How do colleges know your kid can do the work? You might argue AP scores or SAT subject tests, but that’s just substituting one standardized test for another. Course rigor and grading vary enough between schools that a 3.0 at one school might involve just as much work as a 4.0 at another.
“How do colleges know your kid can do the work?”
Because we’re talking about scores that are good but not great. Kids who can do the work in a liberal arts curriculum at the University of Delaware can do it at Harvard, too. They might not be A students, but they could graduate. The admission process at elite schools is not about separating the able from the unable.
Point well-taken that many countries base 100% of their admittance on one test…and we’re lucky (i guess) that more is taken into account. But the bottom line is that kid 1 received a 33 ACT and kid 2 a 30 and those 3 points have made all the difference when it comes to making it into the decision pool. (and, i know kid 2 is going to do great…but grrrrrrr). Anyway, as always, many thanks for the smart talk and good insights.
- "Do the work" to me means more than graduate. It means graduate with at least a reasonable GPA. If you graduate with less than a 3.0, the number of employers who will even give you an interview, as a new hire, drops off dramatically.
- I can't speak to the difficulty of Ivy League courses. However, if you're claiming Harvard courses aren't much more difficult than University of Delaware courses, it makes you wonder what all the hype is about the Ivies?
One thing to keep in mind is that those standardized exams tend to require much more analytical writing which would be par for the course for students in their college-prep high schools, but not very common even at the better suburban public or some respectable boarding schools.
It’s not all multiple choice with a small writing section as on the SAT/ACT here.
Not necessarily. YMMV depending on the student.
That same older college classmate who was placed on academic suspension for one year and forced by parents to take another gap year due to abysmal undergrad grades had 5s on several AP exams.
Still didn’t help him avoid crashing and burning in undergrad, struggling through the same courses I took with him even when he was repeating them, or taking 7.5 years to graduate with horrid grades.
@ Hanna I think what we are “really” talking about is whether colleges should admit and/or hand out merit money based on high school gpa and test scores or based just on high school GPA (plus the same additional factors, e.g., teacher recs, essays, ECs.)
You say
I don’t think that’s the question. The question is whether the difference between good and great test scores predicts not only graduation but academic performance as well as the difference between good and great high school gpas predict it or as well as using BOTH test scores and gpa does.
Sure a kid with a 1350 (out of 1600) could graduate from Harvard. IMO,so could a kid with a B+ average at a competitive high school.
And, sure it may seem “unfair” to some kids that you need a 32 ACT to get merit money from a college that they want to attend, and they have a 30. Personally, I think it’s every bit as unfair for a college to require a 3.7 high school gpa or top 10% of the class to get merit money when there are high schools where meeting those requirements is one heck of a lot harder than it is at other high schools.
In the example of the study I used, the students’ high school gpas were good enough to get into Cal State, but they couldn’t succeed there. One common reason for this was poor vocabulary. There are high schools where having a poor vocabulary or limited reading comprehension doesn’t really hurt you that much because you learn most of what you learn from teachers’ talking or lecturing and you take multiple choice tests for 4 years.
There are even high schools where lots of people take AP courses and get As in them but very few students score a 4 or 5 on the AP exam.
Bottom line: I think it’s perfectly fair to require standardized tests.
High school grades really can vary from school to school. My DD had a weighted GPA of 3.7 and she was top 5% of her class. That GPA would have been viewed as low at many schools…but for her class, it was actually high.
The standardized tests are the same from school to school. Some colleges view this as the constant…they are comparing apples to apples when they are comparing SAT scores. They are comparing apples to oranges with GPA.
I’m glad the OP cast a broad net…and the student has a few acceptances from which to choose. That’s really the end game you want.
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CSU baseline selectivity is not particularly high. Here is the chart of (recalculated) HS GPA and SAT or ACT scores that will get a California resident into a non-impacted major at a non-impacted CSU campus:
https://secure.csumentor.edu/planning/high_school/cal_residents.asp
Impacted majors or campuses may have significantly higher thresholds for admission.
I disagree that you are always comparing apples to apples when using SAT or ACT scores. I constantly see parents here emphasize studying and practicing to no end. How would an AO know the difference between a 1450 (of 1600) from a kid who had no prep and a kid who had tutoring and lots of prep? I would assume they take location and income into consideration when they look at scores since there is somewhat of a correlation.
Maybe at some smaller schools…but really…at most places that use the SAT or ACT…it’s one of the first screeners along with GPA. They look at those first. Kids who make that first cut get LOR and essays read.
