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<p>I think people have invented this idea of the lopsided SAT score to explain away the tremendous gap from the norm at these schools. Seriously 500-599? </p>
<p>Likewise, I think the jock explanation is being offered without evidence. Ryan Fitzpatrick had a 1580 SAT and a 48 Wonderlic.</p>
<p>I don’t even know how people with 500-599 SAT scores even manage to brush their teeth or tie their shoelaces without assistance.</p>
<p>You got it, argbargy. Adcoms at elite schools hate smart people and want to put them in their rightful place.</p>
<p>I’m not even going to look up “Wonderlic,” because I like imagining all the naughty things to which it could refer.</p>
<p>I have hung out with 2012 parents over a 2 year period. Several of them had kids with this problem - can’t get over 600 hump in Math while scoring 700+ in the english sections, or can’t get over 600 in CR with 780 in math. The low CR scores are quite typical of international applicants who have not learnt the collegeboard’s english (SAT and GRE english sections are really silly) while they are proficient in Queen’s english.</p>
<p>A true indicator of what a college is willing to accept is to check how many people fall below 27 (1820) in overall ACT score to figure out the low threshold and not add up all the low scores for various SAT sections.</p>
<p>Philo-to me here is the useful information that I have discovered from my research that has been confirmed by this thread. The useful information goes out to the 62% of Americans who are white and non-jewish.</p>
<p>If your dream is to go to HYPSM find a sport that you can get recruited in. The more obscure the better as there are 40+ sports at many of these schools that these schools recruit for. Get your kid involved in that sport early and find the top trainer in that sport, spend alot of money training your kid, and do pretty well in school. Otherwise your chances are about as good as winning the powerball. Admissions people expect to get their quota of non-jewish whites from their athletes and rich contributors.</p>
<p>If your kid gets rejected and you can’t figure out why don’t worry-they never had a chance in the first place. There is no-one out there advocating for WASPS and Catholics.</p>
<p>Don’t waste your money on applying to these schools. If they send you a letter saying your kid is just what they are looking for please apply-write back saying I’m not going to apply to improve your rejection numbers until you demonstrate to me that you are truly interested in kids like me.</p>
<p>Well if we took Harvard no one is below 24. 13% are in the bucket 24-39.</p>
<p>Percent of students submitting ACT is 32%.</p>
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<p>Can someone point me to the “for the love of god, please stop” button? How about “don’t waste your money applying to or your brainpower thinking about any school about which you are openly contemptuous”?</p>
<p>I don’t see how one can say “no one cares” about distinctions among White people anymore in one breath, and then continue to bring up the historical systematic discrimination against Jewish students in another. If Hillel numbers showed that the Ivy League had a relatively tiny number of Jewish students in comparison to other top campuses, would “no one care?” Vanderbilt cared, and is apparently doing something about it. </p>
<p>People care a lot about the demographic make-up of universities, as we all know. If Harvard’s student population was composed of 25-30% Mormons, which I selected because this report , [Statistics</a> on Religion in America Report – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life](<a href=“Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics | Pew Research Center”>Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics | Pew Research Center) says there are the same number of people who call themselves Mormon in the US as those reporting Jewish - 1.7%, it would be noteworthy and inquiring minds would want to know <em>why</em> this was so. I am aware that discussing religion on this site is a sensitive topic, and people become defensive and offended easily. I don’t really know why they do since open discussion is the surest way to understanding. Not addressing it fuels the fires of conspiracy and suspicion, so it ought to be discussed and fleshed out, imo.</p>
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<p>It may surprise or amaze you to know that probably 95% of the United States never gives one iota of thought to Harvard / HYPSM / the Ivies / whatever other collection of elite schools you wish to assemble. These institutions only loom as large in your mind as you let them be. Amazingly, people grow up to be successful in America (successful both in job success and financial success) without once worrying about “will I make it into these colleges.” Yes, it’s abundantly clear you come from a culture where it’s all about “your school will make or break you.” Well, it’s not like that here; welcome to America.</p>
