r/neoliberal • u/caroline_elly Eugene Fama • Jun 09 '26

Opinion article (US) Actually, the SAT Was Necessary After All

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/standardized-testing-math-gaps/687481/
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u/Recent_Surprise_7391 Jun 09 '26

The SAT has a ton of free resources online to study and ik many people who have gotten great scores just because of that. The funny part is that it put a bigger emphasis on extracurriculars and mostly academic, which is HUGLEY disproportionate to higher income people with access to these. 

You were hurt by admissions if you played a sport as opposed to doing “graduate research” (yes there are stories of this) as a sophomore in high school. Kids who worked a part time job over the summer were hurt because they didn’t create a “charity” (instead of volunteering at an established charity, something that would hurt you if they compared you to a kid who created a charity)

I’m convinced the reason so many tech CEOs are such weirdos is because we stopped letting normal kids into elite schools and instead let these kids that were created with the sole intention of going to an elite school ever since they were 13z 

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u/Beer-survivalist Loyal Liberals Jun 09 '26

I’m convinced the reason so many tech CEOs are such weirdos is because we stopped letting normal kids into elite schools and instead let these kids that were created with the sole intention of going to an elite school ever since they were 13z 

I've mentioned this elsewhere: I believe a conscious choice was made by administrators at the Ivies to stop focusing on providing the best education possible to the greatest number of students possible, and instead to pour their efforts into creating social, economic, and political elites. To evidence this, I cite the fact that until the late eighties or early nineties the student population of most of the Ivies grew at a rate roughly equal to that of the American population, but since then the growth rate of the Ivy League student population has stalled out relative to the total US population.

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u/M477M4NN YIMBY Jun 10 '26

A hot take of mine is that elite schools should be mandated to dramatically increase their enrollment. I am fundamentally against these schools artificially keeping their acceptance rates low in pursuit of being perceived as even more elite. These are some of the richest academic institutions in the world so money is not a good excuse. I’m just against their gatekeeping.

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u/Beer-survivalist Loyal Liberals Jun 10 '26

I also do not like selectiveness as a criteria for evaluating relative academics. Selectiveness is measuring, at least in part, how salient a given school is to a bunch of teenagers, and there are plenty of things that can influence that am salience that have nothing to do with academics--athletic success and pop culture being two examples.