Yes! How soon before expensive production companies start marketing their materials to families to produce beautiful admissions videos. AO’s may believe they will be able to tell the difference but I rather doubt it.
This is something I can completely agree with. I know there are remarkable kids who are dissuaded from applying because their scores don’t quite fit the profile.
This has not been my experience. I am very familiar with several extremely talented kids with the grades and rigor to qualify them for any school in the country but not the test scores. These kids are generally lopsided. They may be brilliant in writing and the humanities, but only average or below in math and/or science. These kids don’t have 34+ ACT scores but they may have 31 or 30. Its very likely that the colleges would have accepted those kids even with a somewhat lower score (In fact that is what happened in most of these cases), however, I believe many others would simply decline to apply, thinking they have no chance.
Those kids from poor performing high schools who have the great test scores to differentiate themselves can and should still send them. U of C is not getting rid of them, just opening other paths to admissions.
This is a different problem in that the SAT I has been made easier in each revision over the past 20 years. It no longer distinguishes between good and great for either Math or English. The answer is not to get rid of testing, but to go back to what was a better test.
And to be clear, I am not in favor of testing because simply because my kids do fine on them. While they have never had any paid test prep, they have the very real benefits that accrue to higher income college educated parents, including an awareness of what activities are attractive to elite colleges. High test scores add nothing to their profile.
Rather, it is the fact that when I grew up, it was test scores that allowed me, a kid from what was then a poor family, from a rotten school system, to show that I would likely thrive in college, and get scholarships for them.
This is interesting to me because as a college educated parent, I had no idea what activities were attractive to elite colleges. In fact, until very recently, it never occurred to me that my kids should do anything other than participate in what they enjoyed.
This is why test should not be eliminated. But it doesn’t mean they need to be the only path.
By the way it should be noted than between Khan Academy, crack SAT, Quizlet, etc, 1000s of free apps and the internet there is no barrier to studying for standardized tests or anything else. A motivated student can easily avail themselves of these tools. Everyone keeps bemoaning the plight of the socio economically disadvantaged…if you can check the right box on the common app, have no family that attended college and have middle to lower middle class parents or below you can go to any college you want for free…IF you are motivated. If kids can play on a phone all day whether it is at Hotchkiss or Brooklyn they can study for a test.
Milee, but std scores are proving arbitrary, per the long term studies of test optional colleges.
And why hold URM or first gens to a test score when it so blatently doesn’t advantage other kids? It confers no special anything on the apps of kids with high scores, except the score. They still blow their essays, have very hs centric ECs focused on titles, can’t reasonably answer a Why Us? and etc.
Nonetheless, no one should assume anything about their peers at a college other than they qualified in the eyes of adcoms.
There was a poster, an MITgrad, now long gone, who used to say minorities shouldn’t go to MIT because ‘everyone’ would assume they were unqualified diversity admits. Yikes. Talk about taking the oxygen out of the room.
“Presumably most course grades are not based on a single multiple-choice test. A student’s GPA represents the cumulative assessment by many teachers (each acting independently) of the student’s classroom performance over a number of years. Basically, it indicates whether the student consistently meets/exceeds educational expectations. Highly-selective private universities will, in most cases, have the experience/data to know how kids with a similar record from the same HS have performed in their College in the past.”
The GPA is also not too useful for the highly selective colleges, as they admit. There’s too much grade inflation and high school inconsistency for them to give that number any importance. They will look at the transcript for sure but not the GPA of an applicant. They get all sorts of GPAs, uw, weighted, different scales, that they throw out the number and calculate their own gpa. I agree that colleges know how to evaluate a GPA in the context of the high school, so it is helpful in that way. Many teachers use multiple choice tests in high school, because it’s a lot easier to grade. AP teachers use parts of old ap exams for tests, which is typically half multiple choice.
My point is that many grades in high school are determined by multiple choice tests, and that doesn’t even begin to explain the other issues around solely using HS GPA, cheating, pressure on teachers to give As.
It is not a matter of pushing activities on them they don’t enjoy, but rather taking what they enjoy and letting them shine.
For example, while my D always loved art, it occurred first to me rather than her to get her art rated at National Portfolio Day as a freshman. And based upon that strong positive feedback from that, I knew that art was something she could showcase, long before she even thought about college admissions. It became an integral part of her eventual application, even though that was not her intended major.
This attitude is pervasive at every educational institution that I have been at (3 universities currently ranked in the top 5 of USNWR, although I guess now the top 5 universities comprise 8 schools??), and at every high level job I have had (East Coast type jobs where credentials were very important).
Wishing it away is not going to work in my opinion, and demonizing people for saying or noticing (or thinking it, based on first hand observation of presumed preference admits) is leading to a backlash, now 50 years into massive race preferences at all levels of society. Notably, 74% of black Harvard undergraduates reported feeling “marginalized,” and I believe them. If one can’t dispel that presumption at Harvard, which has the freedom to choose the very best candidates from its applicant pool, regardless of race, it cannot be dispelled. I wish people would pay more attention to the message that race preferences are sending to everyone, including to the students themselves who are presumably benefiting from them.
It may be that what GPA measures well is not necessarily mastery of any individual topic but the ability to understand, and do what it takes to succeed. It measures the ability to show up, turn in assignments, navigate the system, stay out of trouble, resist peer pressure, defer gratification etc. These may sound like small things, but in fact, they are the base line skills that allow people to succeed in a wide variety of academic and occupational situations. The kids who have the potential and desire to work hard and succeed will bring that to college. They may not be as advanced as kids from more rigorous schools but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the potential to excel after a little catch up.
