<p>^dude, calm down… this thread has been dead for long. Let it die again. Please.</p>
<p>haha you think i missed the sarcasm… just trying to stir some controversy. please, lets work to keep the thread alive…</p>
<p><em>sigh</em>
what everyone on this board (whose not just some psycho) will realize when they go off to these prestigious schools is that nobody CARES blah blah blah. To everyone else in the world, it’s Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT at the top, and every other college, including Duke, UChicago, Brown, JHU, etc. are hovering right below them. There is no “break off” into various tiers and what not. They’re all at the top.</p>
<p>If you don’t believe me, step into Durham, chicago, Baltimore etc. Outside of Harvard, they will list their respective schools (Duke/Chicago/JHU) as being the best.</p>
<p>Even in the working world it doesn’t really matter THAT MUCH where you came from. People talk about recruiting a lot and which schools don’t get recruited from as often, and a big part of that is because of the make up of the school. Schools like Harvard and Dartmouth have large amounts of students clamoring for wall street jobs, whereas at schools like JHU or Caltech, you will be hardpressed to find 1 in 10 that want to work on Wall Street…hence the large difference in business recruiting.</p>
<p>Anyways, just my two cents. Let the battle stupidly continue.</p>
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<p>the answer to your question is simple. The SAT is EASILY prepared for. I came from a wealthy high school where I watched my classmates start off with SAT scores in the range of 1800-1900 and after between $50-$3000 of practice, classes, and tutoring, end up scoring in the range of 2200-2400. Did these kids ACTUALLY get smarter? some of them…maybe…but what’s more likely is that they figured out how to play the game better, as taking the SATs is all about knowing when to hedge your bets with answers, skip questions, skim readings, and plug in math answers from multiple choice, etc. That does’t sound like a true intelligence test to me. And I don’t say this mockingly, because I myself scored very high in the SATs, but still, it’s a flawed test. period.</p>
<p>people who think the SAT is ACTUALLY fair need a reality check. The only way to make the SAT TRULY fair would be to COMPLETELY REVAMP and RESTRUCTURE the format of the test every time it is taken so that it is COMPLETELY unpreparable, but of course, that would cost too much money and not be possible in the long run, and somewhere along the road, some cheat will think of a way to gain an advantage somehow.</p>
<p>With that being said, the best principles for analysis of students should be based on a) class ranking (how do the students do compared to the rest of the school) b) school profile (school curriculum, the classes available vs. what classes the student took, how difficult the school is compared to other schools) c) extracurriculars/recommendations–> how well does the student do outside of class? what is the student like? d) GPA. duh. and e) a mandatory interview. Students should show depth and passion. With the chances of essays being fraudulent/edited, etc, the best method would be interviews to flesh out the candidate and get a sense of their potential/vitality.</p>
<p>Unfortunately some of these methods would not be financially feasible for everyone. Thus, the current method is probably as good as it can get.</p>