The decision comes in the face of Harvard’s previous commitments to remain test-optional through the admitted Class of 2030, a policy that was first instituted during the pandemic....
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi E. Hoekstra wrote in a statement that “standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond. More information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range,” she added....
In its press release, Harvard referenced a study from Harvard-affiliated initiative Opportunity Insights, led by Brown University economist John N. Friedman ’02 and Harvard economists Raj Chetty ’00 and David J. Deming, which found that SAT scores are a particularly strong predictor of college success – much more so than a student’s high school grade point average....
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"In Sudden Reversal, Harvard To Require Standardized Testing for Next Admissions Cycle."
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Won't matter much. Rich parents will pay to get little Bif and Buffy diagnosed with ADHD so they get the bonus time on the test.
Sanity seems to be reasserting itself. I am a bit surprised by this.
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi E. Hoekstra wrote in a statement that “standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond. More information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range,” she added....
What changed?
Why wasn't this just as true in recent years?
They admit that lower standards admit students who will be at the bottom of the class. Amy Wax got into woke trouble for pointing that out.
It was only a month ago that the NYT crossword noted SATS were no longer required at Harvard!
https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/7/2024&g=24&d=A
What does it matter if they just give blacks an extra 40 points, Hispanics an extra 30 points, and trash every application from whites, Asians, and Jews?
Guess too many morons were slipping under the wire.
In its press release, Harvard referenced a study from Harvard-affiliated initiative Opportunity Insights, led by Brown University economist John N. Friedman ’02 and Harvard economists Raj Chetty ’00 and David J. Deming, which found that SAT scores are a particularly strong predictor of college success – much more so than a student’s high school grade point average....
Duh.
The whole point of eliminating standardized tests is to eliminate the effects of meritocracy.
Curious about this "sudden" reversal. It is out of character for the Regime. It looks like they are losing coalition members.
Imagine how poorly students without SAT scores must be performing for Harvard to back track. I'm frankly shocked that Harvard is going back to tests, particularly after losing the SCOTUS case, which hinged on demonstrating the superior test scores of asian students. Much harder to show bias without test scores.
This means your children and grandchildren had better be workshopping and perfecting their "adversity" essay for college applications. Woke universities will have to weight those essays quite heavily if they have any hope of maintaining their preferred racial profile for admitted students.
Shocker! They follow leader MIT and others in returning to sanity, and surely knew their students would struggle to beat community college students if they didn't stop the DEI brain poison.
Lefties are suddenly rediscovering the massive "progressive" educational achievement of standardized testing. (Just don't call it IQ testing, even though the correlations with IQ are always high).
Maybe Ms. Gay will finally get fired for academic fraud too? Hope springs eternal.
L. O. L.
Harvard thought they were like Mortimer Duke in "Trading Places." All we have to do is treat them like they belong here and they will. Tough luck.
Caltech too. Caltech had gone test *blind*.
I'd say that the stench from a particularly stupid decision ultimately reaches even the highest academic nostrils.
I'd say that the stench from a particularly stupid decision ultimately reaches even the highest academic nostrils.
Of course they have to go back. You can't stay "elite" without the top students.
This was driven by key alum and key employers recognizing the destruction of the Harvard brand.
I take a more cynical view (though this is just guess). Eliminating the SAT likely closed off the easiest and cheapest method for minority students to get into the admissions pipeline for Harvard. I wouldn't be surprised if they found the number of minority applications dropped precipitously and left them with too few options for admissions.
"Eliminating the SAT likely closed off the easiest and cheapest method for minority students to get into the admissions pipeline for Harvard. I wouldn't be surprised if they found the number of minority applications dropped precipitously and left them with too few options for admissions."
It is more likely that they found the lack of SAT scores made it more difficult to find the smart minority students. For Harvard, they get the cream of the crop no matter what demographic group we are talking about, but they have to be able to tell the cream from the oil residue at the bottom of all the barrels.
Seems to me Harvard has figured out how to hack standardized testing to get around their racist quotas. I have strong doubts they have migrated back to Judeo-Christian sensibilities.
Word from Admissions people is that high school grades from 2020-2023 are utterly meaningless. In some places they are wildly inflated, as some schools or teachers just handed out A's to everyone due to the impossible conditions. At others there are massive numbers of F's (presumably due to attendance policies). Formerly reliable rules like comparing the student's GPA with the graduating class's GPA are no longer correlated with anything. What has been happening is that some students who look great on paper are arriving at college without basic writing and math skills while others who on paper look like they need remedial help turn out to have been taught by parents or self-taught when they weren't doing Zoom lessons and so are way ahead.
Schools can't afford the remediation that many of the students need (and which they have a legal right to if their parents get a psychologist to sign off on learning issues--which, given what the kids experienced, isn't 100% wrong, as they really do have learning issues), and they have now heard enough stories of superb students with full-pay parents who got in only to their safety schools (major lost revenue opportunities).
So although the official ideological position is that standardized tests are biased and unfair (though no one has ever shown how this works in response to any individual question), top-tier schools see themselves as having no choice but to uses them to try to figure out which students are capable of doing the work.
Interesting times. My own experience is that I've currently got a cohort of students who are in the upper 1% of any that I've taught over the past 26 years (which is amazing considering that there has been a steady decline in the education-level of incoming first-years since around 2015), but that I also have more students with severe educational (not IQ, but taught-knowledge) gaps, and unfortunately the specific things they're missing are scattered all over the place, so any fixes are very time-consuming and not easily scaled up to groups of students.
