<p>Hey, I'm an immigrant whose family is eligible for a full ride at Harvard, income-wise, and I got a 2330 on the SAT. I really don't think 1900 is that respectable of a score for people on top of their class. Eh, whatever.</p>
<p>oops sorry aquamarinee.... mj93 made the perfect SAT score post. My bad!</p>
<p>Hey Ray192.... Did you apply to Harvard? Did you get in?</p>
<p>This situation parallels my own exactly. My school has an almost 30% dropout rate, has been overtaken by the state several times, has a very low teacher retention rate, 50% are low-income, and almost that percentage are first-time English-learners. My school is no better than the schools that these twins went to. And my school rarely sends anyone to top tier schools. </p>
<p>However, my twin and I got into Yale and that's where we're headed next fall. We too are immigrants from Vietnam, low-income, and have "substandard" SAT scores, and yet we made it into Yale. I really do believe in the need to give people that show exceptional promise with many disadvantages in life (whether it is economic or not) a chance to better their position. </p>
<p>Imagine if only affluent people who could afford SAT prep classes are the ones capable of upward mobility. The rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer. By accepting these kinds of kids, schools make a strong statement about their commitment to the public (whether it is only lip-service in order to generate publicity is irrelevant). I'm not saying that it is absolutely necessary to go to the top schools to get out of poverty; it is about exposing the poor to a kind of intellectual vitality that they may never be exposed to otherwise.</p>
<p>Something to keep in mind here is that intelligence is extremely difficult to measure. The SAT's try to do it, but nevertheless, they don't always work. If a bright student can't get a good high school education, their scores will still be low. If Harvard has a reason to believe that they can develop these students' intelligence well beyond what their high school was able to do, then that's reason enough to accept them.</p>
<p>Read "A Hope In The Unseen" by Ron Suskind. It's about a student from inner city Washington DC who was admitted to Brown. He came from a worse social situation than these girls and had substantially lower test scores. He finished Brown with a 3.3 GPA. Maybe adcoms can find the "diamonds in the rough" who can succeed at their schools. As others have pointed out, Brown and Harvard have very high graduation rates. I think they can be successful there. Will it be easy? Probably not- but that can be true of the 2300 4.0 kids too.</p>
<p>^Same as virtuoso_735. I'm a twin, also from a bad background with sub-standard SAT scores, and am attending Yale next fall along with my twin brother.</p>
<p>This whole "twin" thing is starting to freak me out a little bit.... are multiple births the next URM? ( the previous statement was a joke, for those of you who are reading this before your first cup of coffee! ;))</p>
<p>By the way.... something that has bothered me; not only on this thread, but on others.... I scored very high on my SATs as did some of my friends, NONE of us are "rich" and NONE of us took SAT prep classes, so PLEASE could we stop assuming that every person who does well on the SATs is a rich kid who took a SAT prep class!!</p>
<p>Standardized testing really doesn't say much beyond how much time, practice, and money for prep you've had coming in. I don't buy it, and I'm not sure if the overall schooling situation is remedied at all with classrooms being more and more geared towards teaching for tests (think No Child Left Behind). It's absurd, stupid, and destructive for any semblance of actual intelligent activity that could've gone on instead.</p>
<p>Getting a 2400 on a test is a quantitative measure of how well you did on that particular test, which may or may not adequately sum up your verbal, mathematical etc skills. Can you cram someone's sharp critical eye for social issues into a 1-hour standardized test? Can you summarize a person's potential based on how well they do in an environment they may or may not be familiar and/or comfortable with?</p>
<p>" Standardized testing really doesn't say much beyond how much time, practice, and money for prep you've had coming in. "</p>
<p>Unless, god forbid, you didn't do the aforementioned things and just happen to "get it".</p>
<p>c_v, I "got it" for the equivalent to SAT in my country of secondary schooling. With the ACT here, on the other hand, I was faced with a very different test format testing for kids from a very different schooling system. I didn't do bad by any means, but still not as good as with the test format I had been prepped for; this is from a country consistently ranking stronger than the US for secondary school rigor, mind you.</p>
<p>Beyond a certain point of baseline ability, standardized testing IS a measure of familiarity.</p>
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[quote]
By the way.... something that has bothered me; not only on this thread, but on others.... I scored very high on my SATs as did some of my friends, NONE of us are "rich" and NONE of us took SAT prep classes, so PLEASE could we stop assuming that every person who does well on the SATs is a rich kid who took a SAT prep class!!
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<p>This also bothers me.</p>
<p>It seems that some people are fond of throwing excuses for events that don't make them feel good.</p>
<p>If an "under-represented" minority doesn't score well, it's because he didn't have the resources to afford test prep.</p>
<p>If an "over-represented" minority or "rich White prep school kid" does well, it's because he had the money to pay for expensive tutoring.</p>
<p>Is it not possible to pay $12 for the Blue Book and study on your own?</p>
<p>Or, does such a situation make the "he's got money" excuse even stupider than it already is?</p>
<p>Great point fabrizio, may I also add, that you can take out the SAT study guide books from your local library for FREE, and use those to prepare if you like. That is what I did, and I scored over 2300! NO prep..... just a library card... "so easy a caveman can do it!!"</p>
<p>I find it interesting that you guys think this is all about money and social climbing. Have you considered that there are people well-represented in the 2400 SAT, perferct GPA crowd who want to do scientific research? This is something in which they are vastly underpaid with respect to the intelligence to do it. Yet perhaps, they would like to actually be able to <em>attend</em> the university which they will work at later as a professor. Or is being a professor somewhat like being a janitor--not good enough to attend the school as an undergrad but someone you need to recruit later on? </p>
<p>The ironic part is that the more smart people like this you disappoint when they are 18, the more people will decide "the hell with it, I'm not part of the elite so I might as well go get that job on Wall Street after college." I've seen this happen. And that takes away opportunities from the lower social classes to make more money.</p>
<p>I got accepted to Brown on less of a score than that and I'm white.</p>
<p>[10 char....]</p>
<p>
[quote]
Great point fabrizio, may I also add, that you can take out the SAT study guide books from your local library for FREE, and use those to prepare if you like. That is what I did, and I scored over 2300! NO prep..... just a library card... "so easy a caveman can do it!!"
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<p>Exactly. It's there. You may have to reserve it, but it's there nevertheless.</p>
<p>Another excuse the "he's got money" crowd likes to make is the one of ignorance.</p>
<p>Apparently, some "under-represented" minorities don't know that a book can be borrowed from the library free of charge. They don't know that a school like Harvard or Brown exists. Because they don't know, we need to treat them preferentially.</p>
<p>Sadly, this crowd is ignorant of how condescending it is.</p>
<p>As I've said before, these students will be fine. They're hard-workers, and they're going to schools that have high graduation rates and remediation programs. Four years from now, they'll walk with degrees that they've earned through hard work and experiences that are unique to them. They're winners.</p>
<p>The losers are other disadvantaged students who hear about this and take the time to apply for fee waivers only to be part of Harvard's 91% rejection rate.</p>
<p>All about the rankings...</p>
<p>rich kid views vs poor kid views = no love for just us plain old middle class peeps.</p>
<p>1900 - sure that doesn't sound impressive, but imagine taking it in your second language, all while having teachers who may not care or teach well.</p>
<p>Good teachers flock to wealthier, nicer areas, it allows them to be around more 'good' students and less 'bad' ones, so these kids likely have to be much more self motivated and attentive just to maintain their status with students at other schools.</p>
<p>No doubt Harvard and Brown have athletes and generous legacy admits with similar SAT scores. Where's the concern that those kids will fail out?</p>