The SHSAT is not a pass/fail dealio

[conuly]

It is, rather, a zero sum game where by definition not everybody is going to pass the magical, ever-changing threshold score for any of the schools they'd like to attend. Because they're not simply competing against themselves, they're competing against everybody else for a very limited number of spots.

Whether this is good or bad is up for (endless) debate, apparently, but it is never going to be possible for "anybody" to get in so long as everybody believes that. No matter how "easy" you think the test turned out to be for you.

Comments

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

The problem with college entrance is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with your ability, and everything to do with whether people like you. That's why college needs to be free and universal.

Re: Yes ...

[conuly]

Well, yes, but we're still stuck on high school around here. I am devoting more and more time to "when will Eva find out what high school she goes to?" the longer and longer I have to wait, and since the wait is due to a lawsuit about the specialized science high schools in NYC (and since nobody in this city ever seems willing to shut up about those schools) I am thinking about it an awful lot.

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yeah, that's horrible. They should have enough schools that people can get they education they want, instead of being told their needs are irrelevant and they should shut up and take whatever they're given.

[nodrog]

Y’ know, that applies to IQ as well.  It’s not fixed; 100 is “Whatever you should normally have,” and that’s obviously going to be relative to the baseline population.  When late Imperial Rome was drinking leaded wine and water from lead pipes, a 100 IQ would have been…  disappointing to modern sensibilities.

[conuly]

No arguments here.

[nodrog]

Excuse me, but is this what you're talking about?

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/12/18262037/college-admissions-scandal-felicity-huffman

[conuly]

It's not, though I am in the awkward position of sympathizing with at least two of the children in that case (one who says repeatedly she's "not interested in school" and, probably accurately, determines that her parents only made her go because they wished they'd gone and another who either didn't know what her parents were doing or was browbeaten into it after she failed to get a high enough test score on her own, despite her intention to keep trying until she did). Edit: To be clear, my sympathy with the first is only that she's now famous for being incredibly vapid and silly. Her parents, if they were so determined for her to do college, would've done better to have her to go community college. They would've done better if THEY had enrolled, honestly.

No, I'm still on high school! By law, some schools in NYC require you to take a specific test - the SHSAT - for admission. Those schools are constantly in the news. (They are, quite frankly, overrated, but hardly anybody seems to see that.)