DD has visited many different type of schools. From large schools, both public and private, to smaller LACs. She is down to about 6 schools that have the varsity sport that she would like to continue to play-DIII. She’s decided that playing a sport is a huge part of what she needs to keep balance in her life. If she is a 29 cum ACT looking at a school that has a 29-33 mid 50% range is she setting herself off in the wrong foot. We understand every child is different, some advice and/or insight from parents/students would help
How is she doing in high school, including managing her time between school and sport? Test scores are hardly the final word on how strong the student is academically.
my daughters were not good standardized test takers. One had a high gpa and did just fine at a STEM school with others who had had more AP courses and a much higher ACT score. The other did have a slower start at a state flagship but is finishing with 4-5 semesters of all As.
I think the results would have been the same at any school they had attended.
She has a 3.7 GPA. She is attending a small private school. Regular classes are like AP’s. She hasn’t taken many AP or Honor classes. She has always been the type of student that did very well rising to the occasion. Very good at managing her time. She actually does better and seems happier when she has a full schedule. That is part of the reason why she feels keeping a sport as part of the equation is important for her. I’m just afraid that being the bottom of the 50 percent might be too stressful.
Test scores are less predictive than high school record for college performance. So try not to assume that she is defined by her test score.
Even if she is in the lower half academically of a highly selective college, almost all students from highly selective colleges graduate, and usually with high GPAs.
My son was a B+ to A- student in high school and got similar grades in college. He was in the top 75th percentile for the verbal part of the SAT and the bottom 25% for math. He majored in International Relations and got mostly A’s in his major courses. (B’s in the economics ones, and maybe one of the Poly Sci courses. He liked history best.) One thing about college is that after you take care of whatever General Education classes you need to take, you can generally stick to courses you like and are good at. I’m guessing your daughter will be fine. Coming from a small rigorous private school way back when, I found Harvard much easier than high school.
I agree that test scores aren’t the best indicator of ability. But if you and she think, after sitting in on classes, that this is a more intellectually charged environment than what she’s used to, the bigger question is how she thinks she’d feel if she’s solidly in the bottom half of the class. Will she feel like it’d be too much of a risk to take a class in something that might not play to her strengths? Will she feel shy about participating? Bummed if her best effort is worth only a B+? Or will she be energized by being around academically motivated, quick students? Determined to figure out how to excel to her personal best? The reality is that different people handle challenges differently and there isn’t a single right answer.
Remember too that in college, you pursue what appeals to you so don’t need to be all round good.
My daughter had a 27 ACT & attended an elite college where her scores were definitely below the 25th percentile. She graduated summa cum laude (top 5% of her class). Other than first-semester adjustment she never had a grade below an A-. (First semester there was a B and a B+, but that was largely due to her choice to enroll in advanced-level classes when she hadn’t quite realized the difference between high school & college expectations).
But here is the more important point: she was never at the “bottom” needing to work harder to keep up. She was just surrounded by a lot of kids who had done better on standardized tests, many of whom were clearly not as smart & capable as she was, and she realized that fairly early on in the course of class discussions and other activities. Yes, there were also a lot of very smart students there, but the test scores really were irrelevant. College performance is all about self-discipline, diligence, motivation. For the most part, it isn’t rocket science – (unless one happens to be majoring in astrophysics). It’s a matter of doing the assigned reading, attending class, paying attention, and being proactive about seeking help with difficult material. Assuming that the student has reasonably good writing skills, there is no reason why a student in, say, a history class who has a 29 ACT can’t do as well as any student who happened to have a 34 ACT … because the history prof isn’t going to give tests that look anything like a standardized test.
You didn’t say what her prospective major is. A STEM major can be more difficult because grading is more typically on a curve, and many STEM classes typically also have labs which require a greater time commitment, so harder to juggle around the time commitment of the sports. In other words, the schedule of a Chem major is going to look very different than the schedule of an English major.
But assuming that our daughter is not planning on something like engineering or pre-med, the basic question is whether your daughter will be able to manage her time well with the sports commitment.
So focus on fit and don’t worry about how her test scores match up with others.
However, do not assume that humanities, social studies, and arts courses are always light workload. Arts courses may have “lab” (art studio or music performance) that can take up as much or more time as a science lab. Humanities and social studies courses may have large term projects that can sneak up on students who are not careful about time management and avoiding procrastination. Also, among STEM subjects, math courses tend not to have labs (though some find upper level math courses intellectually difficult enough to have to spend a lot of time on them).
