<p>What should really matter in admissions? I am sure there are many different opinions, and that there is no "right" answer. So, having said that, should there be a minimum standard that automatically qualifies a candidate to a state school?</p>
<p>I think most people would agree that if two candidates are otherwise equal, that factors like ECs, recs, etc should break the tie. But, if we totally discount race, legacy status, etc from the process, an interesting question arises.</p>
<p>Should a student with say a 1900 SAT and 3.7 GPA get into a top school over someone from the same school with a 2100 and 4.0 when course rigor is the same? In other words, should there be a minimum standard that gets someone accepted? I understand the need for a "holistic" approach to some extent, but I also think an exceptionally bright child should not be disadvantaged because they were shy and didn't participate in anything, or didn't have good people skills and therefore didn't get good recommendations, or maybe had to go home everyday to babysit a sibling and couldn't participate. </p>
<p>The example I brought up was what if the next Stephen Hawking applied to a top school with a 4.0 and fantastic SATs; shouldn't he or she be accepted despite never having done anything else? Nowdays they probably wouldn't stand a chance. </p>
<p>There pretty much is a minimum “standard.” If you are unhooked and your test scores and grades are below the schools median and you aren’t in the top 10%, you can pretty much consider yourself rejected from a highly selective school.</p>
<p>Same goes for state schools. They don’t have enough time to carefully evaluate every part of tens of thousands of applications. </p>
<p>And why shouldn’t the exceptionally bright child you mentioned not be disadvantaged? He/she would need to learn how to get along with people and interact with others. Otherwise he/she will find it very hard to get any kind of job after graduating college. Why do you think job interviews exist? And there are tons of applicants who have part time jobs and baby sit their siblings yet still find time to participate in EC activities including some of my friends. Its all about managing your time well. </p>
<p>And if the next “Stephen Hawing” applied to a top school, what makes you say he/she wouldn’t have done EC activities? Because he has a 4.0 and top SAT scores? No. And FYI when Stephen Hawking was studying at Oxford and was orally evaluated, his examiners admitted Hawking’s was more intelligent than any of them. And given his accomplishments, something tells me that if he was a high school student now, he wouldn’t have too much trouble coming up with scientific theories and projects that would win him recognition and get him into schools like MIT.</p>
<p>Kids without the most rigorous classes are not even considered at top schools. Schools do have standards. Some, like many state schools are totally numbers driven. When admissions are holistic, it doesn’t mean less qualified students slip in.</p>
<p>If test scores plus GPA equaled success in college and in life, you might have an argument. Most American universities do not believe you can bottom line the potential of students. Holistic evaluation often means recognizing exceptional accomplishments in other areas and even valuing them over another a kid whose only accomplishment was earning all A’s. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.</p>
<p>But how does a university evaluate students from different sending schools with vastly different honors/AP/IB offerings, vastly different grading policies, vastly different home cultures, vastly different economic opportunities? How does one factor which kids were grinds to get grades, skipping all else? How does one factor which kids matured a little later or had deaths to deal with or were uprooted and moved to a new country or…? </p>
<p>Whether we agree or not that some of these factors should be considered, most universities find this information noteworthy. This can be disconcerting to those who want a defined number to strive for. But we see the institutions who use holistic methods are quite happy with the students they choose this way.</p>
<p>“If test scores plus GPA equaled success in college and in life, you might have an argument.”</p>
<p>But they do! Study after study has proven that they are the two best predictors of college success. I recently read an admissions book by a former AO named Steinberg or something like that which referenced all the studies. </p>
<p>"But how does a university evaluate students from different sending schools with vastly different honors/AP/IB offerings, vastly different grading policies, vastly different home cultures, vastly different economic opportunities? How does one factor which kids were grinds to get grades, skipping all else? How does one factor which kids matured a little later or had deaths to deal with or were uprooted and moved to a new country or…? "</p>
<p>I completely agree with you! I am not arguing for one or the other. I totally see a place for holistic reviews for all the reasons you mentioned. I do however think there could also be a way to combine the subjective holistic approach with objective measures in extreme cases of demonstrated intellect.</p>
<p>This is a straw man argument for most highly selective schools. It’s test scores, grades and rigor to clear the first bar, then holistic to thin the herd. It’s not an either/or proposition.</p>
