“Based on years of private school applications and attendance and having intimate knowledge of admissions”
You are not the only one here who can claim that distinction when voicing opinions.
“How many kids and parents on here disclose perfect Recs?”
Most don’t see their recs so they don’t really know if they are perfect or not. Based on my conversations with admissions officers, I think they can make a difference.
“Grade inflation and lack of verifiable consistency between candidates schools makes grades a very nuanced and subjective component.”
It is nuanced but don’t underestimate the ability of the Admissions folks at the BSs to be familiar with many of the schools from which students are applying and for understanding those nuances. AOs have regional specialties and there are many middle schools they get to know, not just the private feeder schools.
“A 4.0 and a 1900 won’t get you into Harvard”
I do know kids at Harvard - and Brown and Columbia and Dartmouth - with sub 4.0s (of course this was from boarding schools with little grade inflation) and SATs in the 1900-2000 range or lower in a case or two. They had hooks.
“SSAT, SAT and ACT are objective.”
Standardized tests scores are very movable with time and money thrown at it, a luxury not all have.
I’d argue that being a legacy is a bump not a hook, unless there is something else behind it like being super rich.
An ancillary point is how do you measure home schoolers if the weight is on the grades. Personally I have to believe more weight is on the test score if it is very high or low and it is average then they put more weight on the grades. But YMMV
Homeschoolers are definitely unique and, yes, I would imagine test scores take on more importance relative to a non-homeschooled candidate. I don’t think the approach to analyzing each application is one size fits all.
@Center: what is your question or doubt about teacher recs? On the questionnaire for my DD’s year, the highest rating was “one of the best students you have had in the past ten years” and the specific traits were maturity, intellectual curiosity, diligence, etc. Now, I can tell you that is a very high recommendation, (I am an educator…) and not many teachers would easily give out that kind of a rating. There were four students from my DD’s school applying to the same school, and I seriously doubt all four got that “once out of 10 years” rating: stats were 3 admissions: 1 with generous FA, 1 with no FA (ended up not going), 1 FP legacy and 1 WL. So, the teachers and the admissions officers were able to make whatever distinctions they needed to make decisions.
There is a great blog post by a former Yale AO interviewer. And he basically said after applicants have basically met some sort of high bar to distinguish between them is really not possible. He proposed that you take that sub-set of candidates that meet SAT/GPA/ref’s/EC standards and then hold a lottery. He suggested it was no less fair and in some ways more acceptable to the ones that are not selected when they have a 4.0 and 2400.
I would think that same logic would apply to the HADES entrance process.
Doschicos: yes of course to many of your comments. Nonetheless: subjective versus objective data always rules. Other hooks include minority status, geographical diversity, an unusual talent. As for Ivy League students with lesser scores and grades but hooks: the beauty of a real hook is just like the SSAT. It is objective data. Star lacrosse player, star baseball player. Stats to back it up. There is rampant grade inflation in boarding schools too. Anyone can see their recs. Two of my boys came out of NYC private schools. Everyone has an A.
I can say for sure that NOT everyone who attends Choate gets an A. Most likely the other top 10 BS have a similar situation. Do not have any knowledge of NYC private schools, so I will accept your claims of grade inflation.
“subjective versus objective data always rules.”
Some of the things you are claiming are subjective - grades in particular - aren’t necessarily if the AdCom is familiar with the grading policies of the sending school.
“There is rampant grade inflation in boarding schools too.”
Not at all boarding schools. And the good colleges know which have it and which don’t. Again, that is their job.
“As for Ivy League students with lesser scores and grades but hooks: the beauty of a real hook is just like the SSAT. It is objective data.”
For the kids I know with lower stats and a hook at Ivies, it’s more a case of the Ivies knowing the kid attended and survived a rigorous boarding school. Therefore, they are likely to survive academically at the Ivy as well. That’s the proof the college needs rather than GPA or SAT thresholds which apply to the “average” applicant. They have enough high stats kids to make their overall stats look good so they’ll dip lower to pick up that kid with the hook to fill other needs of the school be it the sports teams, diversity, sizable donations, etc. (And in the case of development cases, they sometimes accept them but with a year deferral.) Those aren’t necessarily objective measures. That’s why hooked applicants from boarding schools in particular are well received by colleges, and yet another reason why boarding schools themselves liked hooked applicants. It pays off down the road in matriculation stats.
My kids signed away their rights to see their recommendations so they did not see them at any point along the way but they were referenced after their acceptances by admissions people we talked to.
If you sign away your rights to see the recommendations, you don’t know what they contained. When people write, “great recommendations,” I disregard it. You don’t know.
The boarding schools I know do not have grade inflation. It makes it hard to use online search engines, which orient to the average US high school, which does inflate grades. That’s another reason Naviance is helpful; you get to compare yourself to a group of students with the same hard grading.
Colleges also know that students graduating from good private schools often have had more intense instruction in writing.
But that’s college admission. For boarding schools, remember they’re trying to build a class of students who will grow up together. The schools can offer advanced instruction to advanced students, but they don’t look to admit an entire class of students ready for graduate school.
For homeschooled children, I’d think records from any experiences which allowed someone (not a parent) to compare the child to same-age peers would be helpful. An academic summer camp, for example, or participation in some sort of academic competition, or an out-of-school collaborative extracurricular.
