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<p><a href=“Google Ngram Viewer”>Google Ngram Viewer; indicates that “necromancer” does not seem to be a very common word historically.</p>
<p>It probably became better known in subsequent years, though. 40 years ago (1974) was the first publication date of Dungeons and Dragons.</p>
<p>Correlation of SAT scores with family income and parents’ education:
<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/03/05/these-four-charts-show-how-the-sat-favors-the-rich-educated-families/”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/03/05/these-four-charts-show-how-the-sat-favors-the-rich-educated-families/</a></p>
<p>I just asked my 8th grader if she knew the word “necromancer” and she said “how could I not know the word ‘necromancer?’” And I would guess, given the entire aisle in our bookstore now devoted to teen vampire romances, that it’s quite well-known by today’s test-takers.</p>
<p>Many of top 20 national universities and LACs do not even report an average HS GPA in the Common Data Set. On collegedata.com, HS GPA is “not reported” for Carleton, Grinnell, Haverford, Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Duke, Tufts, Cornell, Brown, Columbia, Stanford, or Yale. For Bowdoin, the average GPA reported on collegedata.com is 3.8. For Princeton, it’s 3.87. Those are good GPAs, but not as good as the ones reported for UCSB (3.91), UCSD (3.94), UMCP (4.07), UVa (4.21), or UNC-CH (4.53).</p>
<p>Maybe we’re not comparing apples to apples here, given variations in how GPAs are averaged. However, it would appear to be the case that the most selective private schools tend to have higher average test scores, but lower average HS GPAs, than the most selective state flagships. </p>
<p>If that is true, what does it mean? One explanation is that the Ivies and other selective private schools weigh SAT scores more heavily than GPAs. An alternate explanation is that selective private schools enroll relatively many students from competitive private high schools and public magnets; therefore, their average HS GPAs tend to be lower (even though they weigh relative GPA at least as heavily as test scores.)</p>
<p>In any case, the most selective private schools do tend to have very high SAT scores (much higher than the averages at the most selective flagships). If scores have no predictive value, why don’t the top N private schools all stop using them? And why wouldn’t colleges with the highest average GPAs be able to point to much better college and post-college outcomes than colleges with the highest average scores (but lower HS GPAs)? If anything, for whatever reasons, the opposite appears to be true (in terms of 4 year graduation rates, alumni incomes, graduate and professional school admissions, and PhD completions). </p>
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<p>The reported GPAs won’t be comparable (except the two UCs to each other which are likely reporting UC-weighted GPAs), other than to note large differences (like the difference between a 3.7 and 2.7). College may reweight applicants’ GPAs by their own methods, use unweighted GPAs, or not track GPAs in a formalized manner at all (i.e. holistic look at the courses and grades).</p>
<p>I think this entire thread stumbles on to the issue of relativism, which effectively changes the underlying issue into one of income, when test scores may have less to do with income than people think. The Washington Post article a couple posts above gives the game away.</p>
<p>Here is the relevant passage from the Post article:</p>
<p>“The second chart shows that students from educated families do better. A student with a parent with a graduate degree, for example, on average scores 300 points higher on their SATs compared to a student with a parent with only a high school degree. No doubt this is the same dynamic reflected in the income graph, given that there are high returns to college education. But it also dispels the notion that students in America have good opportunities to advance regardless of the family they’re born to.”</p>
<p>The last sentence is absolute nonsense. Nothing in the graphs dispels the notion that students in America do not have good opportunities to advance regardless of the family they’re born to. Why? Because all the graphs really point out is all families are different with different education levels etc. Well, no kidding. But to deduce that because the incomes and education are different then good opportunities are lost on lower income people is not supported in the least. The important issue is not income or education; it is what are these cohorts doing differently to get disparate results? Not all behaviors get equal outcomes</p>
<p>Where is the study that looks at low, middle and high income kids at the SAME local high school? All these kids would have the same school, same library, same sports teams, same geographical location etc. I would wager students in families with similar work ethics and focus on education would have similar scores, regardless of income. It may turn out that most high scorers are also high income, but they would be the ones with similar work ethics toward school. However, the lower income families with similar work ethics would be right there too. That is just my hunch.</p>