<p>In some ways, building a college class is similar to hiring a crew for a cruise ship. There would be a minimum set of standards for education and how one presents oneself in their application/interview. BUT, the ship doesn’t need hundreds of Captains. Each crew member will bring a unique set of skills that will all fit together to make the cruise ship work. A college-based example will be in the choice of a major. If someone with the minimum (even if high-level minimum) is applying to a LAC, but wants to major in Mathematics or Biology, they would have a leg up on the multitudes of non-science/math applicants because at that moment, the school might need more math majors.</p>
<p>I would also like to add that I am looking at this from a purely theoretical view since my D has not been rejected anywhere, and I believe that is in part because a holistic process favors her. </p>
<p>Let me give a more reasonable example than the Hawking hypothetical I posted earlier. Say you have a student who is fantastic at math and scores an 780+ with all As at a hard HS who wants to be a theoretical physicist but writes competently, just without passion. Another student has much lower scores and mainly As but is a terrific writer. Is it fair that the latter student gets the acceptance? </p>
<p>It may not be possible, but I would like to see a system where a holistic approach is used to account for differences in HSs, rigor, etc, but where things like ECs or essays are only used to break ties among relatively equal applicants. JMO</p>
First I would say that there is a difference between “exceptionally bright” and “genius”. A lot of people want to believe that their exceptionally bright children are geniuses, but in reality most of them aren’t. Nothing wrong with that. But the geniuses do tend to catch the eye of their teachers along the way through K-12. Teachers who will likely be there to advocate for them with colleges. Even the exceptionally bright tend to catch some interest and teachers and other mentors in their lives will offer them opportunities to do or get involved with things. So it’s likely that they will have EC’s to report.</p>
There is also one ugly aspect of the admission game: Tufts syndrome. The school needs to manage/protect its yield so that their admission rate would be lower. (If they can afford to send out as few acceptance letters as they can, the admission rate will be lower.) This is more likely applicable to a small top college than a large state university.</p>
<p>In recent years, there is another ugly aspect of the admission game: For public colleges which are stressed financially, they may recruit more OOS students because they pay more. For top privates, they may want to accept more international students who are from wealthy families in their country. It would be even better if these students happen to belong to an ethnic group being considered (or maybe a more proper word should be: disguised) as URMs.</p>
<p>No, I think the former student would get accepted in almost all cases over the latter student. He/she would most likely apply to a science/math focuses school/program where essays have less weighting. In any case, low test scores can effectively kill your application, regardless of anything else (unless you have a hook).</p>
<p>A US university/college is a unique institution. Academics is not all that matters. Take a look on TV and see what some of the most widely publicised aspects of these universities are. Some of the most well known schools are not the ivies among our young people but the top sports school. So right there you need a population of athletes at a level that when you throw in academic rigours is going to result in a list too small to field a competitive team. Do remember that the ivy league is so designated because it is a SPORTS league.</p>
<p>That is only one example that everyone understands. You also want the kind of crowd to give those sports teams an audience. You want some people that reflect the diversity of this country so that you don’t have a bunch of white chicks and dudes pontificating about the situation of people of color. The whole idea of a university community is one that opens up a variety of ideas. You need a certain m/f balance at coed schools or it affects the admissions and the quality of the whole school. You want some international students. You want people who are active in community things from music to outreach to other activiites. On top of this you have money constraints and yet you want students that represent a spectrum of economic backgrounds. </p>
<p>Most schools use a matrix of test scores, grades, difficulty of courses, recommendations, essays, and extracurricular activities in putting together a class. The more selective a school, the more it can tailor its wish list.</p>
<p>Don’t fool yourself that academics don’t matter. Look at those test score ranges and the gpas of those kids overall at the selective school. Plus most of those kids have done things outside of their normal curriculum. The schools keep an eye on those numbers too, because their selectivity ratings do affect a school’s reputation. </p>
<p>I do not believe that Tuft’s syndrome is as widespread as reputed. Every single year for the last 12 years I have seen the accepted lists of the top kids of a number of schools and though there are some surprise rejections, the most desired students tend to have the biggest lists of accepts. If ever there were kids that were going to be accepted to HYP, there is that group of kids who are obvious to any one that they have the greatest chances in that year’s crop of kids, and those are the ones that seem to get the Tufts and WUSL acceptances too. However, demonstrated interest has become an important issue in many schools, and kids who do not show they love some of those smaller schools who want to keep those high rankings or move higher are going to be looking for more than the average amount of love from a certain core group of applicants that are difficult to distinguish from each other on paper.</p>
