Overexaggerated Importance?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Advocating the importance of standardized tests has become quite politically incorrect, and elicits rather negative sentiments from many folks. But, the fact that we don’t like it being important does not make it go away. </p>

<p>Even if people don’t WANT to believe that some some well known, well respected, and highly sought after employers are asking for SAT scores for all of their fresh college grads, you need to think about the internship issues. By now we all know that good internships help tremendously when the kids are looking for their first job out of college. Many companies hiring interns, to the best of my knowledge, are asking for SAT scores. So, one way or the other, SAT scores do matter beyond just the college admission cycle. Just how much longer after the admission cycle depends on what you want to do and which companies you are applying to.</p>

<p>So, as parents, we can tell ourselves and our kids that standardized scores should not matter that much, and kids can just ignore and walk away from companies that are crazy enough to ask for the scores. But, blaming the messenger for brining this reality to the attention of others and wishing it go away does not make it go away, nor does it do any service to the kids on this board we are trying to help. They are mature enough. They can do whatever they chose to do with the facts, but giving them the facts (however widely or narrowly applicable, that, too, depends on the kids outlook and future plans) is a good thing: at least they can make an informed decision.</p>

<p>Me? When I first started to hear that SAT scores cast a long shadow, I was dismayed for S2, for whom this is a weakness. After I overcame the initial revulsion about this issue, I decided to help him as best as I could so that he will have as rich a set of options available to him as he can possibly have going forward - so that his disadvantage is as narrowly confined as it could be. It does not matter how much I think this is crazy and unfair. It is what it is. </p>

<p>So, I decided to help him as best as I could. Having discovered that the group sessions are not the right format for him, I decided to take the plunge and pay a lot of money for private tutoring (based on research I have done - the consensus seems to be that group sessions can be very ineffective, especially for kids with uneven scores like my S2’). When he becomes a CEO, he can finally fight back the kind of people like his brother who are test taking monsters :wink: and forbid any HR person to ask job candidate of their SAT scores, but till then he will have to play by the rule others lay down for him.</p>

<p>If there is a chance that standardized tests can affect more than just the admission cycle, AND there is an ample evidence that the tests are an important part of the admission decisions, then it is a wise move to do what can be done to improve them, while there is still time to do it. Simply telling students that it’s not really that important because of such and such anecdotal stories of someone with 550 getting into a top college is irresponsible. None of us would build our retirement plan around the odds or winning lotteries or getting a large inheritance from a long lost rich uncle, would we???</p>

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<p>je<em>ne</em>sais_quoi, my daughter submitted ACT only where she could, so the lack of SAT submission wasn’t a factor in her acceptances. She was accepted into all of her “reach” category schools except for one Ivy - which I had considered impossible and refused to pay the application fee, so no surprise there – but my d. was waitlisted at two schools she considered to be matches, including one where her ACT scores were solidly mid-range. </p>

<p>I think this really just illustrates that the scores are NOT the deciding factor. They are a single factor, but not the most important factor, and rarely a deciding factor at competitive colleges. The “range” of acceptable scores is just that – a range in which all students with such scores will be considered. An unusually high set of scores within an applicant pool will boost the chances of an otherwise unremarkable or undistinguished applicant. (By “undistinguished” I mean in comparison with other applicants – at Wellesley or similar schools, almost all of the applicants have excellent grades and an array of EC’s and accomplishments). Similarly, an unusually low set of scores will hurt the applicant whose accomplishments might otherwise be considered remarkable enough to win admission. </p>

<p>I imagine myself as a fly on the wall of an admissions committee room. There is a group of officers sitting around the table, and as they come to each applicant someone is asked to summarize that student’s credentials in a few words. In that setting, I would NOT want to be the student who is described as, “well, she has really great test scores and is her class valedictorian”. I’d rather be the student who is described in terms of her special talents or accomplishments, even if the description is accompanied by some hesitation about test scores or uneven academic performance. (My daughter was surprised to learn that her Barnard roommate had a “D” on her high school record – the young woman was an English major who submitted a portfolio of her poetry along with her application, and my guess is that the poetry was pretty good). </p>

<p>I don’t know why my daughter got accepted over others with higher test scores who were waitlisted or rejected… but I do know exactly what the admissions officers would have said about her, pro and con, in such an imagined setting. </p>