<p>It is just too easy to pick low income groups and high income groups and see the SAT scores of the higher income are higher and then say its income. Does anyone really believe that if we took the lower income, lower score families and gave them $2 million that the scores of their kids would rise over 5 years or even 10 years? The scores would stay relatively the same, I bet. Or, if we took the money away from the high scorer families that their kids scores would drop over time?</p>
<p>The real question no one is asking is what in the world are the high scoring families doing that is so much more effective than low scoring families. The high scorers are not studying on their bed of money, and their money is not taking the test for them. There are specific actions and behaviors they are doing that make the difference? What are those actions? (And, yes, control for SAT prep courses, which easy to do). And I would think that a low income, low score family could emulate those behaviors and get similar results. I may be in the weeds by myself, but I am one who believes that behavior matters and culture matters and those two come together to influence all sorts of life results, including SAT scores. This idea that it is all because of money is a convenient smokescreen.</p>
<p>I know for those GPAs it’s 4.0 scales so it’s impossible to get above a 4.0. I think the ones above 4.0 is the average between all the GPAs reported that are weighted. Many schools don’t even report unweighted GPAs </p>
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At several of the public colleges, the listed GPAs are above 4.0. Obviously you are comparing weighted GPAs to unweighted GPAs. This is not a meaningful comparison, even more so when you consider the wide variety of different weighting systems that can be used. </p>
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If anything it’s the opposite. Public colleges are more likely to use a less holistic admissions criteria that focuses more on stats, while highly selective private schools are likely to have a more holistic admissions system where they weight non-stat factors heavily than most public colleges. At some selective privates, these non-stat factors can be as important or more important than both GPA and SAT. For example, Brown’s CDS lists 4 criteria as more important than both GPA and test scores – course rigor, talent/ability, character/personal qualities, and level of applicant’s interest. In the NACAC survey of many college admissions, GPA across all class and test scores are not within the top 2 reported most important admission criteria. The top 2 were grades in college prep classes and course rigor. If you holistically focus more on grades in the most relevant class than grades overall, it can also lead to lower reported GPAs in the CDS. For example, several years ago, I was accepted unhooked to Stanford, MIT, and ivies with only a 3.4/3.5 HS GPA and 500 verbal SAT. While my HS GPA was 3.4/3.5, my GPA in university classes taken out of HS was 4.0. The latter seemingly had more influence. </p>
<p>Many highly selective privates could fill their entire class with 4.0/2400 type applicants if they wanted to, but they don’t. In an interview back in 2006, the dean of admissions at Stanford said perfect GPA/SAT type applicants had a 35% acceptance rate. I’m sure it would be much lower today. Also note that we have been focusing on chance of achieving a high GPA in college. At highly selective privates, the main admission goal is generally not creating a class that will have the highest possible college GPA . They obviously want students who can handle the course work and will graduate, but they might favor a student who has a history of impressive achievements outside of the classroom and looks like he may have a big impact on the college and world beyond over a candidate who statistically has a better chance of high GPA upon graduation.</p>
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Note that students with high SAT scores also make up the majority of applications and are even more so the majority of top candidate applications. It’s quite rare to see a student who has a top GPA with lots of AP classes, great ECs, impressive awards, great LORs, and everything else great except they bombed the SAT. Instead such applicants usually also have great SAT/ACT scores. If a highly selective college decided to not consider SATs, I’d expect they’d still have higher reported SAT scores than most flagships. </p>
<p>Public reporting of test scores also influences perception of the college, USNWR ranking, and ultimately the number of top students that apply. Consideration of such factors also likely impact admissions. In another thread I compared how SAT score influenced rate of admission for Stanford apps for the subgroup of Parchment members with a reported GPA of 3.9+ while taking 4+ APs. The admit rate had sharp changes at two SAT scores – one near Stanford’s reported 75th percentile score and one near Stanford’s reported 25th percentile score. There was little change in admit rate for the range between 25th and 75th percentile. It may just be a coincidence or it may be that wanting to keep the reported 25th and 75th percentile scores at a particular level can be an influential factor. There are also unique candidates for which SAT scores can be more meaningful due to lack of knowledge about the grading system or course rigor of the HS, such as a home schooled student or a HS with ridiculous grade inflation.</p>
