<p>I have a hard time believing that adcoms at the elite colleges are familiar with all the high schools in their regions. They may have knowledge of their feeder schools and other top-tier high schools, but there are just too many schools out there. Also, not every adcom has been doing their job for enough years to have accumulated the requisite knowledge to quickly adjust the mental context for each new application. Secondly, they’d have to stay on top of any grading policy changes. In the last 6 years at our public, the school made 3 changes that impacted their system: 1) they stopped ranking and give only % rank 2) they changed the weighting of honors and AP courses, and 3) they stopped including in high school rank any high school level math classes taken in middle school, like algebra and geometry. </p>
<p>On my D’s transcript, for example, GPA was computed one way in her freshman year, and a different way her other 3 years. I wondered whether the adcoms would take the time to realize that there had been a change and how that impacted the possible GPA for kids in her grade compared to previous years.</p>
<p>Regarding grades, you have some schools like this one in Fairfax County, Virginia where an A could mean the student mastered the material quickly and earned high marks during the relevant time period, or it could mean the student slacked off or is a slower learner and finally got an A on on his third try at the test. If I were an adcom, I’d like to know the difference.</p>
<p>Maybe the kid who got the “quick” A crammed the night before the tests and remembers nothing a few months later, versus the kid who takes a longer time to learn the material. There was an article in the NYT (I think) which went into great detail how one remembers material better the more difficult it is for one to master. </p>
<p>Personally, I think there is too much emphasis on grades and test scores and all it has achieved is a generation of stressed out/burned out kids.</p>
<p>Our school system includes those HS courses taken in MS as part of the GPA. Made an appreciable difference on S2’s transcript GPA (and not for the better). We pointed this out to the GC and I believe she mentioned it in her letter. OTOH, taking those courses in MS helped him get into the HS program he attended.</p>
Don’t confuse what admissions officers say they consider with what they actually do.
I think the statistics referred to in the quote probably come from some kind of survey in which the officers are asked what they consider most important. “Rigor of curriculum” is a current mantra, but it can’t be that they don’t consider GPA–they’re just saying that rigor is most important.
You could study what this means by looking at whether students from high schools with fewer AP courses are doing better or worse at getting in to highly selective schools than in the past. I’ll bet there is no detectable difference.</p>
<p>vossron. Most knowledgable people would agree that the 75% of reported SAT is the level an unhooked applicant needs to achieve to have a realistic chance for admission. Keep in mind that all the selective shools admit 30-60% of their class for varsity athletes(excluding MIT,Caltech). All the athletes go ED at these schools and get in with lower scores as do the other hooked students. This is why the average SAT’s at the top schools give a very false impression of one’s chances for admission. I have also attached the LA high school data that’s been on this site. Go look at the grades and scores but keep in mind when you see someone admitted below 2200 it probably means they had a hook. The Price of Admission Book is the best resource. Notice in the SAT data that the 75th percentile at the very top schools closely approaches 800. This could not be true if SAT/grades only account for 20% of the application. </p>
<p>It may be possible that 40% are hooked in some way or another.
