<p>@Calmom its pretty simple. Take yale for instance. 50% of the students have a CR score between 710 and 800. Assuming the score is normally distributed, the 50th percentile should be at that half way point so (800-710)/2 + 710</p>
<p>@calmom - Do not sweat it; not giving me a hard time, as it is actually a logical question.</p>
<p>We actually went with the higher figure for the schools. We assumed the mid-range was composed of a distribution weighted towards higher-end scores. That could be totally wrong for some schools, but it is the possibility that gives the highest potential average.</p>
<p>Point blank - for kids with no hooks of any sort, the best bet is to go in with as top as possible and require no help in having the college meet any stated averages. Better yet, make it so your scores allow colleges to accept a lower candidate, which they might like. Colleges are not bending anything for the totally unhooked applicant.</p>
<p>I never said anywhere it makes sense for anyone else. Just like the merit and public college stuff would make no sense for us. The point of this thread is to see what others did; it is up to readers to decide if something makes sense for them or not.</p>
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It’s even more complex than that. Colleges look at test scores “in context”. I’ve posted many times about my d’s admission results in terms of the reach schools that admitted her (with scores at or below the 25th percentile) – but I don’t think it was as much of a leap as CC’ers would think. I think the colleges looked at my daughter as someone from a California public high school, and they would have had good data from her district and her high school – so they would look at her scores in the context of where she was coming from. </p>
<p>To the extent that schools are striving to achieve targeted scores in admissions, they may very well set different targets by geographic region. That is, my d’s alma mater would know in advance that they would end up with roughly 10% of their class being from California. So they can do the math to figure out what score range they need from different regions in order to achieve their overall targets. So it’s quite possible that the below-range number my daughter had overall was safely within range for the California group. It’s clear from the college web site that they have different admissions officers assigned to different territories. (My d’s school actually currently has California split into 3 separate territories)</p>
<p>But that’s a big assumption. Because of the way the scores are reported, there’s no particular advantage to a college to strive for an even distribution without each 100 point range. Yale might be a bad example because its scores are so high - so let’s look at Stanford which has a very diverse student body, and somewhat wider score distribution. </p>
<p>CR mid 50 percentile for Stanford: 680-780 (so using your math, you’d project a 730 midpoint) </p>
<p>But we also know from the CDS that 96% of the students have scores between 600-800 – so it’s just as rational to assume a mid-point of ~700. (That’s simply discarding the bottom 3.5% as outliers and then assuming a nice bell curve among the remaining 96%. </p>
<p>Obviously, both are high test scores… but you could have had an interesting debate at home with a kid who had a 710 CR score and his heart set on applying to Stanford. I wouldn’t want to be the parent telling him no because of the 50% rule. </p>
<p>^^ Parents need to decide what is right for their families and ignore any advice they deem unfit for them.</p>
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<p>LOL. That’s kind of what my son told me while my daughter was applying to reach colleges, and I was worried about her test scores. He said that her test scores didn’t matter because of all of the wonderful stuff that made her special… that the schools would balance out her test scores by drawing half their applicants from all the high scoring plain vanilla applicants. He didn’t use the words “plain vanilla” - I don’t remember what he said, but I know he meant kids who had great scores and test scores, and a typical array of EC’s, but nothing special to distinguish their apps and make them stand out from the pack. My d. didn’t have any “hooks” in the traditional sense, but she definitely had the sort of extras that would make her application more noticeable.</p>
<p>So I guess your rule did make sense in a particular context – in the sense that for some students, the high end SAT score is the main admissions “hook”. </p>
<p>Did you read my other posts? Again, I clearly mention that once test scores are off the table then it comes down to ECs etc. Test scores are never hooks for the unhooked applicant, as far as I can tell. Vanilla kids are not going to be helped by high test scores, that is for sure. </p>
<p>Probably the way to look at it is for the unhooked applicant, high test scores are more expected to be there, as there is no excuse or anything else to offset a low set of scores.</p>
<p>Obviously, there will be a small subset where this does not apply, but I would think an unhooked candidate should strive to have high scores, great ECs, leadership positions, great LORs etc.
