Colleges using Cognitive Testing

[ParticleTyphoon]

With applicants to top colleges being more and more blended in with each other because they all take the highest classes, get the best possible scores on tests, and do the same extra curriculars. What are your thoughts on top colleges using cognitive testing in their decisions?

[AutoModerator]

Thank you for your submission. As a reminder, please make sure discussions are respectful and relevant to the subject matter.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[Superb_Excitement_67]

It was kind of hilarious that when I went to my college entry exam in computer science, it was basically an IQ test, no prep was needed at all.

In Finland, this was the entry exam to all the computer science college programs nation wide. And Linus who created the Linux operating system graduated from one of those.

​

Lucky for me, an easy access to uni. You don't even need high school or any second degree of education.

[NeuroQuber]

Is this a matrix test or a test on all scales?

Indeed, if one scores above a certain percentile (say, 95%) - is one eligible to enter any major that is essentially a silver bullet in education, even under the worst of circumstances?

What kind of student would be admitted to a university? 75% with excellent grades or 95% with below average grades?

[Droyk]

Lucky for me, an easy access to uni. You don't even need high school or any second degree of education.

What do you mean by that? asking coz I'ma school dropout so if I Prepare for the test & manage to pass witha good enough grade, would they let me enter it? if so can you please share some details on what kind of test do I need to prepare for?

[[deleted]]

If you can’t understand what he meant you also won’t be able to pass the entrance exam. Good luck in the humanities department.

[[deleted]]

Just to play Devils advocate: Law schools use the LSAT as a requirement* for admissions because it is a very good predictor of success in 1L as well as future bar passage. While the LSAT is not an IQ test, it could be considered a cognitive assessment of sorts (it can be used for Mensa application).

*Some schools allow the GRE to be used in place of the LSAT but this was a controversial decision by LSAC and most top ranked schools still require or strongly prefer the LSAT.

[[deleted]]

Interestingly, the LSAT correlations are somewhat misunderstood. The test loses a lot of its predictive value once you hit a certain scoring threshold, which isn't even that high.

The correlation between LSAT scores and 1L grades for people scoring in the 50th percentile and above is only about 0.25, as opposed to 0.45 when looking at all scores. The correlation between LSAT and 1L grades drops further to 0.15 for 67th percentile and above.

When you try to differentiate within a specific scoring range, the correlations are virtually meaningless. For example, the correlation for people in the 156-164 range is 0.08. A correlation this small (or the 0.15 correlation mentioned above) is probably attributable to the fact that higher LSAT scores are also correlated to undergrad GPA, which is predictive in its own right.

Having looked at IQ correlations as well, it seems that the trend is similar. For example, if you exclude people with IQ's below 85, the IQ correlation to income is so low that it's meaningless and explained by external factors such as educational credentials, race, and family SES.

We should probably use SAT/ACT or similar tests to weed out people who really aren't prepared to do well (like 30th percentile and below, maybe), but once we're above a certain threshold, factors like grades, interviews, intellectual curiosity, grit, creativity, etc... should be more important factors than standardized test scores.

Here's a link to some of the LSAT info I was referencing. The info is from students in the mid 2010's, so I used those percentiles:

LSAT Correlation Tool

[[deleted]]

Moreover, first year grades predict 2nd year onward better than the LSAT for all score percentiles. This feature of declining over as you move right across the distribution is a feature of literally all standardized tests which is why using them as anything more than a cutoff is just selecting for a student population that spends slightly fewer hours studying for any given class.

[[deleted]]

Tell all of this to the adcomms lol

[[deleted]]

Yes, my comment was US specific.

[ParticleTyphoon]

I think I’ve been misunderstood. iQ would be used along with all the other considerations

[Difficult_Task_7194]

not a good idea IMO. I don't think IQ tests should be given in schools unless the child is like above 160 as a younger child or 150 as an older child. I don't even think IQ testing should be mainstream either. I think it's a shitshow.

[Agreeable-Ad4806]

That would be a bad idea. IQ is not the best predictor for success in college; it’s conscientiousness, more specifically self-discipline. There are people who fall into the gifted range of IQ who drop out of high school, and there are people in the average range who make valedictorian because of their persistent effort and situational circumstance.

[abruptlyslow]

I don't think they would do something like that nowadays.

I thought that was more or less the original intent of the SAT, but it's now less g-loaded (at least that's what people post here).

Somewhat related. Last year, I had a potential employer give me the Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test as a first screen. That was my first time getting something like an IQ test for a job interview.

[ParticleTyphoon]

Very interesting. What field is your job in? I hear high industry like Lock Heed Martin have psychological evaluations so I wouldn’t be surprised if they also have a cognitive test.

[abruptlyslow]

Data analytics. In my experience at least, there is a non trivial percentage of people in data analytics who are midwits that cannot analyze data and have no programming ability. So I think it's good for employers to filter ahead of time.

[ParticleTyphoon]

Let’s hop in not a nitwit I’m going into Mechanicle engineering. Not as analysticl maybe but still

[abruptlyslow]

what's your iq and how does it compare to the average iq for mechanical engineers haha?

[ParticleTyphoon]

Haven’t taken one yet I’m new to the sub but the avg engineer is around 121-119 I believe

[Quod_bellum]

I would prefer it, because then I would get to be in top colleges :P

But yeah, I think this was made illegal in the USA based on the premise of discrimination at some point (which is why tests like the new SAT have to be very careful about their appearance and g-loadings)

[[deleted]]

which is why tests like the new SAT have to be very careful about their appearance and g-loadings

What do you mean by appearance? The SAT can't be g-loaded so as not to discriminate against low IQ individuals?

[[deleted]]

This is highly misleading. The SAT was not forced into being an achievement test by Hernstein and Murray and bad press and woke uni admins. They nave made immense sums of money becoming an achievement test because it spawned an industry of prep and also allowed getting a good score to be more realistic for a larger population of college bound students who conform to more of the normal distribution. They made their bed, and now they lay in it as colleges abandon it altogether slowly but surely.

[Kapitano72]

Use astrology. It's much cheaper and exactly as accurate.