<p>^^ Right, I think that it may be that the two correlate. At least a friend or two of mine who were very serious about their applications and made it into some great schools took the SAT twice or more. They also clearly did a lot of other things to show they are serious about college apps. Whereas I know someone who got a 2350 on his first try, didn’t have much insane stuff on his application, just was a fairly good student and did some ECs…and didn’t have much success with the elite schools he wanted to get into. Rather similar story for someone I know with a 2400 on his first try.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure what you’re saying.</p>
<p>I think mathboy98 is saying that colleges want to know you care about them and doing their apps, and care about stuff in general. Those who score a 2350 or 2400 on their first try but don’t show much passion in their apps won’t do well in admissions. I think that is pretty obvious though.</p>
<p>I am saying that it would appear logical that higher SAT scores <em>correlate</em> with boosts in admissions, while in my little experience, there is little causation to be spoken of. I.e. I would be very surprised if high scorers received a boost <em>without</em> possessing other attributes which mark someone who was not just a serious student, serious intellectual, or seriously talented person, but also serious about applications (namely having lots to show, which looks good).</p>
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<p>Not only logically, statistically as well.</p>
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<p>So you are essentially going with option two from post #60?</p>
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<p>Not SO obvious. There are people who are incredibly passionate, say what they are passionate about, but my experience is there is a very nontrivial extra factor called how serious you are about applications. You can be very serious about doing interesting things outside of acing classes, but not very serious about hunting down ways to look good on an application. </p>
<p>Taking the trouble to ace the SATs tends, in my experience with people, to correlate decently well with being pretty serious about applications. But what I am also saying is that acing the SAT by itself meant almost nothing independently in my experience. I’d be interested if data actually say anything different, but would be very skeptical.</p>
<p>Option 2 seems most likely to me, but Option 3 is also plausible.</p>
<p>Here is some of that data that I alluded to, by the way:</p>
<p>[ul][<em>]At Stanford, applicants with 800 on the Critical Reading section of the SAT are 64% more likely to be admitted than applicants with 700-790.
[</em>]At Stanford, applicants with 800 on the Writing section are 58% more likely to be admitted than those with 700-790.<br>
[<em>]At Princeton, applicants with 2300-2400 on the SAT are 130% more likely to be admitted than applicants with 2100-2290.
[</em>]At Dartmouth, applicants with 800 on the Critical Reading section of the SAT are 122% more likely to be admitted than applicants with 700-790.
[<em>]At Dartmouth, applicants with 800 on the Math section of the SAT are 68% more likely to be admitted than applicants with 700-790.
[</em>]At Dartmouth, applicants with 800 on the Writing section of the SAT are 118% more likely to be admitted than applicants with 700-790.
[<em>]At Brown, applicants with 800 on the Critical Reading section of the SAT are 39% more likely to be admitted than applicants with 750-790.
[</em>]At Brown, applicants with 800 on the Math section of the SAT are 28% more likely to be admitted than applicants with 750-790.
[<em>]At Brown, applicants with 800 on the Writing section of the SAT are 46% more likely to be admitted than applicants with 750-790.
[</em>]At Brown, applicants with 36 on the ACT are 119% more likely to be admitted than applicants with 33-35 and 273% more likely to be admitted than applicants with 29-32.[/ul]
The gains just seem too large for there to not be at least some causation.</p>
<p>I would think so on first glance too. I would still place plenty of weight on the fact that some very talented people are vastly more serious about applications than others, I guess. Especially if these guys consider the best possible scores on each section from each attempt, then data that contrast a perfect score with a high, but not perfect score, would probably favor someone who actually gives a damn about something like the SAT, <em>just because it’s a part of the application</em> :D</p>
<p>I would guess that a lot of little boosts add up, though, for sure.</p>
<p>Those are interesting data, though :D</p>
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Classic post hoc ergo propter hoc.</p>
<p>A more likely explanation is that, in most of those cases, a confounding variable is responsible for the observation of students with 800s having higher admission rates. I think the identity of said confounding variable needs no elaboration.</p>
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<p>What an absurd comment. Based on my previous acknowledgment of the need to distinguish between mere correlation and causation, it is clear that your accusation is incorrect.</p>
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<p>It does.</p>
<p>College admissions can be very unpredictable. But we can all tell from this data that improving test scores improves your chances of admission. I would also love to know what confounding variable it is that leads to higher admission rates krypton. If we can’t come to an agreement on this, why not ask an admissions rep?</p>
<p>Just because you acknowledge there’s a difference doesn’t mean you’re invulnerable to confusing them. It’s obvious from my aforementioned quote that you’re not privy to the requirements for establishing causation.</p>
<p>And said confounding variable is being a “better” student.</p>
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<p>The only admissions officer who has given a straight answer is Chris Peterson (a CC poster) of MIT. He said that there are threshold scores, but this does not seem to be the case at other schools.</p>
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<p>You said that I was not even considering the possibility of a confounding variable. I explicitly mentioned the possibility and opined that a confounding variable would not be sufficient to explain the correlations. Are you really asserting that someone who scores 800 on the Writing section of the SAT is almost 50% more likely to be admitted to Brown than someone who scored 750-790 simply because of the former’s possibly being a better student (a correlation, moreover, that you have not established)?</p>
<p>It is absolutely not classic post hoc to consciously make the evaluation that the confounding variables are not likely sufficient in magnitude to compensate for the correlation without the presence of a causal factor.</p>
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That’s kind of weird, because MIT’s statistics say otherwise.</p>
<p>[MIT</a> Admissions: Admissions Statistics](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/admissions_statistics/index.shtml)</p>
<p>Either what he said isn’t entirely true, but was only said to encourage more students to apply or something. Where can I find what this admissions officer posted?</p>
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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/939227-reminder-no-one-not-even-me-can-give-you-accurate-chance-mit-3.html#post1065106638[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/939227-reminder-no-one-not-even-me-can-give-you-accurate-chance-mit-3.html#post1065106638</a></p>
<p>^ Just to let you know, I’ve asked the MIT rep (on that thread) why there is such a strong correlation between higher test scores and acceptance rate if there is indeed a threshold for scores as he says there is.</p>
<p>^ Do you really think he is lying to you?</p>
<p>^ No I don’t, I just feel that he would be able to explain why this is. Then maybe we could believe that at other schools there are also just thresholds for standarized test scores.</p>