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<p>They may know which kids seem the “smartest” in their classes, but only from their perspective as peers. They have no way to judge POTENTIAL. They cannot know how a particular kid fits within an optimal freshman class for a particular college. They do not have the wisdom of experience watching overachievers (not all, but some) burn out from trying to be all things to all people. </p>
<p>I don’t know why that is so hard to understand.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter what the kids know – the colleges are NOT in the business of picking the “best and the brighteset” and they certainly are not in the business of picking the “best and brightest” from a single high school. </p>
<p>They are picking students to fill dozens of different types of roles at their colleges – scholars, athletes and artists - students who will study physics and philosophy and poetry – and of course they also are striving for a diverse student body. They do prefer that all the students are up to a certain academic standard, and they certainly want to have a reasonable share of academic super-stars-- but that’s only one piece of the admissions pie. </p>
<p>^^ Like +1000 @calmom, your posts on this topic should be required reading for all students (and their parents) who are thinking of applying to any elite school. It’s a shame that so many posters just don’t seem to get it.</p>
<p>I cab’t believe this hasn’t yet joined the big “race in admissions” thread! </p>
<p>I will add my also not new comments;</p>
<p>I believe appearance is a legitimate aspect of diversity, seperate from everything else that makes us different.</p>
<p>“Points” for being black in elite college admissions is relevant for only the teensiest portion of the black community. </p>
<p>It’s one thing to say it would be better to be that black guy in the applicant pool at Harvard. Entirely different to say being born black would give you better odds. How many parents would swap kids in the nursery? How many kids would swap parents? </p>
<p>I can’t seem to edit the above, even though it has not been an hour… This is the edited version;</p>
<p>I can’t believe this hasn’t yet joined the big “race in admissions” thread! </p>
<p>I will type fast, and add my also nothing new comments;</p>
<p>I believe appearance is a legitimate aspect of diversity, seperate from everything else that makes us different.</p>
<p>For those who say things you cannot control, like race, should not be considered, what are your thoughts about control over SAT scores? I am more than open to the idea that the middle of the curve, say up to the 85th percentile, is within a students control, but I am not sure about the 95th percentile and above…And if you’re one of those parents or kids who scored there in the 7th grade, with no prep, I especially mean you. Some might think kids born that way deserve the best schools, but what if the best schools disagree? </p>
<p>“Points” for being black in elite college admissions is relevant for only the teensiest portion, I’m thinking less than one percent, of the black community. It’s one thing to say it would be better to be that black guy in the applicant pool at Harvard. Entirely different to say being born black would give you better odds of getting in. How much random swapping would happen in the nursery? </p>
<p>I like to think think that is what your average black community leader is about. Not the individual student, but the whole. Again, I get that that is not what CC is about. But the thread isn’t locked yet, so I’ll say it; having the numbers, opportunity, and money seems far rarer than the annecdotal experience of those on CC. I am willing to live with the “shame” of affirmative action until the numbers increase. No one I know IRL seems to be shaming. </p>
<p>Full disclosure; one of my AA kids did get into an “elite” school, applied to largely because it was in a city that my sister lived, but she didn’t apply to any Ivy’s. Didn’t really occur to her. Wanted UCLA, but got rejected. (2008. I’m still a little bitter, but I’m still here.) Most folks I work with to get the number of students graduating high school and applying for college up would have no idea what we are talking about. </p>
<p>The board apparently has been changed to allow only 15 minutes edit time.</p>
<p>Oh. </p>
<p>And you don’t need 10 char!</p>
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<p>You two are spot on! My son is a perfect example. He didnt take any honors classes in hs, and just did so-so. Once he went to college, he excelled. He will be graduating next year cum laude,departmental honors, and he is in the Honors program! He didnt have the grades or test scores to be admitted into the honors program from high school, but he had an awesome freshman year then applied. He probably would graduate magna cum laude, but his school only takes the top 17% for honors designation, so it is very competitive. Most schools take the top 25-30%. So, you are right, kids dont know. My son was very quiet in hs, and was never in class with the overachievers, but clearly he was very bright. </p>
<p>I think I should clarify that, in my thinking, there is an important difference between preference and actually lowering standards. All other things being pretty equal, you could make an argument that it makes good sense for the school to take the legacy or URM or tuba player or pitcher that fits their needs. However, if students in the non-preferred groups are at a certain academic level (which is imperfectly defined by SAT scores and course rigor), and the tuba player is let in with a significantly lower record than what would otherwise be acceptable, it can be problematic for both the school and the individual. It’s still primarily a school, after all, not a band or team or social club.</p>
<p>On D’s elite school sports teams, most of the athletes are academically indistinguishable from other students. They have SAT’s in the 2200-2400 range, for example, and many came from top prep schools. But it’s also true that there are some stars who were accepted with an SAT of 1800, give or take. D knows some of these students and trust me, it hasn’t always been a great experience for them. They’ve struggled mightily; have thought about transferring and some did; have quit their team, not because they wanted to but because they couldn’t handle their lives; have had to drop their intended major for an easier one not at all to their liking; and they have developed stress issues and self-destructive behaviors. At S’s Ivy, there was an academically under-prepared football player who kept failing this one class he needed to graduate, and eventually he resorted to cheating. He was caught, and it became a terrible mess for him. I also know a young URM woman who freely admits she was accepted to a top LAC under AA. She described to me how awful it was to feel academically inadequate, how much it shook her confidence and self-esteem. She turned to a self-destructive behavior and eventually dropped out. The good news is she did go back to school, but not an elite one, and graduated. She told me this story when my D was being recruited, as a warning to not let her go somewhere above her level. At Penn this year, there was a suicide of a young athlete who was under academic stress.</p>