<p>What CC’ers forget is that 1900 on an SAT is a GOOD score. It is not an amazing score, but a kid who can score 1900+ is perfectly capable of college level work at the most selective colleges, IF that kid is motivated and disciplined. The college ad coms know that, and they also know that many but not all students receive extensive test prep, so that test scores don’t really tell the whole story. So YES they like high scores, but no… they are not dazzled by them.</p>

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<p>For those parents who are “helping” their kids by arranging extensive test prep tailored to their needs:</p>

<p>I think you are just proving that the tests are relatively meaningless, used more to sort the haves from have-nots than as a measure of aptitude or potential. The kid who scores 1800 and then has a lot of test prep and scores 2100 on a subsequent test isn’t any smarter or more capable than the kid who scored 1900 without any test prep.</p>

<p>I personally felt it was more important that my kids develop life skills than test-taking skills. The test scores, in my view, are what they are. If there was a short-term, specific goal that could be met with a certain test score, I’d probably encourage the test prep if my kid were clearly in reach. For example, if I knew that a kid would be almost certain to earn a scholarship at a given school with an SAT score of 2100, and the kid had scored 2050 on the first attempt – I might want to see a repeat effort. </p>

<p>But I am quite sure that the time my daughter spent in high school on life was a far better use of her time than test prep. If there are employers who are dumb enough to reject a person with her strong organizational skills, people skills, and initiative, in favor of someone with a higher test score… that’s too bad for those employers. There are plenty of others who will be very happy to hire her, and my guess is that those employers will be offering positions far more suited to her abilities in any case.</p>

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Possibly because they overestimate the impact of their scores when targeting colleges and when preparing their applications. In other words, they may assume that they can easily get into a college based on scores, when the reality is that they are a poor fit for one reason or another; or they may be a good fit but in their over-confidence submit a weak application that gets lost in the shuffle.</p>

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<p>Well, the application may often be the same one that earns admission at a different school. I think the question of fit comes in here. And if a school can be someone’s Prince Charming, maybe that school doesn’t want to be the safety, the Baxter, the also-ran.</p>

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<p>Just to give it some context, especially after seeing je<em>ne</em>sais_quoi’s daughter’s stats, my daughter (HS class of 2009) also applied to Wellesley. She did not take the SAT - we live in the midwest and she took the ACT and her highest score was 28, which is below their median of 30. GPA was 3.9 unweighted, 4.2 weighted. I think her ECs were interesting and she was VERY involved, for many, many years in all of them. Attended a large urban public hs in the midwest that doesn’t send many kids to out of state colleges (many do not even attend college). She was waitlisted, and then offered a spot this summer. She is pretty much full-need financially. She is now a freshman at Wellesley and loves it. The poster above, kantianethicist, who described the Wellesley student as driven, type A overscheduled who want to give back described my daughter perfectly. She is ecstatic to be surrounded by students who are like her.</p>

<p>So, I say give it a shot!</p>

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<p>I’d rather that they make the decision on the basis of her work history and references or information from former employers, academic qualifications (accomplishments, not test scores), and their impressions based on an interview. </p>

<p>To me… making the decision based on a standardized test score IS the same as making a race or gender based decision. After all, everyone knows that test scores correlate highly with level of family wealth, that blacks and hispanics tend to do poorly as compared to whites on such tests, and that women generally do not do as well as men on standardized tests, though they tend to out-perform men academically. So why ask the test score? For some employers it provides an easy way to exclude minority candidates, especially if trying to screen out blacks and hispanics. Its a good way to discredit the Sonia Sotomayer’s of the world … after all, we know her SAT’s weren’t all that good*, so what that she was #1 in her class at Princeton? (See [Today’s</a> Workplace Lieutenant Sotomayor?](<a href=“http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2009/07/28/lieutenant-sotomayor/]Today’s”>http://www.todaysworkplace.org/2009/07/28/lieutenant-sotomayor/), SAT’s “not on par with” peers)</p>

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<p>Sorry Calmom, but racial discrimination in hiring decisions is much more pernicious in companies which do not have mutliple datapoint, holistic assessments. Those datapoints may or may not include standardized test scores- but companies which rely on “judgement”, “fit” and “this is someone I’d like to work with” have atrocious records regarding the hiring of racial minorities. They may hire women- but their senior ranks are comprised of white men except for their “diversity officer”.</p>