Of course, the ability to score well on a timed multiple choice test like the ACT may not be that predictive on how well a student can manage college course workloads.
Parent of 2 nearly done with college here.
One was bright kid that never had to work hard in HS, attended a reach known for high intensity.
It has been 2 stories. The major he originally picked, was on “Dean’s List 1st semester and got compliments from profs in a more challenging course in his major. But he got bored, wanted to change to STEM. At that point he was absolutely in the wrong college. Once he was studying something that was not his greatest strength, the experience was demoralizing and confidence killing. Wish he had gone to one of the many less competitive schools that admitted him to honors programs. He would have been more free to explore his passion with less impact on grades and confidence. He did meet amazing people where he attends, but academically and career wise was a mistake.
Have another, recruited athlete. Used his athletics to try and get into a reach, which he did.
Different kid, worked very hard in HS to deal with sports, AP courses and another time consuming EC.
So he was used to hard work when he arrived on campus.
He found the right major for him, and is achieving as a top 25 student despite not having top 25% scores and HS GPA. He even ended up tutoring others. I think an athlete is naturally competitive and in our case that led to academic compeitive desire too. Being pushed by achievement of others was motivating to S2, but stress inducing to S1.
Both went to schools with a reputation of requiring hard work, and not giving As so easily.
Was right for one, not the other. Have to know what drives your kid. If they work hard and thrive on competition, go for it. If they have less drive then take a path of lesser resistance.
All depends on major and school. One friend who busted his butt in HS and was not really talented in math among math talented kids got crushed at MIT. OTOH another friend who really was talented but not on a genius level did very well at MIT with a decent level of studying.
Generally speaking, SAT and ACT scores are not that good indicators of success. I had 99.99% in SAT but was totally unmotivated student academically. I will say this though: I never felt I was less smart than kids who got good grades at school; in fact, many kids assumed I must be getting good grades because I was pretty blase about grades. However, after I found a major which interested me, I did get almost all As without studying much. So, a lot has to do with motivation and study skills.
I was the reverse – perfect scores on any math or science related tests and bottom 1% of verbal scores among matriculating students at Stanford. I majored in electrical engineering. My major and upperclassmen classes were almost all in techy fields, but I also took a good number of lower level humanities classes, and did well in them for the most part, getting mostly A’s… While taking these more reading/writing intensive classes than I did during HS, my vocabulary notably improved, and my reading comprehension improved to a lesser extent. This improvement combined with doing some degree of prep, led to my GRE verbal score increasing to >90th percentile. So when I applied to co-terminal master’s programs, my verbal score was no longer at the bottom of the class. Instead it was above average among Stanford grad students, including above average among Stanford grad students in humanities/writing intensive fields of study.
As others have touched on, several studies have found test scores offer little predictive ability of academic success in college beyond what can be explained by a good measure of HS grades + HS course rigor. For example, the study linked at https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/files/2014/08/AERJ544298_Heil-final12.pdf concludes,
Malcolm Gladwell devoted time and research to this topic, particularly as it impacts young women leaving STEM majors at elite schools, in his recent book. You may wish to look into that.
Gladwell is an author trying to increase book sales rather that a peer reviewed researcher. I haven’t read his book, but I did see a video lecture he made about choosing colleges based on SAT score. Gladwell’s argument was something along the lines of:
- A STEM degree is the most important thing a student can have. All students want to be STEM majors.
- At both highly selective and less selective colleges, STEM majors tend to have SAT scores higher than non-STEM majors.
- Therefore the students who are on the lower end of the SAT score at highly selective colleges all want to be STEM majors, but aren't likely to become one. If they had attended a less selective college where their SAT score was higher than peers, they would likely have been STEM majors.