That was just our outlook though. </p>
<p>What do you mean by “hooks”?</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s true, awcntdb, especially when it comes to schools a tiny bit below the HYPSM level. Very good schools are still taking students who are more or less regular old smart kids - high GPA, high test scores, good but not amazing ECs, etc, but if you want to have a shot at being one of them, you actually do need to have the great GPA and SAT score. I might take Applicant A with a slightly lower SAT score because she’s a professional level dancer, applicant B in the 10 % part of my score range because he achieved in spite of considerable adversity, and applicant C who has super high stats and is also clearly a budding scientist who has already done serious lab work, but once you’ve taken all the As and Bs and Cs and their equivalents, most schools are still going to have plenty of spots left to fill. Why wouldn’t you prefer a student with a higher SAT score to one with a lower, if there’s not any other super compelling reason to take either of them, if for no other reason than because it will protect your score range and make you look better in rankings? </p>
<p>The reason I think it seems like no “vanilla” kids get in any more is because there are so many of them competing for so few spots. Not everyone’s chances at a school with a 15 % acceptance rate is actually 15 %. If you’re a professional dancer, a diamond in the rough, or a super-genius, your chances are higher. If you’re the “vanilla” kid, your chances are lower, and probably by a lot. So even if in raw numbers a lot of these types of student actually do get in, percentage wise, you’re going to wind up with a lot more disappointed applicants than successful ones.</p>
<p>As for uncommon restrictions, I knew someone whose parents wouldn’t allow her to go to a school IN her home state or within a certain radius. The parents wanted the kid to foster independence, and felt like she’d be the type to run home every weekend if she could. Didn’t make much sense to me, but as far as I know it worked for them. </p>
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<p>OK, I see that we are talking completely different levels. The acceptance rates for my 70% of DSs’ schools (outside of the three considered safeties - actually one was not but close enough) were below 10%. Not much room left there, like none at all. Therefore, high GPA and test scores had to be covered to be considered without an athletic or some other hook. For the schools you mention with higher acceptance rates, your post is dead on, but DSs were not even looking at those schools.</p>
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It depends on the college. At some selective colleges, applicants with >75th+ percentile test scores have an extremely high admit rate. For example, Vanderbilt’s CDS lists 75th percentile test scores of 780/790/770. Parchment members that exceeded the sum of these 75th percentile scores with a 2350+ have a 100% historical acceptance rate, regardless of GPA, hooks, or other application criteria (the lowest GPA in this sample was a 3.44). Vanderbilt seems to place high importance on test scores or an event correlated with test scores, such as wanting to increase number of NMSs or USNWR reported numbers. Obviously this pattern is not true for ivies and most other highly selective colleges, particularly ones that emphasize non-stat criteria. At some selective colleges, most 2400 SAT applicants get rejected.</p>
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It depends how the particular colleges values test scores and uses them in the admissions process. Several selective colleges are quite up front about other areas of the application being more important than scores for admission, and excelling in those areas can offset lower than 50th percentile scores for an unhooked applicant. At such colleges, the high reported test scores can more relate to high scores being correlated with excelling in other important areas of the application than the college wanting to admitted students to have that test score level.</p>
<p>For example, when I applied to colleges, I was unhooked with a SAT CR of 500. If I was forced to apply to only colleges with a median CR score below 500, then I wouldn’t have even been able to apply to less selective local schools that accepted the majority of applicants. I ended up being accepted to some of the colleges with the highest reported test scores in the United States, colleges where my CR score was in the bottom 1% of the admitted class. My combined SAT score was in the bottom quartile at all colleges to which I was accepted (EA acceptance, so no need for traditional safeties).</p>
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But you were applying a deterministic analysis that the colleges themselves weren’t.</p>
<p>Because of the way scores are reported, there are a certain set of cutoffs that are important to the college:</p>
<ol>
<li>Total number of enrolling students with scores above the 75% level</li>
<li>Total number of enrolling students with scores above the 25% level</li>
<li>Total number of enrolling students within with scores within 100-point ranges (500-590, 600-690, 700-800).</li>
</ol>
<p>So let’s look at Yale’s numbers (again focusing on the CR score):</p>
<p>Here’s a link to the Yale CDS – the numbers are on page 9:
<a href=“http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/CDS2013_2014.pdf”>http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/CDS2013_2014.pdf</a></p>
<p>A score of 800 is big boost. If we assume that Yale’s goal is to simply maintain their score range profile from one year to the next, then Yale wants to assure that 25% of enrolling students have 800 on the CR. (Note: it doesn’t matter if those particular students have weaker math & writing scores – the college can also take advantage of the practice of reporting sub scores separately to by leveraging students into various categories. That is, they could protect that upper 25% level by a policy that simply favors student who have a top end score in only 1 subtest - no individual student needs to fill all 3. </p>
<p>For a student who can’t offer up a top quartile score, it doesn’t really matter where they fall within the mid-50 range. For Yale, an enrollee with a 770 does not add any more value than one with a 720 – either way, the student’s scores are just functioning to add to the head count for the mid-50 range.</p>
<p>If they were reporting mean scores rather than median ranges – it would be different. Then having a lot of 770 students would function to pull up the average. </p>