but
This seems a little far-fetched. You believe that an average of 45% of the students at top schools are varsity athletes? So at Harvard there are somewhere around 2000 varsity athletes in the four undergraduate classes?</p>
<p>Didn’t I read on another thread that Yale has reduced the percentage of recruited athletes to about 13%? (That’s still pretty many, in my view.)</p>
<p>^^^
13% athletes is a lot, but it’s not 30-60%. That just seems wildly exaggerated.</p>
<p>I’ve read (and I think it was in the P of A) that around 40% overall have some sort of hook. So that leaves the rest of the population competing for 60% of the spots. Even if none of the hooked candidates overlapped the top 75% on SAT, that would still leave slots for kids with less than the 75% level. But seeing as some of these schools have single digit rates, that still makes it very tough.</p>
<p>So, even if you assume that all of the lower scoring slots are hooked, there is still some chance for less than 75th percentile applicants. Maybe around 1/2 the statsitical chance as for >75th percentile applicants. Which, when you’re talking single digits overall, is pretty low. But it’s not exactly a lock for anyone.</p>
<p>The “most” and “probably” caveats are fine; I’m not convinced that there are fixed cutoff numbers (if not published, only the adcoms can know), not convinced that Ivies are dishonest.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most important message Ms. Clark should convey (c.f. the many discussions about how FA expenditures are remarkably consistent from year to year.)</p>
<p>What does the 75%th percentile on the SAT have to do with how much the schools “weights” SAT/grades at 20%? It just means that lots of students with high scores as part of their entire application package are accepted. Doesn’t mean that’s WHY they were accepted. It’s the same fallacious reasoning that some folks believe making Intel finalist or being an Olympiad winner makes one an auto admit. It is NOT the case!</p>
<p>My kids were at/above the 75th%tile at every school to which they applied (including some Ivies) and didn’t get in everywhere. One also had some significant hooks and was rejected. Some schools require a winning lottery ticket. If one can’t live peaceably with the concept that “$$$$ happens” and there may never be a logical reason as to why one is not admitted, don’t play the game.</p>
<p>Sure it could. If all your qualified applicants have similar SAT scores then clearly you would’t want that to account for a substantial amount of the decision matrix. Once you parse out the immediately unqualified at the lottery schools I imagine the test score ranges are pretty similar, you technically couldn’t give them substantial weight.</p>
<p>The 60% number is not for ivies but the top liberal arts schools. At the ives it’s more like 20-30% but way above 10% depending on the class size. Keep in mind that some ivies are big Cornell and some are small Dartmouth. At say Williams(and most other top ten D3’s) over half the freshman class is a varsity athlete. Remember they field the same number of teams as the D1 schools with only 1500 students(Haverford has only 1100). At these school there are very few walk ons even at D3. Again I strongly suggest reading both the Price of Admission and the Game of Life. I read these books before my #1 and # 2 went through the process and it’s mostly true with the caveat that there will always be a few exceptions. Both my children ended up going ED #1 for sports to top ten school and #2 ED at another top school. ED is a definite advantage at the schools say 6-15 on the list but not the top five. Everything I said is correct but the HS and the colleges purposely don’t really tell you the truth. The athletic hook is more important than all the rest. Keep in mind that this is not new. Bill Bradley got into Princeton years ago to play basketball with under a 900 SAT. </p>
<p>collegeshopping: I liked your perspective. “who is fooling who” It’s very interesting discussion. I am just learning this CAP (college admission process) as my DS is a sophomore. There are lot of subjective variables going into this process besides objective numbers(gps/sat/act/rank). It’s a coke formula. Nobody knows what happens behind the doors in adcomm meetings!!!</p>
<p>30-60% of the students at LACs are NOT athletes. That is just a thoroughly irresponsible comment. I believe there was a thread a couple of years ago on CC where the % of varsity athletes was discussed using sourced facts. At that time there was general agreement that the College of the Holy Cross had the largest percentage of student-athletes and it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25%. If I can find the link I’ll post it.</p>
<p>But being a varsity athlete is not the same as being a recruited athlete. 60% at top LAC’s is a gross mistatement. For example, at Amherst, the ED recruited athletes take up around 80 spots ED of a class of 480. I would hardly call that anywhere near 60%.</p>
<p>Sorry the class size at Williams is 2100 but @1500 at Amherst and Bowdoin. It’s been a couple of years since my son went through for sports and #2 is a freshman. My #3 and #4 are still a few years away but I still follow the web site. The percentage of all hooked(not just sports) students at the very top schools does indeed approach 65-75% of the class. This is why large numbers of excellent students with uw GPA above 3.8 and SAT above 2200 do not get admitted to the top 5-8 schools. SAT’s/GPA for unhooked students is very important, though once past the screening level(3.85uw and 2250) the other factors come into play. In your own kids schools go out and try top find a student who got in to the top 5-8 schools with lower scores and no hook. Mostly you find find great students with better scores that didn’t get in. I know many friends children with GPA above 3.8 and over 2300 SAT’s that were rejected by all top schools. But keep in mind that there are a lot of admits that have hidden mini-hooks such as listing themselves as hispanic because the parents came from Peru/Argentina even though they are European.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that a majority of students at top schools are “hooked,” as long as we’re referring to the typical list of hooks: URM, recruited athlete, legacy, developmental admit. I do think that a majority of those students have something beyond strong grades and scores, though–such as a significant achievement in some activity, especially outside school. I wouldn’t call that a hook, though.</p>