The first sensible thing to happen at Harvard in recent memory. I hope it signifies the beginning of a return to sanity in Cambridge. Having just received the ballots for Overseer, however, I am not encouraged. There was not a single nominee that I felt comfortable voting for. As far as I could tell there was not a single nominee who had either the experience, or the talent, to manage a large organization.... but they were diverse!
The Smartphone and social media generation (2007 to present) is characterized by pervasive absent-mindedness (@Prof M. Drout). They have the nose in the phone, and thereby don't notice the toilet paper on their shoes, that their zippers are undone, and that they totally forgot to wear clothes at all.
Students yes, but teachers, executives, activists, politicians, and everyone else. They'd never have allowed this nonsense or humiliated themselves if they paid attention for more than a minute. But, I gotta check out my likes...what was I saying?
So, is the standardized test going to be the SAT/ACT, or is it going to be something like:
1. Spell your name.
2. Do you hate Jews? (Yes/No)
3. How many DEI check boxes do you count as?
"As far as I could tell there was not a single nominee who had either the experience, or the talent, to manage a large organization.... but they were diverse!"
In such situations, I always vote for the one-legged transgender lesbian albino who grew up in the Hood.
Standardized tests might be useful for some majors.
But most of the majors at Harvard, as elsewhere, are bullshit.
That the SAT has some correlation with Success in Bullshit at Harvard means nothing.
Testing someone’s ability to predict their success to master slogans and pablum should be avoided.
Chuck Schumer had a perfect SAT score.
So the test is meaningless
Prof. M. Drout raises and excellent point, and said...
heard enough stories of superb students with full-pay parents who got in only to their safety schools (major lost revenue opportunities).
Harvard is a for profit, money making enterprise (prove me wrong!)..
While MOST of the income comes from interests on their endowments; they can NOT afford TOO Many free students
They NEED these full-pay parents, and that means they NEED (some) smart kids
Black students are a loss leader.. They make the brand Look Good, but are Very expensive
MIT led the way almost 2 years ago when they recognized they were getting too many students not up to the school's rigorous math abilities.
'Chuck Schumer had a perfect SAT score.'
Don't conflate intelligence with good intentions.
I'm convinced that Hillary is very intelligent, but she is also one of the world's worst humans...
Once again proving the old adage, "You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality...."
@mccullough said 15:19: "Chuck Schumer had a perfect SAT score.
So the test is meaningless "
Chuck Schumer is arguably one of the most powerful Senators of the most powerful nation on Earth - and he's held the position for a very long time indeed. One might not like his politics, but I would find it hard to demonstrate that he is not in a position of ultimate power and authority, and highly respected within his sphere of influence - even if he's not liked. I don't find your argument persuasive.
Is this a lucid interval or the return to classic education? Probably a temporary sop to give hope back to Jewish mega donors.
The dirty little secret is that an undergrad degree from Harvard hasn't been respected for decades. Their game is all about research and graduate programs.
"Chuck Schumer had a perfect SAT score.
So the test is meaningless"
Kaplan started SAT Training, and you can take the SAT many times, Schumer worked for Kaplan.
"The ETS didn’t change questions all that often back then. Before Kaplan, gaming the SAT was considered unsporting. As Schumer has explained, he read the SAT questions over and over running Kaplan’s mimeo machine. So, he had a huge advantage over other high school students in that more trusting, less cynical, more honor-bound America that Stanley H. Kaplan helped undermine."
Don't think that Schumer is not very smart, he is. All Bond vilains are very smart.
Its hard to be the best undergrad school in the US without admitting the students that are best at taking tests. For serious track courses Mid Term and Final plus homework is 80% of the grade.
The SAT will help Harvard be serious and stay on top. And not become a boutique artsy social school, like emm Brown.
It will also help the Harvard Graduate school, you don't want the Physics PhD program at Harvard to be full of U Texas, Perdue and Georgia Tech grads because the Harvard undergrads can't do Hamiltonians.
They probably were admitting a large number of black students who could not graduate. There's plenty of black students who have the potential to graduate from Harvard, enough to diversify a strongly attractive place like Harvard. But only the SAT tells you who is a potential graduate and who is not. Diversity criteria fail to project this correctly. And if large numbers of black students were failing at Harvard this would become in time a potential lawsuit. From somebody.
The SAT was challenged because its ability to project the likelihood of a person's success in an academic environment was correlated with intrinsic intelligence and even with position on some kind of evolutionary tree. The lower the SAT score, the closer you were to our ape ancestors - this is what the eugenicists, like Arthur Jensen, taught. And then, determined to reject the eugenic interpretation of the SAT, people came to reject the SAT.
I have never denied that the SAT predicts the potential for academic success where the academy is teaching the European literary and scientific culture. I just say that our culture is literary and geometric which means it is based on a pattern recognition in space. You have only to look at the Raven matrices, the current "culture free" form of IQ testing to see that this is so. [https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Sample-item-from-Ravens-Advanced-Progressive-Matrices-The-participant-is-asked-to_fig1_44569248] But there could be a culture which was strongly musical and based on pattern recognition in time. [https://www.musictheoryacademy.com/understanding-music/fugues/] Intelligence is pattern recognition and so intelligence in one culture might not mean intelligence in the other. But this difference would not be "lack of intelligence" but just having a strongly marked ability in only one type of pattern recognition.
Amazing! Tests designed to evaluate a student’s preparedness for college turn out to … actually evaluate a student’s preparedness for college. Will wonders never cease?
How many other boneheaded decisions now need reversing, Harvard?
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