It’s not as easy as people seem to think–you have to be able to do the writing. I think one difference may be that many students, even from good schools, don’t write that well when they arrive at college, and they are often required to take writing-intensive courses in the first year to get them up to speed. Perhaps this allows kids from inferior schools to catch up a bit in that area.</p>
<p>I very much doubt if the Ivies have any real mismatches among legacies, except perhaps for a few development cases. The difference in preparation is unlikely to be significant, and the difference in stats appears to be pretty small. As to athletes, the Ivies at least have rules in place to limit the risk of mismatch in that area, not the case at other selective schools. I think the issue of mismatches among URMs is probably overstated as well.</p>
<p>Let me put it this way: The possibility of mismatch is a risk that selective colleges accept in order to pursue some of their goals. That is, one of their goals is to have a winning football team, so they take the risk of admitting football players with weaker stats than the average student. They try to control this risk–and they do a pretty good job at the Ivies (not so well elsewhere). It’s the same for URMs, legacies, development cases, and perhaps other categories as well.</p>
<p>If I were an applicant planning to major in STEM today, it would be logical for me to assume that the STEM majors at any given college would most likely be those who scored highest in the Math portion of the SAT. I would also assume that the lower Math-SAT-scoring admittees and matriculants would not be majoring in STEM.</p>
<p>Therefore, if I were concerned about the level of competition in STEM, I’d look for a college where I scored near the top of the Math SAT scores.</p>
<p>Well, yes. But we don’t know what “the top” is, just where the 75th percentile is. If you’re looking at a LAC with maybe 30% STEM majors, 75th percentile could still be the very bottom of the range for kids who go on to complete STEM majors. </p>
<p>SAT II scores in science / math subjects are probably a better metric to use, just because relatively few humanities majors are likely to submit science SAT IIs, and relatively many STEM majors will. Those ranges are less likely to be publicized, particularly for LACs, so you’re right back to “no data.” </p>
<p>That said, we do the best we can with what we have. I suspect that campus visits and sitting in on an introductory STEM class or two will tell us far, far more about fit than scrutinizing score ranges will.</p>
<p>Perhaps it would be useful to reexamine the actual article:</p>
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<p>It is worth noting, as someone did above, that colleges such as Dartmouth have a system in place to improve the writing skills of even very good performers on the SAT. They’ve changed the system slightly since S was a freshman, but at that time (2008), any student who didn’t score above something like 770 on the CR portion was required to take a specific writing course, plus a writing-intensive seminar. Even the kids who scored above the cut-off were required to take such a seminar. Kids who scored around 660 on CR were “invited” to take TWO writing courses plus the seminar. To my knowledge, there isn’t as elaborate a framework in place for math, and certainly everyone isn’t required to take math, specifically, even if it is encouraged. If a kid comes from a HS where they don’t even offer pre-calc–and they are out there–I’m not sure what they would do.</p>
<p>Edited to add: I wonder to what degree the fact that STEM departments so often pride themselves on having “weeder” courses early in the sequence plays into this. They actively try to weed out even students who would be able to major in the subject and graduate. The social sciences and humanities, in contrast, actually WANT students to pursue their fields.</p>
<p>This argument has some merit in the law school context, where first-year grades play a huge role in determining employment opportunities, and where graduates must pass a standardized test in order to be licensed and use their degree. The review references an important UCLA article on the subject. But those factors are not present in the liberal arts sphere. If you get the degree, you get the degree – GPA doesn’t control your destiny, and there’s no exit exam.</p>
<p>There are some pre-professional undergraduate programs that are better analogies to law school: nursing, architecture, engineering, accounting. I don’t know if anyone has looked at those specifically. There might be some results of interest there. I don’t find this argument at all compelling when it comes to elite colleges in general.</p>
<p>It’s not surprising that students who are the first in their family to attend college would see the most gains in socioeconomic status. However, it doesn’t say what the contribution of the elite status of the college (ivy, etc.) was to these socioeconomic gains.</p>
<p>I also have to say language like in post #22 is beyond the pale. </p>
<p>I do think that mismatch is more of an issue with STEM, especially since you keep building on previous courses. For an extreme case, Caltech teaches only using the more theoretical Apostol text for calculus. A lot of people who could get A’s in calculus at other universities might be totally lost in Caltech’s class and end up not learning anything.</p>
<p>That is presumably why Caltech has taking calculus while in high school as a requirement for admission… although it does shut out students who do not have that available in their high schools (and are unable to make taking it at a local college work logistically or financially), or who are not able to take it due to middle school placement decisions made several years previously.</p>
<p>There are some fields that are more vocational and if your technical skills aren’t better than that of the man on the street, you’ll have a huge handicap in the job. So someone who has prior exposure to the material in the class, measured by test scores, has a significant advantage.</p>
<p>There are other areas where the main requirement is that you can deal with people, get projects running on time, and make things happen. So you can take classes in the culture of Elbonia where you don’t have as much of a binary correct/incorrect answer as in rocket science. But as long the student used the college experience to learn how to mediate disputes as an RA or get the frat event organized well, the degree has served its purpose in giving a useful skill in life, albeit not like a STEMmite.</p>
