Railing against the system: One parent's lament

Parent Cafe
1

Can I just lay out my frustrations here? I have 2 kids. One (the older) applied to 14 schools, got into 12. The younger (a senior now) is right in the middle of it. Both kids are smart, both wrote strong essays (My view is slanted but, honestly, I think I’m on target here), both had stellar teacher recs, both had 4.0 UW, both have strong ECs (though I’d say Kid 2 has stronger ones). BUT, there’s one difference, Kid 1 had high standardized scores and Kid 2 does not. And because of that, Kid 2 has been waitlisted and/or rejected from most of the schools that Kid 1 got into it. And, I mean, that drives me NUTS. I want to rail against the system but I’m not sure how. The schools are as trapped as the kids. A school can’t get a high ranking unless it shows high standardized scores. And without the high ranking, fewer people apply which then becomes a vicious circle. And, yes, a school can take a chance (so to speak) on a kid with lower scores but they can’t do that too much or their overall ranking will go down. Anyway, it’s maddening. (and before anyone asks, yes, Kid 2 did apply and get into colleges so he has a place to go.).

And that’s my Saturday fruitless yelling into the wind….

2

And this is why test-optional colleges are very popular now.

Your post is a timely one. Just yesterday, a friend got in touch, asking why my D didn’t choose a certain wonderful school last year. Her son has been accepted, she wanted insight. I told her my D liked the school a lot, but wanted a small LAC in the end, and the school in question wasn’t it. I mentioned that D, who had high test scores, got great merit aid from the school her son got into. She told me that her son has top grades, lots of rigor, captain of a sports team for two years, lots of awards, etc… He has several accpetances in hand, but has yet to recieve merit awards, because his SAT score was not high enough. And in a way, I feel guilty, because my D was involved in school and so on, but didn’t have lots of awards and wasn’t a captain of anything. She has the high test score though. So many colleges have holistic admissions, but if you don’t have the test score, forget it.

It worries me, because my son has leaning disabilities. Is he going to get high test scores? It’s too soon to know yet, but he also has a hard time maintaining high grades. I wonder what types of colleges he will get into. His sister is like your other son, got into 9 of 12. It might be me writing your post in two years time. I am glad your son does at least have choices.

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Sorry for your frustration. The process is aggravating – it is not always kind and not always fair. Your kid 2 sounds like a great candidate for the test optional schools so hopefully he took advantage of some of those options.

The good news is that it sounds like you have two bright kids who are blessed with a dedicated and caring mom and I have no doubt that both will thrive wherever they end up.

4

I think a lot of people will empathize with your frustration. But remember, there are also a ton of kids with everything your Kid2 has, plus the high test scores, who are getting rejections too.

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Some kids can benefit from taking a couple of semesters of transferable courses at a local community college. Earning a lot of A’s, and trying the testing again after a year can give them the boost they need.

There’s always another chance. Some roads have a few more twists and turns.

A lot of people transfer into their school of choice after an academic bump up by a successful year at community college. (will save you some money, too) A kid with a 4.0 gpa on 24 credits of community college work, and an upward trend on his ACT/SAT…is going to get a solid second look from admissions.

Scores are what they are. It’s more than just “A school can’t get a high ranking unless it shows high standardized scores.” Colleges want well prepared students who will succeed and graduate. Graduation rates are very important to rank. So are post-graduation employment rates.

Very sorry for your frustration.

Another thought…a lot of kids can bump their scores on standardized tests by taking a testing strategies course. Stuff like, how to organize your time, when to skip questions, what to do first…can help a great deal. (for instance, if you read the questions at the end of each reading passage…before reading the passage, you’ll know what you’re looking for and waste less time) When in doubt, eliminating the wrong answers can narrow your odds…and is better than guessing blindly. Tons of little tricks like this can add up to better scores. These classes are offered everywhere.

Practice tests. Lots and lots of practice tests.

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I’m sorry for your frustration. Many people complain about the holistic unpredictable nature of the admissions process, but it shouldn’t be too surprising that students with lower scores are generally admitted at a lower rate than higher scores.

There are many great colleges, and dwelling on the rejections and waitlists misses out on the acceptances and the fact that Kid2 will have a place to go to prepare for his/her future. Furthermore, assuming your use of the word “colleges” means plural, (s)he will have to disappoint at least one college.