There are so many valuable opinions on this thread and I’m learning so much reading between the lines. In our town, if you apply to a private school and you don’t get in, the AO meets with the family and tells you what aspect of your application needs improvement. It’s at that point, you might find out that the teacher references weren’t so good. Do any of the BS provide such information if you don’t get in? I suppose they couldn’t possibly do that for the thousands that don’t get in but maybe if you ask, they might say??? Does anyone have experience in that regard?
I have heard that many AOs would be willing to give guidance if your child was waitlisted or rejected and would plan to reapply next year. If the request is framed as “Your school was really our child’s top choice and she’s planning to reapply next year; could you let us know how she might be able to better position herself for a favorable outcome next time around?”, then I think that you’re fairly likely to get some useful guidance. Particularly if your child seemed to really connect with that AO. It may well be that the AO advocated for your child to get in, but “lost”, and would be happy to see her reapply with a better chance next time.
Yes, standardized tests are objective, but that’s not the whole story. The problem is that not every kid has had exactly the same preparation prior to the test. Consider the math section of the SSAT, for example. One eighth-grader taking that test might be enrolled in pre-algebra, while another might be taking geometry. The kid enrolled in geometry will have had the benefit of a full year of algebra, plus a few months or more of geometry. I know that makes a difference.
And what of the kids who repeat ninth grade? They not only have had a full year of extra course work, but the added advantage of an extra year of brain maturation. I can’t imagine that that wouldn’t help–and so I’d have to think that admissions committees take this into account.
And let us not underestimate the value of coaching in many instances. It can make a difference–especially if the child hasn’t come out of a conventional school environment. Some homeschoolers and kids coming out of “alternative” schools, for example, could conceivably have little or no experience with testing and could surely benefit from some special preparation.
Moreover, I do not believe that any test can measure pure aptitude–or even “skills,” as the SSATB prefers to call it. I know that when I took the SAT back in the last century, I raised my verbal score by about 150 points and my math by about 70–in less than a year. They’d have you think that that shouldn’t happen. Yet it does.
Yes Donfefe but all the kids take the same test. Prepping nonetheless or anything else…grades are even more of an inconsistent marker. Because then the variables are not just the student but the school, the teachers, the curve or lack thereof etc
Of course, Center. It would seem that some of the public schools around here are populated by many, many truly exceptional kids–if one goes by the honor roll listings in the newspaper. How can 180 kids achieve some form of honors out of a class of 200 students?–though perhaps I exaggerate here just a bit. I’ve heard that teachers sometimes simply give up when it comes to grading. It’s just not worth the parental grief that can come with giving a kid a poor grade, so just about everyone gets an A.
Nothing is perfect, which is why they have AOs. The SSAT scores that DC’s submitted were pretty much at the median for where DC applied. In one of DC’s tests one of the subscores was quite low. 6 weeks later, it jumped by 30 points. I have heard other people talk of similar experiences. My conclusion is the SSAT has its weaknesses and limitations; a good test should be far more stable. I assume the AOs know this better than any of us.
By the same token, to rely solely on grades, the AO would have to know the middle school pretty well. That is not often possible.
precisely 6teensearch. The SSAT is not perfect neither is making assumptions based on GPA. Two HADES schools we applied told us point blank that SSAT was a significant weight. That GPA is hard to rely on. This was when first term grades were submitted but SSATS had not yet been taken.
@Center – did you expect them to say that the SSAT is not that important or didn’t carry that much weight? I would venture to guess if asked they would have said the same for GPA, Essays and Recommendations.
I think there is a difference between top BSs using SSAT scores to differentiate between the many, many applicants with straight As and saying that test scores are more important than grades. Absent an occasional B or so, they really don’t want lackluster students. Here’s another thought: In small classes with 8-13 students in a class (my own kids experiences), you can’t have a kid or two who isn’t going to put some serious engagement into the class. It changes the dynamic of the classes, which are very much discussion based. Sure, on any given day someone might be tired or not feeling well, but why should a top BS take a kid with mediocre middle school grades? From a school that 99% of the time has been less rigorous than the BS to which they are applying? Why take that risk? You don’t have to have a 4.0 but I’ve never heard of a 3.0 student getting into an Exeter, Andover, SPS, Groton, even with a hook. But I do know kids who got in with SSATs in the 80s and even 70s. It’s not saying that either one is more important just that my observations and conversations have led me to believe the minimum threshold for grades is higher than that for SSAT scores. Perhaps, @Center, that speaks to your views regarding grade inflation.
I have another angle to add; Some students are naturally very bright, and instructions up to middle school level can be so easy that it is too boring. They end up not working hard for the work and get bad grade, even though they understand the material and ace standardized tests.
The sad part is that they have never learned to work hard, and are lacking good work habit that takes years of nurturing to build. Many of them suddenly find that they can no longer just get the material without working hard, either in highschool or later in college. Such students, unfortunately, are disadvantaged by their own talent and often fail or take a long detour in their academic career.
Admitting such students into a challenging bs would probably won’t contribute to discussion based small class dynamics or be beneficial for the students themselves. Therefore I agree with those who argue that low GPA with high SSAT scores won’t generally be viewed favorable by bs admissions, unless the low GPA is explainable in a way that the above challenges can be addressed; It’s a special school that everybody work very hard but are poorly graded (Proof school in S.F., or some magnet schools) or the students have had a learning disability that is improving, etc. etc.
