's say you opened Politesse School of Medicine. How would you pick your inaugural class?

A solid fourth of American doctors are foreign born and never had to take SAT at all.

Irrelevant. Most countries have more stringent entrance exams to tertiary education than US does.

I care more about their professional qualifications as an adult than how good they were at gaming their way through standardized exams as a child.

It's all a part of the journey. SATs lead to college. MCAT to med schools. Then you have USMLE/COMLEX that is important to matching into residencies. How would you distinguish applicants without some meter stick to measure them against?

 

[thebeave]

This story has been making the rounds in my area. If this guy gets rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to with his SAT score (1590 out of 1600) and a 4.42 weighted GPA it makes you wonder what the ones who got in had going for them. Maybe we shouldn't bother with SATs or grades, and just admit those who had jobs as a crossing guard for little kids, smiled a lot, picked up a lot of litter on the highway and wrote a good essay.

Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges reveals how he got Google job

In short, Zhong was rejected this spring by MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, Cal Poly SLO, Cornell, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Caltech, University of Wisconsin and University of Washington. He was only admitted to the University of Texas and Maryland.

My alma mater is in that list, and I got in with a B+ average and fairly unremarkable ACT scores (didn't take SAT) though I started college 23 years ago. I guess things have changed a lot since then!

The thread necromancy is timely. There is a recent update to Stanley Zhong's case. He's suing the UC system for racial discrimination:

Rejected by 16 colleges, 18-year-old got job at Google. Now he sues for discrimination

Stanley Zhong was only 13 years old when he heard from a Google recruiter. The recruiter reached out in 2019, writing in an email that Google “would love” to discuss software engineering career opportunities with Zhong, according to a 291-page lawsuit he recently filed in Sacramento federal court. Zhong was already a self-taught programmer by that point and was interested. “Just to make sure you know, I’m 13 years old,” he responded to the recruiter, a screenshot of his emailed response included in the lawsuit shows. The recruiter ultimately told Zhong that Google was going to keep his resume for future consideration, due to his age, according to the filing. Google hired Zhong full-time at age 18 in the fall of 2023. He was offered the Ph.D.-level position as a recent Palo Alto high school graduate — who had been rejected by 16 out of 18 colleges he applied to, according to Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination, an organization created by his father, Nan Zhong. Of the colleges, five were all University of California schools: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara, the lawsuit says. Stanley, who’s now 19, and Nan Zhong are suing the University of California for racial discrimination over a pattern of discriminating against “highly qualified Asian-American applicants.” “What we’re trying to get out of this is a fair treatment for future Asian applicants going forward, including my other kids and my future grandkids,” Nan Zhong said in an interview with KGO-TV, which first reported on the lawsuit.

This could rival the Bakke discrimination case. Incidentally, Allan Backe was a student at my alma mater.

 

[lostone]

SATs also are helpful to people who went to rural and small town schools, schools which lack the options to teach AP courses and pre-calculus which handicaps them when they go on to large universities and compete against those students from major cities, many of whom have already taken first courses in calculus, the brightest of those from large urban schools who even have the background to bypass elementar6y calculus and take linear algebra in their freshman year.

Of course, in the old days, before 1970 or so, there was no such thing as organizations offering training on how to take the SATs. That is corruption of the system.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This story has been making the rounds in my area. If this guy gets rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to with his SAT score (1590 out of 1600) and a 4.42 weighted GPA it makes you wonder what the ones who got in had going for them. Maybe we shouldn't bother with SATs or grades, and just admit those who had jobs as a crossing guard for little kids, smiled a lot, picked up a lot of litter on the highway and wrote a good essay.

Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges reveals how he got Google job

In short, Zhong was rejected this spring by MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, Cal Poly SLO, Cornell, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Caltech, University of Wisconsin and University of Washington. He was only admitted to the University of Texas and Maryland.

My alma mater is in that list, and I got in with a B+ average and fairly unremarkable ACT scores (didn't take SAT) though I started college 23 years ago. I guess things have changed a lot since then!

