<p>Having read posts, both those of parents and students, over the past eight months, I'm curious to see if the expectations and judgements of a large majority of CC posters line up with what my past experience in academia has taught me: statistics define truth for science/math majors but for those inclined toward the humanities, other modes of perception (and expression) are of equal if not more importance. Surveying reactions to acceptances and denials at colleges and universities--the beffudlement of those who fall or see those close to them come up short and who invariably cite the "randomness" of the process as a judgement or salve, and the never ending "chances" threads that point up just how touching this whole process is--one has to wonder if there is perhaps more to the picture than meets the eye. Exactly what are people being driven by here, and how are their expectations formed. I guess I could put it in the most common form that I witnessed, when students received grades they did not expect on English papers and came to me with the justification that they had put in the required amount of work, why did they not get the grade that they deserved? Was there anything wrong with their grammar? Spelling? Organization? Well, then, why not an A?
And the answer, difficult for some students to accept (primarily . . . no, exclusively pre-med or business school bound students) was that they had not formulated or carried on an interesting and valuable analysis of the text/question/theme/etc. as assigned. This is not to say that many of the science/math oriented students were bad writers, some of them were superb, but the ones who took issue with evaluation formulated according to the requirements of written expression--ideas, if you will, as opposed to numbers--were, as noted above, exclusively of this group. What I am boiling this all down to is an accumulated reaction to the "chances" threads that appear in this forum: Is it possible that acceptances to most selective colleges and universities are primarily decided by intangible yet very real qualities that are expressed in other ways than numbers and that it is precisely this--for lack of a better term, personality--that carries the most sway among adcoms for whom numbers no longer function, having lost the ability to discriminate?</p>
<p>As a senior who is looking to study both engineering and English in college, I can see what you're talking about when it comes to perception of grading/decisions.</p>
<p>When it comes to English papers, I know that the technical aspects of my papers factored into my grade, but it was the feel of the paper, how it handled the assignment - the intangibles as you aptly named them, that made a paper an A. Sometimes I wrote a paper was superbly structured and had perfect grammar and spelling and knew that it wasn't good enough for the grade I wanted.</p>
<p>When it comes to college admissions, I personally think it's all about the intangibles. So many students test well and get superb marks in high school that it really all boils down to the things you cannot get from statistics. That's why the essays and the teacher recommendations are so very important in the process.</p>
<p>I've refused to post in the chances section because I don't believe that without reading an essay and the teacher recommendations, without getting an insight to who the person is beyond the numbers, you cannot really assess how an individual will fare in the admissions process.</p>
<p>I'm aware that my GPA and my SAT/SAT II/ACT will be important, but I'd like to think that to a college admission officer, I'm more than a name associated with a list of activities, achievements, and numbers.</p>
<p>I remember a thread on this topic a while back. A user hypothesized that those accepted to HYPSM-level colleges were students who, having adequate grades/scores/ECs/recs, possessed an "intellectual spark" generally shown through the essay. Adcoms are supposedly trained through experience to recognize this "spark" as something unique to successful and motivated students, thus differentiating them from the endless pool of applicants.</p>