<p>“Standardized tests cut through all of this. Sure, the SAT is very flawed, and if someone makes a better test more power to them. When a person with the highest scores in a school is barely in the top 20%, and this person has an application that shows that they aren’t lazy, clearly GPA and class rank aren’t working.”</p>
<p>Yeah, I’ve always wanted one thing, which is for the AP’s and SAT II’s to be very rigorous, standard exams which <em>guide the curricula of many classes</em>. Since some AP’s are already flaky, I think doing well at them doesn’t reflect very much often, AND high school classes can afford to be even flakier and still pull decent results on the AP tests for their students. I think it’d be great to inspire high schools to teach AP stuff more at the level it really is done in college … some AP’s are probably better than others, though.</p>
I think that schools should direct advanced students to local colleges for the subject areas they excel in (apparently a few do now). Hopefully adcoms will let my A’s from community college override my high school record, but the impression I’m getting is that it doesn’t do much more than serve as a minor bonus.</p>
<p>just wondering, what would be the main factor(s) of admission then? what would make you choose one person over another (generally, if you can’t use plain numbers)</p>
<p>Heres what I think, in order of importance.</p>
<p>Rigor
Rank
Sat/ACT
GPA
Ec’s</p>
<p>GPA is useless without rank and rigor and thus should be much lower. I have much more respect for a person taking 10 ap’s and earning a 3.5 at stuy or bronx sci than a person with a 4.0 wih 3 ap’s at some crappy public school.</p>
<p>I disagree with the degree of emphasis colleges put on GPA- but to disregard it completely? Are you OUT OF YOUR ************************************** MIND?</p>
<p>Sure, why not let our best schools just educate the lazy! That way the little recession we’re in could become no big deal. Our global competitiveness would be over anyway.</p>
<p>By the way, I made this thread as sort of a joke. A good portion of the time, a gpa is a very good indicator of how well a student will do in college, but often times, inflation of grades often makes it irrelevant.</p>
<p>Time to wake up, kiddos… In the real world, hardly anybody really gives a crap how smart you are. Your value is a measure of your production, which is a product of your capacity and your effort (note that your excuses for lack of effort do not appear in the equation). And capacity is a lot easier for colleges, employers, &c to enhance than effort.</p>
<p>If you’re a lazy genius slug, you’re still just a lazy slug.</p>
<p>(@chronicfuture: Yeah, your original message sounded sardonic enough to read as a joke, but there’ve been plenty of recent posts here from students moaning here about how high their GPAs could be if they actually did the work and how they shouldn’t be punished for being too smart to do boring busy work. :rolleyes:)</p>