CountingDown

S1 had a very well constructed list; it's just that the two Ivies to which he applied were not at the top of that list, and I suspect that a) they recognized there were other schools that were a much better fit; and b) there may have been some yield assessment taking place. (There did not seem to be any huge red flags thwacking admissions folks in his case. He was accepted EA at two top ten schools.)

It all worked out just fine -- S got into exactly the four schools he liked the best (and to which he had directed his essays).

Heplayer92

I think its unfortunate how racist some of you guys are.

Not all asian people are like the "annoying ones" that you're "sick of"


If you haven't noticed, most asian kids work extremely hard. Instead of partying on the weekends and getting high and wasted, asian kids are at home studying/etc. Also, in general, asian parents are extremely strict on homework, like 99% of my asian friends, and therefore it is in fact ridiculously competitive among asian college applicants.

Also, when it comes to affirmative action, asians are indeed a minority. Do you think its fair for a person with native american heritage or mexican / african american to be able to be admitted into a better college with a 3.5 GPA/25 ACT etc, while an asian with a 3.9/33 ACT etc gets rejected simply due to race?

Asians are a minority too.


Cut them some slack =P One will probably operate on you some day.

lockn

Nobody has said how colleges should treat Asians (in this thread at least). They are saying how they think the colleges are currently doing things.

Senior0991

I was reading through this thread and I think a distinction should be made: there is a lot of difference between a 4.0 GPA and a 2400 SAT. Both are not simply "scores." A 4.0 demonstrates four years of hard work and well-rounded intelligence, a 2400 indicates raw academic talent and potential.

I know many people (myself included) who got near perfect-perfect scores on the ACT/SAT but didn't get straight As, and one even got straight Bs, and we generally didn't get accepted to HYPSM, etc. But the few people in my school to get a 4.0 or very, very close got accepted to the majority of those schools. Which indicates to me that a 4.0 GPA (at least at my HS) should have a pretty good chance to get into the top schools, while someone with a perfect/near-perfect on a standardized test shouldn't count on anything.

If I had it my way, grades wouldn't matter so much, but, as it stands, they do, and they matter much more than test scores.

strife15

Yeah, I've got to agree with the previous poster.

We've got a couple of kids in my school (5, I believe) who pulled off a 2300 SAT, but only had a 3.5 GPA (Which for these students was considered" abysmally low").

One got into Wesleyan, one got the Michigan Shipman scholarship. The other three? Rochester and Michigan LSA (not even honors...). But relative to the schools these guys were looking at (and to be honest, for how damn intelligent they were), the results were quite shocking/disappointing.

At the same time other kids with GPAs that were higher (~3.7-3.8, that's still not top cum laude though) with significantly lower SATs (I think almost 200 points lower) breezed through the admission process, racking up schools like Wash U and Cornell.

monstor344

Senior0991, I find your assumption on the SAT misguided. While it's true that you have to be naturally intelligent in order to do well on the SAT (2100+), through knowledge of my peers, I can say that there are certainly other significant factors, including luck and wealth. Luck can easily diminish one's math score by 50, or it can raise it and boost other scores as well. And those with money can afford private tutors and prep courses for the SAT, or even if they don't pay for one of those, they can spend lots of time self-studying.

I still stand by my belief that a 2400 is a rare and significant achievement. But it is not a score attributed to pure intelligence. Then again, neither is a GPA, which depends even more on luck of the draw and studying (sometimes even with a tutor). But it's not like top colleges are looking for extremely intelligent kids who simply don't study; they want the hard workers as well. That's why I believe both are still valid areas in determining a student's success in college.

dirdir

Another valid question to consider: Do colleges sometimes reject 2400s just to say, "We rejected X % of 2400s."?

Senior0991

^I just said the raw intelligence because that is basically what it does. And, in my experience, the general score differences between me and my peers are well reflected in our all-around natural intelligence. Studying and luck can only get you so far.

In the essence of the posts, we are in agreement. We both agree that GPA can be "gamed" easier than the SAT through hard work, luck, and class selections. We also both agree that the very top colleges don't want those 2300+ straight B students (although I think that should be different). And, like you said, both are valid areas for assessment, but they measure different things.

Senior0991

dirdir- That wouldn't be a difficult practice. They could just drop down to 2390 or 2380 and get virtually the same quality of applicants in terms of standardized tests. And they could easily find 2380 applicants who are better in other areas than those 2400 applicants as well.

I don't think they'd reject a 2400 applicant who was virtually the same or better in all other categories as a 2300 applicant just for the heck of it, though.

TheMatrix411

About 300 people get a single-sitting 2400 in a given year in the entire United States of America. Between 10x and a 100x more people have 4.0 GPA's. Which, then, do you think might get more attention from the admissions committee?

I had a 2400 and will be attending Harvard in the fall. My GPA was about mid-way between a 3.7 and a 4.0, and I was somewhere in the top 10% of my class, but several positions removed from Valedictorian/Salutatorian.

Senior0991

^Just because you got a 2400 doesn't mean your SAT score got you in. A 3.85 GPA is pretty darn good, as is "several" positions away from the top of your class. You probably had some other reason(s) for acceptance as well.

Think about it this way. Would you rather have a 4.0 GPA and a 2000 SAT or a 3.4 GPA and a 2400 SAT?

Maybe I'm too used to the way Stanford looks at it. From what I've seen, they take countless people with "bad" test scores but who are generally great besides that. A 2400 doesn't entitle you to get accepted at Stanford, and an 1800 does not disqualify you from admission (there were some accepted 1800s). But, the vast majority of admittees are near the top of their class with GPAs higher than an A- average, with SAT scores all over the place.

lockn

Applicant Profile : Stanford University

It looks like getting below 600 on a section is pretty much the same as not being in the top 10% of your class.

monstor344

Stanford is probably the most frustrating school to think about admissions-wise. Aside from their rather arbitrary acceptances, as someone who is trying to get recruited to play baseball, Stanford is one of those top schools that I won't be able to get recruited at, simply because their baseball team is ridiculously good (they produce quite a few major leaguers). They're the one school where even if I continued my baseball career reasonably well and did amazing on my tests, I still wouldn't have a good chance of making it in.

shayman91

Heplayer92-

Asians are a minority, but not an underrepresented minority in colleges.

Asians make up 4% of the US population, however they make up 20% of the colleges' population. Therefore they are not a minority in colleges at all. They are represented fully. Latinos and african americans get in easier because they are underrepresented in college and more of them should be admitted to make them represented equally in colleges.

monstor344

shayman91, be careful how you word that. Should be admitted? I always feel extremely cheated when an under-qualified URM is admitted over a much more qualified ORM applicant. With that said, I have no problem with URMs getting a significant admissions push, but only if they are qualified in the first place.

The Asian situation is what makes AA so difficult, because even if Asians are ORM, it's not as if the Asian race was treated better than other minorities in the US; they were just as disadvantaged and had to work their ways up society as well. But the Asian aesthetics of being determined and working hard has brought them to a point where their hard work goes against them, and now they have to work harder than other races just to be "average" amongst their own race.