If I were the AO, I would prefer the straight A kid with a lower test score over the high SAT kid with a low GPA. Of course, there are extenuating circumstances, but as a general rule, I would rather take the kid who has proven himself over time, day after day, year after year.
My sentiment is give it time. As each generation improves, so do the advatages to their kids and others they influence. That’s not saying they are unqualified. I agree they can be marginalized, BUT–
that’s the fault of those who marginalize them, who are unwelcoming and assume there’s got to be some absolute hierarchy and these kids, identified by their URM reality, must be sub par.
The answer isn’t to move to a hierchical scheme. Or to refuse a great kid based on scores.
You see what you wrote? It’s not the existence of any race prefs (I am not here to discuss those.) Rather it’s small minded assumptions. That’s the shame.
@gallentjill No in fact a GPA doesn’t measure any of those things anymore. We might assume it would but most high schools now have massive grade inflation. Most high schools now have no minimum GPA to graduate as they did back in my day. Most high schools have at least two and often more GPA algorithms based on course level. Public Principals and teachers are incentivized on grad rates, college matriculation rates and other metrics. You are probably correct-at a school like Stuy, Regis, TJ, Andover, Exeter a high GPA with a lower test score may mean better work ethic, maturity, diligence and so on. But, what about kids with heavy EC activities that may stretch their time? Do you think a high GPA of say 3.9 with 1 extracurricular is more impressive than a 3.7 of equivalent rigor with 3 extracurriculars? HOw much time do these ECs take, Should that be factored in? If we were talking about 200 applicants then all this might be moot but when we are talking about 5,000 to 20,000 applicants or more then this is just silly. I cannot comprehend why anyone can argue against some standard measures. (ADDED: and lets not forget about human nature and inherent bias. Many teachers dislike athletes; many teachers are women… and there is data that shows girls get better grades in writing and certain courses. What about teacher politics? At some schools the politically active students are often favored. Too many variables in grades.)
If you think a beautiful admissions video is going to get someone into UChicago then you don’t know the college, they will be looking for real videos of real applicants to lend some insight into who they are, not some glitzy production
There is a very talented film maker in my family. Trust me, she could make an application video look like whatever you wanted it to. Just because she is professional doesn’t mean it would be glitzy. In fact, just the opposite. A talented professional would know exactly how to make it look “real” with just the right amount of insight into who the kid wants the school to think he or she is. Just like a truly talented college counselor doesn’t pump out college essays that look like cookie cutters.
This is not really relavent because we are not talking about minimum GPA for graduation. We are talking about the kids who can do what they need to do to get straight As or close to it, often in some very challenging circumstances. The school can weight the grades any way they wish. Colleges routinely recalculate the grades.
I think all of these things are factored in. But probably not in the way you suggest. I don’t think any of these colleges are simply counting ECs. I think the admissions officers at elite schools are practiced at looking at an application in its entirety and picking out the kids who are not only truly exceptional but are a good fit for the campus. That might be the kid with no ECs who watched her younger siblings and also worked part time so she could help support the family, but shows evidence of a thirst for learning. These colleges have no need to box themselves into any one particular admissions metric. They can look at test scores, but why not also have the flexibility to look at other things?
@gallentjill I am sure that the person in your family is talented and could put together a great video, but (unless your intended major is film making) with the level of detail that an applicant needs to make a great video, it becomes inherently obvious to anyone that it is being professionally accomplished. They are not looking for polished videos from physics majors they are looking for insight into who they are.
Well, I was that kid who was just outside the top 10% in what I already said was a rotten school system. Why? Because I was bored out of my mind. It was only after I found my peers in college that I performed to my potential.
This is actually a very real issue. Intelligent kids often underperform in poor high school systems because they have no academic peers with which to engage. My children have attended both CTY and a family weekend at Davidson in Reno. Even though there are bright kids from both, the differences are stark. The CTY kids are from generally affluent families, mostly attending private schools with other strong students. Most of these kids will end up at top-30 colleges.
The Davidson kids are generally considerably brighter (criteria for admission is roughly top 0.1%), but also typically poorer (Davidson is subsidized). These families seek and find Davidson out of despair for how their children are suffering in their poor local school system. I have seen first-time parents weep because their children finally connected with with their peers, where being smart is not something to be hidden, and where achievement is allowed to be celebrated. And yet, because of their socioeconomic situation and their underperformance in school, some of these kids will not even attend college, let alone an elite one. And yes, these are some of the brightest kids in this country.
This is the reality on the ground. The vast majority of the elite talent in this country is being wasted because of where the students live, the school systems they attend, and the lack of knowledge of the parents in how to create an app that people like @lookingforward would find attractive. What a waste.
@gallentjill you are giving admissions officers too much credit. They are by a large not the best and the brightest–they are bureaucrats…functionaries. And sorry–the vast disparities in high schools–in GPA algorithms and course rigor is impossible to calibrate. Grade inflation is so vast a problem that it is not even in dispute. So why would colleges then want to rely on them more?
What’s your alternative?
Pick kids you think are right? The colleges are picking based on their criteria. And that includes the ability to show you meet them. That’s like life. And there are so many other gentler colleges where those kids can grow. They aren’t shut out.
No one is preventing low-income kids (or anyone else) from submitting standardized test scores. Or saying they’ll ignore them. What UChicago is saying is make the best case for yourself and we don’t assume that that case will always involve SAT or ACT scores.