<p>I’m trying to attack you? Get a hold of yourself and listen to what you’re saying. And you are belittled because of the overly defensive way you sound, not that I was trying to at all. The fact that you feel “belittled” by a significant side comment just shows how big of an ego you have. And I’m not really understanding you… are you saying that a student who’s family survives on food stamps can perform just as well as a student who has access to numerous academic resources?</p>
<p>I’m not belittled, but you are attempting. Calling me dull, saying it passed over my head, etc. It’s funny that you think I have a big ego. I didn’t call myself “theenlightened”. Someone who makes that their name is obviously full of themselves.</p>
<p>Yes, a student who’s family survives on food stamps can perform as well as a student who has a butler, maid, etc. You want to know why? My school has the most kids on Food Stamps in the county, and yet a lot of them end up excelling, much better than many of the rich (And by rich, I mean two doctors with 500K+ money) kids. So yes, poor students can succeed. You are perpetrating stereotypes by thinking they can’t.</p>
<p>My username “theenlightened”, is actually a reference to my religion. If you understood buddhism, you would know that being enlightened is not pretentious at all, so I would appreciate if you stop criticizing my username and forming preconceived notions. </p>
<p>You stated that you felt belittled after asking, not calling you, if you were dull. Please, grow a pair if you want to survive in the real world.</p>
<p>You are also confining your argument to a your own school, whereas I’m talking about the bigger picture. Anyhow, I am going to be the bigger man and leave this thread because I don’t want to prolong this argument further. You can reply and say whatever you want to me, but I’m not replying.</p>
<p>Only the Buddha was fully Enlightened, and therefore aren’t you claiming to be him?</p>
<p>You must not pay attention in social situations. When someone asks something like “Are you stupid?” The implication is that you are. I have a pair, as I’m a male, so your argument is invalid. You should probably learn human anatomy.</p>
<p>It’s funny that you think you’re the bigger man. Good luck in life. People don’t like pricks, so you’re going to have a lot of trouble.</p>
<p>^^ prick? That wasn’t necessary. It’s a damn username, stop trying to pick it apart like an english paper.</p>
<p>I love that you can only focus on me mentioning his username. You should probably just drop it at this point.</p>
<p>Crimson, just stop lol. Every time somebody puts up a reasonable argument against you you lash out at them and refuse to accept it at all. That’s the sign of somebody immature. And insulting somebody’s username because they pointed out a negative quality of yours? As you said, people don’t like pricks lol.</p>
<p>Re: #76</p>
<p>The hierarchy of predictive power among the various tests is not too surprising, since the AP and IB tests cover the most advanced course material commonly found in high schools. The SAT Subject tests come next, with the SAT Reasoning test covering the least advanced material (other than the writing section, which replaced the writing SAT Subject test).</p>
<p>The SAT Reasoning reading and math sections have predictive power in a negative sense – poor performance on the less advanced material covered in that test likely means that the student will struggle with more advanced material (this is likely what is going on in the University of Oregon study about math and physics majors). But good performance on the less advanced material is less predictive of performance than good performance on the more advanced material found in SAT Subject, IB, and AP tests.</p>
<p>With regard to the relative placement of HS GPA in the hierarchy of predictive power, schools like Harvard probably see little predictive power from GPA because nearly all of their enrolled students had HS GPAs compressed at the very top of the scale. Studies at the University of California, which (as a system) admits students from a wider range of HS GPAs and test scores, indicate that HS GPA is a better predictor than SAT Subject tests in their case (also found was that the SAT Reasoning test added almost no predictive power if one already considered HS GPA and SAT Subject tests, although the SAT Subject tests then included the writing test).</p>
<p>UCB, good point, but Harvard also has people apply with lower GPA’s, so it may not distinguish between the top student, but they are using it to narrow their scope. That’s mostly what the top schools use GPA for.</p>
<p>NYCtempo, it’s funny that you keep going after everybody else has stopped. Do you need someone to pay attention to you?</p>
<p>I hate to play the “holistic” card, but this is a something of a divisive exercise to be discussing when the importance of GPA vs. SAT will ultimately be decided by the adcom reviewing your application rather than what we conclude here. The senior members do well to note that neither matter all that much at tippy-top schools where everything is important.</p>
<p>I think a better question would be which is rarer - a 2300/3.5 student or a 2000/4.0 student.</p>
<p>There are 26,400 public high schools + 10,700 private high schools in America - meaning that there are at least 40K valedictorians. </p>
<p>There are [url=<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat_percentile_ranks_2008_composite_cr_m_w.pdf]approximately[/url”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat_percentile_ranks_2008_composite_cr_m_w.pdf]approximately[/url</a>] 6000 students leaving high school with 2300+ SAT scores. Factoring in superscoring and students scoring 34 or higher on the ACT, the number becomes around 20,000 students (total conjecture).</p>
<p>Add in internationals and I become really confused. 