Sure those colleges that won’t get him/her are worthy, but while (s)he will have reviewed their qualifications, I’m afraid that (s)he will be unable to accept those colleges due to the overwhelming demand on him/her. (S)he can only attend one college. It’s not easy being so desirable.

Kid 2 is the prize, not the colleges.

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For others reading this, frustration about the system in this regard may be avoidable. This list of test-optional schools http://fairtest.org/university/optional includes top schools including the “Little Ivies.” Any student could find an excellent fit on this list. Applying without scores does not make anyone a second class applicant. The schools really mean they are test optional (except of course some of them want scores for merit aid).

Under B’s alone the list includes Bowdoin, Bates (both Little Ivies), Brandeis, Bryn Mawr, others…

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For the benefit of those who may be in the same (or similar) situation, here are some test-optional schools:

Bowdoin
Wesleyan
Smith
Bates
Bryn Mawr
Wake Forest
Holy Cross
Mt Holyoke
Pitzer
Franklin & Marshall
Skidmore
Lawrence
St. Lawrence
George Washington U
Willamette
WPI

https://www.niche.com/colleges/rankings/best-test-optional-colleges/

9

I like standardized tests. Over the course of my lifetime, they have, on the whole, benefited me and my family.

One of the many reasons standardized test scores have become important is that high school grades at many, if not most US schools, are extremely inflated. The median high school GPA reported by students taking the SAT was A- many years ago; I don’t know what it is now. Many public high schools, including my offspring’s, do not provide class rank. It’s politically incorrect for AOs to admit that high grades from some high schools mean more than high grades than another. Moreover, there are just so many high schools in the US that it’s impossible for AOs to be familiar with all of them. Plus, reality is that high school grades can be very subjective and how well a student LIKES a kid can impact a grade. Some teachers are swayed by neatly typed papers or artistic charts (often made by computer programs). So, standardized test scores have become more important over the decades.

Another reason is that standardized test scores are more predictive than you might think in protecting success in college. Yes, there are MANY exceptions. Yes, the SAT correlates with family income. Unfortunately, so does success in college.

At least 25 years ago, there was a study done at some Cal State of kids who seemed to have tried but still flunked out. In other words, these were kids who had gone to class regularly, hadn’t had any disciplinary issues, and still flunked out. The idea was to try to figure out things that could be improved for these kids.

They found that the #1 “changeable” factor was vocabulary. 59% of this group had low scores on the verbal SAT. It wasn’t a fluke. These kids had poor vocabularies. If you don’t understand 10 words in every paragraph you read in a college textbook, it’s hard to understand what you are reading. If you try to look up all the words you don’t know, it takes a lot longer for you to finish the assigned reading. Moreover, even when you do this, it’s still harder for you to grasp the central idea of a reading passage when you’re so focused on understanding the meaning of individual words.

I’ve told the story on this forum before of how my D helped her step sib improve a verbal SAT score by over 100 points without studying. More importantly, she figured out what the REAL problem was–reading speed. So, step sib enrolled in a Sylvan reading course the summer between high school and college and improved reading speed. The result was much better grades in college than high school and much less of a struggle to get them. There was also a conscious decision to limit the number of courses with heavy reading loads each semester.

Now, this may be completely irrelevant to the OP’s case, but if my kid were the one with a SAT score lower than anticipated based on grades, I’d be looking at the questions (s)he missed and WHY they were missed. If, like my offspring’s step sib, the problem is a slow reading speed, that will be a problem in college. If the kid has a poor vocabulary, work on it, etc.

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On the test optional,schools…just check for their requirements if younare applying for financial need based or merit aid. Some of these schools don’t require standardized tests for admission…but they DO require them if you want to be considered for aid.

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“Colleges want well prepared students who will succeed and graduate. Graduation rates are very important to rank. So are post-graduation employment rates.”

That’s true, but the difference between good and great scores doesn’t predict graduation well. @SouthernHope can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing that Kid 2’s scores are not low enough to create doubt about graduation or employment rates. They’re just too low for the most elite schools. If we’re talking about a kid with a 19 ACT, then I agree, colleges need to worry about readiness for college work. But if we’re talking about one kid with a 27 and another with a 35, they both have excellent odds of graduating, and they’ll still get very different results at top schools. Rankings and reputation are a bigger part of the reason than odds of success.

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@jonri

Your D’s step-sib’s issue with reading speed sounds very much like one older undergrad classmate who was placed on academic suspension for a year and forced to take a parent mandated gap year because of abysmal/failing grades.