<p>From what I have gathered from adcoms, GPAs are really used to compare students within schools, especially to their specific school profile and direct peers, and not for school-to-school comparison. Same reason why AP course availability at one school does not affect the applicant; it is school-specific.</p>
<p>Well Mathyone and Ucbalumnus, I guess all we’ll need is another forty years for the present bunch of obscure SAT words to become commonplace. Hmpf…by that time today’s test taking high school juniors will be nearing retirement.</p>
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<p>Every (private) college I am aware of recalculates GPA to an unweighted, then weights according to its own formula or, to phrase it differently, looks at rigor + grades only.</p>
<p>@OHMomof2, at our school if you are in the top accelerated math group in middle school (such that you complete geometry in 8th grade) and if you take all possible honors classes in math, science, social studies, English, and foreign language, including 10 AP classes, you cannot even get into the top 10% of the graduating class if you got more than 1 B in your high school career. All the top students have A averages. Unweight that. </p>
<p>Edit: Ooops, I made a mistake. You cannot get any B’s. Well, actually you could get a B for each additional AP class over 10 that you took.</p>
<p>People can huff and puff and pontifcate all they want about the test scores. The bottom line is that if you want to apply to the mainstream colleges, and have a shot at the merit money at them you gotta take them and you gotta do well. Even those schools that will waive the test scores for admissions purposes use them for merit consideration and without high scores on them, you had better have something else they really want to get any money. That’s really the bottom line.</p>
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<p>You could get a pretty good idea for what “necromancer” means from the root word “necro-”; you don’t have to have read a fantasy novel.</p>
<p>Data10 posted the statement: Many highly selective privates could fill their entire class with 4.0/2400 type applicants if they wanted to, but they don’t. </p>
<p>This is the case if the statement is limited to 4.0 students. There are huge numbers of them. </p>
<p>It is not the case, though, with respect to 2400-type students, unless by “2400-type” you include people with scores below 2400. The number of students with single-sitting 2400 scores is about 400 per year. When you add in superscoring, I would be surprised if the number doubles. Even if it did double, that’s only 800 students (or so) per year.</p>
<p>Caltech could fill its entire class with students who have scored 2400–and it very nearly does. Deep Springs could fill its entire class with students who have scored 2400, though I am pretty sure it doesn’t. Olin could fill its entire class with 2400 scorers.</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, other places? If they are admitting 1500+ students a year, there aren’t enough 2400-scorers to fill the classes at one of them, let alone all of them.</p>
<p>Incidentally, cptofthehouse, I think that “pontificate” is now considered an esoteric SAT word, that no one uses in real life. Please dumb your posts down!</p>
<p>“When you add in superscoring, I would be surprised if the number doubles.” I wouldn’t. It’s all about whether or not you make a careless mistake. </p>
<p>To keep everything objective as possible - less than 500 students a year score 2400 in one sitting (sometimes it is less than 400). So, it is not possible to fill a class except at a school like Williams or Amherst, but not all students want a small school. With superscoring, I do not know the number, but even is we are kind and say it quadruples, that only is still less than 2000 students. If this has changed over the last couple years, someone please correct. </p>
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<p>I don’t understand, are you saying no one can get a B or lower grade in accelerated courses at your school?</p>
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<p>Agree or disagree with Botstein, but op-ed writers don’t write their own headlines. And Botstein may have a large ego, but I don’t think many would argue he’s remained in that post for nearly 40 years to make himself wealthy. In fact, I’d hazard that Bard’s board loses sleep worrying about the day the man finally retires. Bard, to a great degree, IS Botstein.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, I agree there’s clearly a need for standardized tests for most schools to make admissions determinations, especially at large state flagships. The question is whether or not the SAT (or ACT) is that test.</p>
<p>I’m an international student who has gone through the British system of schooling.
What confounds me is, why aren’t the High School leaving exams in the USA standardized?
In the British system, we had to go through 3 standardized tests in order to get graduated. O Levels, AS Levels and A Levels. When the High School leaving exams themselves are standardized, the need of the SAT disappears!
The SAT already does a lousy job that indicating college readiness, why keep it to begin with?</p>