<p>I think ‘insane’ just goes with being a parent - if it is temporary I am still waiting for it to pass! I had a t-towel once that said ‘Insanity is hereditary - we inherit it from our kids’.</p>
<p>I found this on the new UChicago admissions website, I think it speaks rather clearly as to how they evaluate and what the process is, and provides a little more insight into what Dean O’Neil is saying in the interview. I would bet many admission dean’s would say something similar.
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<p>Hey! No snide comments about websites! I (kid) am setting one up for myself. It’s a great place to put visual and performing arts samples and to tell a bit about myself!</p>
<p>I’m confused. Is he complaining that smart kids want to go to selective colleges so much that they are willing to work harder and try again?</p>
<p>Is there some brewing scandal where these 2 time SAT-takers are found to be unfit to do college work once admitted? Do 1-time SAT-takers, if there are any, bring much more to the campus than their twice-tested peers? Surely not. I like the holistic reading of applications, but kids and parents aren’t naive. Without competitive scores, their chances for admission to excellent schools like UChicago go down dramatically. Just read his own college’s website.</p>
<p>I wish the process weren’t so weighted in favor of scores. If we ever see a day when elite schools list accepted SAT scores between 1100-1300 (There are certainly many who test in that range who have excellent essays, ECs and recommendations) maybe some of our overstressed kids can kick back after one test session.</p>
<p>UChicago lists test scores not as very important or important, but only as “considered.” From what I understand they truly tend not to be too concerned with them, and have the writing score removed so the admissions folks never see it. The fact remains, however, that the attributes they are looking for are typically found in kids who also have high test scores. The scores on their site are for the mid 50th percentile, which means 25% have scores: Here are some specifics:</p>
<p>1200-1290 10%
1100-1190 10%
1000-1090 1%</p>
<p>When one considers that there are no athletic scholarships and that the profile of the athletes compares favorably to the school as a whole, one cannot assume these students are largely recruited athletes. If one looks at the numbers posted by rejected students, one sees that Chicago’s SAT numbers could be much higher if that was what was very important to them.</p>
<p>It is disappointing that a university that stresses holistic admissions (although don’t they all?) would remove the SAT W score so that it isn’t even seen. (My son scored 790 on it and may be applying to UChicago.) Quite frankly, that doesn’t sound too holistic to me!</p>
<p>Believe me, there are plenty of opportunities to demonstrate one’s writing skills to UChicago. They just don’t have any data that the SAT writing score predicts anything about success in their curriculum, and is not representative of the way writing is used at the University. Here is one way they assess writing. </p>
<p>[University</a> of Chicago College Admissions | Essay Questions](<a href=“http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/admissions/essays.shtml]University”>http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/admissions/essays.shtml)</p>
<p>Yes, I know their spiel about not seeing the value of the SAT writing section but I really disagree with their philosophy. The essay on the SAT is the only unassisted writing they see from the applicant. No hired ghost writers or overly involved teachers and parents. Just the student on their own writing with a limited amount of time. And I believe the latest round of studies are indicating that of all three sections, the writing is actually the most predictive of success in college.</p>
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<p>I think he’s trying to say the following:</p>
<p>Intense preparation for the SAT usually benefits one’s score. (1)
Not everyone has access to private tutors and prep classes, and it’s not always easy to tell these students apart. (2)
By (1) and (2), the SAT is not really all that standardized. In other words, O’Neil has little confidence that two students with the same SAT have the same innate aptitude.</p>
<p>
Exactly. Are colleges/universities so sure that they are getting independently written writing samples on the essays? As I’ve read throughout CC, many essays are “edited”. Look at this thread, for example. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/550657-any-online-other-essay-editing-advice-sites-recommend.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/550657-any-online-other-essay-editing-advice-sites-recommend.html</a></p>
<p>A very good writer could easily write an essay with all that all-important student “voice” for a student. </p>
<p>To ignore the W section of the SAT is to do those students who score highly a disservice.</p>
<p>To accept the writing score one must accept the scoring standards of those who do the scoring. Perhaps some schools do not believe that they match what they are looking for in their students. Perhaps Chicago will find the score predictive, I’m sure they are independently assessing that, but for now, they are happy with the predictive quality of their current essays. I must say, their essays brought out abilities I had never seen in S1’s writing prior to his application. He carefully thought out his essay, played with different approaches, and finally settled on what he thought best handled the ideas embodied in the prompt. None of this would be possible using the SAT writing sample, with the former more clearly representing the type of writing valued at Chicago. Further, as noted earlier, Chicago places little weight on any of the test scores to begin with.</p>
<p>The last I saw (check for the latest info), Swarthmore was ignoring the SAT Writing test in their admissions evaluation, too. </p>
