Data10, the article says the schools plan to put “less emphasis on standardized test scores,” to "downgrade the importance of ‘AP everything,’ " and to “use essays and references to figure out which students’ community service projects are heartfelt and which are merely window-dressing.” And the purpose of this is to minimize their responsibility for having contributed to the problem that “many kids admitted into top schools are…slavish adherents to soulless scripts that forbid the exploration of genuine passions.” From that, I am inferring that the schools see passionate community service as a marker for the engaged and soul-ful students they want.
Is a slavish adherent the same thing as a featureless drone?
I guess I agree with those who think this is just more justification for what these colleges are already doing.
If the SAT, ACT or some equivalent was changed to produce more separation at the high end (higher standard deviation), I expect for better or worse (we could argue about which) there would be much less talk about community service and the like. Any elite that wants to maintain its mystique has to be able to claim that their incoming class has higher stats than any lower tier. Or does anyone want to claim one of these noble schools, or the noble people who apply to them, would be fine dropping down a tier or two in order to embrace these new “values”? Please, spare me. Elite first, noble second.
Looking at what appears to have happened with the PSAT, there appears to be less differentiation at the top not more.
The SAT is becoming more geared towards measuring readiness for college, not differentiating top scorers. I have heard that SAT IIs are designed to measure skill in advanced subjects for admissions purposes, but I don’t think these separate top performers either. American college admissions should have a standardized test that is really tough so that a really high score truly is spectacular. There are too many 2350 range scores to distinguish between applicants reliably.
@Studious99 - very brave of you to use the word “should”. You should remember though that our betters, who want to have and enjoy the right to pick the winners and losers, prefer the process to be just what it is.
Non-ironically: Getting more separation at the top of the heap is a concern for how many students? 5,000? 10,000? Maybe, in your dreams 20,000? Out of 3 million + every year taking the SAT and/or ACT in the US (and many more to come if the testing companies succeed in selling these tests as universal measures of basic competence).
Why in the world should everyone do back flips because 15 or 20 colleges might care – although of course they say repeatedly they don’t care – to know what differentiates one 800-scorer from another? Why should a need Harvard doesn’t even say it has make everyone spend more money to finance a test that measures a wider range of skill? Remember, Harvard has lots of information to help it tell the difference between 800-scorers – transcripts, recommendations, personal essays. It doesn’t have any trouble at all with that.
Some people clamor for transparency in elite admissions. There has never been, and there never will be, transparency, no matter what test people are taking. You will never get to see other people’s private information, including what they say about themselves and what others say about them. Anonymous postings on CC where some kid posts his stats and grades himself on his essays and recommendations he hasn’t seen don’t even come close to counting.
Of course, I get that if you are one of those 5,000, maybe 20,000 kids each year, you (and your parents) probably wish there were more predictability (not transparency) in the process. It would reduce your stress a lot, maybe make you feel better about yourself, not so rejected or threatened with rejection all the time. Guess what: If you are a super-successful 17-year-old high school senior, it is really easy to think the world revolves around you, and ought to be retooled for your convenience. But the world doesn’t revolve around you. And it’s not the job of college admissions staffs or testing companies to subordinate everything else they try to achieve to reducing your stress.
“Elite first, noble second” – this is my view as well.
The pickier gatekeepers have to find ways to ensure a steady stream of leaders, CEOs…etc. go through their doors to protect their reputations. I don’t think there is anything more threatening to the elite brand-name myth than the reality that greatness can flourish outside of their gates. It used to be the case that scion of the movers-and-shakers all went to the same 4 or 5 schools and got rubber-stamped as the next generation of movers-and-shakers. Today, predicting greatness is not so simple. The children of non-movers and shakers are attaining greatness, too. And so are the children with less than perfect SATs and grades. The definition of greatness and who can claim it is changing.
The turning of the tide will be complete when society finally rewards those who choose careers of “good character” with the social status it rewards to lucrative careers in law, medicine and technology. Until society assigns social status for “caring for others,” most kids will pursue community service as a means rather than an end.
Back in the mid 80’s my public high school required 20 hours of documented volunteer/community service hours to be completed between the end of our junior year, May 1st and May 1st of senior year in order to graduate. We had to submit a proposal outlining what you planned to do, find a teacher/community member to sponsor/mentor you and sign off on your hours and finally write a brief paper at the end of the volunteering detailing what you did, what you learned and how it was going to help you in the future.