There are some obvious problems in the logic that I won’t delve in to, which make his conclusions invalid. However, there may be an element of truth about leaving STEM majors. The study that is usually referenced on this forum as evidence of SAT mismatch is causing students to drop out of STEM majors is http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/grades_4.0.pdf . It found that URMs were more likely drop out of STEM and the rate of attrition could almost fully be explained by differing admission criteria for URMs. The specific regression coefficients for dropping out of numerical majors (engineering, hard sciences, economics) at Duke with full controls are below. I
Being Female: +0.188 (0.048) – 99% significant
Degree of Grade Inflation in Specific Classes) -0.084 (0.025) – 99% significant
Admissions Rating of HS Curriculum: -0.147 (0.058) – 95% significant
Admissions Essay Rating: -0.068 (0.044)
Admissions HS Achievement Rating: -0.046 (0.053)
SAT Score: -0.031 (0.027)
…
Being Black: 0.024 (0.064)
Among those who changed majors because the major was too difficult, the coefficients were:
Degree of Grade Inflation in Specific Classes): -0.187 (0.032) – 99% significant
Initial major not STEM: -0.141 (0.071): – 95% significant
Being Female: +0.071 (0.053)
Admissions Personal Rating: +0.076 (0.061)
Admissions LOR Ratings: +0.020 (0.062)
…
SAT Score: -0.009 (0.033)
Being Black: 0.000 (0.078)
The most influential factor by far in dropping a STEM was being female. With the same SAT score, HS transcript, and admission ratings women were significantly more likely to drop out of STEM at Duke than man. Few women seemed to be dropping out because the classes were difficult. One take away might be to review stats like attrition rate for women in engineering at specific colleges. They likely differ between different college for a variety of reasons, including things like male/female ratio within the major, role models, and faculty/TA actions.
Among academic criteria, HS curriculum was particularly important. Duke admissions gave the matriculating students at Duke an average rating of 4.7 in HS curriculum on the max 5 scale, making this an incredibly imprecise measure that essentially just flags the minority of students who had below a perfect 5 rating in HS curriculum. Nevertheless, being among the minority with less than perfect HS curriculum rating was the most influential academic criteria in predicting who would drop out of a STEM major. With full controls, SAT score had relatively little influence, as did being Black.
Nearly 40 percent of female engineers leave engineering by midcareer so it isn’t surprising that many women switch careers before they graduate.
OP should also look at whether the proposed major is selective or impacted. My eldest could have attended the well regarded public flagship, but was unlikely to be allowed to study either business or psychology there. She didn’t want the added pressure of competing for those majors once she arrived, or likely not getting into them.
Self knowledge is a powerful tool. Scores aside, what do you and your daughter think of her academic profile compared to other students you know? It is nice to say that everyone starts college equal, but that isn’t remotely the case. Students have different talent levels in different things.
Back to the original question…not necessarily. How does she compare with friends in HS? Do they have higher scores but lower grades? Discipline and ability to learn new things through hard work matter more than test taking prowess.
I don’t have an anecdote from my kids, but S2 had a teammate on his DIII team who was not a good standardized test taker, but was an excellent student. He was organized and a hard worker and that is what mattered. He was pre med and had no trouble getting into med school.
I’d also just point out that a “midrange” = 50% of students.
So if a student has a 29 ACT at a college where the midrange is 29-33, the student is in good company – she has scores within a range shared by half of the class.
A 29-33 range represents scores in the 89th - 96th percentile. That is not a meaningful difference – those are all very capable students.
Where you might start to see falloff would be ACT 25 or below – or below 80th percentile - or with subscores particularly weak for the proposed major.
I’d also say if your child has taken any AP tests that’s a lot closer to what college requires than the SAT or ACT.
Gladwell bugs me nearly as much as that Duke study (which is now old. 2012 is an ice age ago, in terms of admissions and how top colleges work with kids. Plus, so what if kids drop out of stem? In college, they meet a buffet of academic choices, more than high schools can expose them to. Their opportunities expand.)
. . . .
D1 specifically wanted a school where the best kids were a little ahead of her, for the challenge. A lot parallels what a few others have said about their kids’ stats versus how they took off in college. She set her sights on her own performance in her major, her own opportunities, not comparisons (owing to how the school is structured, this meant a lot of breadth, on top of depth.) She had the satisfaction of doing well and the prof feedback. But she’s the sort who willingly interacts with profs and wasn’t fazed by the workload. Confident. More afraid of being bored or too easily on top, than the work required.
As blevine said, she was at a (different, I think) college with “a reputation of requiring hard work, and not giving As so easily.” She flourished in that environment. And, “Have to know what drives your kid. If they work hard and thrive on competition, go for it. If they have less drive then take a path of lesser resistance.” I agree, it’s mportant to look at the personality factors and that aspect of “fit.”
One of the keys is how a kid is willing to be both driven and “self advocate,” as needed. That translates to going for help, whether office hours, tutoring support, or a help center. Add to that, some comfortableness with onesself. If a kid seems the sort to fall apart at a B+ or call herself stupid or lesser, you do rethink.
In contrast, it took D2 a long time to find her sea legs. Maybe she should have chosen an easier school. But in the end, she had taken on the challenges, was very well educated, discovered her driving interests and, despite academic challenges… has a degree.