<p>Better colleges and high schools won’t be giving their students a lot of multiple choice tests. My youngest was a terrible multiple choice test taker when he was young, he would have the most elaborate reasons for picking what was clearly a wrong answer - I discovered how easy it is to write a bad question from him! He did eventually learn how to play the game and did very well on the SATs. </p>
<p>We didn’t think twice about Scarsdale - 1% African American, 2% Hispanic. 100% middle class or richer. I wanted my kids to experience more diversity. I don’t know of course how my kids would have done if they had attended the Scarsdale schools, but I am very happy with how their college admissions turned out and with the experience of being around kids with more varied backgrounds.</p>
<p>I definitely think that many competitive schools would pay more attention to kids they determined to be “ivy bound”. This is exactly what happened at my school. If you weren’t at the top in academics, sports, music/theatre, you didn’t receive much attention at all. Looking back, I think this was unfair to many of the kids who had the potential to be successful but were never recognized (although I think many were later on) because their talent wasn’t immediately evident.
I even felt that my college counselor thought that I wouldn’t get into any top schools. Maybe because of my lower freshman grades or lack of leadership activities (although I did two extracurriculars seriously). I said that I wanted to go to an urban east coast school and he suggested Rochester, Syracuse, and Lehigh.</p>
<p>I agree with you 100%! Our D’s high school was extremely diverse (60% white and 25% Asian). However, it was not socioeconomically diverse with most kids coming from upper middle class families. 98% of the students go on to college. The college that she is now attending is also quite diverse, but more so from a socioeconomic standpoint.</p>
<p>I have a question referring back to post # 79. How do Colleges go about the “poor test takers”? If people get denied from the college because of poor SAT scores but have very high GPA and ECs and probably shows interest and potential to succeed, what does that imply? Or they don’t?</p>
<p>Colleges vary in how important they consider standardized test scores. For example, someone with a top 10% class rank in Texas gets automatic admission to Texas public universities (7% for Austin), regardless of test scores (though this may not mean automatic admission to the chosen division or major). Students with a 3.0 GPA in-state or 3.61 GPA out-of-state are admitted to non-impacted majors at non-impacted California State University campuses (those with lower GPAs do depend on test scores).</p>
<p>However, standardized test scores (sometimes different ones like Accuplacer) may still be used for placement in English, math, and/or foreign language courses. Of course, students in college have to take tests, but the test formats may not necessarily be similar to those of the SAT, ACT, or other standardized tests (whose multiple choice formats are likely due to the need to grade very large numbers of tests). Students planning to go on to graduate or professional school may wish to practice standardized test taking skills for the GRE, GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, etc…</p>
<p>Do you know why SATs or ACT would be very important to some colleges and used in admissions purposes if college classroom tests may not be anything similar to SAT or ACT? What would happen if someone is good at classroom tests based on what they learned in class and gets a good GPA but doesn’t do well on SATs or ACT or any sort of standardized tests?</p>
<p>Many colleges are holistic in their admissions, they look at GPA of the student compared to the other students in that high school, they look at the information in the application and they look at standardized test scores to compare the student nationally. You aren’t a “bad test taker” if you have decent grades because clearly you are passing the tests your high school teachers give. The SAT and ACT are simply benchmarks for college preparedness. One thing that can trip up kids is you need to be efficient and decisive in taking standardized tests because of the time element…although that can be said of tests in the high school classes also. If you haven’t tried both, try both…some kids find one easier than the other although many kids do about the same on both give or take alittle. </p>
<p>Find colleges where your test scores a good match, add a reachy school and a couple safe schools where you are assured of acceptance (and can afford) and you should be fine.</p>
<p>Probably because grading standards and course rigor vary all over the place in high schools. It is not like in some countries where grading standards and course rigor are largely standardized in high school courses, so students can present just their high school records for university admissions. In the US, the standardized tests are a common measure for all applicants.</p>
<p>In the US, if you emphasize grades, you become more vulnerable to high school grade inflation and the like. If you emphasize class rank, you become more vulnerable to differences in how many strong students each high school has. If you emphasize test scores, you become more vulnerable to “gaming” the tests or losing “poor standardized test takers”, as well as emphasizing a measure that is not necessarily like university school work. It is a no win situation, and different universities have different mixes of the level of importance of each of these measures.</p>