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...the Posse Foundation selects about 600 students a year, from eight different cities. They are grouped into posses of 10 students from the same city and go together to an elite college; about 40 colleges now participate in the program.</p>
<p>Most Posse Scholars would not have qualified for their colleges by the normal criteria. Posse Scholars median combined SAT score is only 1056, while the median combined score at the colleges Posse students attend varies from 1210 to 1475. Nevertheless, they succeed.
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Maybe one reason that Posse students of color do well is that the Posse brand identity is so strong. The buzz around the school is that these Posse kids are cool and smart, said Carlos Salcedo, a Brandeis Posse scholar who is now a vice president in equity derivative sales at Barclays. Perhaps students who are reminded all day that they are Posse scholars find it is a stereotype that lifts them.
<p>What a great idea- and it sure seems to have had a positive outcome for most, too. It goes to show that stats just aren’t everything when it comes to success at college.</p>
<p>IMO Most of the success of the program is due to the support structure in place for the Posse students. In some ways it’s similar to the extra support in place for athletes at large DI schools - mentors, special study groups, enforced study times. I think if some of those structures were in place for the general student population you would see similar graduation success across the student body.</p>
<p>It’s a great program, but I have no doubt that there are literally thousands of low-testing ORM’s from disadvantaged backgrounds who would do equally as well as such colleges if given the chance. That is just the nature of the SAT. It tends to favor the wealthy, particularly the CR.</p>
<p>I think the point is, these kids may or may not succeed, based on their low SATs. But their chances of success are greatly improved if they have a peer group and positive reinforcement, so they don’t feel like minnows in an extremely large, white pond. :)</p>
<p>Yeah, I understand the point, but as few journalists understand because they tend to be math-challenged, correlation is not causation (AP Stats). Nevertheless, standardized testing cannot measure drive/will to succeed. A rigorous application and interview program can move in that direction. Even an ORM from the other side of the tracks is a fish out of water in a private NE college, where 65% are full pay.</p>
<p>Thus, my point: there are literally thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of disadvantaged, low-performing test takers who could do well in selective colleges if given the chance.</p>
<p>Correlation is not causation, but using a time-ordered relationship researchers and people who develop interventions can draw causal hypotheses. Of course extra help and mentorship would help everyone. That’s not the point. The rich kids in northeastern colleges have had this extra mentorship their entire lives.</p>
<p>Besides, kids “from the other side of the tracks” aren’t overrepresented minorities. “underrepresented minority” doesn’t just mean racially; it also refers to socioeconomic status and disability status as well. Poor white kids can be just as at risk as black and Hispanic kids (and possibly more, if the black or Hispanic kid is sufficiently wealthy). And the article doesn’t say anything about race; it just says that the kids wouldn’t have had the SAT scores to succeed initially. That happens to a lot of poor white kids or white kids with disabilities who don’t have the money and/or support to perform as well on the SAT.</p>
<p>I would LOVE to work for this program. Especially as one of the staff members that meets with the students to encourage them to succeed. This is such an excellent program, and the stories of the kids supporting each other makes me want to cry.</p>
<p>“University of Wisconsin-Madison was in 2002 the first major public research institution to launch this unique program. Approximately 155 merit scholarships have been awarded thus far.”</p>
<p>This article in no way supports the author’s contention that SAT scores are not correlated with academic ability and certainly not her claim they are “malignant”. In fact it supports the thesis that the best students also have high SAT scores.</p>
<p>The participants in this program went through a very competitive and exhaustive selection process intended to find those students in this population who would be most likely to succeed in college and it appears they did indeed select the right students based on their rates of college graduation.</p>
<p>Now, let us take a look at their SAT scores not in relation to those of the students who are normally accepted at these schools but with the demographic of the people competing for a place in the program. The average SAT score for POSSE students was reported as 1056/1600. That would put them at about the mean or 50th percentile for Asian students and about 30 points above the mean or about the 55th percentile for White students which is not a large difference. However, it is about 200 points above the mean for Black students and would place them well above the 90th percentile for Black SAT takers.</p>
<p>The conclusion I drew was that the students who were judged to be most ready for college through an exhaustive evaluation process also happened to be among the highest scorers on the SAT of the students being evaluated.</p>
<p>Some more data to add to that figure of how many slots are ACTUALLY up for grabs in Ivy-type universities. Now we know that there are:
slots for alumni children
slots for athletes
slots for internationals
slots for development admits
and apparently entire BLOCKS of slots set aside for kids from programs like this.
