American Economics Thread

[manqiangrexue]

As someone who has never and will likely never been in US, just out of curiosity how do these SAT tests work?

Is it common that people can get full score on them or does it take a lot of practice?

I find it quite bizarre to have big tests if many people can ace them. How will you be able to differentiate between ppl every normal ish person gets high or even top scores?

When I was taking it, it was very very difficult to get a full score. I think only 1 kid in my school got it and I went to one of NY's top 3 science high schools. It was 800 on the Reading, 800 on the Math. And the scores didn't go down linearly as you missed questions. On the Reading, you could miss like 3 questions and still have an 800 but then on the 4th one, it would go to 770, 5th one 750, etc... Somewhere in the middle, it slowed down where every missed question was 10 points off or even 0 points sometimes when you get into the 400's. You start with 200 for signing your name. On the math, you get like 30-40 points off right from your first missed question but it kinda becomes the same if you were in the 400's. We think they did it this way to trip up the Asian kids because if we could miss 3 math questions and still have 800, half of us would. Anyway, 1300 was considered a decent score, most of us had better than that; maybe one kid out of 4 or 5 had over 1400. Probably 5 kids out of over 400 would have over 1500. Supposedly over 1400-1450 was good enough for any Ivy if you had strong extra-curriculars; over 1500 would be a selling point to an Ivy and they didn't care if you had over 1550-1600 cus that was probably the difference between being in the zone and having a bad day for genius kids.

Then they added the writing section, which was another 800. I was testing the first year they added that and they said that was basically another racist measure to keep Asian kids down because it was basically making mastery over the English language worth double compared mastery over math. The colleges basically didn't count that in the first year because there was no historical precedent for evaluation. So with that, 2100 became the relatively high score that 1400 was, meaning basically, only about 20-25% of the kids at a specialized science high school could score that high. 2200 was a boss score people were very impressed with.

Several years later into my PhD, I went to one of my professor's house parties and he said his kids both scored over 2200. I said that was amazing. He said not really... cus lots of their Asian friends have over 2200. I said wow, they must go to a genius school! He said... that's the first time he's heard someone call their local district high school a genius school before. Didn't want to continue that conversation cus I didn't want to inadvertently say something like, "Oh, ok. I guess they're not that smart then." File that away; at another party, basically the same convo happened, and then I realized that 2200 was no longer an impressive score because they made the test much much easier. Basically, Maikeru is correct.

Now here's what I don't get. Even though this is pretty much non-debatable that 2200+ scores, even 2300+ scores became much much easier to come by, the national average has actually DROPPED. How did this happen? I don't know.

But then they adjusted it again in 2017 because according to the American philosophy that if your kids are failing then the solution is to make the test easier, they did away with the writing section because it wasn't holding Asian kids back (my writing score was almost has high as my math score but my reading never broke 700) and this time, they made it easy enough to get the average a bit higher.

Full story in empirical mode below:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[Maikeru]

When I was taking it, it was very very difficult to get a full score. I think only 1 kid in my school got it and I went to one of NY's top 3 science high schools. It was 800 on the Reading, 800 on the Math. And the scores didn't go down linearly as you missed questions. On the Reading, you could miss like 3 questions and still have an 800 but then on the 4th one, it would go to 770, 5th one 750, etc... Somewhere in the middle, it slowed down where every missed question was 10 points off or even 0 points sometimes when you get into the 400's. You start with 200 for signing your name. On the math, you get like 30-40 points off right from your first missed question but it kinda becomes the same if you were in the 400's. We think they did it this way to trip up the Asian kids because if we could miss 3 math questions and still have 800, half of us would. Anyway, 1300 was considered a decent score, most of us had better than that; maybe one kid out of 4 or 5 had over 1400. Probably 5 kids out of over 400 would have over 1500. Supposedly over 1400-1450 was good enough for any Ivy if you had strong extra-curriculars; over 1500 would be a selling point to an Ivy and they didn't care if you had over 1550-1600 cus that was probably the difference between being in the zone and having a bad day for genius kids.

