<p>When your child's verbal score is at the 25th percentile and math score is at the 75th percentile at virtually every one of the schools that appeal to him, does he have any shot? How do you determine which, if any, schools are safeties and which are reaches for this type of student?</p>
<p>verbal low, math high or the other way around?</p>
<p>Is your child going to pursue a math-related/quantitative/Engineering path? Seems obvious, but just want to check. Which schools does s/he have her eye on? What "tier" in USN&WR, for example; and what have been their typical acceptance rates? I have seen kids with scores at the 25th percentile in BOTH get into their first choice school - but it depends what that first choice school is. If you can share some ideas of what s/he wants to do and where s/he wants to go, that will help us help you. Safeties <em>may</em> have to be found outside of those schools where s/he is only at the 25% in verbal, but maybe not.</p>
<p>Thanks for your interest, jmmom. He is contemplating a major in business or econ.</p>
<p>Worrywart, I don't think you can get a reasonable answer to your question without sharing more information about your child's high school record (grades, difficulty of schedule) and other strengths. SAT's are only one part of the story, which includes grades (and high school program), extracurriculars and achievements/recognition, essays, and letters of recommendation.</p>
<p>Students interested in business as a career need to be able to write as well as calculate; have a strong command of stats and spreadsheets; show skills and experience at teamwork and leadership; have some international experience.</p>
<p>worrywart, what mackinaw says is true. We are poised over our cursors ready to help, but we don't have enough to go on. Knowing whether he has his eyes on a school which typically admits 12% of the applicants vs. one which admits 50-75% is the only way I can think of to help you guess his chances. Similarly, guessing his chances does depend on knowing where he stands grade-wise and what other strengths he has; whether he is geographically advantaged or disadvantaged wrt chosen schools, etc.</p>
<p>Look forward to hearing more from you.</p>
<p>what about the reverse: A verbal score much higher than math? The kid has clear strengths in the humanities but because of the low math score, the total score is not great...</p>
<p>we would need the same additional info to comment on that type of profile as well. Simply knowing that someone has "lopsided" scores isn't enough to go on to say where they "fit" or to attempt to evaluate which schools are sure bets, which are 50/50 and which are reach or lottery schools.</p>
<p>I'll jump in. My daughter has lopsided test scores (more than a 100 point difference between her reading and writing scores and her math scores.) Here's how she and I have approached things. </p>
<p>1.We have kept her combined math/reading score in mind and tried to identify colleges where her combined score puts her at or above the median for combined scores. </p>
<p>2.We have compared how her GPA compares to the school's reported median GPA (important: make sure to find out whether a schools reported median GPA is based on weighted or unweighted grades, and whether it is on all grades, or just core academic classes)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>We've also compared how her curriculum stacks up against each school's required and recommended curriculums (i.e., number of years of math, science, history, foreign language). </p></li>
<li><p>As a final test of her chances, we've then looked at where her individual math and reading scores fall in school's 25-75 percentile for math and reading scores. We also have looked at the percentage of students who have scores in her range. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>There are, of course, other factors involved -- EC's, recommendations, essays, financial need, etc. -- but they are too hard to quantify so we have focused on a broad spectrum of hard data that we can compare.</p>
<p>Using this information, and considering admissions percentages, we have categorized schools this way:</p>
<p>Category 1: Significantly above the school's median on all four factors: highly likely (definite safe bets)</p>
<p>Category 2: Above the school's median on 3 out of four factors: fairly likely but not definite</p>
<p>Category 3: At the school's median on all factors: Even odds of acceptance or rejection, depending on school's admission rate.</p>
<p>Category 4: Below the school's median on 3 out of four factors: reachy match, rejection more likely than acceptance</p>
<p>Category 5: Below the school's median on all 4 factors: unrealistic reach. Remote chance of acceptance</p>
<p>Of the schools she's applied to so far, one fell into the first category (she's already been accepted), one falls into the second category, and the other three fall into the third. She is now considering applying to two schools that would fall into the fourth category. She will not bother with any in the fifth category, and, frankly, I think she probably would be in over her head academically at schools falling in that category even if, by some miracle, she was accepted. </p>
<p>Of course, we have no idea yet how this will work out for her. Stay tuned. :)</p>
<p>By the way, you can find all of the information you need to set up a similar system with a $15 investment in the online version of US News & World Report's college guide.</p>
<p>Carolyn, I'd tweak your Category 3: if your stats are equal to a school's average admittee, you have less than an average chance of admittance due to how scores "pyramid" from top down. This assumes an "unhooked" kid. Another way of looking at it: I like to see scores at the 75th percentile for an unhooked kid before I'll declare "Match."</p>
<p>Carolyn, I've been following your posts for the past three years as our oldest children are the same age. You always have something wise to share. Thank you for laying it out in this fashion.</p>
<p>
[quote]
She will not bother with any in the fifth category, and, frankly, I think she probably would be in over her head academically at schools falling in that category even if, by some miracle, she was accepted.