The thread necromancy is timely. There is a recent update to Stanley Zhong's case. He's suing the UC system for racial discrimination:

Rejected by 16 colleges, 18-year-old got job at Google. Now he sues for discrimination

Stanley Zhong was only 13 years old when he heard from a Google recruiter. The recruiter reached out in 2019, writing in an email that Google “would love” to discuss software engineering career opportunities with Zhong, according to a 291-page lawsuit he recently filed in Sacramento federal court. Zhong was already a self-taught programmer by that point and was interested. “Just to make sure you know, I’m 13 years old,” he responded to the recruiter, a screenshot of his emailed response included in the lawsuit shows. The recruiter ultimately told Zhong that Google was going to keep his resume for future consideration, due to his age, according to the filing. Google hired Zhong full-time at age 18 in the fall of 2023. He was offered the Ph.D.-level position as a recent Palo Alto high school graduate — who had been rejected by 16 out of 18 colleges he applied to, according to Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination, an organization created by his father, Nan Zhong. Of the colleges, five were all University of California schools: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara, the lawsuit says. Stanley, who’s now 19, and Nan Zhong are suing the University of California for racial discrimination over a pattern of discriminating against “highly qualified Asian-American applicants.” “What we’re trying to get out of this is a fair treatment for future Asian applicants going forward, including my other kids and my future grandkids,” Nan Zhong said in an interview with KGO-TV, which first reported on the lawsuit.

This could rival the Bakke discrimination case. Incidentally, Allan Backe was a student at my alma mater.

What, 1 in 9.5 applicants are accepted at Berkley? Am I supposed to believe that those 85000 or so rejected applicants were all idiots, except the Asian ones?

 

[Politesse]

How would you select people for medical schools? Let's say you opened Politesse School of Medicine. How would you pick your inaugural class?

I'd follow best practices as they are now understood, of course. There's no need to reinvent the wheel when there are thousands of highly qualified specialists to pick the brains of.

But I would also design schools to accomodate demand rather than trying to boost the value of the institution through contrived scarcity. There's no good reason to reject highly qualified students from pursuing a degree in the first place, if that happens regularly your system of higher education is poorly designed on a structural level, wasting talent, time, money, and skill. You realize in more civilized countries more or less any talented school can pursue whatever degree they have a mind to, right? And that's far better than trying to maintain graduate school as the private stomping ground of the very wealthy, creating this bizarre situation where a country with some of the best medical schools on the planet has to search overseas for qualified students because our own do not make it through the useless morass of our secondary education system.

 

[Derec]

I've known plenty of MDs who were not very smart, lacked critical thinking skills and were in the low end when it came to emotional intelligence, which to me is vitally important to be a really competent health professional.

Nobody is saying that medical education is perfect today. But do you really think any of this would improve by making admissions even more subjective? Subjective metrics can be gamed by the rich and the shrewd way more easily than objective ones.

Sure, my examples are anecdotal but I've found it to be true about standardized tests in general and I have never seen any clear evidence that one's SAT scores equate with success. College is more about being motivated, having goals and being willing to study and learn.

If you are willing to study and learn, if you are driven, you are more likely to do well on SATs as well.
Not only by preparing for SATs themselves, but also by having a solid academic foundation since 1st grade.

Ya need some more anecdotes?

No. Of course there will always be stories of somebody doing well in high school and then partying too much and flunking out because they are away from parents for the first time and are overwhelmed by newfound freedom. That does not invalidate SATs as a solid objective metric for aptitude.

Again, what do SAT scored have to do with being a highly skilled technician or being able to interact with people in a mature, compassionate way?

SATs are a long way removed from surgery residency. But they show general academic aptitude. And it is one of many standardized tests a kid would have to master to get to being a surgeon. MCAT for med school admissions. Shelf exams are given after each rotation. USMLE Step 2 is still scored and a major metric by which med students are matched to residencies. Then there are (re)certification exams.

Unfortunately, some of them aren't very good at what they do, so their patients sometimes end up with severe deep, open, draining wounds, left for nurses to clean up and help heal. Been there, done that! I imagine that most of the bad ones also had pretty good SAT scores, but what does that have to do with their skills as surgeons....nothing. It's a talent as well as a learned skill.