Doesn’t Middlebury only have 2000 students? If there are only 500 in each class and 30 percent go to alums, that leaves only 350-ish for all the other applicants. Having an entire block of ten slots that are set aside for people who don’t have to go through regular admissions channels seems devious – and, as I said, I’d like to know how many other programs apparently have blocks of seats set aside for them.</p>
<p>It’s a great program – I’m actually very familiar with it from the posse members at Grinnell – but I really doubt it has anything to do with SATs. These students succeed because of the rigorous selection process and huge support structure. It shows that there are other factors besides SAT that affect college success, but the author of this article is really stretching it by saying that SATs are “malignant”.</p>
<p>I only skimmed the earlier posts, so I don’t know whether any of the other posters pointed out that Posse is not limited to URM or poor ORM studnets. Posse screens for leadership; a signif number of Posse Scholars are middle-class and upper middle-class White students - - that’s one reason some schools refuse to participate in Posse (the schools refuse to provide $$ to students who don’t qualify for need-based aid).</p>
<p>This is what the “statistics” would like us to believe. The term statistics is bracketed because one often quoted source is none other than the self-reported data at the College Board. The same data that tell us that the 40 percent of all test takers have a GPA higher than a B. The reality is that most students have no idea of the income level of their parents. But, that is no really relevant. </p>
<p>It is a given that students from lower SES will not perform as well on standardized tests. However, that does not mean the SAT favors the wealthy. It simply measures the differences caused by the unequal education provided by our public system. It would take a miracle for the SAT to report different symptoms! </p>
<p>And, to take a different tack, one might also see that the SAT provides opportunities to lower SES students to overcome their own background. A score that is clearly superior to the(lower) expectations placed on lower SES or minority students might become the strongest attribute of an application. </p>
<p>There are schools with plenty of straight A students and plenty of AP classes that cannot bring their students to break 500 on each part of the SAT. The GPA and ranking is meaningless. A SAT that is 200 to 400 points above the school average on the other hand …</p>
<p>Actually, independent studies of the SAT not conducted by the College Board, but by researchers, have shown that SAT scores are correlated with income. Besides, I think it’s incorrect to say that students have “no idea” of their parents’ income level. They may not know exact numbers, but most high school students could give a somewhat accurate range of income - certainly within $20,000 - that their parents make. That’s what the CB asks for. Even if they are off by $40,000, though, that wouldn’t hurt the results so much. No child thinks their parents make $160,000 when they really make $60,000, or thinks that their parents make $40,000 when they really make $100,000.</p>
<p>The R-squared in this is .95. That is ridiculous. That means 95% of the variation in SAT average scores is based upon family income.</p>
<p>In fact, income is correlated with standardized test scores throughout all of life, from early development through to SATs.</p>
<p>However, that does not mean the SAT favors the wealthy. It simply measures the differences caused by the unequal education provided by our public system.</p>
<p>By definition, that means it favors the wealthy, since most of the inequalities make the disadvantages fall squarely on the shoulders of the poorest children.</p>
<p>Of course, there is a distinction between (a) the SAT favors the wealthy, and (b) the SAT measures something (e.g. quality of K-12 schools attended) that favors the wealthy. (It is theoretically possible for either alone or both to be true.)</p>
<p>“The buzz around the school is that these Posse kids are cool and smart,” said Carlos Salcedo, a Brandeis Posse scholar </p>
<p>Seems to me the the Posse kids would be stigmatized on campus, by the acknowledgement that this is a group of kids with sub-par academic credentials.</p>