<p>@fallenchemist Yes you are correct the SAT scores have gone up for nearly every elite college in the last 10 years. But why? You claim it is because of the greater number of applicants that the school receives. But there may be other reasons such as SuperScoring and the many times has the SAT been revamped in the past. (The SAT will again see a version next year). You are aware that if you add up the total number of reported perfect SAT scorers who enroll at the top 100 colleges, this number is greater than the actual number of students who achieved perfect SAT scores by all students last year. </p>
<p>How is this possible? Super Scoring! A gimmick to again allow colleges to post higher and higher test scores. This superscoring is welcomed at many test optional colleges, but why, since these colleges in the rhetoric to the public declare that SATs are really not that important.</p>
<p>As to retention, you state without evidence the claim that it is the “natural outgrowth of more academically talented students.” Where is your evidence for this? Higher average test scores do not necessarily indicate a more academically talented student. In this case, I defer to the statements of the Dean of Admissions at Georgetown I posted earlier.</p>
<p>Besides there are other reasons for higher retention such as the difficulty to transfer because the hyper spiral of low admission rates also applies to transfer students who want to transfer from one elite school to another. Since cost is an issue, there could be different levels of financial aid at different colleges that hinders transferring to another school not feasible. There are host of other reasons that have nothing to with your premise that kids who have higher SAT scores thus they are more academically talented than students with slightly lower scores.</p>
<p>It is extremely well known in admissions offices that the higher level the classes are academically the greater the retention rates. This has been tracked by various admissions offices for years. I won’t even bother to argue this with you, it is so well known.</p>
<p>The SAT increases at Chicago are MUCH larger than at most other schools. Check it out for yourself. The simple fact of the matter is, despite your dancing as fast as you can to come up with much more elaborate explanations (ever hear of Occam’s Razor?) that by widening their admissions net Chicago ended up with more applications from the most talented students and was able to improve the quality of their classes. This is according to the Dean of Admissions from Chicago. Not sure why he would carry less weight than your Georgetown dude, who by the way also said that if they were only getting applications at the level that Chicago used to they would have considered the Common App more strongly, per your own quotation.</p>
<p>This is now tiresome. Say whatever you want at this point, I think people can easily judge for themselves whose data and explanations make more sense.</p>
<p>Imo, “Voice of reason,” labeling aspects gimmicks and misrepresentations and then insisting, isn’t striking me as “reason.” It’s looking through one lens only, not open to other interpretations. It is, imo, unnecessarily argumentative. </p>
<p>You folks can dissect the SAT to death, but it simply isn’t the be all and end all worth all this. Ime, adcoms look at it, hope to say, “fine,” and then go from that one set of lines on one page, to the other 13-16 telling pages of the app package. Some here build those arguments on false premises. </p>
<p>Cool! Well, allow me to make a statement and let you try to refute it. Here we go:</p>
<p>I state that I can find a direct and important correlation between admissions at the most selective colleges and their SAT scores. The lower I go in the rankings, the lower the range of scores will be. I can repeat that exercise in bands of 10 schools with few exceptions for non-coed schools and specialized LAC such as Harvey Mudd, and the SAT optional schools to a certain degree. </p>
<p>I also state that you cannot find such correlation with AP. Of course it helps that little tracking is done for APs in terms of admissions. And for good reasons! </p>
<p>This said, I could add a decade of following one particular school and its great success at the most selective schools without much consideration to the AP program (and no IB for that matter). Or I could look at the private statistics of a program such as Questbridge and their correlation to schools such as Stanford. </p>
<p>Or I could hint at the shared results right here in CC of the serial APers to again state that the AP is a LOT less relevant in terms of admissions. One can overcome an absence of AP scores a LOT easier than a lower SAT relative score at the overwhelming majority of highly selective school. </p>
<p>There is no need to dissect the SAT or ACT. The simple statistics are crystal clear and speak for themselves! A perfect SAT score is not a guarantee, but a lower score is surely an anvil on your neck in the adcom ocean! The AP … not so much! </p>
It depends which top school. For example, the undergraduate admission section of Stanford’s website states:</p>
<p>“As a result, we do not require students to submit AP scores as part of our admission process. AP scores that are reported are acknowledged but rarely play a significant role in the evaluation of an application.”</p>
<p>Haha, xig, I thought this was going to be a SAT question and it’s AP. And I know it’s not really directed at me.
