<p><a href="tokenadult%20wrote:">quote</a>
I think it's quite debatable whether most admission committees at most highly selective colleges operate as post #7 speculates they do.
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<p>By the way, post #7 refers only (and specifically) to Stanford. It is a false imputation to say that #7 speculates on what "they" (the "most highly selective colleges") do. </p>
<p>It's worth taking a moment to dissect that false imputation, as it's a neatly crafted piece of work. The language is legalistically precise. It came about as follows: within the past couple of days, tokenadult and I had a discussion of Richard Shaw's (Stanford admission's director) remarks that the admissions office analyzes the SAT score report for trends, such as whether the scores plateau or fluctuate up and down. So it was known that post #7 is correct as a reference to Stanford. Unfortunately, correct post #7 does not accord with debate positions that tokenadult has taken in a flood of 50 or more recent messages all over College Confidential. How to discredit #7? Well, the absolutely correct comments about Stanford look like they could well be an instance of more general assumptions about elite admissions, assumptions which if applied to enough colleges are open to challenge (due to lack of evidence) or possibly even false. Thus, playing on the distinction between the correct assertions actually made, and possibly wrong things that were probably (but not known to be) assumed in making the correct statements, allows for creating the impression that an inconveniently accurate posting is "quite debatable".</p>
<p>Clever, but not something that should pass unremarked.</p>