<p>GAH! SAT can be easily prepared for using money to buy prep books (like the one I'm reading now for instance!) and prep courses etc. GPA varies. A 4.0 in school A is harder than in School B for instance. And I'm saying that if that inner city student is at the top of his class, he/she has the potential to do well regardless. Im sure that even if the competition is slim, there still is competition. Since they were not exposed to the hard material, they should not be penalized. They should definitely be given the chance over you. They beat out their classmates and they could possibly beat you because they got #1. Their work is in NO WAY worse because of easy competitionl. If you are really wanted to make top ten percent, you could take the APs pertinent to a medical career, get your good grades in them and take less difficult classes for other things that arent pertinent to medicine/science. These students definitely deserve the chance more than arrogant you. AND I am not speaking from the position of a poor student etc. I am middle-class, average comp high school. You need to suck it up and look to another program because obviously the ad-coms and many others (like me) feel they deserve the chance over you. You've had your blessings, now they get theirs!</p>
<p>you need to wake up and smell the coffee, this isnt some fantasy world where everyone gets an equal chance.</p>
<p>Ive earned my scores and my grades with hard work. I can get A's in every AP course and still not be number 1, like i said, being top 10 percent in a school like mine is not as easy as you may think. That doesnt mean i should be ruled out of applying for a program tho.</p>
<p>I agree with part of Doogie's argument but not with all of it. I don't think any program should ever employ strict cut-off points based on any aspect of the student record (exam scores, grades, rank, number of AP courses, quality of recommendations, etc.). I think that a student should be allowed to make up for shortfalls in any one area with exceptional demonstrated ability in other areas (in Doogie's case, medical volunteer experience). Obviously, the greater the shortcoming in one area, the more the student needs to excel in the others to make up for it, but "making up for it" should always be an option.</p>
<p>However, I don't see class rank as being a worse a gauge of ability than any other common admission criterion. While being valedictorian at a huge or competitive school is a great accomplishment, it is impossible to determine whether the valedictorian from a small rural school is any less qualified. All we know is that the rural valedictorian excelled in the available environment. It may be that the top student from the small town achieved that position through lack of competition, but it could also mean that the person is driven to be the best in whatever situation he/she ends up.</p>
<p>For example, one of my friends ranked somewhere around the tenth percentile at a rural village school you would no doubt disdain. When he enrolled at a top college he initially had to re-adjust to the heightened competition, but because he felt uncomfortable performing beneath the tenth percentile he redoubled his efforts and attained about the same college rank that he had held in high school. I suspect this is more common than you might want to believe; even rural valedictorians have become accustomed to being the top of their class, and so have a strong motivation to succeed that lower-ranking students from even better high schools often lack. It seems to me that college is based on effort even more than high school, so whether or not a student has taken the courses (as Doogie puts it) does not seem the most important factor at play.</p>
<p>doogie, you've reiterated that you've earned the grades and such. youve said your school is competitive, fine. it could also just be grade inflated. but until you walk in the shoes of the rural student, you dont know if they're more or less qualified. as mary said, you shouldbe able to make it up. call them and ask. if you cant, move on. im sure some programs arent like that. if you personally think you are better than some that do get in, then you can have fun thinking about how they're probably having a horrible time and are being stressed to death.</p>
<p>this isnt about rural students and their opportunity tho, let them have it idc. I just think ranking is stupid because it doesnt allow me to even apply</p>
<p>I think I have to agree with Doogie311 here. The fact is, I have always thought that grades and class rank should not be used to determine academic ability, but rather by should be determined by a (possibly highly extensive) test. This test would be combined with an assessment of your extracurriculars, your interview, your socioeconomic standing, and those other factors for determination of admission. I'm not saying that the test would be the current SAT/ACT, but rather would be something like the Bar exam or CPA exam, or a test that each school would run for itself. </p>