The class (1985) before me was only required to submit the proposal and the have someone(anyone) sign off on the hours. Guessing that kids falsifying hours is what prompted the strict requirements for my class(1986) and the next (1987). The Class of (1988) reverted back to just having to do 20 hours and have someone sign off. The Class of (1989) was reduced to15 hours and was the last class required to have the hours to graduate. We had large senior classes, around 650 kids per class. I think you could get out of the “volunteer hours” if you had a paying job and submitted a form signed by you employer. I don’t recall anyone not graduating because they had not done the hours. I do recall many seniors panicking around April 1 because they hadn’t done their hours yet.
My and 7 other German III/IV students’ community service project was teaching basic German (name, numbers, alphabet, simple greetings and vocabulary etc) to 4th graders at a local elementary school.
I think that Harvard and other “top” school admissions folks don’t want more differentiation at the top end of the SAT. For their institutional goals, someone who is plenty smart enough and has the other attributes that will lead to a successful career is actually better than someone who is extremely smart, and does not have those attributes. At the same time, they want to lock in their status as a “top” school, so having too many people [ones they did not want to admit] blowing the top off a much harder version of the SAT would be undesirable to them.
I think a similar thought process is behind the heavy emphasis on GPA in med school admissions, and the fact that one does not get a huge GPA break for competing with the other pre-meds at Harvard, rather than competing with the other pre-meds at Dismal Seepage University. The med schools want to avoid a situation where there are any significant number of people who seem provably more accomplished than the students they admit, on a semi-objective measure
In contrast, Caltech does care about the scores at the top end. I believe that at one point, Caltech was asking CB for the actual raw scores of the 800 scorers on the Math Level II (SAT II) test, in order to differentiate among them. I think that it matters at Caltech because it takes a fairly high level of developed mathematical ability to become a theoretical physicist, and even the biology undergrads at Caltech have to take quantum mechanics. MIT cares less, I think because they need their students to pass the bar for engineering, and they take many more students than Caltech. I think Caltech ought to find a way to ramp up its diversity, while maintaining its curricular strength, however.
I think that Harvard has rarely been looking for the students with perfect SATs and grades, historically. They have been looking for students who will be highly successful.
Re: "When society finally rewards those who choose careers of ‘good character’ . . . " While I like this idea, I expect it to remain with the realm of science fiction, within my lifetime, and frankly within the lifetimes of my grandchildren (if any).
Not to the exclusion of the MCAT, which arguably is more important for obtaining an interview, and to be admitted, one must be interviewed first.
btw: I may be dense today, but I have not the faintest idea what your second paragraph is trying to say.
Of course, they don’t. If they did, CB would have changed the scale to 900 or a 1000 years ago. CB is a non-profit, whose Board consists of colleges/unis, so if the colleges wanted a change in SAT-M (or CR), it would happen, easily.
Really hard to say, and even harder to prove. H takes so many legacies and athletes and other hooked applicants, as % of total Frosh class, perhaps 7xx is good enough for those folks. To support your assertion, we’d need the numbers for the unhooked.
"Why in the world should everyone do back flips because 15 or 20 colleges might care – although of course they say repeatedly they don’t care – to know what differentiates one 800-scorer from another? Why should a need Harvard doesn’t even say it has make everyone spend more money to finance a test that measures a wider range of skill? "
Because it gives several dozen people the chance to pontificate on CC that SAT-level math is just middle-school math, oh, please, anyone should be able to do that with one hand tied behind his back, and anyway, their little preciouses are ready for differential equations in 9th grade and consequently Harvard owes them a spot.
“Of course, they don’t. If they did, CB would have changed the scale to 900 or a 1000 years ago. CB is a non-profit, whose Board consists of colleges/unis, so if the colleges wanted a change in SAT-M (or CR), it would happen, easily.”
I am reminded of the great admissions consultant Nigel Tufnel who beat the system by ensuring his amps went all the way to 11, thus distinguishing them from the peons whose amps only went to 10.
Getting rid of legacy preferences across the board would, to me, be a “money put where mouth is” indication that any of these schools are genuinely seeking a broader cultural change in the process here. (Athletes at least are demonstrating a proven prowess backed up with hard work, so I have less quibble with them being recognized in some way.)
I do understand the logic behind compulsory service of some kind. My D17’s school requires 30 hours of documented service for graduation, and I think it’s a good idea. Why do we have compulsory academic subjects? Why do we think it’s a good idea for kids to study a foreign language, even if they grumble about it? Sometimes you should do things just because exposure to them is good for you. It seems to me that forcing kids out of the academic tunnel where they can’t even see the world around them is not a bad idea.
We hear so much about the pressure these kids are under and how it leads to rampant cheating and padding and gaming - is that really what we want to be rewarding and sending out into the world?
