<p>TV4Caster,</p>
<p>The SAT is not an IQ test as the college board itself will tell you. Rather, it simply predicts the likelihood of success in the first year of college.</p>
<p>Could somebody please bring me a student with a 2400 SAT and a high GPA who did not get into his/her state school, who did not also have some sort of black mark on his/her record?</p>
<p>With UVA, you have to also include W&M, just because the number of strong students in VA far outstrips the size of even one big midwestern U. But, find me ten kids with 2400 and a top GPA who don’t have an affordable option, and I will introduce them to Mom2CollegeKids and Kelsmom and Cpt, and they will get them what they need for next year. ;)</p>
<p>I mean, who are these 2400 SAT kids you are talking about? I’m confused.</p>
<p>ETA: are you actually only talking about the state of Virginia? Becuase Virginia is a unique situation, collegewise. Maybe you should lobby your state, if it is just Virginia you mean. Though, budgetary concerns, I think, are driving policy there, right now.</p>
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<p>Those subsets are already there. At any top school, you’ll find the well-rounded kids and the pointy kids (pointy in a whole host of dimensions - writing, math, theater, leadership skills, whatever). You seem to think that because some particular pointy kid you know didn’t get in someplace, that no similar pointy kids are getting in.</p>
<p>Anyway, there really is no crisis of smart, capable, achieving students not getting into schools that will challenge them. The only “crisis” is that some kids applying to Harvard or MIT or Stanford have to “settle” for Tufts or Vanderbilt or Carnegie Mellon or U Michigan. That’s only a “crisis” among the people who are either unsophisticated enough to believe that the world revolves around a handful of schools and everything else is just sloppy seconds, or entitled enough to believe that their kids are soooo superior that they are owed admissions to certain universities.</p>
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<p>Since no one actually has access to the student’s app, the “theorizing” is a waste of time. For all you know, the essay WAS atrocious, or the teacher or counselor recs painted an unflattering picture. You’re the one assuming that the kid’s so great just based on stats. That’s not the real world of college admissions, and it’s not the real world of adult life either.</p>
<p>Or, maybe they’d been caught cheating, or had a Minor in Possession charge. High stat kids are not immune to these kinds of things.</p>
<p>Mucksdogs- That is why I keep saying SATs AND a high GPA. Also, I am not sure if you were reading the thread several pages ago but I had this argument with Poet back then about SATs and IQs. I have read several books (including one by the president of the Amer. Psych. Assoc- or whatever it is called) and found numerous online quotes and references by psychologists that say it is a close substitute for an IQ test. She says that she is a psychologist but hasn’t shown me any studies that refute what I wrote. I would also add that even if she could, the point wouldn’t be that it is wrong to think the SAT measures IQ; simply that lots of psychologists think it does, while some apparently might not.</p>
<p>TV4caster, Now that I understand you are from Virginia, I see what you are trying to talk about.</p>
<p>There are very few states, however, where an instate kid is going to face what the kids face in your state. it’s not a systemic problem, but it is an issue in virginia.</p>
<p>I refuse the validity of the “objective” label for the SAT, given the fact that socioeconomic and racial factors are diffed in the test in such a way that URM’s score lower on easier, socially normed in questions, even when they score well on the more difficult, non-normed problems. The SAT measures racial and economic differences, for sure, and any test that does that so consistently is not an objective measure. I put in a cite earlier in the thread and I’m not going back to retrieve the link.</p>
<p>The SAT was originally developed from military IQ tests, but has been changed significantly, over time. Show me a cite, besides the one you did, which warns that it is not really accurate, and then we will talk. The cite must deal with the most recent SAT, and not the ones before 04. </p>
<p>All that said, Virginia is a state that is tough on it’s high stat kids.</p>
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<p>I basically said the same thing earlier, but he didn’t address it.</p>
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<p>Do you know of any good state school which does not have a place for plenty of “super high achieving kids who also have super high GPA’s?” Those kinds of kids are present at every state school (even UVA)! Just because the odd kid with perfect stats who would *seem *to be a perfect candidate for a school doesn’t get in, does NOT mean that there are not numerous other “perfect candidates” who DID.</p>
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<p>I never said there wasn’t a place for them, or even that there weren’t a significant number of them. I am talking about, as you said, about the “odd kid who didn’t get in”. </p>
