<p>…and maize joined cc less than 12 hrs ago. Scrappy little thing…</p>
<p>Hi linden…</p>
<p>@jym626 Isn’t 99 percentile on the ACT is 33-36? Something like 1.6M take the ACT and SAT. I have no data on how many take both, but I think we can agree the best students are most likely to take both. Either way, there are about 20,000-30,000 99 percentile ACT and SAT test takers each year. Now how many have a GPA to match? How many have the collection of ECs? How many even apply to the top 20 colleges? How many seats are there for the top say 20 schools in the nation? My point is AMAZING students are not getting shut out. Shut out of HYP, sure. Shut out of Harvard, Yale, Princeton…Northwestern…Cornell…Cal? No freaking chance. People are constantly looking for ways to scheme their above average but not great kids into an elite school. Nobody that’s 99 percentile (including ACT, GPA and ECs) on paper is getting shut out. It’s hard for people to accept that their kid isn’t as bright or motivated as they wish they were.</p>
<p>Linden/maize,
JHS correctly provided those stats, not me.</p>
<p>Sorry, it’s hard to keep up with all the pseudo-stat gurus on here. Is Linden/maize an inside joke?</p>
<p>nope. Welcome back.</p>
<p>It was announced on another thread that maize is now banned.</p>
<p>@quietdesperation
</p>
<p>The SAT/ACT accounts for <em>much</em> more than they admit.
The ECs, recs and essays account for <em>much</em> less than they admit.</p>
<p>The “soft” elements of the application are used to make distinctions between applicants who have roughly equivalent GPA and SATs. They are <em>not</em> used to give a bump to applicants who have grades and test scores that are otherwise below-the-line.</p>
<p>
I would have thought quite the opposite. If you scored 2000 on the SAT, you would take the ACT to see if that’s more your style. If you scored 2400 on the SAT, I think you’d be displaying perfectionism or another negative trait to then take the ACT. I think elite students do “one and done,” typically, since they have other fish to fry. Retake. Superscore. Bah, humbug. </p>
<p>“And when say 95% of the kids on campus are upper middle class, at least, he sees that as an issue. It’s to the point that lower and middle-middle class families can’t create an elite college kid, because it costs too much and if you lack the savvy or the connections, you’re a commoner excluded from the club.”</p>
<p>But it’s nowhere near 95% of the kids at Ivies/elites being upper middle class. Not even anywhere in the ballpark. And these colleges go out of their way to recruit at the lower level.
It’s true that it may be particularly hard from an affordability standpoint for the middle class - but that isn’t something to lay at the feet of the other students, as they aren’t the “cause” of that situation.</p>
<p>“I would have thought quite the opposite. If you scored 2000 on the SAT, you would take the ACT to see if that’s more your style. If you scored 2400 on the SAT, I think you’d be displaying perfectionism or another negative trait to then take the ACT. I think elite students do “one and done,” typically, since they have other fish to fry.”</p>
<p>And if you’re in a state where you’re required to take the ACT anyway as part of high school, why would you bother with the SAT? This isn’t the 1980’s, when the SAT was the “real” test for elite schools and the ACT was for midwestern state flagships amongst the cornfields. </p>
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<p>Possibly because some students feel they would perform better on the SAT than the ACT. And some students do perform better on the SAT vs the ACT along with those where the reverse applies. Each test tends to play to different academic/test taking strengths than others. </p>
<p>National Merit contenders must take the SAT (which is why, in some midwestern or southern high schools, average SAT scores are much higher than average ACT scores–because almost everyone takes the ACT, but only top students are taking the SAT.)</p>
<p>Some not only sound good but are really good (allow me a little boasting here). Can’t complain about top .01% S1 since K all the way through college and first jobs. Took all the tests (he could have stopped after the first one, he was satisfied but I wasn’t). No, he wasnt’ into the make himself look interesting business and actually hated all that padding of the resumé business. We are far from typical upper middle class and went through the public school system since K.</p>
<p>These days many business class seats on shorter domestic runs are simply economy seats on the aisle and window with the middle seat unsold.</p>
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<p>Um…what does this have to do with this thread?</p>
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<p>Absolutely nothing!!
It was supposed to be on the airline seat wars thread but somehow I posted it here by mistake.
Mea culpa and apologies…</p>
<p>Oh thank goodness! I hadn’t read this entire thread and thought I was missing something!!</p>
<p>I thought it was comparing the successful Harvard admit to a business class seat, and the state school admit to an economy class seat, and suggesting it only takes 1.5 times the space (for the seat) or the ECs (for the student) … or maybe not.</p>
<p>What is the equivalent of the center economy seat?</p>