Academics Alone: MIT and the SAT
City Journal | Connor Harris (AB ‘16)
Connor Harris (Harvard AB 16) argues that MIT hasn’t gone far enough in reinstating the SAT. “The point is not just that admissions tests are useful, but that very little else is, beyond other academic measures such as high school records… College admissions would be both more efficient and more fair if they were based on academic criteria alone.”
Harris argues that “Correlations between students’ SAT scores and their parents’ socioeconomic status are far weaker than the correlation between SAT scores and college grades and are explained in substantial part by genetic confounding: intelligence and conscientiousness have significant genetic influences and contribute both to students’ academic achievement and to their parents’ ability to obtain well-paying jobs…”
“Holistic admissions processes consider test scores only to a limited extent, often just to make an initial list of candidates who clear a minimum bar, and base final decisions on softer considerations… [and] there’s little evidence that these subjective considerations help colleges choose better students. In fact, almost no published research examines the predictive value of nonacademic admissions criteria except in medical education…”
Many admissions officers argue that colleges need students with “good character who contribute to the campus community.” This idea, Harris argues, “has an ugly past in the somewhat anti-intellectual ethos of…the northeastern upper class, for whom good character meant public spirit, social grace, and, above all, athletic achievement,” allowing for anti-semitic, discriminatory admissions practices.
Harris goes on to argue that “Nonacademic criteria can show cultural and class biases of their own…the subjective aspects of college applications are largely a test of cultural capital…. [these] nonacademic criteria make college admissions more inaccurate and biased, while providing little information about students except their ability to tell a few bourgeois adult strangers what they want to hear…”
“A more fundamental objection is that universities are educational institutions,” Harris explains. “Their purpose is to spread knowledge with the understanding that educated citizens will be more useful and able to address social challenges, not to build a utopian campus community or reward teenagers for virtue. They best serve this purpose by choosing students who can benefit most from their scholastic offerings… [The fact is], the bulk of Ivy League students, whatever claims to high-mindedness they made when they applied, end up making conventional career choices and heading to graduate and professional schools, consulting and investment-banking firms, and large tech companies.” (see Class of 2022 Survey).
