<p>"&Is it a crime to actually have Yale as your first choice? It was S’s first choice, and he was deferred SCEA. His classmate was accepted. By the time S got to school on Monday morning someone–not us–had told everyone and he had to put up with people offering sympathy. It was pretty humiliateing for him. I actually had someone stop me in the supermarket and express shock."</p>
<p>No, it’s not a crime to have Yale as your first choice. The idea of everyone else in town knowing these things, though, just gives the introvert in me the creeps. </p>
<p>I still don’t see why it was characterized as a “Yale 2003 controversy.” I expected an actual controversy - like the accepted kids were mailed out rejection letters or something.</p>
<p>I don’t really get the controversy either. Apparently it had something to do with a changing EA/ED policy?</p>
<p>Believe me, I wasn’t too thrilled about everyone knowing either. I think that what it was was that S’s friends knew he was applying SCEA, and a lot of kids who thought a lot of him thought he would get in. Perhaps being naive about the odds. Still don’t know how people found out he was deferred, but S thought that his classmate who got in might have been told by the alumni rep who called to congratulate him and might have told people at a ski meet he was at that weekend. Which caused definite hard feelings between them</p>
<p>My son took the test, did very well, and could have traveled to Northwestern for the recognition ceremony but we chose not to. I think the most fun for him was taking this cool & challenging test alongside HS juniors/seniors! :)</p>
<p>Arguing for the sake of arguing, Pizza? Perhaps you had to be on CC at that time or understand how Yale disappointed many CCers by lowering the admit rate and dropping the binding admission. </p>
<p>Perhaps lost to you was the fact that several were rejected as opposed to be deferred. The same people who earned admissions later at schools like Harvard. </p>
<p>And, fwiw, I used the term Yale debacle and not controversy. Different dynamics and not one that was wrong per se.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, Yale only has so many seats, so when more kids apply, the admit rate gets lowered. That’s not Yale deciding to be a bunch of jerks to people on CC, and that makes those people immature to be “disappointed by Yale.” It speaks to an entitled mentality - that their kids were “owed” something by Yale that Yale meanly took away.</p>
<p>And how does that make it a debacle that someone was rejected from Y but accepted at H? Isn’t that just … how it goes in the world of selective college admissions?</p>
<p>“Perhaps lost to you was the fact that several were rejected as opposed to be deferred. The same people who earned admissions later at schools like Harvard.”</p>
<p>Evidently this was supposed to mean something to us, but I don’t even understand what this is supposed to imply. I also don’t understand why you are arguing about something that happened a decade ago and which has absolutely nothing to do with the OP’s question.</p>
<p>I don’t think parents always know how well their kid is going to do on an out-of-level test. I could narrow my D’s likely score down to about a 200 pt range, as it turned out she scored a bit higher than I thought likely. Had I known, I would have had her do the test a couple months earlier while she was still eligible for SET - she sometimes feels overshadowed by a younger sib. But, who knows, maybe those few months mattered.</p>
<p>A friend of D’s moved during HS and was able to use middle school SAT scores to get placed in honors/AP classes post-move. It’s not a situation that everyone is going to face, but that family was glad that they had the scores. </p>
<p>As far as why use an out-of-level test in placement decisions, it’s something commonly done when thinking about acceleration (which AP is, technically). MAP tests are used for that too, but SAT/ACT is probably more useful for decisions during high school.</p>
<p>Our S actually enjoyed tests and thought of them as the “new and interesting assignment or project” that the instructions in the tests reference. He actually found them stimulating (even though somewhat tiring afterwards), and honestly WANTED to take them.</p>
<p>D was not quite as excited about tests, but took them above grade level because S was doing so and didn’t like to be left out of anything. It’s one of the few ways to get any information about where the child that is clearly above level in terms of how far above level the child is. </p>
<p>For both my kids, they tested at college vocabulary and reading level when in grade school, which corresponded to our observations of them and confirmed to us why they never studied for vocabulary tests and found them silly.</p>
<p>A child can still qualify for SET after 13. They just have to score an additional 10 points above 700 for each month after their 13th birthday that they took the test.</p>
<p>There is not really a lot of benefit to belonging in SET though, just a magazine and an online forum really.</p>