As you said, nothing, but that's the start of the journey. And sure, tests, even shelves and boards which test medical knowledge, are not going to test surgical skills. Maybe there should be a standardized way to assess that, and using virtual reality it would be possible to do that today. Only relying on impressions by preceptors is a disadvantage, since every institution, and every preceptor within the same institution, will assess students differently, and thus clerkship evaluations are not a "same meter stick".

Apparently, I'm not the only one who has decided that SATs are just an expensive money making scheme that allow the, wealthier members of society to prepare their offspring to score higher on them.

Not so. Of course wealthier members of society can prepare their offspring better. That is always the case.
And if a family values education more, they will not just do it for the SATs. It will be a life-long thing. Reading to children when they are little, for example, and one professor even suggested that was an unfair advantage.
But studying more for SATs, or taking AP classes, is pretty benign advantage since this actually prepares these kids for college. Paying somebody to write essays for your kid is pretty malignant. And yet, you want to get rid of tests like SAT and emphasize more easily gameable things like essays. That would make things worse.

Maybe that's not exactly how the schools see it, but since so many no longer require them as part of the admission process, they must have come to realize that they don't predict success,

Actually, many are reversing course.
SAT and ACT testing is no longer optional at top schools | College Connection

And for good reason. Harvard going test-optional meant that they had to introduce remedial math classes. Yes, you read that right. Remedial classes at Harvard.
America’s Math Collapse: Harvard Institutes Remedial Math
Our future if this dumbing down continues. Also, as to the end of the clip, we all know all blocks go into the square hole ...

If only there was a standardized test that Harvard could require that would have weeded out prospective students who can't hack algebra ...

and there are many other things to base admissions on, including even work and life experience.

Nobody is saying SAT should be the only metric. But it is an important one.

Perhaps most young people need to take a gap year or two before they start college. There are plenty of ways of assessing if one is ready to be successful in college. I just don't think that SAT scores are necessary or predictive in most cases.

They are definitely predictive, in conjunction with other things like high school grades, extracurriculars etc.

 

[Derec]

That would be nice. If there was one. But your SAT scores have nothing whatsoever to do with whether you are a good surgeon or not. There's nothing objective about it.

SAT is an objective measure of readiness for college, not surgical residency. Surgery shelf and USMLE Step 2 would be the equivalent here. Same argument stands. A residency program needs an objective way to compare all the myriad applications they receive in order to select comparatively few candidates to interview. Standardized tests provide an equal meter stick to measure candidates against.

So you're worried about letting the "perfect be the enemy of the good", but imagining that a pimply teenager who gets 1455 on the SAT and thus is in consideration for Johns Hopkins is a fundamentally more capable person who scores 1445 on the SAT and thus has their application scrapped?

1445 vs. 1455 will not make much of a difference, if any. 1355 vs. 1455 would. 1255 vs. 1455 even more so.

Because they got one question "wrong" about the most important plot element in an excerpt from Tom Saywer, you wouldn't trust them to transplant your kidney?

The kid is getting into undergrad with an SAT. Long ways to transplant surgery fellowship. JH and other highly selective universities need some way to stratify applicants, and SAT is certainly better than an admissions person liking one kid's admission essay slightly better than another's. Especially since essays are far more easily gameable by the rich. Even a rich kid must sit for his own SATs, but anybody can write an essay for somebody else.

Another "objective" requirement to get into Johns Hopkins is GPA. If "perfect is the enemy of the good", does it make sense to say that a person who got a B in their theater class in junior year, then a B in PE in their senior year, thus letting their GPA drop below the school's 3.92 minimum standard is not only a fundamentally worse person, but also one that you believe could not possibly become a skilled pulmonologist later in life? Because another kid was willing to give their theater teacher a blow job to get that A, but she refused, you would refuse to let her do surgery on you?

So if you dislike grades and you dislike tests, what do you think Johns Hopkins should base their admissions on? Forget theater and PE. How about getting a C in chemistry? No better a candidate for a top university than somebody who took AP Chem and aced the AP exam?

"Objective" measures of quality, especially when taken to the nitpicking extremes that the major schools are now (thankfully) walking back a bit but once enforced rigidly, are a fat load of nonsense to any thinking person.