<p>Nobody makes a hiring decision based on a test score. Nobody. But to state that using the score as one among the other 19 factors is somehow anti-minority or anti-female just flies in the face of facts. The 20 criteria hold up better as a way to create a meritocracy than the zero criterion “I like this resume and this person would fit here” which is the assessment model in use in WAAAY too many organizations. It is usually results in a highly discriminatory environment. SAT’s have their flaws- and believe me, I’ve sat through dozens of sessions with statisticians and sociologists and psychologists and psychometricians and learned what those flaws are. But in the absence of any objective measurements you are left with hiring your boss’s idiot nephew and the CEO’s frat brothers-- and surprise surprise- a decade later, you still have no women in senior management and still have no African American employees above the rank of manager.</p>

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I think any kid who submits “the same” application to multiple colleges (other than absolute safeties) – is on the wrong track right there. My daughter submitted 10 DIFFERENT applications to 12 colleges, she was accepted at 9. (Three were UC’s that have to be all done with a single form - if the UC system allowed separate applications, my guess is that she would have differentiated those as well).</p>

<p>Yes, she did recycle the same “main” essay for most of them, though it went through several different reincarnations to meet slightly different framing of essay prompts or different word count limits. And of course the demographic info was the same for each. But each college had one or more short-answer or supplemental essay questions, and my daughter looked at each in turn as a separate task. </p>

<p>So basically I take your observation as further evidence that an individualized approach is helpful. Every application submitted to a college that is not tailored in some way to that specific college is a missed opportunity.</p>

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<p>Well, how about keeping the other 19 race-neutral criteria and ditching the one that is known to be income and race disparate? How does it help the employer make a fair decision to know that the hispanic Princeton valedictorian had weak SAT scores?</p>

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<p>I am very intrigued by caldaugher’s experience, which in some ways flies in the face of CC conventional wisdom.
Calmom, did the top rated college counselor who predicted rejection for your daughter at Barnard ever follow up with after acceptance? Did s/he learn (or concede learning something new) from your daughter’s experience, or was it dismissed as a fluke?</p>

<p>I am delighted that your daughter had such a positive experience and while YMMV of course applies here, I think there IS something to be learned.</p>

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<p>Calmom, why do you think you know what employers consider weak or not? How do you know the context in which a candidates profile is evaluated? Doesn’t the hispanic valedictorian from the College of New Rochelle or Suffolk University get to have his or her candidacy evaluated alongside that of the valedictorian from Princeton? And shouldn’t a kid with “high” (however you want to define it) SAT’s from an underprivileged home, crappy high school, and no-name college get to compete with privileged kids? Toss out SAT scores as one of the criteria and you’re also tossing out grads from anything but the elite universities-- at least the scores level the playing field.</p>

<p>I read a fascinating study last year about bar passage rates among different demographic groups. Correlation does not imply causation, etc. but at the end of the day… surely you wouldn’t suggest that law firms are not allowed to use bar admittance as a reasonable employment criterion??? Don’t clients have an expectation that their attorney has actually been admitted to the bar in their state??? But since the passing rates vary among different groups— ??? Maybe law firms should toss bar admittance as one of their criteria and just rely on the resume, organizational skills, undergrad GPA, and those other things that don’t offend you???</p>

<p>Do you get irritated that law firms ask graduating law students their LSAT scores, given that the LSAT’s don’t actually measure knowledge of the law???</p>

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<p>It’s not that I don’t WANT to believe it, in fact it’s not even that I don’t believe it. I’ve never been asked this in an interview for an engineering job, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen somewhere.</p>

<p>Regardless of whether employers ask it or not, IMHO it is a stupid thing to ask someone in a job interview - except possibly a new graduate or intern where you can’t actually ask anything pertinent to the job.</p>

<p>And I have never scored below 95%ile on any standardized test - GRE, GMAT, PSAT or SAT.</p>

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<p>calmom,</p>

<p>Your post (#63) is the approach we’ve taken. My daughter will get into the college where her SAT is acceptable, but, I hope, where they see that there is so much more to her. If they don’t, then she’ll go somewhere else. I don’t want to try and mold her to fit a particular school, I want her to end up where she fits. But I can’t say that the pressure isn’t there, especially since she goes to one of “those” high schools where it seems like everyone goes to an Ivy.</p>

