<p>Before Recruiting in Ivy League, Applying Some Math</p>
<p>"But there is one thing the Ivy League does that truly sets it apart from its sporting brethren nationwide: it tracks and scrutinizes the finite, detailed academic credentials of every recruited athlete welcomed through the doors of the eight member institutions. And it has done so for more than 25 years — creating a dossier of grades and test scores for more than 40,000 student-athletes.</p>
<p>To accomplish this, the league came up with a measurement called the Academic Index, which gives all prospective high school recruits a number, roughly from 170 to 240, that summarizes their high school grade-point averages and scores on standardized tests like the SAT. The index number of every admitted recruit is shared among the member institutions to guarantee that no vastly underqualified recruit has been admitted at a rival institution and to allow member universities to compare classwide index averages for athletes against similar averages for the overall student body.</p>
<p>That the Academic Index number for each student athlete is SHARED with ALL other Ivy League schools is an eye opener, at least to me.</p>
<p>I also just read that Brown's President just eliminated 20 recruited athletic spots-perhaps this, as well as the overall increase in the AI this year, is the reason-
"In a response to a commissioned report on Brown athletics issued this year, the university’s president, Ruth J. Simmons, said that for the four most recent admissions classes throughout the league, Brown had seven [ 7] sports with average A.I.’s under 200; Dartmouth and Penn had 5; Columbia 3; Yale 1; and Harvard and Princeton none. "</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing! I’ve been wondering for a while what role the Academic Index plays in admission. </p>
<p>College admissions guides seem to put a huge emphasis on it, yet a friend who used to work in the admissions office at Princeton never mentioned this particular number. (He did, however, elaborate on another way in which they quickly assigned “merit numbers” to applicants, but those were just on a scale from 1-4.)</p>
<p>^^^
Fascinating and very entertaining, especially the H buried body hypothesis on p. 16. I think the link is worthy of its own thread. Interesting theory on the evolution of the SAT W section too. The poor poets of the College Board…</p>
<p>Wow, just spent the entire evening skimming through the above referenced e-book. 2 comments:
(1) Once that book gets into wider circulation, those hyper-competitive CC parents who are aiming at the top universities will no longer need to consult CC. Probably a good thing. All you need is right here, in one book, that is, until the rules of the admissions game change. Bye Bye, CC, so long, it’s been nice knowing you. Repeat after me: the new mantra is: Fox Parents Unite.
(2) The more I study this topic (can I quit already?), the more I am beginning to be outraged that there is so much overwhelming emphasis in this country in elite college admissions on this beast called the SAT. Not that I didn’t know it already, but to paraphrase one ex-president, “It’s the SAT, stupid”. And by extension, our best students are the top 1%ile on the SAT, leaving the other 99% out, and by comparison, stupid. The near exclusive focus on SAT scores as the measure of academic talent, to the exclusion of almost everything else, is notable in this text. Apparently, the SAT is the be-all and end-all of American education. It’s galling that the author of this text, after demonstrating mathematically in one section how Blacks and Latinos get lowered admissions standards on SAT scores because of their lower performance on the SAT, subsequently leaves Blacks and Latinos out of most of his graphs and tables and calculations. The author’s genuine and self-effacing admissions of being a “fox” parent as opposed to a “tiger” notwithstanding, this e-book can be used as a manifesto for how to prep your child from birth for the big test and the big admissions competition. Shame on you, Fox parent.</p>
<p>I read the entire book tonight. Couldn’t stop. The best condensed source of info “ever”. </p>
<p>The subsection on essays confirms my intuition. I know that many people here do not like the weight on SATs very much… However, I do think that standard tests still are the only equalizers. If you disagree, just look at threads such as this: “A in class but a 1 on the test?” </p>
<p>Sure, you may argue that the wealthy can hire test-prep tutoring. However, they can also hire PhDs in English to do essays and PhDs in the scicnces to do projects, which are much more easily distorted, because with the standard tests, at least the applicant has to take the tests himself/herself at the end (except in severe cases of fraud).</p>
<p>In my opinion, the thing to notice here is the importance placed on SAT Subject Test scores. They are as important as the SAT itself. And there’s no reason to think that this applies only to athletes.</p>
<p>Many students (and parents and high schools) consider the SAT Subject Tests to be almost an afterthought, possibly because only a relatively small percentage of colleges require them. But that small percentage includes all of the super-elites and most of the just-below-the-super-elites. </p>
<p>If your child is aiming at elite colleges (and I don’t just mean Harvard and Yale – this applies at the Georgetown/Cornell/Northwestern/WashU level too), you and your child should be giving as much thought to the SAT Subject Tests as the SAT or ACT. In fact, the Subject Tests may require MORE thought because decisions have to be made on which ones to take – and those decisions require an understanding of both the student’s strengths and weaknesses and the degree to which the high school’s curriculum matches the material covered by the test. In some instances, the student’s college and career plans also play a role because students who plan to pursue certain majors (especially engineering) may have to take specific Subject Tests.</p>
<p>In fact, the SAT Subject Tests are so important that the most savvy students/families take them into account when planning high school course choices. Example: Have you ever wondered why there are kids at your child’s school who take AP Biology or AP Chemistry as juniors and then take regular high school physics as seniors? It’s because of the Subject Tests. By taking that AP as a junior, they have two years of a single science under their belts when they take the Subject Test in that science. This gives them a significant advantage over kids who attempt the same test with only one year of preparation.</p>
<p>We knew nothing about the Subject tests until Junior year. Once you get to Junior year it’s too late to do anything to catch up for lost time. </p>
<p>Thank you for pointing that out. This information tends to confirm my thoughts that those tests may have been the tipping factor for at least one Ivy admission WL-which may have been an acceptance with better Subject test scores to back up the high SAT scores of my son.</p>
<p>Marian is so right–and you need to get clued in on Subject Tests early on, because you want to take the test right after you finish the course, not a year or two later.</p>
<p>Planning how to handle the Subject Tests may be very appealing to your child because a lot of it involves gaming the system rather than actually learning stuff. Gaming the system appeals to the adolescent mind. One of my kids gamed the system sufficiently to get two 790s and a 760 without doing any studying specifically aimed at the Subject Tests. This is the sort of thing that kids can appreciate. </p>
<p>However, to really deal with this issue properly, you have to start thinking about it in 9th grade, and this may be too soon for many kids, who are just barely adjusting to high school and don’t have college on the brain yet. Therefore, the people who need to think about it that early are the parents.</p>
<p>I don’t view this information as some elusive secret data that will get an applicant accepted. I think it is just interesting to read about the stats.</p>
<p>I do think there is a relationship between test scores and admittance-do high test scores guarantee it-no as my son’s example points out. However, if this type of school is something a student aspires to it certainly won’t hurt to see how information about an applicant is treated.</p>
<p>I also don’t view these schools as a “Golden Academy”. We never thought much about what kind of college our son would be looking at until junior year and he managed to do just fine.</p>
<p>My daughter is a freshman in HS. I know what she needs to do to at least be a viable candidate-whether or not she is capable of it is an entirely different matter. She may well prove to be capable of it and still chose not to go this route. This just gives her the ability to be as prepared as she can be. It will be very easy with a few schedule adjustments to make sure she at least has been exposed to the material covered by subject tests by the time she needs to be and not be trying to play catch up senior year like my son tried to.</p>