In fact, what I do think is that you are simply pointing to the complexity of predicting holistic admits to top colleges, despite the apparent history of them cherry picking high stats/high SAT/ACT kids. But stats are just one element of holistic. I know you know that, but it needs to be said.</p>
<p>AP scores are another piece in a complex puzzle. Yes, there sure are anvils. But all these people looking only through the hierarchical stats supremacy lens are missing just how many anvils there can be in a kid’s package- you don’t simply submit stats. Lowish AP scores, when you had AP offerings, took the class, and all that- can rattle. Of course they can. But I can’t be tricked into saying, SAT not so much, AP so much. Ha.</p>
<p>How much depends on a host of factors and just how compelling the rest of his package is (which includes how well he put it together, not just the bare facts.) Holistic. Some forgiveness when it is merited. At the high stakes colleges, there is no empathy vote and there is no accounting for, “but I dreamed of this school since I was in diapers.” And I strain to imagine them saying, “oh look, he got a 2 in AP physics, let’s just shuffle him into our engineering class,” when there are so many others who didn’t hiccup. So, it’s circular. </p>
<p>Not all high schools offer many or any AP courses, for various reasons (e.g. low quality schools with no advanced offerings (AP or otherwise), super-elite high schools that offer what they consider better than AP courses, IB schools, non-US schools, etc.), so there may not be sufficient commonality in the AP test taking habits of college applicants.</p>
<p>In addition, the SAT reasoning and ACT each have an incumbency advantage, so a college that requires any other standardized test could lose applicants due to inconvenience, or applicants not knowing that they should take the other test. This is likely why Harvard and the UCs require either the SAT reasoning or ACT, despite having publicly stated a preference for the SAT subject tests that they have now dropped the requirement for. The fact that both the SAT reasoning and the ACT have incumbency advantages (partially region-based) causes colleges to accept both, even if they would prefer one over the other (they are rather different tests).</p>
<p>“As a result, we do not require students to submit AP scores as part of our admission process. AP scores that are reported are acknowledged but rarely play a significant role in the evaluation of an application.”</p>
<p>may say more about Stanford’s pool of brilliant applicants than about the predictive value of AP scores in college success for other competitive colleges. If Stanford has so many applicants in their pool who would almost certainly be able to get a 4 or 5 on most AP tests, and are clearly “college ready” perhaps these scores do not adequately distinguish between the “elite” and “very elite” students for Stanford’s purposes. As another poster suggested, for schools like MIT or Stanford, tests like the AIME are far more useful to distinguish among those few who can get past the first pass of the Stanford admissions committee. </p>
<p>At least for STEM majors, use of AP scores significantly improves the predictive ability of traditional measures (grades and SAT tests) in forecasting success of an applicant in college. See e.g. this very recent study led by professors at Georgia Tech and RIce: <a href=“APA PsycNet”>APA PsycNet; But admissions committees obviously would continue to need to use subjective measures (essays, interviews) to improve further. “The new study finds that while traditional measures explain about 25 percent of the variation in student performance, the additional consideration of AP scores and personality traits allows for explaining 40 percent of the variation.” </p>
<p>It is also important to recognize that each of the many AP tests has different predictive value - some are ‘easier’ than others and some require more memorization and some require more analytical thinking. An older Harvard study indicated that the best predictive value for success in STEM fields in college was achieving high levels of ‘mathematical fluency’ in High School.</p>
<p>That is not too surprising, since merely having an AP score indicates that the student has studied material that is more advanced than typical college-prep high school level material, and studied it in 11th grade or before (for students in the great majority of high schools in the US where AP courses are the most advanced and rigorous offerings). So there is a built-in selection effect here.</p>
<p>In addition, advanced high school or beginning college level material (as tested by AP tests) is more like college material than less advanced high school material, so performance in that is more predictive than measures of performance in less advanced high school material.</p>
<p>Of course, students who do well in actual college courses taken while in high school may show an even better prediction of success in college, since they not only do well in college level material, but also handle the self-motivation and time management expectations of college, as opposed to high school expectations with more hand holding and progress monitoring.</p>
<p>There’s an older study by the AP folks that says what you do, Ucb, for math. The kids have experienced the material and they allow that self-selection may be a factor in the sort of kid who then does will in college. Personally, I don’t see how a hs class, taught by hs teachers, in the hs structured environment, following some loosey attempt at standardization, can mirror what goes on in college, except STEM, depending.</p>
<p>There is not some magic line between high school and college that automatically makes it impossible for a high school course to teach the same material as a frosh-level college course (although whether an AP course does this depends on which AP course, how well the high school teaches it, and which college’s frosh-level course). Indeed, an elite high school’s advanced course may be more in-depth and rigorous than a typical college’s frosh-level course.</p>
<p>What is not typically replicated is the college course requirement that the student needs greater self-motivation and time-management in college, due to less hand-holding and progress-monitoring in college compared to high school. This does not mean that students should automatically repeat their AP credit in college if the college allows the AP credit to place into a more advanced course (but reviewing the college’s old final exams would be a good idea to check one’s knowledge), but it does mean that high school AP courses are not the same as college courses in the environment aspect even if the material covered is the same, which means that some students who succeed in high school AP courses may struggle in actual college courses.</p>
