<p>What can tell which assumptions are intelligent but data?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Exogenous data, of which there is plenty and which an intelligent interpreter (of the endogenous data) would ignore at their own risk.</p></li>
<li><p>Calculation from the data one has, such as actually summing or estimating the AP Scholar numbers from your spreadsheet before making misleading statements as to the rarity of multiple high scores.</p></li>
<li><p>Not “spinning” the discussion by withholding dissonant data, such as the National AP Report which, as you know, displays the number of students (it is in the thousands) taking one or more AP exams in or before the ninth grade.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So how would you make an affirmative case for how many students MUST have straight scores of 5 on AP tests at the time they apply to various colleges (that is, by the end of junior year), given those data? Across how many AP tests can one be sure that that average was maintained, given all the available data? That was what was originally at issue in [post</a> #4<a href=“posted,%20I%20think,%20by%20a%20student%20who%20appears%20not%20to%20like%20NYU’s%20proposed%20admission%20procedure”>/url</a> and [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062375324-post5.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062375324-post5.html]post</a> #5<a href=“my%20reply%20to%20that%20post,%20suggesting%20that%20either%20%22thousands%20upon%20thousands%22%20or%20%22numerous%22%20in%20that%20post%20must%20have%20been%20written%20with%20a%20different%20meaning%20by%20that%20participant%20than%20I%20would%20give%20to%20those%20words,%20linguistically,%20in%20that%20context”>/url</a>. I explained further in [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062377354-post10.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062377354-post10.html]post</a> #10](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062375214-post4.html]post”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062375214-post4.html), a reply to QuantMech, what figures I can accept as indisputable and how I would express the same idea that he and I both seem to have about the score distributions.</p>
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<p>This sort of burden shifting doesn’t work very well when your only counterargument is “I personally am not convinced” rather than any specific numerical scenario (i.e., hypothetical frequencies of 5’s on various numbers of exams, that pass the laugh test when compared to known single-exam frequencies, or comparable percentiles on SAT and SAT-II, or the statements from Stanford and MIT, or the 35000 students a year taking one or more APs by grade 9).</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062377354-post10.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062377354-post10.html</a></p>
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</a></p>
<p>Debating the definition of “few” is not a numerical scenario.</p>
<p>If you have plausible numerical scenarios to discredit the rough estimates I posted earlier, feel free to post.</p>
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<p>I thought it was apparent from my earlier replies that I never disagreed with this basic proposition. What I find interesting is that there may be some selection factors operative in Harvard’s usual selection process such that some of these available applicants with straight 5s in that lower number of tests (lower than eight) still get passed over for admission. Maybe Harvard doesn’t wish to fill its entire class with such AP-taking students. Yes, young persons with AP scholar with distinction awards by the end of junior year are numerous enough to fill Harvard’s enrolled class, and I presume (for the same reasons you presume) that they are abundant in Harvard’s applicant pool. </p>
<p>Now what was the relevance of all this to NYU’s policy mentioned in the thread-opening post?</p>
<p>Even though I hate the SAT, I think using AP exams as a way to measure academic proficiency is completely foolish. To be honest, getting a 5 on the majority of APs is incredibly easy. For Chem and US History (two of the ones I took this year), you only have to get about two thirds correct, which is a pretty ridiculous statistic considering the level of difficulty of the exam (really not that hard.)</p>
<p>I’ve since seen a postcard from NYU further describing their policy. The idea really is to give students the choice of what tests they bring forward to make their case that they are ready for NYU.</p>