Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the kid and their needs. The general idea that we must get to the mean/standard test score for the district and that’s it, is fairly pervasive even in high SES areas.
Yes, low resources it’s a financial issue. High SES, no excuses IMO but that doesn’t imply it happens. Still the gap in education is immense. This is most shocking between low SES public and high SES private.
This is getting worse since high SES privates have been attending school thru Covid and others have been out/online for more than a year.
There’s an interesting assumption embedded in this, one that’s quite widespread but too frequently just accepted without questioning: That higher-prestigiosity colleges are more rigorous/involve more difficult coursework than lower-prestigiosity colleges.
I would like to question this based on my own experience. I am currently faculty at an open-admissions institution (and our average SAT score for incoming students, FWIW, is 1080). My previous faculty positions were at a very selective institution and at a moderately selective institution that was rapidly transitioning into a very selective one.
And the pressure to give high grades at the more selective places was palpable, for two reasons: (a) Lots of our students were headed to graduate and professional school, and giving low grades—and Cs counted as low grades, and Bs were questionable!—could damage their chances, and by extension lessen the reflected glory their undergrad institution would have; and (b) these students generally had gotten high grades their entire lives, and they were often quite open about being ready to punish rigorous grading when it came time for them to fill out the student evaluations of instruction at the end of the semester. (And they knew how important those things are to faculty being retained and promoted.)
I’m now at an open-admissions institution by choice—yeah, it’s frustrating sometimes, but the degree to which I’m actually allowed to be rigorous in my teaching and grading where I wasn’t at more selective places provides a bit of personal peace that makes me quite happy.
So yeah, just anecdote and not proper data, but given the data I have seen on grade distributions at a number of highly selective institutions, I suspect my experience is not entirely unrepresentative.
TL;DR: It might not be quite so hard for students from poor educational backgrounds to thrive academically at T{low number} colleges as some might expect.
6 Likes
Those colleges where the base level of rigor is significantly higher than the typical range of college rigor (e.g. Caltech) likely have mostly self-selecting applicant pools, and admissions policies that actively look for “can this applicant do the work here?” rather than making the (valid at many other colleges, including highly selective ones) assumption that top-end high school academic record means that the student is highly likely to succeed and graduate. Most highly selective colleges can make the latter assumption, since they do not require entering frosh to immediately jump into super-high-rigor courses immediately (e.g. Harvard has far more students in regular entry-level math courses than it does in its three honors levels 23/25/55).
Remember, it is not just students from lower SES backgrounds that may have weaker preparation. Most of the top-prestige colleges admit development and recruited-athlete candidates with high school academic credentials significantly weaker than for the admits without these attributes. But the colleges presumably make sure that such students can graduate.
1 Like
“Can the student do the work” uses context: a student with a 27 ACT at a school where the average is 17 has shown exceptional innate ability and initiative. It means that when they encounter new material or things they haven’t been taught, they are able to think it through quickly and accurately. As a result, they’ll be fine.
(In addition, don’t worry too much about top students from lower achieving schools: top schools know they have a “gap” and they also know they have a thirst for learning+the ability to handle a lot quickly. These students often spend their summer on campus preparing for the Fall, “catching up” directly at Yale or Harvard or … and making up what their HS didn’t teach them but which they’d have been able to learn if the HS had tried to teach it to them.) The top colleges’ wealth also helps them transition from “reduced opportunity school system” to “endless opportunity university”. All in all, they graduate and do fine - often, better than if they had attended “easier” schools. Fewer (low income) students drop out from top schools than from flagships, local universities, or even CCs. A study was circulated 3(?) years ago that was quite devastating in that regard.
3 Likes
@ucbalumnus — is UCB’s reading process still close to what is described in the Hout report?
it is interesting how much easier, and quicker, it is to respond to the chance me threads when test scores are given. The most recent one, by an AA male first gen with very good but not great gpa (3.78), some AP courses, solid but not extraordinary activities and good rank from one of the country’s 40k public schools becomes much easier to predict when he offers his 35 ACT score.
I think that will be the biggest difference in TO-it will be harder to predict admission results.
2 Likes
The Hout report is still referenced along with other current policies at Admissions, Enrollment, and Preparatory Education (AEPE) | Academic Senate .
It does look like from https://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/freshman_admissions_policy-fall_2021-approved.pdf that the 5 point scoring has been changed to a 3 point scoring (“strongly recommend”, “recommend”, “do not recommend” for admission). Seems like that would create a larger group to tie-break in the central ranking after the reading, although it may reduce inconsistency between readers in the initial reading.