Then they added the writing section, which was another 800. I was testing the first year they added that and they said that was basically another racist measure to keep Asian kids down because it was basically making mastery over the English language worth double compared mastery over math. The colleges basically didn't count that in the first year because there was no historical precedent for evaluation. So with that, 2100 became the relatively high score that 1400 was, meaning basically, only about 20-25% of the kids at a specialized science high school could score that high. 2200 was a boss score people were very impressed with.

Several years later into my PhD, I went to one of my professor's house parties and he said his kids both scored over 2200. I said that was amazing. He said not really... cus lots of their friends have over 2200. I said wow, they must go to a genius school! He said... that's the first time he's heard someone call their local district high school a genius school before. Didn't want to continue that conversation cus I didn't want to inadvertently call his kids stupid. File that away, at another party, basically the same convo happened, and then I realized that 2200 was no longer an impressive score because they made the test much much easier. Basically, Maikeru is correct.

Now here's what I don't get. Even though this is pretty much non-debatable that 2200+ scores, even 2300+ scores are easier to come by, the national average has actually DROPPED. How did this happen? I don't know.

But then they adjusted it again in 2017 because according to the American philosophy that if your kids are failing then the solution is to make the test easier, they did away with the writing section because it wasn't holding Asian kids back (my writing score was almost has high as my math score but my reading never broke 700) and this time, they made it easy enough to get the average a bit higher.

Full story in empirical mode below:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Having failed to dumb down the SAT sufficiently to do away with Asian advantage, many universities in the US are no longer considering SAT scores as part of their admission criteria. Will be interesting to see the judgment in the Harvard admissions case currently before the USSC.

 

[manqiangrexue]

Having failed to dumb down the SAT sufficiently to do away with Asian advantage, many universities in the US are no longer considering SAT scores as part of their admission criteria. Will be interesting to see the judgment in the Harvard admissions case currently before the USSC.

To be fair, that one kid who got the 1600 in my school was Jewish, not Asian. But in CalcBC, he was only in the top 5 while there were about 3 Chinese kids who were at the level where they could figure stuff out faster in their heads than you could put the data into your TI-83+ graphing calculator. These 3 psychos sat next to each other in the front row and competed to see who could get the answer the fastest every time a question was put on the board. They all got 800's in math but they couldn't touch his 800 in the reading section. The questions in the SAT math barely go further than algebra.

 

[Maikeru]

To be fair, that one kid who got the 1600 in my school was Jewish, not Asian. But in CalcBC, he was only in the top 5 while there were about 3 Chinese kids who were at the level where they could figure stuff out faster in their heads than you could put the data into your T-83+ graphing calculator. These 3 psychos sat next to each other in the front row and competed to see who could get the answer the fastest every time a question was put on the board. They all got 800's in math but they couldn't touch his 800 in the reading section. The questions in the SAT math barely go further than algebra.

Well now, the original Ivy League racial discrimination was to stop there being 'too many' Jews admitted, back in the 1920s. Ashkenazi jews have a claim to the highest average IQ in the world (110-115) but this skews towards linguistics and mathematics rather than spatial.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

SATs used to be a valid test of academic potential and highly correlated with IQ. However, because certain groups scored lower than others it is/was deemed racist and so increasingly dumbed down to the extent that, at the higher end, it is no longer useful in distinguishing the merely good from the great. This same process is happening with all similar tests across the US, including MCAT (medical aptitude) and LSAT (law school).

SAT is nothing compared to A levels, Gaokao, Le Bac, Russian Unified Exam, Korean CSAT etc. It never could distinguish the good from the great. But currently they're complaining that it is too efficient at distinguishing the obviously bad from the competent soooo.....

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

In general their school.system is systemically backwards in a mid 20th century way and haven't really learned from innovation in education for the past 70 years.

The end results in every country say that testing based education is the only way to ensure true fairness for everyone which is why literally every country has a harder and more serious test than the SAT.

 

[Overbom]

That's a good thing. The more they dumb down scientific tests the better. Hopefully by 2030 they will go away with all that boring math stuff and instead test for religious studies

I see a bright future for America. Keep going that way!

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

That's a good thing. The more they dumb down scientific tests the better. Hopefully by 2030 they will go away with all that boring math stuff and instead test for religious studies

I see a bright future for America. Keep going that way!

Most countries require you to learn a foreign language to get into university.

Meanwhile...