<p>I do agree wholeheartedly with this. Giving a qualified applicant preference is totally different than lowering the academic standards. I’ve seen that with my own child.</p>
<p>S was good at his sport, and was recruited fairly heavily by elite schools. He opted NOT to attend the Ivy that he received a likely letter from. Thank goodness, because he would have been miserable. He was not prepared either academically or socially for an elite school. He continues to struggle with LDs, ADHD, and BPD. He is very bright, got “good enough” grades, and is charming and articulate in interviews, but every minute in the classroom is frustrating for him. At best, he would have graduated with the proverbial “gentleman’s C” and forever defined himself as a “dumb jock.” TheGFG describes the at worst scenarios. On the other hand, two of his classmates went to elite schools with a football “hook.” Both of those boys were top students, school leaders, and socially adept. Both thrived. Interestingly enough, neither played football for more than two years, but both graduated and are doing well. </p>
<p>That was 10 years ago, though, and the physical requirements associated with the sport I’m most familiar with are particularly apt to lead to mismatches. I don’t think S’s situation is as common today as it was then. Still, giving preference to a recruited athlete (or anyone else with a “hook”) who also has the test scores and a history of doing well in advanced classes is a lot different than populating a sports team with kids who are discernibly different in terms of academic potential than the rest of the school population.</p>
<p>When admission to however you chose to define an “elite” school stops being equated with winning the lottery or getting a guaranteed ticket to some amazing life there will be some return to sanity in college admissions.</p>
<p>It seems to me reading this thread as someone who knows just enough about this subject to be dangerous it is that simple. </p>
<p>I have many family members who went to or are attending “elite” schools and I don’t see the difference between them and my kids-one an “ivy reject” who somehow is managing to be very happy at his safety school or my daughter who will not be a viable candidate for these schools so we don’t have to get involved in this insanity again. </p>
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<p>There is just one wrong word in that sentence. Replace flute with volleyball, basketball and world would be her oyster. :D</p>
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<p><a href=“Brian Cushing - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cushing</a></p>
<p>Someone I know who was in one of his classes at USC told me that Cushing lifted his chair and put it back in order to get around him. This kid was easily 175 lbs back in those days.</p>
<p>TheGFG, I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. But of course you know that there are kids of EVERY background at elite schools who also can’t cut either the pressure or the academic expectations–even kids who were stars in high school. They commit suicide or drop out as well. This does not surprise me at all, because a kid who has been coddled through school, with tutoring, test prep, and every kind of parental support, may not have the INTERNAL motivation and strength to manage on his own. And a lot of them are burned out after being saddled with ridiculously high expectations since birth.</p>
<p>“if you acknowledge that there are preferences for attribute x or y, then it isn’t offensive for people to assume that a or b might have had a role in admission. That isn’t the same as assuming the other person wasn’t qualified.”</p>
<p>Right, but many people assume the second rather than the first. That’s the problem.</p>
<p>“there is an important difference between preference and actually lowering standards.”</p>
<p>Yes, but this was my argument upthread. The Ivies have decided that above a certain stats threshold, everyone is academically qualified, and numbers don’t tell you much about which students to admit. So admitting a 670 over a 770 (or even a 710) can be seen as a preference between two well-qualified candidates, or it can be seen as lowering standards. I trust the schools themselves to know this, because they actually have decades of grade and graduation data for the students they admitted. Harvard and Amherst have the highest black graduation rates in the country.</p>
<p>I would guess that the SATs of incoming black students at Harvard are lower than those of white and Asian students. But they’re above a threshold that tells the schools the students are capable of thriving there. So I don’t see that as lowering standards in any meaningful sense.</p>
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I a really tired of this persistent belief that the SAT somehow is a test of ability or potential. It isn’t.</p>
<p>There is no reason that a student with an SAT score of 1800 can’t do well at an IVY. The SAT scores aren’t really valid for testing much beyond test-taking ability, but to the extent that you can draw a conclusion from the score, a 1200 math/verbal would equate with an an IQ of 123, or 93% percentile. See <a href=“SAT I to IQ Estimator”>http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/SATIQ.aspx</a> </p>
<p>I don’t know what the Ivy’s threshold is… but my kid managed quite well at an elite college with test scores below her college’s median range. </p>
<p>Sometimes I think all the testing is dumbing everyone down. Instead of being encouraged and rewarded for independent thought, kids are taught from elementary through high school to look for “right” answers on standardized, multiple choice tests. The popularity of AP classes only adds to that – the high content level of the classes make it difficult to explore ideas in depth -so for the most part, those are just more classes that reward memorization. </p>
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<p>And yet (in a generalized sense, not specifically relating to those with “hooks” or whatever), students tend to prefer to attend the reachiest schools that they get admitted to, perhaps setting themselves up for this type of thing. (But then the student’s intended major may also be relevant – is it known as a “hard” major at the school or an “easy” major at the school? A student attending a reach school may have a different experience in a “hard” major versus an “easy” major.)</p>
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<p>Try crew. With that height, (and with grades and score in the right neighborhood) one strong season and she could become an Ivy League recruiting prospect. Not kidding.</p>
<p>^^^^ that - you can teach someone to row pretty well in a year but you can’t teach height</p>
<p>You also can’t teach the mentality to put yourself through that day after day but maybe she’s got that. After the innate physical type, much of the improvement comes from that mental willingness to keep pushing.</p>