@SaphireNY The SAT started out life as exactly that - an IQ test, and it still correlates very highly with IQ. Moreover, you seem to be mixing the ACT and the SAT. They are not the same thing. The same person taking the test multiple times can expect to get different scores. It will not be exactly the same each time. Are you aware that students “study” for the SAT and actually see their scores go down?
“Graduate entrance exams”? Are you referring to the Graduate Record Exam?
I am referring to ALL of them from medicine to law to masters programs. Some of my relatives got vastly different percentiles on their SATs and grad school tests. A couple went up ALOT percentile wise (and it was one of the more competitive tests) and the other went down quite a bit in percentiles (also in a competitive field).
I think when my parents took it, maybe it measured intelligence somewhat because although there were some courses, no one worked at it the same way am told. The reality is that kids are going to SAT camp in 8th grade throws everything off. Also I hear rumors about kids in Asian countries (sorry no offense to anyone) where they are drilled until they get to 800. Even the PSAT is not a fair measure because they have courses for that too. Good or bad? No idea but the point is these kids work. I know someone who got over a 2370, he worked alot to get it. His IQ has been measured and it is under 130 (he was not accepted into the GT program that my friend attended).
So my friend from the GT with an IQ at 97% at age 8, will still be just as bright but will not be breaking 2000 without work which he was not willing to do.
Yes people can vary but not 250 points over 8 months unless they work. Plus part of the reason that certain schools want all your tests is that they can make sure you have not taken it a bunch of times in an effort to imporve your score which is exactly what most people do
The author might have been smart enough to get through Harvard, but she clearly didn’t know how to interview well. Think about job interviews.
Interviewers start with formulaic questions to get the subject talking. A good interviewer notices the point where the subject seems a little more animated and less closed/coached/nervous, and then takes the interview down that path to see where it goes.
I’d say the author was too busy checking boxes next to her list of questions. She wasn’t watching the teenager’s face or body language.
@picapole: while that may be true, Harvard et al don’t need us alumni volunteers to be expert interrogators. The issue I have with the article is the author’s outright BS about his/her influence on the process – and then to point out flaws in the entire selective college rat race as if he/she is the first to witness them.
^ ^ ^ ^
I heartily agree with @T26E4. First, it is exceptionally rare for any admissions interview to have a substantial decision-influence (or any meaningful influence, for that matter). Second, it appears that the author’s “BS” is even more egregious than post #43 suggests; the author (in my opinion) acts not simply as an “observer” to the entire process, but rather as an “integral element” of the process. That really is gross self-aggrandizement and it is also total fallacious.
I know an alumna who interviews for Cornell, also on a volunteer basis. She’s told me that her role was much more of a recruiter than a gatekeeper - she was there to get the high-achieving students really pumped up about Cornell, to make them look forward to receiving their acceptance letters and making plans to attend. The little bit of gatekeeper that there was was basically just making sure that they didn’t admit any psychopaths - kids who came across smooth on paper but were really weird on the dangerous side in person. She straight-up said that their recommendation was just a small part of the admissions process.
The characterization of an alumnus interviewer as an “admissions officer” is bizarre, since he’s absolutely not. I definitely don’t think alumni interviewers read over the students’ admission packets to help the office make a decision. I wish the author hadn’t inflated their role because the point they were trying to make could’ve been made adequately if they were just upfront and honest about what alumni interviewers really did.
More interesting was the [url=<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/education/19counselor.html?pagewanted=all%5Dsecond%5B/url”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/education/19counselor.html?pagewanted=all]second[/url] article he linked - a NYT piece about independent admissions consultants and some of their scant backgrounds (for example, two of them claimed to have worked for Ivy admissions offices for years; the journalist uncovered that they had volunteered as alumni interviewers for a few years). One of them gives terrible outfit advice about what to wear to the admissions interview. Given what she’s wearing in the photo at the top of the article, I wouldn’t take advice from her about what to wear in a professional setting. But these people are charging $5,000 to $40,000 and more to wealthy parents who are desperate to garner any “edge” for their kids.
Hmm. Seems appropriate to me.
