I was looking at scatter plots for top colleges and I noticed that there are actually some people accepted to the school that have scores and grades that are no where near average for admissions.
An example of this was when I was looking at the graph for Harvard University. Most people acceptanced were closer to a 4.0 with 1600 scores but there are also some people that were closer to a 3.0 with a 1000 score.
How are these people accepted or is it even accurate at all? Should I even be looking at scatter plots for admissions??
I wouldn’t trust that data as anyone can input anything. Just go to the college your interested in and most will have an admitted student profile on their website.
What is the origin of the data? Naviance maps a student’s school. The common data sets for particular years is the best path to data although broad categories and no composite SAT make it a little tougher.
The scores and GPA are too low to be an athlete, big donor is the only outlier for that. Again I could go enter that score in whichever website your looking at right now! People do throw junk in there.
“Holistic” admissions truly means that someone with an impressive leadership history, or sports talent, or music talent, etc., could be chosen for those qualities, as long as the school sees evidence that they are strong enough academically not to fail out of the college if admitted. It is probably true that someone who goes on to become the best in their field, maybe even famous throughout the world, will reflect more favorably on their alma mater than someone who can score well on tests but does not have the talent or drive to make a major impact on the world. Why wouldn’t top colleges want to choose people who are truly extraordinary in other areas as well as academic superstars? The best schools can afford to admit some students with a variety of strengths without lowering the school’s overall averages for GPA and test scores.
@CU123 Not necessarily too low. Our HS has a Naviance point accepted to Stanford at 1500 old SAT (out of 2400), similar ACT score, ~3.5 weighted (at a school where 4.7-4.9 weighted is where most Stanford admits sit). We have exactly one football alumnus who did that well in recruiting. Our volleyball and water polo admits to Stanford must have had much better scores.
SC Anteater - can’t speak for all but Jody Foster was in my residential college and was thought to be a brilliant student. If those stats are correct the admitted Harvard student was either a potential Heisman Trophy winner or had his family name on a building. Not at all relevant to 99.99% of applicants.
When you look at the scattergrams, look at what happens for admission to people with your combo of grades and test scores and don’t worry about the low outliers -whatever got them in does not apply to you.
It depends on what scattergram you are viewing. But I can think of a few reasons that this could happen legitimately…
First is that a student took the SAT once and early but decided to focus on ACT and submitted that score. (I know kids with high ACT scores who didn’t do well at all on their first SAT.) So the school may only have seen a high ACT score even though the data set for the student includes the bad SAT score.
The student is foreign, still learning English, but brilliant at math. This will have an impact on grades and composite scores, but if the kid was a top 10 finisher in an international math competition, he or she will be interesting to top schools.
Any other variant of this. I have met a few kids who have incredible personal stories who are very capable students but whose stats, because of schooling in different systems, learning English, etc., are not going to fit a profile that compares to my kid’s, who followed a much more conventional path. Colleges don’t want kids who can’t do the work. If you don’t have an amazing back story, @stemmmm 's advice is best.
If you went just on Naviance alone, at our school a higher percentage of kids with a 31 ACT score got accepted to Yale than with a 36. Ignore the outlying scores and concentrate on what the sweet spot is for your GPA/score combo.
“Why wouldn’t top colleges want to choose people who are truly extraordinary in other areas as well as academic superstars? The best schools can afford to admit some students with a variety of strengths without lowering the school’s overall averages for GPA and test scores.”
Ok but a 1000 is really low, 50% that I think data entry error as ucbalumnus noted, is a more reasonable explanation if it’s more than one person. Even if you’re hooked - legacy, athlete, donor, hollywood actor’s child, urm, first gen, all the suggestions in this thread, you’ll have to score higher than that to be considered for admission for Harvard.
I know a kid who was denied at Stanford (national football recruit) 3.6 GPA 28 ACT, again I think I’ll go enter some outlier stats just for fun, how about a 17 ACT and 2.9 GPA getting in to Harvard?
Clearly they are hooked. We had a Natuve American student at our kid’s HS who was also a recruitable athlete. She is an outlier dot for some tippy top schools. I wouldn’t assume you can get in just because someone else did.
My guess is that this isn’t as uncommon as we think, and it doesn’t necessarily mean these applicants have extraordinary skills or personal stories. At our school this past year, a recruited athlete was accepted to an Ivy (not Harvard) with an 1180 SAT and 3.09 weighted GPA. That GPA puts him in the bottom third of his class at a very rigorous private school. He is not an URM, and I don’t think there’s anything exceptional in his personal story. His athletic ranking is in the top 100-125 of his age in the state, so that doesn’t seem extraordinary. Meantime, Naviance shows kids with a 1560/4.86 and 1570/4.75 GPA denied. Colleges are free to choose whichever applicants they think will contribute the most. But do I think it’s shocking that an Ivy would lower its academic standards to this degree? Yes, I absolutely do.