<p>When I was applying for Rice, at the end of the application they had this: Rice University is committed to affirmative action and equal opportunity in education and employment</p>
<p>I laughed because affirmative action ISNT equal opportunity. I think college admission should only be about achievements, grades, ECs, etc and not what race you are. I do think what socioeconomic group you are in should matter though, because that actually affects how much you can do. If they are going to admit people who aren’t as ready, they need to have advisors on hand to help them ;D</p>
<p>I do agree with this. But, part of this is also about wanting a mix of people of all varieties, as well. </p>
<p>I see what people are saying about the stem being a potential issue. Sad but true. I think that says more, however, about the work we need to do in our less fortunate schools K-12, than about there being any advantage to not admitting these students, in the first place.</p>
<p>The Common Application already asks for the occupations and degrees earned of the parents, and colleges can use that information to put an applicant’s record in context. Do you think applicants should also be required to list their parents’ income and net worth, even if they are not applying for financial aid? I think this would be an invasion of privacy.</p>
<p>I am aware of the advantages of high-SES kids. They have parents who value education and send them to “good” schools, who are familiar with the college application process from their own experience and who use sites like this to get fresh information, who have the money and motivation to provide coaching in sports and music and for standardized tests. </p>
<p>There is another non-PC reason that “privileged” kids outperform the “underprivileged”. They are smarter and more studious on average. The undergraduate and graduate degrees possessed by doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, college professors, and other high-status parents signify above-average intelligence, which is usually passed on to their children. Even if the children of janitors and doctors go to equally good schools, the doctors’ kids will compile better academic records on average because they are smarter. College applicants should not be penalized because their parents are smart. If anything, parents’ academic success is probably slightly predictive of the success of their children in college, even adjusting for grades and test scores, which is an argument for preferring high-SES applicants. I don’t think SES should matter one way or the other.</p>
<p>So what your suggesting, Beliavsky, is that we’ve reached a point in this country where there should now be very little social mobility. Families with high SES have such a status as a result of their innate drive and intelligence, coupled with a culture that reinforces hard work. Families with low SES have such a status because of their innate lack of intelligence and drive. There might be a person of low SES who happens to be intelligent or have drive, but that is some sort of odd genetic mutation. </p>
<p>It’s interesting that historically, you always find that members of the elite insist that there is something ‘special’ about their lineage and breeding to justify their status, and that there is something inherently lacking about members of the lower classes that justify their status. And yet these people sometimes find that their hold on the upper class doesn’t always last long. Why is that?</p>
<p>Just look at what people said about women as late as the early 20th century–that women somehow lacked something naturally that made them bad scientists, political leaders, etc. How does this fit into your system? </p>
<p>Are you suggesting that we have improved upon our scientific methods and biases to such an extent that yes, we can now conclude that it is indeed true that the top SES families are there because they have the right genetics, the bottom SES families are there because they have the wrong genetics, and although in the past people would make the same claims, which turned out to be wrong, we’re right now because our science is so much better?</p>
<p>And to disagree with this view, well, let’s go to the ad hominem argument that if you disagree, then it’s because you’re just PC, rather than skeptical of arguments such as this which have been tried before and turned out to be false.</p>
<p>No college applicants are penalized because their parents are smart. If an elite school admits some students with test scores and grades that are not stratospheric because those kids have other characteristics that the school values, that does not mean it is penalizing the kids with high stats (and smart parents) who didn’t get in. People like to trot out stories of smart kids who succeeded in spite of attending lower-tier schools. I have never heard a tale of a smart kid whose life spiraled into misery and failure because he or she aspired to but didn’t get into a top 10 or top whatever school.</p>
<p>Actually, they do exist in the liberal arts sphere, not just in humanities and lit. Just like in law school, nearly all STEM courses in undergrad have curves, which are rather strict Frosh year (just like L1).</p>
<p>And IMO, that is why a mismatch also occurs for many low SES kids who are admitted to “top” schools. Taking Frosh Chem with only a college prep chem class as background puts one WAY behind the other students, many of which aced AP/IB Chem in HS. And since the grade is based on a curve…</p>
<p>(And yes, a professor who has 90/80/70 cutoffs for grades also grades on a curve – s/he just make the test rigorous enough so the mean over the term is a high 70.)</p>
<p>No, high SES families are not “smarter,” not in the sense of inherent abilities. Imo, they are simply wise to the mechanics and depth and breath of the details they function with, the range of opportunities. Doctors know science and can pass that knowledge, critical thinking, and decision-making to their kids, in real time. They can ensure their kids associate with others who add their info and experiences to the context. That’s not genetic.</p>
<p>Blue, there are colleges that will take a kid into STEM because he wants it, convinces them it’s a well considered decision, etc. The top schools try to avoid under-prep, aim for kids who seem able to hit the boards running. That eliminates many kids who only took CP chem or 9th grade physics in hs, except where nothing more was available (but there has to be something convincing that the kid has the abilitis and understands the challenges and the conceptual requirements.)</p>
<p>I didn’t say tutoring. Granted, many top career folks make little time for their families. But the context is there.</p>