<p>or waitlisted but yes most 2400s do not get in.</p>
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<p>There are some problems with your calculation.</p>
<p>The 152 is a meaningless number that ignores the other lower results, the randomness in the scores, and the lack of other success at the top 150 (or 500, or 1000) level when many other opportunities to demonstrate ability were available and some participation in them is visible from the record. If there is no evidence of having done something more difficult than high scores on the SAT then the measured academic level is not “top 152 in the nation” just because that was the number of high SAT scores that year.</p>
<p>The writing test is inconsequential, especially for females with M+V scores near 1600. The comparison group is the scores within 20 points (or 30, or 40, depending on the scoring that day, the number of retakers and so on) of 1600 M+V, plus the students with comparable scores on the ACT. This is a set of about 3000 students in which males outnumber females by 1.5 to 1, so 1200 females or something of that order. Our heroine was a Presidential Scholarship candidate, which is a 1300 males + 1300 females list of highest test scores, controlled for gender and geography and excluding international students. She did not make semifinalist, which is a list of about 500.</p>
<p>The resume presented is not at the level that HYPMS admits in the pure academic or pure talent categories. Excluding international students, students admitted to fill particular institutional needs (such as rare majors, geographic distribution, legacies, donors, athletes, etc), and those minority students who would not be admitted without preferences, leaves about 500 female admission spots per school in the high academic with relatively high extracurricular “unhooked” category, from a pool of maybe 3x as many comparable candidates per school (where the universities may trade slightly lower SAT for higher extracurricular or something like that). I calculated the implication of an approximately 1/3 admission rate above: rejection at all of HYPS one time out of five.<br>
Adjust the details as you like but this is a rough yet realistic picture of what the crapshoot probably looks like. </p>
<p>Based on this relatively common rejection outcome, plus a totally predictable rejection at MIT, and the fact that the other 3 accepted students from the same school had 5 Asian parents, there was a claim that this was pro-white, anti-Chinese discrimination (!), and that the Chinese ethnicity was “the most important factor” (!!). Uh, OK. We have seen from years of experience on CC that the China Pride type of postings are high on accusations and low on calculations but an acceptance rate of 0.00% for applicants at that school <em>without</em> Asian parents does not exactly suggest that whites are being favored.</p>
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<p>The female and male distributions (except for the absolute top) on the AIME differ by 1 point, so the same question can be asked about 5+ which is about the 50th percentile for women. The point remains the same:</p>
<p>You are claiming that a 2400 is automatically in the top 150 females in the nation, and I am curious how that level of ability can be true without also being in the top few hundred of <em>even one</em> other metric, which could be the AIME, the science project competitions, writing, language learning, computer programming, building things. If the SAT result is not predicting other outcomes at high school level, what is the reason for being shocked when it is not taken as a reliable indicator (of being in the top 150 or 500 or similar echelon) for college?</p>
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I did not claim them the top students in the nation, but merely state the facts of how many were the lucky ones among the potential top students.</p>
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I did not defend her. I just said that you can not require those 2400ers to get a 6+ on AIME. In the past 5 years, I have seen 50+ HYPSM admits, none of the girls had a 6+.</p>
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<p>I did not support his view, if you read my previous posts. I believe that though fierce competition among Asian students, it only makes them stronger and more competitive, in any sense.</p>
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<p>Your statement was that using high AIME score as one of many possible additional data whose presence or absence affects the value of an SAT score, would mean unfairly creating a separate admissions category for Chinese girls, and requiring the members of that category to be the absolute top few female applicants in the nation in order to be admitted to the super-elite schools (“HYPSM”). Discrimination!</p>
<p>In fact, the analysis that I posted was race-independent. It also listed many other possibilities besides a high AIME score, as ways to raise the credibility of an extremely high SAT score. There is nothing special about 6+ (or the AIME) except that it is verifiable, because the AMC publishes the names of the students with those scores each year. If there are 30 different activities in which one can demonstrate ability or achievement higher than what is measured on the SAT, and <em>none</em> of them appear on an application from somebody with a 2400 SAT (whether male, female, Chinese, or some other category), that is evidence that the person is probably not in the top few hundred in ability, and this negative evidence is stronger when the applicant is known to have participated in some of the 30 activities. Do you agree that this is true and has nothing to do with being Chinese?</p>
