<p>How exactly does SCEA advantage the advantaged? ED certainly does, but I don’t see how SCEA does.</p>
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<p>I mentioned earlier that I am very much for grade deflation, but only if it’s implemented well i.e. ensure that our peer schools follow suit and that grad schools and employers know it. The latter two things have been very poorly done.
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<p>It’s a bit of a leap to say I’m unhappy. I got near-perfect GPAs both terms of my freshman year, with enough time leftover for friends and activities on campus. I’m actually going to miss Princeton over the summer. But I would definitely have had more fun without a badly-implemented grade deflation policy.</p>
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<p>interesting, didn’t you just get admitted? which classes did you take? it seems like you took some small honors classes, and you have to remember they allocate more A’s for those classes. I have been explicitly told by a professor that lower level math classes have smaller caps on A’s than higher level ones. I have been told the exact percentages for two of them.</p>
<p>screwitlah - I was a “special” student this year. I took PHY 105, 106 and MAT 214, 217. What you say makes sense now that I think of it. I have a friend who took EEB 211 last semester and she said fewer A’s were given (though the class was easier) than PHY 105, which she took with me.</p>
<p>So sorry, screwitlah, I know nothing about you. Chalk it up to a late night at the computer. Glad to hear it’s working out for you.</p>
<p>SCEA advantages the advantaged in this way: imagine yourself at a less than stellar public school, with an overworked guidance counselor, with parents who never attended college, let alone an elite one. No one knew to tell you (and you didn’t have the time to spend on the College Board’s website to learn this for yourself) that SAT subject tests were required. You’ve never heard of subject tests; no one in your school takes them. You find out over the summer when you take a look at Yale’s application and scramble in September to sign up and prepare for at two subject tests, with no chance of re-takes. Or do you over-extend yourself and take four, hoping that two are in the range of acceptable scores? Or maybe your application isn’t ready by the end of November because the teachers writing your recs have never had to turn them in until after Thanksgiving, even though you let them know you’d need it earlier. They thought you were mistaken. And it’s hard to keep all this organized, on your own, when you’re working after school, even if you did cut back on your hours. </p>
<p>If there is an advantage to an early app, some kids miss out, even if it is non-binding.</p>
<p>I was merely voicing my opinion, as someone who has never seen a Princeton class in-depth, of how grade deflation might appear to prospective students, and offering this as a hypothesis regarding how grade deflation affects yield.</p>
<p>lefthand, unfortunately, how very very true</p>
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<p>Although Princeton does not have early admission it does give likely letters
(or something similar) to some recruited athletes who then do not apply to other schools.
These students are essentially guaranteed admission unless they do something terrible.
Does anyone know how many athletes are recruited in this way? Has this number been
growing or decreasing or are such things hidden from the general public?</p>
<p>Princeton uses likely letters only for athletes and relatively few of those. The Dean of Admission has stated publicly that she is opposed to the overuse of such letters because they have the same effect as the early admission programs that Princeton has abandoned. As far as I know, all of Princeton’s peers use ‘likely letters’ (even those that already have early admission programs) and many use them not just for athletes but for high profile students of all sorts. A couple of these schools send out extremely large numbers of such letters. </p>
<p>The reason for using ‘likely letters’ in the case of recruited athletes is that many of the athletes are pressured to commit to scholarship granting schools early in the fall. Since the Ivies have an agreement not to announce admission decisions until April 1, they are at a great disadvantage in competing against these schools. Likely letters in these cases are the only way for the Ivies to let talented athletes know that there is a spot waiting for them at one of the non-scholarship schools and to encourage them not to commit early to one of those other schools.</p>
<p>No school publishes the number of such letters it mails but, at least at Princeton, it is small and certainly not growing under the current Dean of Admission.</p>
<p>Just to clarify one point – A “likely letter” does not prevent a student from applying to other schools, or bind the student to attend Princeton. They serve a really necessary function: It is often the case that a kid will be told by a D-I coach in September, “I’m making you an athletic scholarship offer, but you have to commit within a couple weeks, or else I’m going to retract the offer and make it to someone else.” That’s the way athletic recruiting works in Division I, other than the Ivy League. It would be awfully tough for a good prospect to turn that down for a 7% shot at getting admitted to Princeton 8 months later (when he would have NO chance of bagging an athletic scholarship anywhere). So if Princeton (or any other Ivy school) wants to recruit top-shelf athletes, it has to be prepared to make a commitment way before April, or even December.</p>
<p>Thanks JHS and PtonGrad2000. However I’m not sure why such letters would be used to
recruit squash players. Any ideas?</p>