<p>@ordinarylives - I agree that grades are a better indicator of future success than standardized tests, although both are imperfect. However, neither high school grades nor standardized tests are considered to define intelligence. </p>
<p>Fortunately, neither grades not tests is generally used without considering the other and holistic admissions also evaluate the context of both.</p>
<p>Also you have to take into account of upward/downward trends in GPA.</p>
<p>[Grades</a> pointless? Some colleges don’t care about GPAs](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/27/college-grade-point-averages/1947415/]Grades”>Grades pointless? Some colleges don't care about GPAs) Also thought this was an interesting article pertaining to this thread.</p>
<p>In my view, the SAT/ACT serves one purpose: as an obstacle. The student is presented with a task, and their performance on that task has a great effect on how easy their road to college will be. Students who are very serious about college will spend significant effort perfecting their performance. Less serious students will probably spend less effort. The nature of the task itself is less important. If I had been told that I needed to juggle cats to increase my likelihood for acceptance/scholarship money, I would have gotten really good at cat juggling 
Now of course, some people are just naturally good at juggling cats, which is why there is more to admissions than test scores…</p>
<p>alexisss–I don’t think anyone is using the SAT/ACT as an intelligence test, more of an affirmation of what they learned in high school, the two combined are good predictors of how well someone will do in college. Either one alone isn’t. </p>
<p>ordinarylives–how old is that research though? I think the GPA scene has changed a LOT since our oldest when through high school, not that many years ago. If a GPA is “real” and not the result of hyper parents and they get the test scores to back up that GPA, sure, its a good predictor but I seriously doubt a kid with a 4.0 and a 22 on the ACT is going to do all that well in college. That kid could very well have taken the easiest classes in school–using an exact example that I know of even–does that 4.0 really mean anything? It’s another reason holistic admissions are a good idea.</p>
<p>Flagships “know” the high schools and know how to put the student in context. They also have a history of success (and failures) from students accepted from those high schools. The only disadvantage comes when kids apply to out of state publics and even then flagships like UofM have ‘stronghold’ high schools in some NE states where they have had enough students actually matriculate to understand the context. For the really strong flagships this has been going on for decades and decades. </p>
<p>The standardized test scores (ACT, SAT, AP etc.) should be somewhat correlated with grades for most students unless there is strong grade inflation. If you lay out all the kids and their GPAs and the test scores you should see some correlations if the grading is equitable. I’ve watched 7 years of seniors at our public head off to college. About 80% attend from CCs, to directionals, to our flagships, to Ivies and almost always it makes sense with what I know about the kids and where they fall on the continuum and what they have done outside of the classroom. Now we’re fortunate to have a small community with a under 200 graduating class so it’s not too hard to figure out. It proved out with my own kids as I watched where they fell on the standardized tests throughout K-12, where they fell on the CAT tests, Iowas Basic Tests, ACT and SAT percentile wise, national merit etc. and where they ultimately fell in their graduating class deciles if you look at it with a general eye and the kid toed the line throughout high school. It’s loosely the Peter Principle at it’s best example, kids will continue to rise until they are no longer capable of more, they have reached their academic stride.</p>
<p>When I see a super high gpa and so so test scores I think grade inflation; not sure whether I am right or wrong. I have a family member who lives about 45 minutes away. He has a phenomenal gpa taking all AP classes. He told my daughter that he never studied for APs and they were " easy." He never took the AP tests and did so so on the SAT even with several months of a tutor. It’s either a kid who does poorly on standardized tests or it’s grade inflation. My daughter works her **** off and has a great gpa as a result. She did great on her PLAN ACT test- I assume no grade inflation. I don’t know any other way to explain it…</p>
<p>Just sayin’. I leaned quite a bit in hs that wasn’t present on the ACT.</p>
<p>How is a test that can easily be gamed an indicator of someone’s potential?</p>
<p>I do not think that the ACT is the " end all." My older daughter did fine on the ACT- not great- but good enough. She is doing very well in college.</p>
<p>The ACt is only math, through Trig, although there are only a couple Trig question. It is reading comprehension and it is grammar. The science is mostly interpreting data and information. It’s really a foundational test. It can disadvantage kids that aren’t quick and decisive as speed and decisiveness is definitely a component and a good ACT prep that helps you understand how to move through the tests can add a couple points to your score for someone in the low to mid 20s. All three of mine outperformed their PLAN test prediction by a couple points, but they took an short ACT prep class after the PLAN.</p>
<p>I think one reason that there is a high correlation between HS GPA and college grades is that most colleges do use SAT/ACT, so that kids are going to a college where they can succeed if they try, and grades measure, at least to some extent, how hard kids try.</p>
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<p>I agree with that although it can be a rude awakening for kids that come through high schools where they can boost their grade with homework, helping the teacher, extra credit projects etc. I’ve seen for some of my kids a trimester grade that was comprised of at least 20 or 30 ‘gradebook’ entries. I like when the kids have classes that the grades are entirely of a couple quizzes or a couple papers, a mid-term and a final…it preps them better for how college classes run.</p>
<p>I lived in the midwest for a number of years before moving here, and where I lived, we all thought that our local high school was mighty fine. It was one of the preferred school districts. Huge high school with a graduating class of about 700. It had everything, it seemed, from the sports teams, the bands, the AP courses. It certainly was the best school district in a very large area. And they tooted their horn about it chance they got.</p>