<p>Regarding the Chinese matter, it is true that a race-blind analysis of the supply-and-demand market value of the credentials, or of the estimated ability level given the credentials, will disadvantage US schooled, immigrant Asian females – especially those from some Korean and Chinese subpopulations and communities – compared to people from most other race/gender/geography categories. Belonging to an academically very advantaged and hard striving subpopulation tends to increase test scores and grades at any fixed level of ability, and it also tends to reduce ability level at any measured level of scores and grades. If admissions does not completely account for this effect, the result would be overadmission of Asians relative to actual ability levels. There are many numerical indications that this has been happening for years, such as measurable academic underperformance of Asians relative to credentials on dozens of criteria. The Asian parents and conspiracy theorists on CC should consider the possibility that in real terms the existing system discriminates in favor of Asians relative to a pure ability-detecting or performance-predicting selection, by taking many items on the application at face value instead of discounting scores for likely inflationary factors such as test prep, weekend and afterschool academies, academic summer camps, and the rest of the advantaged immigrant routine. Or it could be a partial discounting, but less than a meritocracy would require. This is, in fact, the only known interpretation of what might be happening that is consistent with all known studies performed by Espenshade and others, including not only the admission regressions, but the ones on academic (under)performance and academic preparation.</p>
<p>I was a 2400 SAT, 8 AIME of Italian descent who was rejected from Princeton, Duke, and Columbia and wait-listed at Harvard, UChicago, and UPenn. I will probably be attending Norhtwestern this fall. I had pretty good extra-curricular activities and a 3.91 GPA at a competitive school in North Carolina. I’m not saying this to scare anybody, but you really never know with the college process.</p>
<p>I’ve known two people personally who scored a 2400. One was an insanely obsessive girl who studied for YEARS to take the test. She once canceled her score because she knew she missed one math question. By this description, I’m sure you can tell that she was also absurdly involved in everything at school and had immaculate grades. As a college, I would never consider her an asset. She worked hard solely to get in Ivies and top schools, had no core interests, and her only job prospect was being a dentist, based solely on making money. Sorry, but I just wouldn’t see the value in having that person at my college, but alas college admissions deans can’t see this fact. They just see the score. She is not abnormally intelligent, just crazy. I can’t count the numerous times she has begged for my help on a simple physics or comp sci assignment. The other guy I knew who got a 2400 was my best friend, a lazy guy who will be graduating with a 2.4 GPA this year. He is going to community college next year, as he only got into two local colleges that aren’t the best and would rather transfer to a nicer school through a guaranteed agreement in 2 years. His grades were low because school was not engaging, and if you wanted to talk to him about a subject he loved, like computer science, he seemed to have a degree in it. In a place like college where you pursue what you want, I would consider him an actual asset. Sure, he may not do the best in general ed classes, but if you let him put his mind to his passions, he will be driven out of intelligence alone, not something inane like making a lot of money. That is the type of student I would want to have. </p>
<p>Bottom line–a 2400 isn’t really indicative of anything. If you try hard enough, you can probably get it, or at least get quite close. It’s not the measure of the genius, and tells you nothing about an individual. Unless you totally bomb that test to prove your sheer lack of proficiency, the SAT is a pretty worthless exam to use to determine anything about a student. By its standards those two people I know are of equal intelligence, and trust me, it’s not even close.</p>
<p>I really don’t understand, why people keep on making the assumption that all Asian kids study for test and do extra after school for achieving high academic standard. I have two kids and none of them do such things, yet they still quite are good on what they do. Now I know the reasons for some disappointed out comes…</p>
<p>They are judged based on the believe that they must have paid someone to polish their applications or they have done nothing but built their resume!</p>
<p>You know what? The truth is this unfairly treatment to the Asian kids may will be the drives for them to fly high in the future.</p>
<p>All,</p>
<p>2400 Curse. (PERFECT CURSE)</p>
<p>I agree to required3 and others. Being an Asian in someway is a big drag on getting into into H/Yale/Brown/P/Penn/ etc…
But I did findout that these schools do give preference to SIBLINGS with decent scores. This will limit the number of seats available for normal admission. As a parent I am proud of what my D has achieved and have confidence that where ever she goes she will be successful.</p>
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siserune, you are one serious anti-asian dude. Put up some facts – something in the form of research article, with all his scholarly credentials on the line, like the one by Espenshade, not just such twisted arguments misguided by your anti-asian bias and hiding behind anonymity of internet message board. </p>
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Fermat25, the first one will be whom I will choose any day. This kid will succeed anywhere if she is so motivated toward her set goal. Whether it is money (tell me your family live despising money) or Ivy league school or whatever. When the situation comes where something else is important in her life she will put that 150% effort in it. The second one is a worthless kid … don’t care how smart the brain may be, unless self motivated and put up his self driven effort he is worthless and deserves the community college admission 100%. I would not take this kid unless he shows a serious change in work ethic and motivation.</p>
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<p>I disagree. Raw intelligence is still something to be reckoned with. The second perfect scorer has much greater potential than the first; not only does he sound much more sane, but judging by his scores/description, he could excel if he was placed in a challenging environment.