[/quote]
Carolyn, this is so wise of you! Sometimes, I think, the quest for 'name brand' colleges loses sight of this simple, yet crucial, point. S1 is at an Ivy, which is a good fit for him. But just last night, I was thinking what a mistake it would have been for him if he hadn't had the seriously rigorous high school experience that he did have. The classes are very challenging, and the student body is such that the curve is very high. Without the level of AP math and science classes he'd taken in HS, he would be seriously over his head. So, the fit factor is more than just a question of whether or not a student fits in socially, or likes the campus. As parents, we should make sure our kids don't forget about the academics!</p>
<p>Worrywart,</p>
<p>As others have already pointed out, it depends a lot on the colleges to which your child is applying. Our high school uses the Naviance service to assist parents and students in the college search. You might ask the guidance office at your school if they have anything similar available. One of the tools is a "scattergram" that plots acceptances and rejections at each college vs. GPA and SAT scores for several years running. Once you get enough data put on the chart, it often becomes very obvious how a particular school is making decisions.</p>
<p>The most selective colleges, of course, want everything - GPA > 4.0 and perfect test scores. A 25th percentile score in anything is likely to be a big problem at most of those places. We've had our share of 4.5 GPA / 1600 SAT kids rejected at a number of them.</p>
<p>If you go down a notch or two, you see that some schools don't care very much about SAT's and admit primarily on the basis of GPA. For example, Rutgers has accepted nearly everyone from this high school with a GPA over 3.3, even when the SAT scores were in the 700's. I'm talking about the sum of math and verbal on the old 1600 scale, not the individual scores. For GPA's below 3.3, they seem to take only about one in five. </p>
<p>Other schools seem to have both a GPA and an SAT threshold. If you have the grades and the SAT scores they are looking for, you are virtually guaranteed acceptance, otherwise the chances are pretty slim. Still other schools actually seem to mean it when they say they look at more than the raw numbers, with acceptances and rejections spread all over the chart.</p>
<p>
[quote]
She will not bother with any in the fifth category, and, frankly, I think she probably would be in over her head academically at schools falling in that category even if, by some miracle, she was accepted.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is true. I was just discussing with a friend a few days ago the folly of some parents' choices in the pursuit of their child's admission to a prestigious school. If you realize that your child -- even in the middle of high school -- hasn't yet fallen in love with some sort of intellectual pursuit, and you have to push and cajole and urge so that he or she performs at a good level, then perhaps it is time to reconsider the goal of the whole venture. If, miraculously, such a student gets into a top school, it will result in getting eaten for lunch there by people who found high school relatively effortless and amusing.</p>
<p>Elite colleges are wonderful places for students who hit the ceiling of their high schools. The rest are often relegated to the unfortunate duty of bringing up the rear in an extremely talented group, which is unpleasant.</p>
<p>Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the best opportunities at any school are disproportionately lavished on the top quartile, and even more so on the top decile. Students who end up in the bottom quartile of a good school are often punished for getting into a school of that quality; it would have been better to take a small step down in prestige and be near the top somewhere else.</p>
<p>My D is like Carolyn's --Verbal SAT was 150 pts higher than Math. We are also following a similar strategy--No high reaches . One or two reaches, two reach/match, two match/safeties (one safer than the other). Three women's colleges are on the list --their average Math scores are lower. D also has one rec from a Math teacher who talks about how hard she worked in that subject.</p>
<p>My D is like Carolyn's --Verbal SAT was 150 pts higher than Math. We are also following a similar strategy--No high reaches . One or two reaches, two reach/match, two match/safeties (one safer than the other). Three women's colleges are on the list --their average Math scores are lower. D also has one rec from a Math teacher who talks about how hard she worked in that subject. </p>
<p>I disagree with BG, though. It can be worthwhile to attend a top school even if your are not in the top quartile. Class discussions will be more stimulating, social opportunites will have more intellectual content and you may still be able to hold your own in one or two subjects even if you don't shine at everything.</p>
<p>Good post, Ben. I think what you are suggesting is that kids who squeek in to a school like Caltech or MIT are setting themselves up for a difficult time. It's different at a selective Ivy or other private though, that's not as oriented toward math and science. At a non-tech school it's possible to excel in another activity, as Pyewacket suggests. If you are not extremely talented in math/science, though, MIT or Caltech would be a very daunting experience, I think.</p>
<p>Five categories, OMG! It is hard enough to try to put schools into three categories: safety, match and reach. My D applied to some music conservatories which for her were all substantial reaches. She also had several strictly academic apps with no music connection. Two of her apps were for State U's which were category 1, safeties. She was accepted by both. She had 3 matches, category 2/3. She had 2 rejections and an acceptance for the most selective school in this category. She had 4 apps for super reaches, category 5. Two were frivolous apps to Ivies. She received rejections for the 2 Ivies and 2 acceptances for the other reaches.</p>
<p>When you are rejected by matches and accepted by reaches, clearly there is a lot more to the admissions process than academic statistics. We will never know what goes on in the minds of the adcoms and sometimes the outcomes can seem like a lottery. I recommend doing the research and picking schools with the best fit for culture and academic programs. Apply even if they are reaches. There is no reason to be entirely analytical and not apply because the odds seem low. On the other hand, my D's Ivy apps were not researched and were a waste of energy and app fees.</p>
<p>One case in which the mix or lopsidedness of scores may not matter is when they go against the assumed bias or, as others have noted, when a specialized school is involved. My daughter, who ended up attending an art school, had much higher math SAT (over 700) than verbal (low 600s). That's not the usual imbalance one might expect of an aspiring artist. But it fairly accurately reflected her relative strengths in verbal/writing vs. math (similar pattern in SAT II). Yet what mattered in her case above all else was that she is talented in art and had a strong portfolio, and secondarily that her scores in verbal SAT were well above average, even if significantly lower than her math SAT.</p>
<p>To generalize this a bit, I would repeat that it's the whole package that counts. I'm not sure we could or would go into the detail of Carolyn's 5-category approach. But the general idea of looking at the student's strengths on multiple dimensions, not just test scores, is well established.</p>
<p>I would agree: the lopsided kid is more likely to apply and be accepted by reach schools. Lopsided SAT or other stats can indicate special interests and abilities which might match the needs of some reach schools. IMO the programs, culture and overall fit are much more important than SATs and AI scores.</p>