Not GP, but you should approach this using Bayes' Theorem just like anything else. If one study from MIT causes you to completely flip on any of your beliefs, you need to rethink how you form these kinds of opinions.
MIT's conclusions should cause you to adjust your priors by a certain amount, but they should not cause you to completely flip by themselves -- particularly if you're not in the camp that thinks literally every decision MIT makes is correct by virtue of it being MIT.
If you wouldn't have looked at MIT's original plan of abandoning SAT scores as proof that they didn't matter, you probably also shouldn't look at them picking up SAT scores again as proof that they do matter. MIT's conclusions should lead you to update your priors by some amount dependent on how much you trust you currently have in the accuracy of college admissions processes when they assess student qualifications and outcomes.
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My personal take on this is that I do absolutely buy that SAT scores could be a leveling factor between kids from different socioeconomic backgrounds and that they could be a better metric than GPA for determining admission. But of course, that's a pretty low barrier of entry to clear, GPA scores are probably close to meaningless when compared across schools. It seems to me that there's a lot of room here for SAT scores to be simultaneously mostly meaningless and at the same time also a reliably better predictor of school success than GPAs.
It's also important to ask what exactly MIT is measuring -- what does it mean by academic success and how much does that definition overlap with "fits in when placed in an environment optimized for people who are good at standardized testing?" And again, even if they are kind of circular or if they're measuring the wrong things, it's still plausible that they're more reliable than GPAs; it's a low bar to clear.
MIT's conclusions should cause you to adjust your priors by a certain amount, but they should not cause you to completely flip by themselves -- particularly if you're not in the camp that thinks literally every decision MIT makes is correct by virtue of it being MIT.
If you wouldn't have looked at MIT's original plan of abandoning SAT scores as proof that they didn't matter, you probably also shouldn't look at them picking up SAT scores again as proof that they do matter. MIT's conclusions should lead you to update your priors by some amount dependent on how much you trust you currently have in the accuracy of college admissions processes when they assess student qualifications and outcomes.
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My personal take on this is that I do absolutely buy that SAT scores could be a leveling factor between kids from different socioeconomic backgrounds and that they could be a better metric than GPA for determining admission. But of course, that's a pretty low barrier of entry to clear, GPA scores are probably close to meaningless when compared across schools. It seems to me that there's a lot of room here for SAT scores to be simultaneously mostly meaningless and at the same time also a reliably better predictor of school success than GPAs.
It's also important to ask what exactly MIT is measuring -- what does it mean by academic success and how much does that definition overlap with "fits in when placed in an environment optimized for people who are good at standardized testing?" And again, even if they are kind of circular or if they're measuring the wrong things, it's still plausible that they're more reliable than GPAs; it's a low bar to clear.