<p>How are y’alls stats? I’m really worried that my stats just won’t be good enough to get in. Sigh.</p>
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<p>I’m sure most of us have solid stats. Look through <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/894258-official-yale-class-2014-rd-results-thread.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/894258-official-yale-class-2014-rd-results-thread.html</a> to get an idea of what most acceptees had.</p>
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You might also be interested in this thread, too, keeping in mind that the pool here is CC SCEA posters. The analysis might not fit the wider pool.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/616854-scea-returns-so-far.html?highlight=scea[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/616854-scea-returns-so-far.html?highlight=scea</a></p>
<p>@silverturtle I was looking at the link you sent me. Some of the kids said that they had seen their teacher recs. How is that possible? I thought recs were supposed to stay private. Do you or anyone else know how this is so?</p>
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<p>I believe the Common Application has a box to check if you wish to waive your right to see the recommendations. If this is unchecked, you may see them. However, even if the box is checked, teachers may still voluntarily reveal them to you.</p>
<p>Is it common practice for students to be able to see their teacher recs? I remember when I was applying for prep school, I had to get in teacher recs and I wasn’t allowed to see them. They would be sealed in envelopes and sent off to the school. Is it different with college recs? Isn’t it kind of awkward?</p>
<p>The Common App allows for electronic transmission of a standard recommendation form from your teachers. I don’t think you get to see the form even if you haven’t waived your right to see it. Otherwise recs can be mailed as per usual.</p>
<p>Your recommender might or might not be comfortable with your seeing the letter they write: what they do is ultimately up to them. As silverturtle says, they can choose to show you the letter regardless of how you check the box. Similarly they can refuse to show you the letter even if you did not check the box. (After all they could write any kind of letter to the admissions office at any time whether you asked them to or not. Hopefully you’ve worked this out in advance!) If you waive your right to see them you are telling the schools that they can deny you future access to the letters from their files (you would have the legal right to do so, otherwise, regardless of the letter writer’s wishes). Because of this, some recommenders might be more comfortable if you do check the box. This might be true even if they write strongly supportive letters: perhaps they would be uncomfortable revealing their fondness for you, or perhaps they frankly discuss your weaknesses within an otherwise strong letter, or perhaps they simply make a policy of non-disclosure for all letters so that students will not infer content based on what the is done after a letter is written.</p>
<p>I suspect the situation is different for prep school: as a minor your rights were somewhat curtailed (but your protections were wider). I’d wager, however, that if you wanted to see those letters after you are 18 the school would be legally obligated to show them to you. (Or perhaps not. Certainly you have rights to any public school records. Private schools might not be similarly enjoined.)</p>
<p>Okay, consider two situations:</p>
<p>1) Student A is the valedictorian of a rather mediocre school. There are loads of people in his class (imagine 800-900, like one of the larger public schools), but the courses aren’t terribly hard (even though Student A is taking the hardest classes that his school offers). </p>
<p>2) Student B is only in the top 20 percent of his class. He goes to a very small, private prep school. There are about 80-90 kids in his class and the courses are extremely difficult. Some of the kids who are ranked higher than him maintained their GPAs because they took easier courses. </p>
<p>How does an admissions officer weigh between the two students?</p>
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<p>Keep in mind that students are not compared in this one-on-one fashion, but the principle of your question is nonetheless valid. If an admissions officer is doubtful of the quality of Student A’s school, he or she may rely more on standardized testing to understand the student’s performance. If the student gets all A’s in AP classes but scores around 3-4 on his or her AP tests and has an SAT score around 2100, the rank may mean less.</p>
<p>Don’t loads of people take test prep courses nowadays? Does that chip away at the significance of the SAT/ACT?</p>
<p>Why would it? Curves account for widespread performance improvements, and preparatory courses are largely ineffective for top-scorers.</p>
<p>I mean, I took a prep course and raised my score 400 points. I took one test, at the beginning of this year, and missed a question. Before, I was averaging in the 1900s. </p>
<p>How exactly do the curves account for widespread performance improvements?</p>
<p>The scaled scores are supposed to remain steady across tests and time. A 500 should mean the same now as it did in 1995, when the SAT was re-centered.</p>
<p>There is no evidence that increased participation in prep courses is driving up scores. Score averages and high score frequencies have remain relatively unchanged for quite some time. It has always been the case that increased familiarity and practice has led to increased scores and thus some number of students have always prepped for these tests. Nowadays, however, more people seem willing to pay to have someone else to prep them. But there is no evidence that these courses are any better than self-preparation.</p>
<p>That you might have benefitted from such a course (and do you know that you wouldn’t have done as well through self-study?) is great, but isn’t a basis for saying everyone benefits. You can find many threads on CC debating whether these courses are worth the money paid for them.</p>
<p>None of this is meant to defend standardized tests as the final word on student ability. Far from it. I only mean to say that they remain about as effective as they always have been and provide a means by which to compare the two students you describe.</p>
<p>Another quick question:</p>
<p>I have 14-16 mandatory courses this year, all As (or at least B+s, I don’t know, different system), but 1 annoying C (78) at sports. And the average of sports is 78-79. How to inform this to the adcoms? </p>
<p>Haha I’m stressed.</p>
<p>@Descartez </p>
<p>How exactly does the SAT test aptitude, as it claims to do? What effect does it have in a student’s application? Loads of people are taking the SAT lots of times now, in order to get that desirable SuperScore. How does that come into account?</p>
<p>We are threatening to go well off thread-topic here. I will respond one more time on this.
Oh no! I’m not going there! Anything I say, supporting or detracting, will engender so many responding posts as to permanently swamp this thread. Suffice to say that test scores show a moderate ability to predict first year college grades–about the same as high school GPA–and when combined with high school GPA show a little bit better predictive capability still. More can be said, but not by me. You can search for numerous and endless CC threads on this topic, if you wish.</p>
<p>Perhaps you meant to ask how the test remains stable in its evaluative results in spite of the different questions it must ask through the years. I am not a psychometrician, but there are statistical techniques which allow this to happen.
The impact varies with the school. At some scores are of primary importance, at others a secondary consideration. Big publics are thought to pay more attention to them as they have less time to consider more subjective aspects of an application, but even these schools seem to practice more holistic evaluation nowadays. Tech/science focused schools, too, are often said to like these quantitative measures more than other schools. It is pretty universal, however, that scores are said to come behind transcripts and strength of curriculum in importance.
I am unable to say with any precision. Superscoring is in vogue, I think, because (1) it appears generous to applicants and thereby removes some pressure and (2) it allows schools to report the highest possible pool statistics on their common data sets, thereby making their classes look as “good” as possible. It is not clear to me whether or not admissions officers actually see all scores or only the superscore when they make evaluations–it probably varies by school. I believe the practice actually represents something of a de-emphasizing of test scores - schools feel a little less compelled to report these numbers consistently (the ACT is usually not superscored) nor accurately (superscoring is not considered “best-practice” by the College Board) because they value these numbers a little less than they used to. Admissions committees often complain that applicants themselves over-value their test scores, but it is the one purely quantitative and standardized statistic students have for comparison of themselves with others.</p>
<p>This might be of interest for future Y applicants:</p>
<p>[Yale</a> Daily News - No choice on scores](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2009/01/16/no-choice-on-scores/]Yale”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2009/01/16/no-choice-on-scores/)</p>
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<p>I think the way the SAT is evaluated in college admissions is flawed which sucks because my score is the best part of my application. Sigh.</p>
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Yale doesn’t superscore.</p>
<p>I do not see how people who do very well on SAT/ACT should be accepted into great schools if they do not excel in regular classes.</p>