I wonder if the invoices clearly show the portion being paid for “an edge” and the portion charged for “desperation”.
@SaphireNY, you’re not helping your point by conflating all sorts of different tests. The SAT, LSAT, and GMAT may be considered types of IQ tests, but they are all different (especially with the SAT’s funky writing section now). Also, the competition in the LSAT and GMAT are tougher because law school and b-school applicants are a self-selected bunch, so someone being 99th percentile in the SAT may very well not be for the LSAT and GMAT.
The MCAT is very much a subject test (med schools actually do care if you learned something in Orgo).
The ACT is it’s own different beast.
Actually it was the opposite. Several of my relatives scored very well on LSAT and GMAT 95 -99 while only getting a 1100-1200 or so on the SAT ( no idea what that percentile was but I know it would have made most ivies out of reach wo a hook)
I have a cousin who went UPenn undergrad during Vietnam wo hooks and ended up at some foreign med school because of his Mcats, nice guy would have interviewed well
My point is they are all subject tests. For most people they can study and improve. Most will, some will not, the same as happens in any math, physics or English class. Some need to study for days, other people need to look over their notes.
@SaphireNY, different parts of the different tests are more like subject tests. For instance, the vocabulary parts of the SAT, certainly. Almost the entire MCAT.
I agree that study can help for big parts of all of them.
I thought I posted a diatribe about this (was there another thread?), but the short of it is either the author is mentally unbalanced and has no connections with reality and real life, grossly exaggerating their role in admissions (5 interviews per year? REALLY? I manage 6 - 10 per year and I work full-time.), or they just aren’t a Harvard alumni interviewer so they have no idea.
I suppose if the author moved frequently, all those alumni interviews in various locations would make sense (so much for a Harvard degree giving a great job with stability?), but otherwise, no college not even an Ivy would expect their alumni interviewers to move around the country to follow applicants. I’m in a population dense area, so I have not traveled more than 30 minutes by car to an interview. Also it would be HIGHLY inappropriate to do an alumni interview at the applicant’s father’s place of business - I cannot believe that the author is a “gatekeeper” but somehow thought that was appropriate?
The thing about the applications being sent to alumni interviewers, that I call as fake because logistically it would be crazy - do you send the apps to the regional rep (like this person purports to be, but they would be coordinating others and someone so lightly involved in the process would not be a regional rep), or do you send them to an alumni interviewer and let them decide based on the app whether to interview, or do you wait for the alumni interviewer to accept the assignment?
I can’t believe that gawker has such low standards LOL…
Also wanted to comment on this, I think from #23:
"Maybe no one realizes that when you give a bright student access to a great education, they in turn become the next generation of “elites”, wanting their children to have the same opportunities they got hold of.
Maybe we could stop this cycle by offering admission to more qualified applicants who might not have had a privileged upbringing. The rub would be that they would have to sign a contract agreeing that their offspring could neither seek nor accept an elite university admission. "
My parents were working class and sent two kids to an Ivy League school. Of ten grandchildren, mine are the only ones left, and none of the others went to Ivies, including a few whose father went to my alma mater. All those folks who go on about legacies have to realize that even to be able to use the “hook” of being a legacy, you have to be quite talented and capable, and have the grades and the test scores. A legacy who gets in with a 2000 SAT score and 3.7W GPA would only happen with significant donations (my son knows someone like that, grandfather donated at least 20 million to the Ivy and she’s not even NM commended or full AP and honors track).
I will agree with a few here who noted that alumni interviews are a two-way street - we want to see if you the applicant are good enough, BUT since we never have your full application, and not even test scores or GPA, we really don’t know what your chance might be. So we have to sell our school to you, in the event that you are a highly prized candidate.
So it is one thing for an alumni interviewer to get an applicant they interviewed accepted RD, and another for that applicant to choose to attend.