The kid is not worthless; he’s just bored. Imagine where he would be if he applied himself.</p>
<p>As for the 40-50% acceptance rate… it still seems really low, considering the perfect 2400. I’d be interested to see if there was any hard data to back up this claim.</p>
<p>An important thing to note is that even if siserune’s claims about Asian-Americans doing better in admissions than they would be by “pure-ability” [how “pure-ability” is defined is unclear], it would still be totally illegal for colleges to factor that into admissions decisions as Supreme Court decisions have been absolutely unambiguous that any use of race in college decisions must be narrowly tailored and holistic. Obviously, having higher standards for some race because of a statistical tendency does not come close to the standard. Imagine the outrage if some college announced it would have higher admissions standards for blacks than whites because blacks underperformed compared to statistical expectations. </p>
<p>Although I believe I have seen some studies that have suggested Asian-Americans somewhat under perform compared to what their stats would predict, it is not clear this is not caused by some other factor. It’s plausible that different choices of majors could cause this for example. There are a number of other factors that could cause this as well. It’s unclear why there is a distinction between “pure-ability” and performance. It seems to me that working hard would increase all sorts of abilities.</p>
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<p>Worthless? I am so genuinely dumbfounded by your statement that my mind is having difficulty outputting a response without directly insulting you. He is self-motivated. Like I said, in anything like math, physics, or computer science, he knows ten times much as me, who is graduating in the top 2% of the same class and was accepted to several quality schools. He has taught himself mass quantities of information. He knows 3 or 4 programming languages, has taught himself mathematics past multivariate calculus and well into complex theory, and is genuinely a master of classical physics. Both the physics and calculus teacher who taught him openly say he is the most brilliant student they’ve had, and one has been teaching for more than 30 years. He didn’t get above a B in either of those classes, and that was with cutting school constantly. </p>
<p>He knows he has made bad decisions, and I don’t agree with the way he treated HS, but the fact still remains that he will someday be VERY successful and happy with what he does. He has spent countless hours self-teaching and loves a handful of subjects. He just couldn’t take the monotony of pointless classes in high school that are beyond intellectually dead. The classes simply bored him and he was unable to endure putting himself through that. I’ve often felt the same, not to his extent of course, but until I went to a magnet school, I can recall feeling as if I was getting dumber by being in my public school classes.</p>
<p>He should have put up with the monotony, but nonetheless he is incredibly brilliant and would thrive if put into the right environment. To call him worthless is an insult to your own intelligence. The first student I referred to is the most annoying individual I’ve ever met. She never stops obsessing and her pure lack of passion in anything is just depressing. Sure, making money or being successful matters, but when your only goal is to “to be successful” with only a monetary goal in mind, you need to reassess the fact that you only live your life once.</p>
<p>It’s very possible that someone with a 2400 and a low gpa will thrive in the right environment at a selective college. It’s also possible that the person would continue their lazy ways and flunk out. Given how competitive admissions are at elite college it’s not surprising that they don’t accept such students because they can accept other students who will almost certainly succeed instead of more risky students with high SATs and low gpas.</p>
<p>Why people always think Chinese or Asian students get high SAT because they are only doing study?</p>
<p>Did I mention my daughter did something else other than studying:
- 4 years volleyball school team and AAU club. (If you or your kids had same experience, you should know how much time it would need.)
- 3 years Secetery of Student Council,
- Piano companion and viola player in school band,
- Worked in a clinic every weekend (and some week day night) since high school till now.</p>
<p>She participated some SAT training classes, but that after took the test, and she was the tutor not the learners!</p>
<p>^^ Maybe because of articles (and books) like this: [Why</a> Chinese Mothers Are Superior - WSJ.com](<a href=“Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior - WSJ”>Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior - WSJ)</p>
<p>Ugh :-). I woudn’t take Amy Chua too seriously as her book about tiger mom is more fictional than nonfictional. The tiger cub at Harvard (class of 15) is also not like the caricature depicted in the book.</p>
<p>Six juniors in the high school near me have a 2400, not surprisingly there are all Asians. We will see what will happen next year.</p>
<p>Do you know anybody below <2150; but with other solid attributes has got into Harvard?</p>
<p>This is a v intriguing logic!!! i have yet to see a 2400 scorer w a low GPA, for being lazy. I have also yet to see a lazy getting 2400. Basically 0 correlation. </p>
<p>I did see a few ~2400 w ~0 sports accomplishments, not surprisingly.</p>
<p>You must me proud of her and anybody who read your post should be proud of this outstanding accomplishments. She is an achiever. Did any of the HYPMS tell you, why did they reject? It’s impossible to be “wrong” in essay with such an achiever and recommendation here, has a v little change to go wrong. Recommender would be suspected here, since there so much finite evidence. I am curious to learn. Only for the reason to understand what they want</p>