So we should dispense with objective measures and what? Admit kids based on personality scores? Lotteries?

If my doctor is, by all appearances, a highly skilled otorhinolaryngologist, an attentive physician who shows diligence and empathy on the job and who has saved hundreds of lives, I do not give a flying shit whether they got an A in their freshman Automotive Shop class, or even whether they remembered the quadratic formula the day they took their SAT. That sort of tangential nonsense is not a truly "objective" measure of anything that remotely matters.

Remembering the quadratic formula goes to memory and recall. Being able to apply it goes to problem solving skills. Both important qualities for a possible future physician. Even auto shop selects for aptitude to work with one's hands and trains hand-eye coordination. Being able to work on cars may not compensate for a poor Step 2 score, but may bring you up a rank or two in surgery match against academically similar applicants with no history of getting their hands dirty. For other specialties it may not matter, but other things might.

 

[Politesse]

So if you dislike grades and you dislike tests, what do you think Johns Hopkins should base their . Forget theater and PE. How about getting a C in chemistry? No better a candidate for a top university than somebody who took AP Chem and aced the AP exam?

So do you then admit your initial argument was stupid? That one should consider relevant information, rather than subjective but completely meaningless "metrics" in assessing student applications? You're like... this close to seeing why it is stupid to consider a 4.0 student inherently superior to a 3.8 student, but you're just not there.

So we should dispense with objective measures and what? Admit kids based on personality scores? Lotteries?

This is an absurd argument. Colleges differ in their admissions strategy and they have every right to do so, but no one makes admissions decisions with "personality scores" or "lotteries", as I think you are well aware.

You seem to not be aware of what objective scoring means (and doesn't mean), but Johns Hopkins presumably does. Which is why they, like all modern schools, balance test scores against other avenues of information for a more holistic admissions decision.

 

[southernhybrid]

My SAT scores were higher than all of my straight A student friends, not that great but better than theirs were. I've already said that my son's scores were horrible, but he ended up graduating with honors with a degree in computer science after getting excellent grades for an AD in computer technology, so even with those poor scores, he can build a computer from scratch and is supposedly the best programmer/developer in his department, or so he's been told. So, I still think SAT scores are a poor indicator of how one will do in college. If you're good at taking standardized tests like I used to be, your scores will be better than those who aren't good at such tests. My nursing board scores were extremely high and now board scores are all pass/fail. It's not that I'm so smart. I was always good at taking standardized tests. Not sure about now in old age, but I was during my younger days.

I could even bullshit my way on an IQ test and that is why I don't feel those tests mean much of anything. I don't think I'm nearly as smart as my IQ score was. I could easily bullshit my way through most liberal arts courses too, but nursing was very difficult, as it's complex and requires a lot of detailed critical thinking skills. Most people have no idea how difficult nursing courses are. About half of my class dropped out or flunked out, and I had already taken all of the lib arts courses required when I was an English major for 3 years, aka a major in books that you've never read. ( Ok. That was a joke from a comedian who had a degree in English )

There are other ways to decide who gets into college. My son didn't have good grades in high school or on the SATs, so he started off at a community college and got excellent grades. He always loved programming from the time he was in junior high. He even taught himself machine language programming when in high school. I think he just hated high school and had trouble paying attention in class. Technology was his thing and he still loves his job because it's in his favorite area. He obviously didn't get that talent from me, although his step dad was a great influence, being an engineer who also loved technology.

Anyway...I have no desire to argue about this any longer. This is just my opinion and of course not everyone agrees with me.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This story has been making the rounds in my area. If this guy gets rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to with his SAT score (1590 out of 1600) and a 4.42 weighted GPA it makes you wonder what the ones who got in had going for them. Maybe we shouldn't bother with SATs or grades, and just admit those who had jobs as a crossing guard for little kids, smiled a lot, picked up a lot of litter on the highway and wrote a good essay.

Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges reveals how he got Google job

In short, Zhong was rejected this spring by MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, Cal Poly SLO, Cornell, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Caltech, University of Wisconsin and University of Washington. He was only admitted to the University of Texas and Maryland.