<p>Lest anybody think this is a bad idea, let me point out that this is EXACTLY how admissions were run at Harvard, and other elite schools about 100 years ago. Basically, everybody in those days who wanted to get into Harvard had to take a Harvard-run examination, and those who scored above a certain figure would get in. No muss, no fuss. You either scored highly enough, or you didn't. The reason that Harvard and the other elite schools started changing the system was simple - too many Jews were getting in. So these schools started using criteria like 'well-roundedness' as a convenient excuse to keep the number of Jews down. After all, you can't really question somebody's score on a test, but you can always SAY that somebody is not sufficiently well-rounded and nobody can really challenge you. They also began to factor in where you went to high school in order to discriminate against the "highly-Jewish" high schools like Bronx Science or Stuyvesant. The dropping of purely exam-based admissions was also used as a method to discriminate against blacks, Hispanics, Irish, women, and other 'undesirable' applicants. </p>
<p>The point is, the movement away from pure exam-based admissions and the embrace of things like "top 10% of high school ranking" and other such critiria did not have the most pristine of motives.</p>
<p>and life goes on is the main point. life's a ***** doogie.weve all had different teachers/classes available where weve learned different things and some people have money for sat prep so the sat is not such a great idea. where rank bites you in the butt, other things help you. this may be the opposite for someone else. So either:</p>
<p>A: try to work soemthing out with the school</p>
<p>B: look for other options</p>
<p>you cant change the fact that they want you in top ten percent but maybe you can be an exception. if not, screw it.</p>
<p>you are not getting this are you? This is not a what should i do post. This is a "discuss why the system sux" post.</p>
<p>and i am telling you why it does not suck. you have other options. plus it does not suck because everybody has advantages and disadvantages---they are just different. your disadvantage is rank. my disadvantage (if i were applying) would be lack of the hands on experience that you have. id say its pretty fair.</p>
<p>Well, look trader. I agree that everybody has advantages and disadvantages, and that both you and doogie311 are being affected in different ways.</p>
<p>But that doesn't mean that we can't think of ways to make the system better. We don't HAVE to always put up with a flawed system Let's not be defeatist. The system can be improved, albeit with difficulty. But certainly things will never be improved if we adopt a defeatist attitude. Social change of any kind has always been spurred by people talking about how to remedy the disadvantages of the existing system. For example, if African-Americans in the 1950's had simply decided that they can't do anything about Jim Crow, then the Civil Rights movement would never have happened.</p>
<p>but even fixing it will create a new problem that others think is worse. this isnt necessarily being defeatist because people still get in BASED on their advanatages and disadvantages.</p>
<p>Without class rank, how would you distinguish between 1000 students in school X with a 4.0 unweighted gpa. Their averages range from 95-100. There has to be students who are better academically, but how can you tell without rank. Rank is necessary, and is, according to most, the lesser of two evils. One evil being that rank makes kids who score high, appear as if they are underperforming, and the other is that it stops the evil and unjust caused by a school with 1000 students with a 4.0</p>
<p>avg SAT of the school tells u the saame thing.</p>
<p>but again thats just one test...you could be lazy-colleges dont want lazy. also--sat is unfair to people who cant afford all sorts of prep options</p>
<p>you could just do it like my school, and just keep grades on the 100 point system (makes much more sense than the 4.0 system). This distinguishes the 95 student from the 100 student. However my school is not perfect because it weights honors/AP/IB SL/IB HL/college dual enrollment courses the same (+10 on average for the year) for example someone taking 7 classes with 1 weighted class and getting 100 UW would get 101.43, while someone taking 6 weighted classes would get 108.57. However this makes not a lot of sense because honors physics and college financial planning are weighted the same as AP Physics, AP Chem and BC Calc. so me taking the hardest classes actually hurt me compared to kids who just take honors classes and get high GPAs.</p>
<p>oh please, enough with the prep, BUY A BOOK!</p>
<p>dont tell me a family cant afford to spend 15 bucks on a book</p>
<p>that might not be thier priority spending. also the sat tests what you have learned. people from different schools may have learned different things.</p>
<p>that might not be thier priority spending. also the sat tests what you have learned. people from different schools may have learned different things.</p>