<p>And like I said before, this isn’t about someone I know, or anything personal. I just found in reading the threads after decisions were announced that there were an awful lot of what seemed like arbitrary decisions; even acknowledging that a “holistic” review is subjective.</p>
<p>I removed my “are you serious” comment because, upon second reading, it seemed an over-reaction to your statement. Sorry I didn’t get the edit in before you quoted me. Actually, I see it’s still there, so I guess I didn’t edit it before the time ran out :(</p>
<p>the OP is from VA.</p>
<p>I think this explains a lot about what they are trying to say. The instate system there IS a tough one, and I could see the point, if it were just about that state, which is having some issues, imho, with figuring out how to get a good balance of OOS and instate right now.</p>
<p>fwiw.</p>
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<p>I gave you several and, unless I missed it, you quoted a warning not from one of the studies, but from a different graph that I linked to.</p>
<p>"Do you know of any good state school which does not have a place for plenty of “super high achieving kids who also have super high GPA’s?” Those kinds of kids are present at every state school (even UVA)! "</p>
<p>Well, to be fair, U of I can be harsh on high-GPA/high-stat students, particularly from the North Shore (since they have more than enough Chicago area students to go around) and particularly if they perceive that the kid may be using U of I as a backup. There are certainly lots of anecdotes about very smart kids not getting into U of I. I don’t really have a baseline to compare it to U VA, though.</p>
<p>No problem Nrdsb. If I had a personal stake in this I might have been a tiny bit mad, but since I do not, I am fine with the discourse so far. I like a good philosophical debate and so far this is just what I was hoping for.</p>
<p>No, it’s true. U of I can be pretty brutal around the northern suburbs, just as UVA is tough on the NOVA kids. But, I think most of those UofI kids, who don’t get in, are full pay, anyway, and head off to UW or IU, or some of those other eliteU’s.</p>
<p>Nova has UNC, which only admits 18% OOS.</p>
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<p>Look, the Steel quote is from 1999. I don’t know what other cites you gave. I see no cites since the test was changed in 2005.</p>
<p>That said, I really don’t appreciate the back-channel communication and then the front channel thing you just did here.</p>
<p>As I said to you in answer to your PM, yes there are socio-economic issues with IQ tests, which, by the way, I also said in a post earlier in the thread.</p>
<p>there is nothing you have said which makes me believe the 05 tests are IQ tests, and nobody I can find who says they are either. I don’t have to prove a “negative.”</p>
<p>Good luck to you and your daughter.</p>
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<p>The PM was about a specific case and then about if there were differences in IQ tests among various groups. I thought this was about the general relation of the SAT to IQ and that since I was asked a direct question that we never addressed in our PMs I thought I was supposed to address it here. Sorry if you were offended by that.</p>
<p>It is what it is, as they say. Let’s move on. :)</p>
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<p>Texas public universities have automatic admissions for class rank, or class rank and test scores, for Texas residents taking the college prep curriculum in Texas public high schools. However, automatic admission to the university may not necessarily mean admission to a particular division if the division is more popular (e.g. engineering at Austin).</p>
<p>The Alabama campuses at Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Huntsville have automatic merit scholarships based on high school GPA and test scores. Presumably, those merit scholarships come with admission offers.</p>
<p>The California State University system has a GPA and test score formula for minimum freshman admissions eligibility for the system. A student who meets the minimum eligibility standard can count on a non-impacted campus and major as an admissions safety. However, most campuses have at least some impacted majors that have higher standards than the system minimums (and the higher standards may not be known until after the admissions cycle).</p>
<p>But the most highly selective universities have lots of applicants who are near maximum possible in GPA (and/or rank) and test scores, so they look to other criteria to differentiate them. Of course, holistic criteria also serve to make the admissions process more opaque, which can serve the universities’ interests. For example, with an opaque holistic admissions process, they can more easily dodge the question of how big the legacy preferences are, to minimize offending both the donating alumni who would like to see a large legacy preference and everyone else who would perceive a large legacy preference as being (more) unfair to them. They could also play the “Tufts syndrome” acceptance and yield percentage game if they so choose.</p>
<p>A couple of people have mentioned the Tufts Syndrome. What is that?</p>