</p>
<p>The most predictive measures are tests like IB, AP, and subject tests. It’s not surprising, because none of those individual tests are required for admission. Even where SAT-II tests are required, in come cases the schools requires them to be related to the proposed field of study. A strong math/science student who plans to study math or science will take math and science related tests. That same student must still take the CR and Writing sections of the SAT, which is likely to be less predictive for a math major.</p>
<p>Likewise, an English major is likely to have done well on the CR and Writing sections, but may have done poorly on the Math section. If we only look at the relevant section based on the studen’t major, perhaps SAT might be more predictive.</p>
<p>But even if GPA is more predictive, SAT and ACT scores provide perspective. The adcoms are in a sense ranking the students that apply to their schools, but in order to do that, they can’t just look at GPA (and many students don’t take subject tests, AP tests, IB tests, or any of the other items that might be considered highly predictive). Student A has a 4.0 GPA, but does that make him more likely to succeed than Student B with a 3.6 at another high school? If the adcom is familiar with both high schools, the comparison may be easy - but given the number of high schools JuniorMint identifies, is that a realistic expectation?</p>
<p>No - the adcom needs a way to compare those 2 schools, and guess what they use? Information from the school profile, and that includes average SAT/ACT scores and possibly a distribution of scores at each high school. The SAT score alone may not be predictive of success, but it is necessary to put that GPA into context.</p>
<p>JuniorMint, I’d like to point out, that while there are probably that many, some don’t have valedictorians, while some have multiple (Which I still don’t get). But yes, there are way too many tests and scores and stuff, haha.</p>
<p>CTScoutMom, I completely understand that SAT is important, especially to put things in perspective, I was just arguing that it stands about where it should be in importance. The SAT helps differentiate between kids with similar GPA’s.</p>
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</p>
<p>Yes, most of the low HSGPA students are screened out in admissions, so the sample of low HSGPA Harvard students is likely to be too small to draw any conclusions on how low HSGPA Harvard students do. Actual Harvard students likely had HSGPAs nearly all compressed at the very top of the scale, so it is not surprising that HSGPAs have little predictive power on Harvard students’ college GPAs.</p>
<p>Lol I just saw what you said, Crimson. Mad at me cause I commented? Were you that desperate to have the last word? I commented not half an hour after you made that post and you claim that “nobody else was talking.” Ever think that people aren’t on this forum all day, waiting to respond within 5 minutes?
Cute how you completely ignore my actual comment and choose to attack me as a person, by the way.</p>
<p>UCBAlumnus, ah, I see what you are saying. Since all of the HSGPA’s were high, you can’t see who fails and passes based off of the GPA’s. I’m not quite sure what I was talking about, haha. I think whole school systems are better equipped to do studies on admissions and such, because they have such wide varieties.</p>
<p>NYCtempo, it’s funny that you’re ignoring that I commented on the actual topic at hand, and then mentioned you. You weren’t the main topic, and it’s cute that you think you were. You didn’t actually make a point, you just attacked me, like you are complaining that I supposedly did to you. I’m not on here all day, I volunteered for 8 hours on Friday, hung out with my family yesterday, and volunteered at church today.</p>
<p>Um, no you didn’t… Reread your post - you didn’t say anything that had to do with the topic to me. Even if you didn’t mean specifically in that post, before that, you were going off about some guys username instead of making a valid argument. I did make a point - the point is that you never accept information posted by people with the opposing argument, no matter how correct it is. Are you bad at reading comprehension or something?
Actually, I guess the answer to that is pretty obvious based on the fact that you thought we were saying that SAT should be weighed more than GPA (oh wait, I should spell my point out cause you won’t get it otherwise: we didn’t say that).
Nobody’s commented in a whole 13 hours. It’s funny that you keep going after everybody else has stopped. Do you need someone to pay attention to you?</p>
<p>My post was actual information towards someone else. You saying that I was trying to get the last word was stupid, I actually had actual information. I’ve made plenty of valid arguments, you’ve just ignored them, like you are saying I’m doing. I find it funny that you think I’m stubborn, get the log out of your own eye. And no, I’m not bad at reading comprehension. I can tell you my scores on Critical Reading if you’d like?</p>
<p>You were saying that the SAT should be more important than it is, which is what I argued against. I’m sorry, did you want me to comment in my sleep? I would have replied earlier, but you know… Sleep, volunteering, lunch ← I guess those aren’t important. It’s funny, when you complain about me responding, you are therefore responding. I guess it goes both ways. Do you need someone to pay attention to you?</p>
<p>I didn’t ignore them, I just accepted that they had a point to them (no matter how annoying you were about it) and didn’t argue against them. There’s a difference. If you notice, the posts I make after you give a valid argument (rare occurrence) don’t contradict your facts.
Your last post was talking about how he claimed he was buddha or something like that. That is not actual information towards someone else.
I got an 800 on Critical Reading, so don’t bother.
And I didn’t want you to comment in your sleep, but I’m glad you see how stupid it sounded to the rest of us when you said it to me. How come you get time to do all your other crap but when others are out doing stuff, you claim that “everybody’s dropped it?” It literally makes no sense.</p>
<p>I find it funny that I’m supposed to make valid responses to your posts, but you point out that you didn’t argue against mine. Double standard much?</p>
<p>"UCB, good point, but Harvard also has people apply with lower GPA’s, so it may not distinguish between the top student, but they are using it to narrow their scope. That’s mostly what the top schools use GPA for.</p>
<p>NYCtempo, it’s funny that you keep going after everybody else has stopped. Do you need someone to pay attention to you?"</p>
<p>That was the last point. Not about Buddha, that was quite a bit ago, catch up. I got a 36, so don’t bother. It goes both ways.</p>
<p>Everyone else was done talking. The"enlightened" said he wouldn’t respond anymore, and devry was done whining. Why would you comment again once everyone is done talking? Who are the rest of us? No one else cares what you or I are saying. You sound stupid, maybe I do too, it doesn’t matter. You and I are the only ones fueling conversation at this point.</p>
<p>If you read what I said, I was referring to the people that were arguing against you. Was UCB arguing against you? No. He’s agreed that SAT reasoning is not a great predictor since page 3.
Besides, there was nothing that hinted devry was going to drop it at all.
And anybody with a brain could read what you said and know it made no sense at all. They don’t have to care to know that it made no sense…
Edit: In regards to your first paragraph, I didn’t argue against yours because I thought they were correct. It’s not a double standard - you read what I said, and completely ignore it in your rebuttals. I don’t do that. I just don’t make rebuttals towards that subject anymore. Did I point out flaws in any of your statistics? I don’t think so.</p>