And this was the same classmate who came from an upper-middle class background, attended a respectable mid-Atlantic boarding school where he graduated in the top 15% or so, and was admitted to at least one Ivy as a legacy/developmental candidate thanks to a grandparent who was a renowned accomplished alumna who was a generous doner to her Ivy alma mater.

When we took the same intermediate/advanced colloquium/seminar classes with heavy reading loads(averaging 500-1000 pages of reading per class), I was puzzled as to why he struggled to complete the very same readings I had no problems breezing my way through. Especially considering I was taking those courses for the first time and he was repeating several of them after failing them the first time.

Ironic part is that he initially snobbed me for having an “inferior education” from an urban public HS and admittedly, I did graduate near the bottom of my HS graduating class. That rapidly ended when he was amazed at how I was shocked at his not being able to complete the weekly assigned reading load…and I was usually carrying a heavier semester credit load(16 credits vs 9-14) than he did…and working a part-time job.

Many parents even here on CC assume a 4.0+ GPA from one HS is better than a lower GPA from another HS even when common sense and a cursory knowledge of the wide disparity in academic rigor among US public and private K-12 schools should have facilitated the opposite conclusion.

It’s especially amusing considering an account I heard from a slightly older friend from a rural/suburban Virginia area(south of Northern VA) in which the a few top students from his hometown including the Val of a nearby private school known for being a former segregation academy snobbed him for not having as high of a class ranking/GPA as they had and for attending the local public school despite the fact the average SATs for my friend and that public school were actually much higher.

Ironic considering said friend graduated as a full-scholarship student from a respectable college whereas even the Val of that private school ended up flunking out within three semesters and never finding their way back even after 20+ years.

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Did Kid2 prepare for the tests the best he could?

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OP here & just want to say thanks! One thing to note though…i’m really talking about kids who can do the work if they got in…but they need X score to keep the school admission stats high only they received Y instead. So they’re out of the running (and, in the case of my 2 kids, I can tell you that kid 2 is as smart, invested, studious, and intellectually curious as Kid 1…he would do as well – if not slightly better – than his older sibling). Anyway, weekend frustration :slight_smile: (@Hanna insights are spot-on for me)

15

In Most of Europe and the world…nobody cares about HS grades. Entry into a University is based on admission test. So I would say that our system in US is more holistic. In addition, many colleges no longer require standardized testing(though I think that only works if you are in liberal arts). Though, personally, I put more value on standardized testing than GPA, since GPA is so dependent on a particular school. 3.6 GPA from a school where the average SAT score was 2220…is not the same as 3.6 GPA from a school were average SAT score was 1500.

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My daughter also had low scores. We did choose several test optional schools, but I’ve been surprised by some of the excellent schools that have accepted her despite her low scores. I think it’s an uphill battle, but not impossible.

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A kid that scores in the 1350/1400 range and that’s almost 700 in each section has no problem with reading and analyzing texts. Especially if said kid has 4 and 5s in AP classes and a rigorous classwork. I understand that there is a lot of competition out there but that’s different than saying that the kid will not succeed at a selective college.

18

I, personally, think things have gotten out of hand with how competitive it is to get into college these days. I live in a community that fosters that and most parents hire private tutors for the SAT and ACT tests. Grades are highly inflated as well and kids are strongly encouraged to take AP and Honors classes galore. Our d ended up leaving the public school and going to a small private artsy HS that while still challenging, was not as grade focused, has no AP or honors classes and does not weight grades. As it turns out, she has done reasonably well but not outrageously well in both her GPA and testing. She just found out that she got into one of her top choice schools and I think it was because she was well rounded, had good essays and lots of work experience and EC’s that she stuck with for all 4 years.

Best of luck to both your kids in finding the right fit for them and having a successful and happy college experience!

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Oh, and on the topic of test optional schools and merit aide for future students, my daughter applied to five test optional schools, we’ve heard from three so far. All three accepted her and gave her generous merit packages. In her case it certainly seems going test optional did not hurt her chances of receiving merit aide.

20

Yes it is frustrating. They may not initially have the same undergraduate options, but that does not mean they won’t have the same or better graduate school or professional options. I took my 2nd one a little longer to figure it out. He started at a CTCL with great merit money and transferred his junior year to a school he would not have been admitted to out of HS, graduated with highest honors and now is in the top PhD program in his field. Was he smart - yes. It just took him a little longer to put the whole package together. Learning to organize yourself and figuring out strategies for test taking are a part of the process.