Most posters here tend to overvalue test scores, because they are the only convenient common measure across applicants, regardless of how important they are at the colleges in question. HS GPA is often inconsistently reported (especially when student post only weighted HS GPA of unknown-to-everyone-else weighting system), and HS variation in various aspects (course offerings, course quality, etc.) is not obvious to most others here. College reporting of HS GPA of incoming frosh is also inconsistent. Certain check box attributes like legacy and URM also tend to be overvalued here. In contrast, essays and recommendations are basically invisible to those replying to chance and college selection posts, so they are not considered at all by replying posters, even though they are often very important at more selective colleges.
5 Likes
Off-topic, but given the Harvard lawsuit disclosures, it may be disingenuous to say people on CC overvalue check boxes like legacy and URM. The extent of advantage provided at Harvard ( and presumably other schools) was surprising to many.
4 Likes
While the advantage of such can be substantial, it is far from the automatic-admit that some posters treat it as. It also varies across different colleges, and some posters assume that they matter at colleges that explicitly say that they are not considered.
1 Like
We have kids who have trouble keeping up even at lower tier schools TBH. Often our top kids have drive and higher level schools can offer them opportunities. The biggest causes of failure tend to be partying, finances, (at any school) and for higher level schools, a type of homesickness that comes from not having SES peers.
The kids who have drive or quickly learn drive tend to do quite well in and post college - equally on par with those who succeeded from my high school growing up.
2 Likes
This is how it is our school. Only our very top kids apply to top schools, and those that attend and leave is usually to homesickness or imposter syndrome. Those that stay graduate on time and are all successful. Avg SAT score at our school is 950.
3 Likes
My view is that colleges, perhaps with a few exceptions, design their curricula to accommodate their students. If the quality of its students changes over time, the college would eventually, perhaps gradually, adjust its curriculum and overall course rigors to match the abilities of its students.
Would this experience of yours suggest that the same motivation and pressure exist at the high school level, especially when grades become more important in college admissions?
A large department can offer varying levels of courses to accommodate the tails of the student academic strength distribution, rather than having to force-fit all parts of the curriculum to a particular level of student academic strength.
For example, although Harvard is well known for having a very difficult entry-level math option (Math 55A, 55B), the actual enrollment in entry level math seems to be mostly in “ordinary” math courses.
https://courses.my.harvard.edu/dw_course/fas_crse_cat.pdf (warning, quite large) lists the following number of sections:
5 sections of MA (2020 fall)
5 sections of MB (2021 spring)
5 sections of 1A (2020 fall)
5 sections of 1B (2020 fall)
1 section of 1A (2021 spring)
6 sections of 1B (2021 spring)
2 sections of 18A (2020 fall)
1 section of 19A (2020 fall)
1 section of 18B/19B (2021 spring)
6 sections of 21A (2020 fall)
6 sections of 21A (2021 spring)
4 sections of 21B (2020 fall)
7 sections of 21B (2021 spring)
1 section of 22A (2020 fall)
1 section of 22B (2020 spring)
1 section of 23A (2020 fall)
1 section of 23B (2020 spring)
1 section of 25A (2020 fall)
1 section of 25B (2020 spring)
1 section of 55A (2020 fall)
1 section of 55B (2020 spring)
Note that there are more sections of MA-MB (= 1A, i.e. slow pace single variable calculus) than the number of sections of all of the honors versions (22A-22B, 23A-23B, 25A-25B, 55A-55B) put together. Certainly, the presence of several levels of honors math courses indicates that Harvard’s math department accommodates students at the right tail of math academic strength, but the actual enrollment distribution in its entry-level math courses suggests that its frosh are not uniformly the academic superstars in all subjects that many people seem to think that they are.
1 Like
You made my point. Creating a large number of sections is one way to adjust the overall course rigors.
However, a small department may not have the resources to offer as many varying levels of courses.
Of course not. That’s the reason why Caltech is an exception.
I’m confused between 2 of my fav posters, UCB and 1NJParent. My son was the first from his HS to be admitted to Caltech, primarily based on standardized scores and teacher recommendations. He probably benefitted from the first 2 quarters being P/F. Core classes were with all freshmen, many of whom came from outstanding HS e.g. Stuy. I doubt he would have been admitted without his 10th grade SAT and AP scores. (He entered after his junior year.)
1 Like
Note that Caltech is now SAT/ACT blind, probably because:
- SAT/ACT does not show sufficient academic strength for Caltech even at the highest scores.
- SAT/ACT scores among those who do show sufficient academic strength for Caltech (based on other parts of the application) vary little, so they are not useful in distinguishing between them.
- Lower SAT/ACT scores may indicate a lack of sufficient academic strength for Caltech, but such lack of sufficient academic strength for Caltech is visible in the rest of the application as well.
3 Likes
So how can a school such as Caltech guess the aptitude of a student from an average HS? How can they distinguish between excellent students from major STEM HSs?