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<p>The people who bring up the historical systematic discrimination against Jewish students aren’t typically Jewish posters, though; they are posters who want to try to draw parallels between Asian “underrepresentation” in top schools and historical discrimination against Jews. And part of how they do this is pointing out that Jews were discriminated against at the same time that they were still present in Ivies at a level greater than the proportion of the population they accounted for. While the point that both a) X ethnicity can be represented at more than fair share of the population and b) Discrimination against X can co-exist with point A is undoubtedly true, it is difficult for me personally to draw that parallel since there is no evidence that anyone at elite schools is explicitly saying, “I don’t want more Asians around these parts.” I do see them saying “I want a broad diversity of backgrounds,” but there is a huge difference between the two.</p>
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<p>God, that’ll *show them! * With 30,000 kids beating down their doors, they will be DEVASTATED to hear that your particular kid isn’t interested!</p>
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<p>“Nothing more to see here”?</p>
<p>I suppose it is a slight improvement of the previous HYP defense “the article is sooo loooong”</p>
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<p>Are we talking about ACT composite scores? Wow, I knew Harvard applicants are smart, but getting 39 out of 36 is the definition of an overachiever : )
I’m guessing you meant 29.</p>
<p>Texaspg - the ACT composite can also be deceiving in terms of lopsided scores. Think about the kid with a 36 in math an a 25 in reading, 25 writing and 25 science. That’s a 27 composite, because it’s averaged. But maybe the 36 math kid is a top performer in national math competitions and is otherwise a math superstar. The composite may be low-ish (for top schools anyway) because of averaging from the other components. I’m not sure how often the scores are that lopsided, but the composite is only part of the story.</p>
<p>Bay, aren’t you getting a little hysterical there? Bringing up anecdotes about discrimination BETWEEN different groups of Jews 70-100 years ago is hardly inconsistent with saying that I don’t believe anyone in elite college admissions pays a lot of attention to distinctions among white people now, in 2012. It’s hardly a secret that, once upon a time, they cared a lot about all sorts of distinctions among white people.</p>
<p>I doubt that Harvard has as many undergraduate Mormons as Jews, but I note that it would be awfully difficult to tell, because as far as I know no one – including Harvard – has any idea how many Mormons they have. Or Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Pentecostals, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Albanian Orthodox . . . The only reason we think we know approximately how many Jews they have is because there is an independent group that purports to track it, but without disclosing their methodology, and with every reason to inflate the number. That’s how you can tell no one cares – because no one bothers to find out or to track.</p>
<p>Further to Mormons – there were a few Mormons in my class at Yale (notably the instantly famous roommate pair of Timber Dick IV and Richard (“Dick”) Sweatt . . . no kidding). But Mormons were a rarity there. One of the interesting things about going from Yale to Stanford was that all of a sudden there were lots of Mormons around. I have no idea what the numbers were actually like, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that Stanford in the early 80s had somewhat comparable numbers of Mormons and Jews.</p>
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<p>Some colleges have Newman Centers for Catholic student, which appear to be the general equivalent of Hillels (providing socialization, worship and community service). Are there other comparable organizations for other religious groups that would track for their own purposes?</p>
<p>I knew a Mormon who attended the law school at Harvard (admittedly 20 years ago), and he said there were a decent number of Mormons at Harvard (over all) and he had no problems there with people respecting his beliefs. He is one of the nicest people I know and so that may have had something to do with it too.</p>
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<p>PizzaGirl, you are articulate, you make a lot of good points and you have influenced my thinking in a lot of ways. However, comments like these are so condescending that I find it hard to be fully on board with you.</p>
<p>Here I try to facilitate discussion, and JHS labels me hysterical for it. Thanks. Interesting to know you had an awareness about the presence of Mormons when you were in college. I guess at some level, you must have “cared.”</p>
<p>“Texas is right. I doubt that most (or even the majority of the athletes) have the subpar SATs.” </p>
<p>Agree and note that Harvard (along wioth rest of Ivy League) uses an academic index for athletes weighing GPA, class rank (where applicable), SAT I and SAT II scores. Coaches can get a few low scorers through but they must be offset by high scorers. Doubt this accounts for the majority of the 100 identified by Texaspg from my post putting forth the stats.</p>