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[TK3600]

When I was taking it, it was very very difficult to get a full score. I think only 1 kid in my school got it and I went to one of NY's top 3 science high schools. It was 800 on the Reading, 800 on the Math. And the scores didn't go down linearly as you missed questions. On the Reading, you could miss like 3 questions and still have an 800 but then on the 4th one, it would go to 770, 5th one 750, etc... Somewhere in the middle, it slowed down where every missed question was 10 points off or even 0 points sometimes when you get into the 400's. You start with 200 for signing your name. On the math, you get like 30-40 points off right from your first missed question but it kinda becomes the same if you were in the 400's. We think they did it this way to trip up the Asian kids because if we could miss 3 math questions and still have 800, half of us would. Anyway, 1300 was considered a decent score, most of us had better than that; maybe one kid out of 4 or 5 had over 1400. Probably 5 kids out of over 400 would have over 1500. Supposedly over 1400-1450 was good enough for any Ivy if you had strong extra-curriculars; over 1500 would be a selling point to an Ivy and they didn't care if you had over 1550-1600 cus that was probably the difference between being in the zone and having a bad day for genius kids.

Then they added the writing section, which was another 800. I was testing the first year they added that and they said that was basically another racist measure to keep Asian kids down because it was basically making mastery over the English language worth double compared mastery over math. The colleges basically didn't count that in the first year because there was no historical precedent for evaluation. So with that, 2100 became the relatively high score that 1400 was, meaning basically, only about 20-25% of the kids at a specialized science high school could score that high. 2200 was a boss score people were very impressed with.

Several years later into my PhD, I went to one of my professor's house parties and he said his kids both scored over 2200. I said that was amazing. He said not really... cus lots of their Asian friends have over 2200. I said wow, they must go to a genius school! He said... that's the first time he's heard someone call their local district high school a genius school before. Didn't want to continue that conversation cus I didn't want to inadvertently say something like, "Oh, ok. I guess they're not that smart then." File that away; at another party, basically the same convo happened, and then I realized that 2200 was no longer an impressive score because they made the test much much easier. Basically, Maikeru is correct.

Now here's what I don't get. Even though this is pretty much non-debatable that 2200+ scores, even 2300+ scores became much much easier to come by, the national average has actually DROPPED. How did this happen? I don't know.

But then they adjusted it again in 2017 because according to the American philosophy that if your kids are failing then the solution is to make the test easier, they did away with the writing section because it wasn't holding Asian kids back (my writing score was almost has high as my math score but my reading never broke 700) and this time, they made it easy enough to get the average a bit higher.

Full story in empirical mode below:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Thanks for the insight. I am glad I never took it.

 

[luminary]

SATs used to be a valid test of academic potential and highly correlated with IQ. However, because certain groups scored lower than others it is/was deemed racist and so increasingly dumbed down to the extent that, at the higher end, it is no longer useful in distinguishing the merely good from the great. This same process is happening with all similar tests across the US, including MCAT (medical aptitude) and LSAT (law school).

Coming from someone who took the test, got 97th percentile and was accepted to medical school:
MCAT Reddit has more useful resources than all the MCAT prep books combined. MCAT question formats are eerily similar to those of the new SAT. There's very little critical thinking involved, the most basic math and physics questions (which usually can be covered by memorization), and a decently difficult reading comprehension plus bio facts section. "Medical aptitude" is, in fact, mostly memorization. This is due to the fact that U.S. physicians are more like technicians that need to perform treatment the same way 100% of the time (else they'll get sued).
As a result, innovation and critical thinking is discouraged in the field. This is also why robots are actually really good at replacing certain doctor types. The American Medical Association, essentially a lobby group / cartel to protect clinician interests, always tries to constrain medical technology and restrict the number of physicians available to keep M.D. salaries sky-high. It's failed because other countries have been automating and the U.S. has realized it's fallen behind. Since then, they've tried things like creating mid-levels (nurses and physician assistants that can perform mid-level medical duties) to meet rising demand and partnering with universities to control the pace and direction of medical innovation.
The lead the U.S. has in clinical and medical sciences is mostly sustained by non-clinicians like biochemistry and computer science researchers who collaborate with clinicians to conduct their research. Only physician interest-friendly research will be accepted by the big medical journals.