Are we sure the students are better and brighter at the elite schools? Looking at the admit stats im not so sure. They may be more interesting or play lactosse or have written the ubiquitous novel at the age of 11 ( has anyone ever read those novels). But based on gpa and stats theres not much difference
This nails it. Busy parents are pretty insular, most aren’t on forums like this for weeks or months at a time, so they don’t grasp the depth of talent applying to the top 50 colleges every year. The charismatic “superstar” great SAT/GPA, captain of two sports, class president at your local high school is [nationally/globally] a dime a dozen. So when students like that get rejected from HYPS the gut reaction is admissions must be luck.
With that said, I’ve volunteered at my children’s high school for the last 10 years. I’ve never seen a top 10 in his or her class shut out of the top 25. They don’t always choose to attend the top ranked college they get into, but they are admitted.
It’s actually pretty sickening as our nation develops a greater and greater gap between the rich and the poor that so many are willing to go along and play the game in an ever more futile attempt to join an aristocracy the likes of which we once declared ourselves independent from.
GPAs are based on the context of the school. An A- from Exeter is not the same as an A- from ordinary high school.
As for what has changed in the last 30 years? Grade inflation and actually studying for the SATs means that it is much harder to do stat based admissions. Also there are far, far more kids from other parts of the country and other parts of the world who have decided that the local university isn’t good enough and are now apply to the same top 25 schools.
@ucbalumnus you’re right of course, but the culture also plays a big role in how parents of comparable education and socioeconomic status view education, and, of course, in the fact that immigrant students and professionals (and their kids) are disproportionately STEM-oriented.
It is not the ethnic culture, but the culture of those who were selected by the immigration system. Bachelor’s degree attainment is 70% among Indian and 50% among Chinese immigrants, higher than 30% in the US generally, but it is much lower than 30% in India and China. I.e. immigration has selected the educational elite from those countries. STEM focus is also selected for by immigration.
"GPAs are based on the context of the school. An A- from Exeter is not the same as an A- from ordinary high school.
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Not true. My own kid who was so upset that we did not let her attend a highly regarded magnet school which accepted her, but instead put her at our home district, ordinary high school. Well her four years there she made friends with her class that produced a nationally ranked spot player, an winner of one of the Google science award, a published author (not self-publish BTW) and many, many more talent young kids. All of the three kids mentioned were later all accepted by ivies, plus a couple more. It was really an ordinary high school compared to few of the magnet schools we knew about, but still you could find quite a lot unordinary people in an average place if you are willing to discover.
A read from couple years ago when my own kid was applying college. Hope it help explaining the application selection from a school’s angle. http://stories.vanderbilt.edu/the-big-search
Our alum contact from MIT put it this way. They could select the freshman class, then rescind their offers, select another freshman class and rescind theirs and then on and on eight times down the line - and not lose student quality nor worry about their succeeding at the school. If the football team needs a right tackle and you’re in that set of eight qualified it could be you. If Russia House needs a Russian speaker it could be you. If the marching band needs a left handed piccolo player if could be you. The very top demands not only top academic scores but something else in which you excel. And even then - there’s a significant element of chance.
@blossom I think the aggravation comes from the idea that these really, really bright kids are shut out of the top schools. Yes, my kid ended up at a top LAC but only after he was denied or waitlisted at all the other top choices, including the school he applied ED. Maybe he should have done more to save the world or cure cancer so he’d have a hook to make him more interesting.
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Or maybe the process worked just fine for your child. Sounds like your kid DID get into a great school, so where’s the issue?
I suspect that most of the college applicants this year still have parents who took the older version of the SATs, if they took the SATs. The SAT scoring was re-centered sometime in the 1990’s. As a result, scores went up. A 720 on the old SAT verbal converts to an 800 now. This accounts in part for the large number of perfect scorers. At one time, I am reasonably certain that the number of applicants in the country with a 1600 was only about 100. Also, the conversion from a three-part SAT back to a two-part SAT increased the number of students with “perfect” scores.
I think the ACT was originally normed mainly on students from the parts of the country where the cut-off on the PSAT for NMSF status is lower (by about 10 points) than it is on in the Northeast and in California. So it is unsurprising (to me, anyway) that as it went national, there would be more scores of 36.
In my view, the colleges want it this way. They could easily ask CB and the ACT to revise their tests to differentiate better at the high end. However, the way the scores currently work gives them much more discretion in admissions. It is not possible with the current scores to differentiate the really, really bright (in megan12’s words) from the bright. (Right, I know, that’s not the mission of the colleges, etc., etc., etc.)
The differentiation could be done in STEM subjects with the AMC12, AIME, USAMO, US-Physics, Biology-Computing-O, etc., but the quality of preparation that students have for those tests varies wildly with the student’s school. There are some students who are able to qualify for USAMO entirely on their own. But others go to high schools with a lot of USAMO qualifiers. If you look at the list of USAMO qualifiers, they are heavily concentrated in some schools from year to year, with a smattering of other schools. Looking for academic superstars in the humanities, one would be similarly out of luck–aside from a few national competitions, which have their own peculiarities.