<p>I didn’t hear much detail on why. Part of it was the lack of any feel or history of whether the test measured anything useful. Part of it may be that the stopwatch writing sample bears no resemblence to the kind of critical thinking and revision heavy writing expected in college.</p>
<p>I think that pretty succinctly sums it up. </p>
<p>Here is a quote from a Blog that was written by someone covering an admission’s conference this year:
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<p>That’s pretty lame. Last time I looked, my graduate alma mater’s institutional mission was set by the President and Board of Trustees, and, as far as admissions, administered by the admissions department, and had nothing to do with the faculty whatsoever.</p>
<p>The faculty at Chicago have immense influence. At the student orientation S1 and fellow classmates were informed by the Dean of the College that they had been admitted for the benefit of the faculty in order to participate as partners in inquiry, and that the faculty was very influential in determining admissions policies. (In my day, seven faculty members could form a committee and grant a Ph.D. in the area described by the committee. I don’t know if it is the same now or not.) I would say the Faculty’s influence is as great or greater than the faculty found anywhere. Recently, a faculty committee was tasked with investigating whether or not Chicago should develop a program in Molecular Engineering. Many meetings with the whole faculty ensued and a report written. Faculty opposition would have killed it. Here is the faculty report, it makes for interesting reading: <a href=“http://provost.uchicago.edu/pdfs/MolecularEngineeringReport.Final.pdf[/url]”>http://provost.uchicago.edu/pdfs/MolecularEngineeringReport.Final.pdf</a></p>
<p>I have never seen a single college where the same wasn’t claimed to be the case. Faculty investigate new programs all the time. At my d’s college, the President convened a committee of faculty, admissions office, and institutional research to study the SAT question, and it took them four years to come up with a conclusion.</p>
<p>At Chicago, apparently the President doesn’t think the issue pressing enough, nor the admissions office think it important enough, to ask for faculty input on the question.</p>
<p>It’s just plain lame. If the head of admissions truly “would love to get rid of it”, his clout must be pretty small indeed.</p>
<p>
And to accept recommendations, one must accept the standards of those who are doing the recommending. And to accept the grades, one must accept the standards of those who are doing the grading. And to accept AP scores, one must accept the standards of those who are doing the grading of the essays. </p>
<p>I do believe that one could hire a writer to write a great essay for admission to UChicago, don’t you? </p>
<p>Just saying that holistic admissions should include ALL the parts of the whole. And any college that throws out the W score without even looking at it isn’t really practicing holistic admissions, to my way of thinking.</p>
<p>Perhaps one could hire a writer and one could hire someone to take the SAT test as well, I suppose. The essay must be in sync with the recommendations, course selection, and EC’s. I’m sure one can game any system, but for the most part I doubt many hire people to write their essays. I’m not sure I have ever read that Chicago claimed to be “holistic” in its process, as a matter of fact, the major claim was that it is “uncommon,” and remains so even while using the common app.</p>
<p>As far a clout, the faculty do have it at Chicago, as a past president found when he tried to make changes without fully consulting the faculty. It is not coincidental that the recently installed president was a member of the faculty for over 20 years.</p>
<p>I am a big fan of University of Chicago but it makes no sense at all for them to ignore the writing section. They can ignore the score on the essay but they might as well take a look online at the actual essay to see the applicant’s actual writing unassisted.</p>
<p>FWIW, Chicago doesn’t require SAT II’s, either, though they come in the package that many students send. Again, they’re probably just not that important to the admissions office.</p>
<p>From my impression, it sounds like SAT scores at Chicago are a metric correlative with other accomplishments, such as a solid transcript with honors courses. Chicago does consider the transcript to be the most important starting point of the application (as does almost every other school, I imagine) so that students who stand in line with with a certain level of academic quality are also very likely to score well on standardized tests. So your child who did well on the writing test probably has a paper trail of strong grades to corroborate that score. If you’re a parent, I wouldn’t be worrying that your child is not getting credit.</p>
<p>I think O’Neill is trying to remove parents as much from the application process as possible, which I applaud him for. My decision to apply and attend the University of Chicago was a decision I made without my parents. If my parents had steered me in the college application process and wanted me to get into the highest-ranked school possible, they probably would have steered me towards applying Early Decision to the school they graduated from and continue to give a lot of money to, and I wouldn’t have been that happy there.</p>
<p>And as far as professional essay writers go, I think that either the essay will sound stiff and wrong (particularly with the rest of the paperwork and SAT scores to compare the essay to), or that the kind of student who would think about hiring somebody like that would run away screaming from a school like Chicago anyway if they visited. And heaven forbid somebody with a false essay got in and attended… well, let’s just say their misery here would be ample penance for their sin. Dante would be satisfied :-D</p>