My alma mater is in that list, and I got in with a B+ average and fairly unremarkable ACT scores (didn't take SAT) though I started college 23 years ago. I guess things have changed a lot since then!

The thread necromancy is timely. There is a recent update to Stanley Zhong's case. He's suing the UC system for racial discrimination:

Rejected by 16 colleges, 18-year-old got job at Google. Now he sues for discrimination

Stanley Zhong was only 13 years old when he heard from a Google recruiter. The recruiter reached out in 2019, writing in an email that Google “would love” to discuss software engineering career opportunities with Zhong, according to a 291-page lawsuit he recently filed in Sacramento federal court. Zhong was already a self-taught programmer by that point and was interested. “Just to make sure you know, I’m 13 years old,” he responded to the recruiter, a screenshot of his emailed response included in the lawsuit shows. The recruiter ultimately told Zhong that Google was going to keep his resume for future consideration, due to his age, according to the filing. Google hired Zhong full-time at age 18 in the fall of 2023. He was offered the Ph.D.-level position as a recent Palo Alto high school graduate — who had been rejected by 16 out of 18 colleges he applied to, according to Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination, an organization created by his father, Nan Zhong. Of the colleges, five were all University of California schools: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara, the lawsuit says. Stanley, who’s now 19, and Nan Zhong are suing the University of California for racial discrimination over a pattern of discriminating against “highly qualified Asian-American applicants.” “What we’re trying to get out of this is a fair treatment for future Asian applicants going forward, including my other kids and my future grandkids,” Nan Zhong said in an interview with KGO-TV, which first reported on the lawsuit.

This could rival the Bakke discrimination case. Incidentally, Allan Backe was a student at my alma mater.

What, 1 in 9.5 applicants are accepted at Berkley? Am I supposed to believe that those 85000 or so rejected applicants were all idiots, except the Asian ones?

You really think that he's inferior to all of those that were accepted?!?!

If he were black you would be saying this is open and shut discrimination.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So if you dislike grades and you dislike tests, what do you think Johns Hopkins should base their . Forget theater and PE. How about getting a C in chemistry? No better a candidate for a top university than somebody who took AP Chem and aced the AP exam?

So do you then admit your initial argument was stupid? That one should consider relevant information, rather than subjective but completely meaningless "metrics" in assessing student applications? You're like... this close to seeing why it is stupid to consider a 4.0 student inherently superior to a 3.8 student, but you're just not there.

But the current system considers the black 3.8 superior to the asian 4.0.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What, 1 in 9.5 applicants are accepted at Berkley? Am I supposed to believe that those 85000 or so rejected applicants were all idiots, except the Asian ones?

You really think that he's inferior to all of those that were accepted?!?!

If he were black you would be saying this is open and shut discrimination.

Seeing that at least one of the 85000 of so rejected applicants was black, and I haven't made that statement... you probably need to put that thought right back from where you pulled it out of.

 

[Politesse]

So if you dislike grades and you dislike tests, what do you think Johns Hopkins should base their . Forget theater and PE. How about getting a C in chemistry? No better a candidate for a top university than somebody who took AP Chem and aced the AP exam?

So do you then admit your initial argument was stupid? That one should consider relevant information, rather than subjective but completely meaningless "metrics" in assessing student applications? You're like... this close to seeing why it is stupid to consider a 4.0 student inherently superior to a 3.8 student, but you're just not there.

But the current system considers the black 3.8 superior to the asian 4.0.

That's simply untrue, so I do not know how to respond to the claim.

 

[Toni]

A salutatorian in one school may not crack top 10% in another.

I find that highly doubtful but if you have an example I'm willing to look at it.

Quite possible with an inner city school. A decent student can end up at the top of the pack while they would be simply average in a good school.

Interesting that you assume inner city schools are not good.

Exactly what do you think the difference is between an inner city school and what you call a ‘good’ school? Geography?

 

[bilby]

"Inner city" is a euphemism.

As in: "I have nothing personally against the Inner Cities, but you wouldn't want your daughter to marry one"; or "Look who just moved in next door. Inner City as the ace of spades. There goes the neighbourhood"; or "I think we should just round up the Inner Cities and send them back to Africa to be with their own kind".