<p>@lookingforward Teacher quality can vary between regular HS classes and AP courses. At my school, most of te AP teachers had PhD’s in their fields and our work encouraged a ton of independence. It wasn’t exactly college, of course, but the expectations placed on us were much higher than those placed on our peers and we were encouraged to use groups more of than we used the teacher’s help. I remember one of those classes only having two lectures by the teacher himself. To think of it, the “here’s the assignment now do it if you want to learn the material” attitude of the class seems a lot like the “you don’t actually have to attend every lecture” aspect of college.</p>
AP scores do add to the ability to predict college GPA at highly selective colleges, such as Stanford. In an interview with the NYT, the Dean of Admission at Harvard said their internal studies found that among the objective stat portions of the application, AP scores were more predictive of GPA at Harvard than both high school grades and SAT/ACT, as quoted below:</p>
<p>“We have found that the best predictors at Harvard are Advanced Placement tests and International Baccalaureate Exams, closely followed by the College Board subject tests. High school grades are next in predictive power, followed by the SAT and ACT. The writing tests of the SAT and ACT have predictive power similar to the subject tests.”</p>
<p>I don’t think predictive power of college GPA is the reason Stanford does not require submitting AP scores and says that AP scores that are submitted rarely play a significant role in admissions. As I stated earlier, I expect it more relates to the widely varied academic backgrounds of different applicants, not wanting to put applicants who attend HSs that offer few/no AP classes or otherwise weaker academic opportunities at a disadvantage. </p>
<p>Also note that while predictive power of college GPA is interesting to discuss, that is not necessarily the driving force behind admissions decisions. Selective colleges do want students who can handle the coursework and are expected to graduate, but that does not mean admitting only the students who are likely to graduate with the highest possible college GPA, so nearly everyone in the entering class is expected to have a college GPA near 4.0, prior to effects of a curve or grade deflation. A college might instead favor the applicant who is likely to make the college a better place while attending and likely to do amazing things after graduating over others who are statistically more likely to graduate with a 3.8+ GPA. </p>
<p>What “you don’t have to attend every lecture” aspect? Hoo-boy. Yes, some college classes don’t take attendance. (Forgive me, but that sounds more attractive than it should be.) But I was referring more to the fact that college profs are in the college milieu, with all the academic, funding and other benefits to them, their interests and their work- which in turn should reflect back to the student experience. Two lectures by the teacher seems a little laid back, no? You’re a CS major, right? You can learn tons from peers, but in college wouldn’t you expect to get cutting edge from the profs?</p>
<p>Blowing off most of the class and then trying to cram the entire class in the week before the final exam is a common stereotype for which there are enough examples around that it should not be surprising.</p>
<p>That always seemed to me to be a less pleasant, less fulfilling, and less successful college experience than attending class, doing the readings, and doing the assignments and projects (starting early). But there are many college students who have party priorities and are not as academically motivated as one would expect for college students.</p>
<p>Not saying that’s what I want. But the way the class was set up was that you had to ask for help to get (a lot of) it. Basically there was no hand holding but a lot of resources.</p>
<p>CE major @lookingforward. The cutting edge research aspect is mostly outside class. It wasn’t a normal year; he was busy with some research.</p>
<p>@foolish
I won’t generalize, but there are a few cases where students earn high GPAs but score poorly on the SAT. For example, the valedictorian of my class scored a 1500 on the SAT (CR+M+W). Despite valedictorian status, the state flagship told her to take remedial courses.</p>
<p>That is very interesting. Some students score below their ability on standardized tests due to stress or medical issues, but if that is not the case, this example would be worth exploring. A student who doesn’t score above 500 on Math (which shouldn’t be much harder than the High School Algebra II final exam) yet gets A in all of her High School math classes would be unusual. Similarly if you can do well on your English papers and finals, but your grammar and writing are not college ready - that is unusual. If this is meant to imply that there are High Schools that have rewarded students with all As but did not challenge them sufficiently to improve their math fluency and writing/grammar, that is discouraging. It would certainly be a challenge to survive at many state flagship Universities if Algebra 2/Writing/Reading skills are not at that level - on the other hand my gut instinct tells me that a valedictorian might well coast on the SAT, and not take it seriously since they would be guaranteed admission due to their grades.</p>
<p>^ Sounds a little bit like how fellow classmates describe my school…however, we are brand new/still trying to work our way up.</p>
<p>So far, at my school,highest anyone has ever got on SAT was 1770. Person won this star student thing for having highest SAT score in their class(She was class of 2014). The Val and Sal scored around 1550-1600 I think.</p>
<p>I don’t know about ACT , but ACT scores could be higher. Also, over where I am at,they switched up the math. No longer is it Math 1, Math 2,Math 3,Math 4. They have this coordinate algebra type of thing going on …not much was truly taught since things happened that resulted in being crunched for time. </p>
<p>Looking back at school years, I can’t remember actually being taught grammar in it’s full details.All I remember is worksheet after worksheet and stupid “grammar” games.I also can remember being told to just write whatever and having to have 5 paragraphs always that had 3 to 5 sentences,and then I’m done.</p>