<p>But I heard bits and pieces from people who had moved there from the East Coast that the school was not as hot as they said they were. As more cracks in the veneer became evident to me, I started doing some concerted research and found out that the school was just average. Maybe in the upper range of average, but average, nonetheless. One of the cracks in the veneer came when a selected number of the “gifted” kids were given one of the independent school exams for achievement testing, and the stanines were terrible, and these were supposed to be our top kids. We were assured that the reason for that was because the scales were set for those in the absolute best private schools. But that still bothered me that most of our top kids weren’t even making the average marks on that test. Then I met someone whose kid was going to an independent school there and when I saw the work her son was doing, I knew that we were all fooling ourselves. So I put my kids in private school after working on them for a year and bringing them up to par. Used the Calvert home school curriculum and saw where we were lacking, and lacking. </p>
<p>And a good thing too, because when we moved here to NY where some of the best schools in the country are, I could see that many of the school districts were truly fooling themselves. When you are looking at school Districts like Greeley, Scarsdale, Rye, there is simply no comparisons. Many, and I see it here on this board, think they have a great, competitive school district. when they are simply average. Those such school will generally get less than 1% of their students in the top schools. Forget the 10% rule. It’s more like the top three kids are contenders, and maybe once every 5 years a kid gets into HPY or MIT. They have absolutely no idea that their high school is not competitive at all for the top schools.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse–is that a function of that specific area though. I look at our overall stats compared to NY and wonder why people think NY schools are all that? I’ve talked to plenty of people in NY who abhor their schools and think they are awful–not even talking about NYC schools but upstate NY. I look at our midwest school and the top 20% is getting into tippy top colleges, they may not always attend those schools, and many are getting into multiple tippy top schools–finances being the main reason. One of the kids’ friends turned down Yale, yes, I saw the letter, to attend our flagship because he got a full ride scholarship from an outside source–still go into Yale though. Our school is one of the better ones but not the top school either.</p>
<p>When I saw the thread title, I thought the discussion was going to focus on high performing high schools where bright students earn low grades relative to grade inflated schools but have high standardized test scores. I hear about this in the case of IB schools, test-in public schools, and some private schools. My kids attended a school like this and between the many high achieving kids around and the less generous grading policies relative to nearby schools, the kids had little sense of where they stood or how well qualified for college they might be. On the one hand, they worried that they were unqualified for any school whose name they recognized. On the other, there was a sense of entitlement that they should be admitted to the schools they wanted purely because their school was so difficult and their peers so accomplished. The applications and admissions decisions were quite surprising for everyone except the athletes.</p>
<p>I’m not bunching the entire Midwest into one category. There are, I am sure, some top flight schools in the Midwest. I was not in such a school district though from all the rah rah, you would have thought so. Most people invested in that school district in terms of buying their homes there and planning their families there. Clearly if your school is getting 20% of the kids to the top schools, you are in a top notch district. Mine was not. Nor were the ones around me. The school had a lot of amenities and on the surfiace looked great but could not hold a candle to the truly top school districts. Those parents who saw this put their kids into private schools, which is what we ended up doing.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse–I’ve had conversations with people who think their schools are just the cat’s meow because their kid is getting all A’s, then they turn around and no one in the class scores above a 25 on the ACT. Of course, since that is all they have to measure “success” by, it looks good to them. It’s shocking to them when these kids don’t get into HYP, etc. That is why I stress that a simple GPA isn’t a good indicator of success and GPA+test scores is better, but holistic is really the only way to know. A kid that can get a 4.0 with a 34 on the ACT while being a 3 sport athlete and first chair in the trumpet section of the top band is just going to be a better student in college then the 4.0 with a 22 and nothing else.</p>
<p>^^ I think there is “alot of that” SteveMA, but there are outstanding public high schools in the midwest. We don’t put 10% into ivy leagues but 3 out of 175 this year isn’t too bad considering UofM is the favored uni for most top students out of our high school. I think ours is pretty darn good, but I’m glad my last one is graduating because they are adding IB now and I’m not so fond of that. And yeah, mine all tracked pretty consistently from K - 12 on national percentage rates for standardized testing and their GPAs were reflective of where I would expect them to be without grade inflation.</p>
<p>[Best</a> High Schools in the US | Top US High Schools | US News & World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools]Best”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools)</p>
<p>I know the USN&WR rankings are somewhat controversial, but here are some of the top high schools in the midwest:</p>
<h1>5 - International Academy, BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI</h1>
<h1>35 - Signature School, EVANSVILLE, IL</h1>
<h1>39 - Northside College Preparatory, CHICAGO, IL</h1>
<h1>41 - Walter Payton College Preparatory, CHICAGO, IL</h1>
<h1>69 - Sumner Academy of Arts & Science, KANSAS CITY, KS</h1>
<h1>76 - Metro Academic and Classical, ST LOUIS, MO 63108</h1>
<h1>90 - Walnut Hills, CINCINNATI, OH</h1>
<p>As I went through the schools in the top 100, most of the schools are located in the following states:</p>
<p>NY - 20
CA - 16
FL - 13
TX - 10
VA - 6
AZ - 3
IL - 3
WA - 3
NJ - 3
MA - 3
MD - 3
OR - 2
TN - 2</p>
<p>I don’t like the methodology used by that USN&WR for the high schools as I don’t think they are as relevant for families looking for the best school districts in an area. I think Jay Mathews who puts together the picks for Newsweek/Daily Beast does a better job. There are schools in that top 10 even that make me wince. Knowing the schools and the other districts, they would not be picks for those looking for the best college prep for their kids. </p>
<p>My midwest state doesn’t have any school in any of the top 100s of any of those lists anyways.</p>