<p>You are misinterpreting my position. I thought I could make an argument for eliminating the SAT preference in response to your challenge, and I did. I could also argue against a preference for prep school students. Curm mentioned National Merit and high-income, and I could easily make an argument against both of those, too. However, I also said that all those kids bring something to the table that colleges are looking for. Calmom said it well in her post, that all of these are "merit" in the eyes of these colleges.</p>
<p>And Alumother, you made my point but much more eloquently.</p>
<p>SAT scores are a first pass. I don't know of selective colleges that will admit a legacy with a 1050 SAT. The problem is how do you choose between students who are admissible? On SAT alone? How many tries? After paid or unpaid tutoring or not? How would adcoms know? S took the SAT only once (not counting 7th grade). But how would adcoms know whether we paid thousands of dollars to hire a private tutor (we did not)?
As for NM status, the cutoff varies so widely among states that it clearly does not reward the very best students nationally. Whether a student makes NMSF with a 215 score or not depends on geography. Fair? Not any more than giving preference to students from certain geographical areas over others.</p>
<p>Sly, your argument, to be precise, was against a non-existent preference for students with perfect or near perfect scores. i am unaware of any data that supports the notion that prep school kids have an advantage. In fact the fondness for GPA's and class rank in some quarters, puts them at a significant disadvantage.</p>
<p>If adcoms favor students whose families have over a billion dollars in assets does that make that preference "merit"? Do you plan on stripping the language of all content inorder to win the argument.</p>
<p>The effect of legacy status at the top-end schools is something like 50-200 percent greater odds of admission than for similar students without legacy status. I've read the arguments for legacy admits in this thread and I'm mostly not buying. The net effect is to perpetuate the "old boys" club (though now including the women)...the children and grandchildren of those who could afford it at one time and who were of the right social class/religion/ethnicity. </p>
<p>I've heard a senior admissions officer from Yale say that the value of legacy is declining but not deny that it's still a considerable factor...hey, when the "normal" admit rate is 10 percent but legacies get admitted at a 20-25 percent rate, that's quite a hook. Yes, the legacy admits may be just as qualified as other admits but they're still a symptom of the socially advantaged getting just one more benefit, as if attending top high schools/prep schools, having all the in-home advantages accruing to high SES families, and superior counseling and preparation weren't enough of an advantage already. </p>
<p>Fortunately, the colleges are slowly letting the doors be pried more widely open. Emphasis on slowly. But the aristos fight a strong rear-guard action.
See also, "self-entitled" and "self-privileging."</p>
<p>As a child of Caribbean parents who went to an Ivy college, I can speak from the point of view of the students. I was raised in Harlem and went to a Harlem high school. When the buzz on the crosstown bus spread that we should all say we had not done the homework, whether it was the reading in English or the Math equations or the Chemistry assignment, I ignored such silly talk. There was less pressure on me to conform to silly, negative behavior, because I was not ostracized from the in-crowd for raising my hand in school and saying I'd done my homework. I behaved more according to the norms in my home than the norms in the in-crowds of cool kids. Unfortunately, that was not the case of a few of the next generation of children in our family, so we had to push them to study, instead of hanging with the cool kids. Being popular and being part of the in-crowd are much more imortant to native kids who've lived in an area all their lives than to new kids of immigrants moving in. I see it now with new immigrants, regardless of their race or backgrounds.</p>
<p>By the way, immigrant kids are often poorer than native-born children, but their immigrant parents spend a much larger percentage of the family's income on education. That is also true in my multi-generational immigrant family. It seems that with each new generation, a few of the families spend a smaller percenatge of their overall income on their children's education.</p>
<p>So let's talk to the kids and ask them what's happening. </p>
<p>The other factor is folks back home follow the immigrant kids' progress and expect them to do well. City kids face the problem of having neighbors who don't even know what schools they attend. I leave books and learning materials in the lobby, by the mailbox and in the laundry room of my apartment building, and it's always interesting to see which kids pick them up, and read.</p>
<p>I have no written proof, but yes, I do think there is a preference for near-perfect SAT scores. Let's put it this way: if the admissions committee is considering two identical candidates, from two neighboring high schools, same class rank, same ECs, yadda yadda, and the only difference is one has an SAT of 2400 and the other 2200 -- I think it is highly likely that the 2400 would get accepted. Same way that if the only difference between the two was legacy status. Or if one's parents had never gone to college. Etc. etc. Something has to break the tie. Something has to make you stand out. </p>