<p>Why is it any more fair that the first student gets in? You’ve betrayed your bias - you believe that “prowess at math” is more important than “being a terrific writer.”</p>
<p>tv4caster - I agree with you because of our own situation. My S is very bright - 2300, 4.0 at a very competitive hs. But he’s very shy and doesn’t get involved in a lot of ec’s. He should have been captain of his athletic team this year that he spent 4 years with, but he was passed over for someone more outgoing who was only there for 2. He spends a lot of his time doing things that aren’t really considered ec’s, like playing online computer games and learning all about them - after all, he’s looking at being a comp. sci. major and wants to learn game design. He’s also a creative writer with a head for math and science.</p>
<p>I wonder if he will be shut out of some of his top choices (we’re still waiting on decisions) because he will look “weak” to some of the schools. He’s actually a really good kid, but they won’t know that, even after a 1/2 hour interview. Can you really know someone after that short of a time? Will they know that he never lies, never curses, and has deep philosophical thoughts on life? Or will they just see that he’s smart, his teachers liked him, but he didn’t do much else? Is he a lesser candidate because he didn’t have a long list of awards and involvements when he’s probably a nicer kid than most teenagers you’ll meet? There’s potential in him to be a great leader - he’s intelligent, fair and well-liked - he just doesn’t know it yet.</p>
<p>What about a kid like that? We’re keeping our fingers crossed that they see his quiet potential too.</p>
<p>there is a certain “feel” on each campus. This comes from the delicate business of making up a “class.” Making up a “class” is different than making up a list of those with the top math scores. But, there is always a cut off beneath which schools do not go. Each school is different in this way.</p>
<p>You mentioned, above, that the best predictors of college success are the standardized test scores and the GPA. What you fail to take into account is that the best predictor of success in life is not necessarily college success.</p>
<p>Success in class is one predictor of being good in the laboratory. Absolutely. But, the list of those who have been successful with a standard college degree from a state school is very long.</p>
<p>In the end, you believe the best predictor of success is your SAT score? Some of us happen to know, not that college is not important, that one of the biggest predictors of success is who you know and who your parents know and how you grew up. This is why the legacy admits. Harvard is a school, but without the network, that is ALL Harvard is. there is a lot more to why Dartmouth feels different than Yale, and Yale feels different than UVA, and why UNC feels different than Berkely and they all feel different than Cal Tech or MIT than SAT scores and GPA’s. Successful people, the gateway into career success, are not going to choose a Harvard grad over their kid’s best freinds they’ve known their entire life who went to NYU, no matter how much people want them to do so.</p>
<p>Universities want different kids for different reasons. Whether or not you think this is how it “should” be or not is really immaterial. As the admissions people at the top schools, and i’m not just talking top ten, will tell you, they can accept more than one class of qualified kids from any group of applications, which is why nobody is holding a big meeting on how admisstions “need to be changed.” they don’t.</p>
<p>^^^^^His teachers and guidance counselor will (hopefully) know all this when they write recommendations, and when he writes his essays, he will be able to explain how he spends his spare time - whether learning how to program (and makng up plots for computer games), reading widely and reflecting on what he has read, or entertaining friends and family with his writing.</p>
<p>Megan, my middle son is like that and has come into his own at college. And yes, there were selective schools that accepted him despite lack of leadership roles and a lack lustre gpa. But it did keep him out of the most selective schools such as HPY. He is, however, in good position for graduate or professional school at any of those.</p>
<p>The subjective elements of college applications are usually the discriminating factor for top schools. Kids get get private tutors or study guides to boost SAT scores, so many kids have much higher SAT scores today than in past years. If the school had 100 kids with perfect SAT scores and 4.0 GPAs, but only space for 50 kids, they go to the ECs, essays, and letters of recommendation. My own D had decent scores, top 5% class rank, and fantastic ECs- leadership in a variety of activities, many hours of real community service. She was accepted to all of the schools that she applied to, with merit aid at all of them.</p>
<p>I know many other kids with higher scores, and very little ECs who were rejected from similar schools. The parents of these kids couldn’t understand why Johnny didn’t get into a top school, “but, he had an 800 in his Math SAT…” So did every other kid who applied to MIT.</p>