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Comment by recursivecaveat | Hacker News Reader

Basically their general position is that Asian American applicants are held to a higher standard and admitted at a lower rate than would be the case if you say, only admitted the X highest scoring SATs. If the acceptance rates are falling after affirmative action was outlawed, their interpretation is that this system of everyone writing a little essay about their racial background and we judge the essays is just the old affirmative action system with a wink and a nod.

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It’s almost as though the SAT score is not the only thing considered in admissions.

Unlike many Asian countries, the US doesn’t have some big single exam that determines your life outcome.

Remind me of where the best universities in the world are again? The places that do admissions solely on test scores? Or these “unfair” places that use more than one metric?

> It’s almost as though the SAT score is not the only thing considered in admissions.

That's exactly the problem these Asian countries want to avoid/address: as soon as you deviate from the standardized test scores, you lay yourself open to potential biases and discrimination.

> Remind me of where the best universities in the world are again?

Quality of Bachelors programs (which is what's being discussed here) has pretty much zero bearing on how universities are ranked.

> Remind me of where the best universities in the world are again? The places that do admissions solely on test scores? Or these “unfair” places that use more than one metric?

Maybe not the undergrad students, but grad students and many professors of research universities come from the countries where admissions are done solely on test scores.

Having a big single exam that determines one's life outcome is bad on principle, but, it removes corruption, and is the most transparent method, ever.

It doesn't remove corruption. Here's an example of stealing positions in the gaokao in china:

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3090774/chin...

That's an execution problem, not a principle problem.

All humans are biased. Holistic admission has many more inherent flaws than test-score based admission.

>Having a big single exam that determines one's life outcome is bad on principle, but, it removes corruption, and is the most transparent method, ever.

Couldn't we have multiple big exams and do some averaging? Maybe even take the median to discard outliers? This would keep the meritocratic fairness aspect and take the pressure from performing in one single exam determining your fate in life.

These are ideas worth discussing. Many countries are moving away from ONE exam- once, or in a narrow time frame. For example, the research entry test, CSIR NET, in India is now taken twice a year, as opposed to once earlier, medicine entrance test did away with the age limit, and attempt limit. From this year, the final school exam at Senior year (12th standard) in my state becomes semester based, two tests- as opposed to one test once.

What I absolutely despise is having metrics on the admission that are highly, highly skewed against the poors, like lifelong A's, school presidency, music performance, other co-curriculars, and so on.

And the focus on increasing diversity at the cost of ability.

I know many who could climb the socio economic ladder due to test based admission. And in significant numbers, not like the ~5 taken by Harvard in each meaningful program a year.

Those grad students are evaluated on far more than test scores, and the essays matter a ton. US university admissions are even more holistic at the graduate level.

The candidates who have good test scores and nothing else get cut in the second round, it’s one of the easiest steps in doing the cull.

The essays are about the actual research they are interested in doing, it's more like a part of a technical interview. Unlike the tell me about your life, do you play lacrosse, bs that undergrad college applicants have to go through.

There is always a personal statement and they matter.

Depends on the department I guess. In my CS department, it's more like a job interview than some personal essay bs.

There are many good universities in all sorts of places.

I like the exam-only entry. Here in Sweden that was why I got to go where I went. The alternative is a bunch of hoop-jumping which, at least for me, would feel oppressive.

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