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<p>Another person who has never been asked for SAT scores in the hiring process, never asked for them when I have hired people and never heard of anybody else being asked for them. I find it pretty bizarre that a company would ask you for SATs 35 years later. </p>

<p>Lots of lawyers get hired before they even take the bar exam, so I don’t know that it figures into the hiring criteria for many law firms. The bar exam is a licensing vehicle. That’s very different from a SAT.</p>

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<p>A vote here for “never asked for them, never been asked for them.” If they’re recent, I can see the relevance. If they’re ancient, it seems misguided.</p>

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<p>I don’t even remember if anyone ever asked me about my GRE scores!!! Add me to the pile of “never been asked about her standardized test scores”.</p>

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<p>I recall reading in an article in Time magazine, back when John Sununu was White House Chief of Staff, that Mr. Sununu would regularly inform people that he had scored a perfect 1600 on his SAT back in the day. Perhaps HE is the sort of boss who would ask SAT scores from job applicants.</p>

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I followed up be letting her know of my daughter’s results. i don’t remember what she said – it was polite, face-saving, and certainly not an admission. I certainly didn’t press the matter.</p>

<p>The ONLY reason I keep harping on the point is because there are so many students and parents on CC who probably get discouraged by what I feel is a somewhat skewed, stats-obsessed viewpoint that predominates at CC. I think the biggest help for me through my daughter’s process was some kid a year earlier who had gotten into an Ivy or equivalent despite an SAT that was 100 points below whatever she was told she needed - and she simply posted something along the lines of, ‘you can’t get in if you don’t apply’. </p>

<p>I did get very good advice on college admissions from a different source – an individual named Peter Van Buskirk who is the author of a book called Winning the College Admission Game. I don’t think he works privately with individual students – instead, he gives workshops for parents and high school students, and I met him through a workshop given at my daughter’s high school – he also gives workshops geared to college counselors. He is a dynamic and entertaining speaker, and his workshops include some group role playing, where everyone is given a set of fictional college applications to review and the group works together to make an admission decision. I think I was pretty well informed about the process before that workshop, but I gained a lot of insight after the workshop. It also was a big motivator for both me and my daughter – because rather than the focus on “stats” that so dominates this board, he focused on strategy – how to select appropriate colleges, how to figure out what that college may be looking for in students, how to frame an application to highlight a student in a way that will be attractive to the college.</p>

<p>I think too many applicants fail to appreciate that the college has its own agenda and goals. They see at as a selection process in which the college is making a judgment about their individual qualifications, like some sort of academic beauty contest. A rejection is taken to mean that the student wasn’t good enough, accepted students are assumed to be better qualified than waitlisted students. And that’s what results in all the angst when a student with better stats is rejected and learns that a different student with lesser stats, perhaps from their same high school, gets accepted.</p>

<p>But colleges have an agenda of their own to fill. Its more like a casting call than a competition. They aren’t looking for the ‘best’ students, they are looking for a wide variety of students to fill a whole set of different ‘roles’. The “roles” may be flexible, but depending on the institutional priorities and the way the class is shaping up, an applicant become attractive to the extent that she gives the college something they want or need. So the really important part of a college application is NOT a recitation of the student’s attributes, but rather information that shows what a given student has to offer the college – and whether or not the college needs or wants what that student offers. </p>

<p>Colleges like Wellesley do not “need” students with high SAT scores – they have plenty of applicants with top scores. But they do need students who will excel in each of their different academic departments, they do need athletes and artists and student leaders. Some of the posters here have suggested that Wellesley really likes intense, overachieving, driven women. If so, the student with strong “leadership” credentials (Student Body president, active in community organizations, etc.) might have an an advantage over an introverted student with a higher GPA and better test scores. (I put “if” and 'might" because I really have never looked into what Wellesley actually wants – I’m just relying on other posts).</p>

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<p>This is quite a holier than thou attitude. Can we please get off the high horse? Nobody is locking their kids up in an attic and do nothing but providing test prep tutoring. </p>

<p>If you don’t think test prep is not the right thing for your kids, don’t do it. No reason to pass judgment on other parents for providing needed help for their kids for a limited amount of time (probably at most a few months, a few hours a week tops)</p>