MIT Reinstates SAT and ACT Tests for Admission

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Prof. Kathryn Paige Harden MIT reinstates SAT and ACT for admission

Prof. Kathryn Paige Harden

MIT reinstates SAT and ACT tests for admission.  Below is a thread by Prof. Kathryn Paige Harden  describing the research behind this decision.  Here’s the short version:

MIT reinstates SAT and ACT for admissiolns

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You read that correctly.  Every factor in the admissions process is correlated with socio-economic status.  SAT and ACT, however, can help identify kids who might not be considered based on the other factors. In other words, not considering the standardized test scores actually biases admissions against smart students from less privileged backgrounds.

Disclaimer: I was probably one of those kids.

For those who want to read the paper, it’s “Essay content and style are strongly related to household income and SAT scores: Evidence from 60,000 undergraduate applications” by A.J. Alvero, Sonia Giebel, Ben Gebre-Medhin, Anthony Lising Antonio, Mitchell L. Stevens, and Benjamin W. Domingue.

 

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About Tony Lima

Retired after teaching economics at California State Univ., East Bay (Hayward, CA). Ph.D., economics, Stanford. Also taught MBA finance at the California University of Management and Technology. Occasionally take on a consulting project if it's interesting. Other interests include wine and technology.