<p>I think this is one reason why the colleges super-score, and many of the top schools require that scores from all sittings be submitted. It gives them the opportunity to cherry pick the best scores for purposes of reporting. </p>
<p>So I don’t dispute your logic that the scores are very important – I just think that you created an artificially high barrier ---- or potentially you could have aimed too low. That is, I think that a kid with a score pattern of 800-720-720 (2240) might be more valuable to Yale than a score pattern of 770-770-770 (2310).-- simply as an artificact of how the scores are reported. </p>
<p>The 2240 kid is filling a top 25% spot and two 50%/midrange spots – whereas the 1310 kid fills 3 midrange spots… but leaves the college still needing a higher score to keep it’s top of range numbers up. </p>
<p>Suppose a kid applies with 800/800 on CR/Writing but only 700 on math (2300 total). Now you’ve got a kid who provides a top quartile number for two measures - but falls short of the midrange on one – but still is filling the 80-82% spot needed for the 2nd set of range numbers. I’d assume that it’s a lot harder to find 800 scorers than students with math scores of 710 or above - so I’m thinking that from the perspective of filling the ostensible score quota for the school, that score pattern may be more valuable to Yale than either of the patterns represented by the 2240 and 2310 kids. In fact – I’m thinking that the kid with 800/800/620 might still be added value in terms of score pattern – because Yale can afford to enroll 18% of its class with math scores in the 600-690 range – and again, it will be easier for them to find 1 kid with a math score of 710+ than it will be to find two more kids with 800 scores on CR/Writing. </p>
<p>So basically what I am saying is that if scores are important – it is equally important to look at those scores the same way that the colleges will. My strategic explanation is convoluted-- but I assume that Yale has statisticians consulting with the admissions department who have these sort of things figured out. </p>
<p>I actually think that the score preferences are more fluid during an admissions season – I think that hey are running stats reports and projections every step of the way, and so the numbers they have at the end of the SCEA round might impact their priorities for the RD round. </p>
<p>Plus, of course, test scores are only a small part of the equation. They still have to fill their athletic teams, meet diversity goals, and maintain enough balance to make sure that they have the requisite number students to spread among different disciplines and departments. </p>
<p>Of course it doesn’t matter in hindsight. I’m just saying that if I were to strategize over high end test scores, this is the way I would look a things. </p>
<p>A had a couple of comments on some of these restrictions, In case anybody is thinking about what restrictions to apply.
I can understand setting a ceiling cost figure that your family is willing/able to pay. But I don’t see the sense in automatically setting it at the cost of the instate tuition in the state where you live–that’s an arbitrary number. It’s even more arbitrary if the instate options aren’t all that great.
I’d also like to echo the comment above that limiting the number of applications may not be a good idea for a kid who is looking at highly selective schools.
Finally, for those of us telling our kids not to go to our alma mater’s rival, we probably do need to tell the kids if we are kidding or not.</p>
<p>Since we are not the consumers of the product, we felt is was not right for us to restrict our kids. Once they finish HS, they are not really kids anymore despite the fact that they may still act that way. </p>
<p>We did give a lot of advice, but ultimately it is up to them. Of course, we are not paying for school either. Not sure if we would have restrictions in that case. Most likely it would be the same, but with the caveat that we would only pay x amount and they had to be able to afford it.</p>
<p>No restrictions on location anywhere in world; however, no schools w/o convenient access to a major airport. </p>
<p>No schools that don’t award substantial merit scholarships. Ivies are definitely off the list.</p>
<p>@VSG, DS is welcome to go to party school if it is offering full ride.</p>
<p>@Hunt Restrictions set at “no more than instate tuition” is typically a forward looking restriction. There are siblings coming up behind and parent(s) can’t/don’t want to get in over their head. And they believe the in-state option is a good school. However, if kid wants to go elsewhere? cover the difference.</p>
<p>Applying to more than 1 highly selective schools on the premise that; your odds increase if you apply to more? is like buying more lottery tickets for drawings on different dates, on the premise that your odds to win get better. It is not a cumulative affect. each application is its own ticket. If you apply to 2 schools with 8% acceptance rates? your odds are not 16%?! :)) you simply have 2 separate 8% chances.</p>
<p>School admission rates are not “odds”; they are not random events, like roll of dice or lottery draws. A highly qualified applicant will have a higher likelihood of admission. An unqualified, unhooked applicant has a zero likelihood of admission.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus My S has strong aptitude in Math, and he likes Math and other sciences enough, so I want to be sure he does not waste his aptitude, so one major must be in a STEM subject. I base that on my own experiences and those of people I know, and not some generalized sense provided by popular media that only STEM has value. I ended up double-majoring in a STEM subject and in a non-STEM subject and it looks like that is where he is headed, and I heartily approve. </p>
<p>My rules from my parents was that they would pay for an in-state public school for four years and they would not pay for a liberal arts/performing arts/fluff degree.</p>
<p>My older DD self limited her school list to ones that were 3 hours or less away. I did ask her to consider a best-out-of-state-value school that was in line with the ones she had already chosen. When it got down to a couple of private schools around $45,000 and 3 publics under $30,000, I did say unless you can show why these are vastly superior to the other choices they should be crossed off. She agreed. At that point she made her own choice, which happened to be mom’s choice. I chose it for “good value”, but she chose it for “maybe where I want to live after graduation” and “gives much credit for IB”. </p>
<p>My younger DD wants to go to college but was happy for me to create a list of potential colleges for her with her own restrictions of less than 2 hours away and non-urban. She has trouble with decisions :-).</p>