Some medical schools have a different set of priorities. For example, public med schools give preference to in-state residents who they believe will remain in-state after graduation. Med schools dedicated to serving rural/under served area like Southern Illinois will accept less qualified students if they believe they will stay in small, rural towns.
Math is actually a pretty amusing example since you can differentiate math pretty easily via ACM and AIME scores, not to mention that many exceptionally strong math students figure out a way to zoom ahead even when schools try to place obstacles in their path. Some colleges ask for those scores - I’m pretty sure MIT did when my oldest applied.
I don’t care that much what traits the top private schools select for; that’s their business and their right to decide their preferred criteria. I do, however, care in general about honesty. If a university tells me I should have confidence in their ability to assess applicants’ academic credentials, it’s not too difficult to muster trust in their competence for that task. After all, they’ve been doing this for years so it’s probable someone on their staff knows about a particular feeder high school and understands its GPA and curriculum. However, if a school tells me they believe they can assess applicants’ character, as well as evaluate the genuineness of their passion for community service from application materials, well that’s a real stretch to credibility. Such an assertion would make me suspicious that they intend to use that subjective criterion to manipulate acceptances for some reason, much like in the past they added nebulous criteria for the purposes of keeping out various undesirables. While they can certainly do what they want, the public also has a right to challenge their claims and their methods.
“Math is actually a pretty amusing example since you can differentiate math pretty easily via ACM and AIME scores, not to mention that many exceptionally strong math students figure out a way to zoom ahead even when schools try to place obstacles in their path.”
Of course, the distribution of math teachers who could steer their students towards such things is pretty wildly skewed to certain communities and locations. Ditto for things like Intel. Let’s not kid ourselves the bright mathy kid in Montana has a math teacher steering him or her in that direction. (Unless maybe it’s an affluent area of Helena, or a pricey outdoorsy boarding school.) Or the kid from the south side of Chicago.
"Getting rid of legacy preferences across the board would, to me, be a “money put where mouth is” indication that any of these schools are genuinely seeking a broader cultural change in the process here. "
Given that legacies have higher test scores than the applicant pool in general, it would be interesting to see, if legacy admissions were somehow “prohibited,” what that would do to the class test scores. Legacies aren’t dragging down class test scores the way athletes are. (To be certain, this is no attack on athletes - colleges have the right to select for whatever criteria they so desire, and if I don’t like it, I don’t need to apply or have my kid apply there.)
Sure, med schools look at other things besides GPA and the student from Harvard is likely (in general) to be differentiated from the student at Dismal Seepage by scores on the MCAT, and also in terms of research opportunities, and the range of summer experiences.
On the other hand, if one compares two applicants who happen to have equal MCAT scores, I suspect that the med school applicant from Harvard with a 3.0 will not fare as well as the applicant from Dismal Seepage with a 4.0–even though it may actually be harder to get a 3.0 at Harvard–while meeting the pre-med curricular requirements–than to get a 4.0 at Dismal Seepage (non-existent university chosen on purpose).
With regard to PG’s comments in #469: “Because it gives several dozen people the chance to pontificate on CC that SAT-level math is just middle-school math, oh, please, anyone should be able to do that with one hand tied behind his back, and anyway, their little preciouses are ready for differential equations in 9th grade and consequently Harvard owes them a spot.”
I think the part of this from “SAT-level math is just middle-school math” through “their little preciouses are ready for differential equations in 9th grade” is just reality in some cases. I have seen some “pontificating” along those lines; some might accuse me of it :). But I think that there is a very good analogy to Suzuki here. Pre-Suzuki, in a lot of areas in the US, high school students did not achieve the level of musical performance that now, Post-Suzuki, they achieve fairly commonly. Analogously, I strongly suspect that there are at least as many students who have the intellectual capability to complete SAT-level math in middle-school and solve differential equations in 9th grade (at least at the level of AP Calc BC diff eq questions) as there are students who can achieve “good” levels of violin performance if they start Suzuki at age 3.
Is math acceleration viewed differently from Suzuki because of a difference in the emotional response to Suzuki, as vs. accelerated mathematics (assuming that the student can perform at a good level, in each case)? Is there actually a difference? Or is it that playing a stringed instrument can be useful for a lifetime (for anyone who can), while mathematical acceleration is only advantageous for a few? Or something else?
I agree with PG that there are some people who imagine that Harvard owes the accelerated math student a spot. Harvard doesn’t. That’s not Harvard’s mission (despite Math 55). There are probably a number of accelerated math students they actively don’t want.