My kids both took prep courses. We do NOT have a wealthy area address. For one kid, the score increased by 300 points. Honestly, I don’t think he knew what he was doing the first time he took the test. For the second kid…score didn’t increase one point. Total score was exactly the same.
Both had similar GPAs as well…but in the first kid’s class…his 3.6 GPA placed him in the top 25% of his class with the higher SAT of my two kids.
The second kid had a 3.7 or 3.8 GPA but couldn’t crack 600 on the CR SAT. However…her GPA placed her in the top 5% of her class 8/200.
Now…schools that do holistic admissions…a whole different story.
“I don’t think that’s the question.”
I agree that it’s not the broad policy question. It IS the narrow question posed by another poster. That’s all I was responding to.
“Bottom line: I think it’s perfectly fair to require standardized tests.”
I do, too. I also think that it’s reasonable for parents and students to be frustrated when small differences have large impacts.
“Do the work” to me means more than graduate. It means graduate with at least a reasonable GPA. If you graduate with less than a 3.0, the number of employers who will even give you an interview, as a new hire, drops off dramatically."
A lot of employers don’t even ask for transcripts. It hasn’t been my experience that people at the bottom of the Harvard class go unemployed. They don’t have the same opportunities for Wall Street/consulting jobs.
“2. I can’t speak to the difficulty of Ivy League courses. However, if you’re claiming Harvard courses aren’t much more difficult than University of Delaware courses, it makes you wonder what all the hype is about the Ivies?”
It depends what you choose to take at Harvard and at UD. More importantly, courses can differ in content and quality without differing that much in difficulty. There’s every reason to question the hype about the Ivies, but the selling point is not meant to be that the courses are harder there than elsewhere.
I do empathize with you and am glad your child has some good choices.
Although In terms of rankings, test scores make up just a small % of the rank. And while I don’t necessarily think that a test score predicts college success, I do think if you are a kid with 800’s across the board in SAT math and SAT math subject tests, that does say a lot about your intuitive ability in math.
How do you define quality?
According to one survey after graduation, 2% of seniors planned to take unpaid positions, 9% jobs paying under $30k, and 20% jobs paying $30k-50k. I’m reading tea leaves, and while it seems some of that might be explained by people intentionally taking low paid jobs(TFA, Peace Corps, non-profits, government), it might reflect the 2.5 GPA student not getting a lot of good job offers either.
http://features.thecrimson.com/2016/senior-survey/post-harvard/
Last year at this time my oldest and his group of friends were all waiting with much excitement for acceptances to start rolling in. His group of 8-10 closest buddies all are full pay, had 3.8+ gpas, and 35/36 or 2300+ scores along with all the usual amazing ECs and sports participation. The next month brought a bloodbath of rejections. My son and one other kid got into top 10ish schools and the rest ended up at one of the state flagships. The flagships are great but not where these kids wanted to be.
A couple of them are sure they got rejected because they were Asian.
A couple of them are sure they got rejected because they are Caucasian.
A couple of them think they got rejected because they only had 500 hours of volunteering.
One thinks he got rejected because of that B he got in AP Chem in 10th grade
More than a couple of them think they got rejected because they got sucked into the SCEA game.
Point is these kids are all amazing. Truly amazing. And they got rejected. Some of the smartest and hardest working people I have ever met in my life. HYPSMC all missed out on some true superstars with these kids.
Be careful about guessing why your kid isn’t getting the results you expected. Applications are up everywhere (except Dartmouth apparently). There is a continuing shift to early decision. More international applications. And this is clearly an inexact science.
Free test prep is available online or at your public library. Test prep books are affordable. You don’t have to be wealthy to prep for exams, but students do need to be aware of these resources and motivated to use them because they understand how test prep can benefit them. No admissions officer will know how much (or how little) a student prepped, but it seems unwise to just walk into one of the most important tests of your life without preparing for it.
@thumper1 I agree the scores are what they use and that is what has the OP frustrated.
I can relate to the OP. I believe my third to go did not receive the admissions he could/should have.
I think what often gets lost when discussing this topic is the staggering large number of excellent students there are applying to college each year. There are about 30,000 high schools in the US so the top 10 students from those schools make a pool of 300,000 applicants. And that number would not include kids who extraordinary in some way but not a top 10 student. It’s hard enough getting into tough admission schools with an apparent perfect application never mind trying to overcome an apparent shortcoming.
It’s also worth noting that every year admissions gets tougher and tougher so even a few years difference between one’s kids going through the process can make a difference.
My D hates standardized testing from the elementary school level through college testing. She currently has an ok ACT score, not great but good enough.
She wrote her ACT essay on what she feels is wrong with standardized testing. She got a 10 on it so she must’ve been convincing.