As I understand it, the origin of the SAT was that Conant at Harvard wanted a type of test that could identify very bright students across the country, who did not have the advantage of a New England prep school education, nor a New York City entry-by-exam high school education. Apparently he had some exclusionary ideas in mind as well (trying to reduce the number of Jewish people at Harvard). But there is really nothing that serves the stated, above-board purpose currently.
There’s curing cancer, or at least developing a new lab test, or starting a Non-Profit, then there’s entertaining, and make 'em laugh apps that get attention. At any rate, you do have to put together a “compelling” app, something that stands out to get into elites these days. Others will say their “good” student got into ivies, because “you just have to be head and shoulders above anyone else that applies from your high school,” but then you’re really talking about dumb luck there.
@QuantMech Did you find that data somewhere about the new SAT having more perfect scores? I don’t think that’s correct. I just read that College Board has not released that data. The most recent data is from 2015 when 504 kids received perfect scores of 2400.
@QuantMech thanks for the insights about why SAT/ACT are having more perfect/higher scores.
I believe that most bright kids will do well in most good schools, there is no need to be really really bright, and you don’t have to be USAMO finalists to combat global warming or cure cancer/autism/dementia. We have enough smart phone technology/SM to ruin many generations over. What are many of the USAMO/intel finalists doing post graduation? Are they leaders of True innovation or just using their math logic training to become another lawyer or Silicon Valley millionaires?
" theloniusmonk wrote:
And of course you have humans making decision and they make mistakes. If you’re good at your job you get it right 6 or 7 out of ten times. So you have to factor in that 3 out of 10 decisions are wrong.
“What makes a decision “wrong” in this case?”
When the person they rejected ending up more successful than the person they accepted. Which would include contributing more when they were college in addition to what happens after undergrad.
"Flunking out, taking too long to graduate, committing a crime (abuse, assault, drug dealing)…
I actually was not referring to this as making a mistake. Things happen some of which you can’t control like dropping out to support your family or something medical.
My wife has volunteered in our HS college counseling office for many years. And in our mediocre local school district, all the kids who want to go to college and have good grades and test scores get into excellent colleges. They don’t always get into their first or second choice school, but no one gets shut out unless they did a really lousy job of putting together a list. Not very many get into HYPSM, but some do, and the ones who do are always in the top 4 or 5 from the HS graduating class. Not the top 5% but the top 5 kids. That fact alone shows that this is not a random process.
Heaven knows the process isn’t always smooth or perfectly fair, but in general it works. The smart kids who are willing to work hard do get into very good colleges. And if they continue their hard working ways into college they end up with good educations and college degrees.
I don’t think ANY college, however tiny its admit rate, believes that by accepting a kid and rejecting another they are making the value judgement that the accepted kid is going to be more successful than the rejected kid. That’s both absurd and untrue.
There are kids who graduate from Yale and become Missionaries and live on $15K per year. There are kids who graduate from Dartmouth and become 3rd grade teachers. The kid who didn’t get into Yale but went to Villanova and now works at a Hedge fund for many multiples of 15K, or the kid who didn’t get into Dartmouth but went to BC and is now a partner at a big accounting firm is not somehow an indictment of the admissions process (successful, not successful, less successful- what does this mean anyway? Money? Prestige?)
What an offensive way to look at the admissions process. Most engineers from UIUC are going to out-earn the Classics majors from U Chicago who end up as archivists, curators, archaeologists, theologians (although some Classics majors go on to fine careers in banking, the law, consumer products marketing, etc.) Most accounting majors from UT Austin are going to out-earn the theater majors from Brown.
And this tells you what about the kid rejected from Brown who ends up at UT?
“If a student doesn’t stay at the college (takes a leave, drops out, transfers, etc.), that might be considered a “wrong” decision. My own son took a leave of absence from an Ivy League, and won’t be going back. That could be viewed as a wrong decision in terms of retention–but who can know these things ahead of time? My son didn’t plan that, so I hardly think the admissions office should be culpable for “making a mistake” in admitting him.”
And this is not what I meant either by a mistake, LOAs and other personal reasons are just that, personal and you can’t predict that or hold anyone accountable as it’s not something to be judged.
What I was referring to was the athlete who gets in due to only his athleticism and barely goes to class, vs the person who was rejected, goes to a top ten law school and is now a superior court judge.
I do think there can be a little luck involved. At any given school, there are probably a bunch of definitely, no question about it, admit this kid, and a bunch of absolutely no’s. But a big chunk fall into a middle category, where luck can play a part. Maybe one applicants mentions a tv show in his essay and it happens to be the admissions counselor’s favorite, so maybe subliminally the admissions person is going to favor this applicant.
I once read some comments by an admissions person who said something to the effect, that say I ate Italian food last night and got food poisoning, the next day I start reading apps, am I unintentionally going to be harder on the kid with an Italian last name? I also have heard a few admissions people talk about institutional priorities which can change year to year. So say a school is building a new science building or hiring a renowned professor to teach some new courses in a particular area. The school needs to insure, it has the right kind of kids to fill those types of classes.
I think that is where the ‘luck’ comes into play.