Agreed. However I think the early coaching and later coaching is changing the nature of these tests. Here is the experiment. Take 100 kids from some good public school who can confirm they have not been coached for the PSAT other than being familiar with the rules etc. give them 1985s PSAT or perhaps 1992 (assuming you can identify the last year that before coaching became common later is better because of changes in teaching and cultural references) and grade them based on 1985s scale. I bet they will do better percentile wise than they would on 2015s PSAT. As opposed to kids who have been coached who will do the same on both. Yes I do know that scores from 1995 or 2005 I forget went up because they changed the sat. Since the PSAT is a curved test, how you do does depend on who else is taking it. Maybe not over a single administration but certainly over time. So if people are being coached and do better that changes the result for everyone, so the very bright kid who would have done great in 1990 now has to study because everyone is coached.
No way they send an app to an interviewer. Even in-house, they have multiple layers of password protection. That stuff’s not going out in a Fedex box or attached to an email. The difference may be for some schools where you’re interviewed on-prem and wth. But we’re not talking about those and the whole point is a fresh look at what the written app struggles to convey.
I’ve lost track of why there’s a SAT argument going on. Regardless of how things were ten or 20 years ago or longer, times have changed, there’s immense competition from a pool of kids and non-quantitative matters.
What I’ll say about scores is that the motivation to do well is good. For all CC talks about passion, being yourself, standing out for some weird activity or etc, the most competitive colleges (and remember, that’s about more than just getting in,) still do expect a kid to be able to somewhat conform to performance standards and interpersonal expectations while there.
@SaphireNY just wanted to add to your argument with a look into my own experience with the SAT. At the end of junior year, I scored an 1840 on the SAT. Seeing as how this would be unacceptable at almost all the schools I wanted, I knew I’d have to study. I studied for about 2 months and took the test in January. What did my studying and practicing garner? 330 points. I went up from an 1840 to a 2170 simply by studying with the SAT official practice guide. I think this was part of the reason as to why I got a likely letter from Duke a few days ago 
It would’ve never happened with an 1840. Best of luck to you all.
On the conversation of the thread: the writer simply has an absurdly inflated ego and seeks to validate himself by bolstering his position from what it really is. Alumni interviewers are amazing people who dedicate their time for their institutions and for the sake of the kids. They don’t however, choose who gets in or who stays out. This guy gives a horrible image of alumni interviewers. They usually rock and are very casual! 
@T26E4 Sorry to leave the thread for a while… I was thinking the opposite of interrogation-- ie people skills. But agree that the heart of the problem was the writer’s incredibly egotistical attitude. (Perhaps related to the lack of people skills?)
"She’s told me that her role was much more of a recruiter than a gatekeeper "
I haven’t done interviewing myself, but from what I’ve understood from others who have, I wouldn’t say “recruiter” exactly.
More like an enthusiastic, somewhat biased, “information agent”. Mostly they are there to describe what it is like there, in general and particularly as it pertains to a kid’s interests and objectives, and to provide information about the university.
As alums who care about the U enough to do volunteer interviewing for it, they presumably like and care about the university and are likely to share their enthusiasm.
At the same time, most also probably do this work because they like and care about kids. They know the place is not for everybody and probably do not want kids to wind up in the wrong place. They are likely to point out aspects of the university that seem to fit with a kid’s interests, as revealed during their discussion. But I would imagine that, during the course of their discussion, if the kid indicates wanting something that is not there, or clearly does not fit for some other reason, they would provide relevant information about that as well.
They do submit an evaluation report but from what I understand it is given virtually no weight by admissions, ordinarily.
Harvard could possibly do things differently though, I’ve no idea.
Top schools do very little “recruiting”. What does occur, happens on the initiative of individual volunteers who make presentations at targeted schools that may be off the beaten path. For instance, I consider myself a “recruiter”. I have relationships w/counselor staffs some high schools of my severely under-resourced large urban school district, my alma mater school district. It’s one of the nation’s largest cities but may only have 3-4 legitimate applicants any given year. Indeed, it’s arguable that it’s one of the nation’s worst school districts. That being said, I make my way there almost every year – to “get the word out” and meet the counselors and keep lines of communication open. All on my own dime and time.
@saphireny, my D had her interview with a current Wash U student. hmmm
Wash U does that. See the results thread