<p>Kids today are running around in circles searching for that thing that makes them stand out. All those CC threads that ask whether such and such is a hook. My daughter once said that the only way to get into Harvard was to build your own plane and then fly it around the world. Solo. Maybe one thing I would change in the application process is the frenzy to do something extraordinary. It puts a lot of pressure on kids, especially on those good, well-rounded kids (I know there's an acronym for that and I'm blanking on it right now).</p>
<p>I definitely understand the argument against legacy preference. And I appreciate that there is a strong argument to be made. However -- theDad: when I went to an Ivy 30 years ago, I was on financial aid and therefore could not afford it, and I most certainly did not come from "the right social class." Same with many of my friends. So our kids may be legacies, but I don't see us as perpetuating the old boys club.</p>
<p>The operative words are "similar students." If that is so, what is the case against giving an edge to legacies since there are fewer slots than students who are similarly admissible? Are you suggesting a lottery? It has been advocated here.</p>
<p>But you did not get into an Ivy because of who you were born to- that is the point. So why should your kids have an advantage that you did not have, over other kids like you 30 years ago?</p>
<p>Sly, you may have been on financial aid but statistically, the legacy admits today or going predominantly to legacies of the old boy's club...simply because that's what was predominant 30 years ago. Thirty years from now it will be even more democratic...it's a question of fairness in the meanwhile.</p>
<p>The toughest admit cohort these days is the non-hooked kid: non-legacy, non-athlete, non-URM. God bless 'em for throwing a few crumbs to the high-SAT scorers.</p>
<p>Marite, no, I'm not in favor of a lottery. I would simply remove legacy status as consideration. Berkeley and UCLA seem to garner just fine admissions classes without it.</p>
<p>S's experience shows that you can get into a good school without legacy status or other hooks. S he had not been admitted to H, he would have gone to Stanford. Except for the lack of snow, there's not a huge diference between the two schools. </p>
<p>Berkeley and UCLA are state schools. They probably have a high percentage of students who are legacies (without the hook). But I still don't see the problem of favoring legacies over non-legacies if applicants are equally admissible. It's not as if the schools don't have room for non-legacies, including, thanks in great part to the generosity of alums, low income students on full ride.</p>
<p>I agree with eliminating legacy preferences too. Legacy candidates could still get in, they just wouldn't get an extra thumb on the scale. Note that legacy candidates are distinct from development candidates.</p>
<p>I am dissatisfied with the SAT for a reason that is different from other people. SAT is good for distinguishing the good students from the weak students. It is not very good for distinguishing the very good from the good. SAT score, like any other score, is really a range. So when your subject score is 700, CollegeBoard actually give you a range of 670-730. While a 700 is clearly better than 500, you cannot be sure that 710 is necessary better than 680. However for the top applicants for the top universities, the scores are all clustered at 700+. That makes it hard to distinguish applicants apart using SAT score. If you look at the AIME test, 12/15 is clearly better than 2/15. However, anyone qualifying for AIME, including those scoring 0/15, is quite capable of scoring 800 in SAT math (it all depends on whether they make stupid mistake.)</p>
<p>So for top universities, they really need a more difficult standardized test than SAT I. In theory, the SAT II can take that role. However the curve in SAT II can be absurd. In math 2C, you get 800 whether you got 50/50 or 45/50. So one thing I like to change about the application process is to make the SAT II harder. For example in math 2C, make the last 5 problems harder so that only the really strong math students can do it. Change the curve so that the current 800 will become 600. So students instead of rushing to AP, they would have to make sure they have a solid understanding of the basic courses.</p>
<p>But don't the AMC</a> tests already take care of the problem of distinguishing high-level math students? Most of the universities with strong math programs involve math professors in admission decisions about would-be math majors, and the professors know about signs of mathematical precocity such as participation in summer programs, joining local mathematical circles, or doing "competition math."</p>
<p>^^^
Yes, but AMC is not a requirement for college admissions, so college cannot compare students uniformly with AMC scores. What I like to see is an SAT II math that is closer to AMC.</p>
<p>A 200 point difference, whether from 2000 to 2200 or 2200 to 2400 seems like a reasonable tip factor to me. And since these are academic institutions , it seems a lot more acceptable a tip factor than where Granddad went to college. But I guess that is just me.</p>
<p>I think we may have worn out the topic of legacy admits but I saw two things on the web that were interesting: first. a survey from CSMonitor which indicated that 75% of the general population favored eliminating legacy preferences, and second, that Bush, Kerry, Kennedy and Edwards all favored eliminating legacy preferences. Lack of popularity doesn't make these preferences wrong but I think we will eventually see legislation that will restrict them.</p>
<p>I can go with a SAT-II math or AP exam that covers higher level topics. I wonder how much longer it will be before College Board institutes a MV/DiffEq exam. AMC and other math competitions are not ubitquitous, which makes it hard for colleges to evaluate kids at the far end of the curve who don't get those opportunities.</p>