A question of fit?

emeraldkity4 · April 18, 2007, 2:59pm

but I think this whole “national ECs” thing is a myth. I have looked at the stats for over a hundred accepted students here on CC over several years, and few had “national level ECs”

my D certainly didn’t , and neither did her friends who went to schools like Barnard, Harvard, UPenn, Carleton & Uchicago

D did a lot of volunteer work at something she would have * paid* to do.
( well, probably not the shoveling out the barn part) :p

But not really nationally or locally ranked at anything although she is a good writer.

If you are really set on finding a school that just uses numbers for admission, the state schools are more likely to do that. ( although not for their honors programs)
I am also wondering, why someone would want to hide or obscure interests that would give a better sense of who they are?

As some schools like VT * haven’t been* requiring essays, and do just go by numbers for admission, I am wondering if perhaps they are going to rethink that - as getting a better idea of who a student is through their essays- can help to make decisions.

I also think it is pretty arrogant to assume they wont be challenged at a school with lower numbers.
For one thing- professor jobs are few and far between and other things color someones decision to work at a college or university or even community college, besides prestige of institution or even pay.
One chem teacher at the community college for example, has degrees ( inc PHD) from Caltech &Stanford- obviously bright- but what doesn’t show up on test scores, is how engaging he is, and how well he communicates with his students.
A student would be lucky to have him, whether they have him at NorthSeattle community college or Swarthmore.

Students also choose schools for all sort of reasons- while this particular student is only interested in SAT points, another student attends a different school because they want the opportunity to participate in the schools theatre productions even though they aren’t a drama major.

I realize that nobody is getting through- but in terms of the value and quality of your education- you are the one who has the most say with that, no matter where you go.
If you are determined to push yourself and take full advantage of your college years, you can get a fantastic education just about anywhere.

Yes there are places where it will be easier & some students and families knowing that their child is not the type to push themselves, unless they are working with students that are higher acheivers and perhaps more motivated and disciplined than they are, will look for schools where they will fall into the middle of the class, or even lower, hoping that they can get an extra push from their peers.

But there are other students who will kill themselves- figurative, I really mean * strive* to be at the top of the class, and if they are in a school where they are in the middle, they may be exhausted and obsessed with having to be top rank.

Students who were top 5% in high school, may be in for an unpleasant awakening, when they attend college with other 5%ers.
For some it could be a relief to be able to let their hair down and not have to be top in their class just because they have always been.

interesteddad · April 18, 2007, 3:14pm

I understand. A lot of people disagree with me, but I really tried to nudge my daughter’s search to colleges where she would have a legitimate 50%/50% chance of admission at the top of her list. I realize that is easier said than done in some high school environments. However, all of us knew from the start that applying as a white female from Massachusetts would be daunting. It really helped that one of her priorities was going to college more than three hours from home! It also helped that she has spent enough time on campus at some of the biggest brand name schools to understand that, at the end of the day, they are just colleges with strengths and weakness like any other school. So we weren’t fighting the allure of magic pixie dust.

With two exceptions, her list ended up with schools where she had 75th percentile or better “stats”. An interesting, effective EC focus gave her a legitimate shot at her two “reach” schools. I really believe that’s how you have to approach it when swimming against a strong demographic current. It’s all about dealing with the odds for the particular stack of applications where your app will end up.

Because I strongly believe in applying to schools you can get into and being excited about them, the original poster’s hypothetical premise rubs me the wrong way. The arrogance of not being intellectually challenged by students with - gasp - lower SAT scores is so counter-productive to an effective college search.

JHS · April 18, 2007, 3:37pm

I just noticed this “curious” thread.

I join with everyone else in saying the following to curious14: SATs + GPA =/= intellectualism (although they probably correlate with it to some extent). Intellectualism =/= what most colleges care exclusively about (although Chicago and Swarthmore come pretty close). Intellectualism =/= what most students, even intellectual ones, care exclusively about, either, so it’s not like there’s enormous unmet real-world demand that corresponds to your hypothetical.

That said: There was a thread a couple of weeks ago with a lot of methodological discussion, the result of which was to convince me reasonably that if all you know about a kid is that he or she has 2250+ SATs (and is not disqualified by other stat-type measures), he or she has about a 25% chance of admission to any one of HYPS (where they will be statistically average in the class), and somewhat better chances at the next tier of schools (where they will be close to average). Based purely on the statistics the schools report, one can infer that the overwhelming majority of such kids who don’t simply go to an in-state public university and who care to apply find a place at a top-15 (or top-20) university (which includes several public universities) or a top-10 (or top-15) LAC, where they find plenty of others like themselves (including many kids with lesser stats but greater or equivalent intellectual abilities) and a satisfying educational and social environment.

That pretty much corresponds to my observed experience, too. Very few kids can count on getting into HYPS, but kids DO get into HYPS (not mine). Every selective school feels a little bit like a crapshoot, but intellectual students with good grades and scores, and without personality disorders, who don’t find a congenial school to attend are pretty rare.

Chicago exists pretty much for the kind of student you are imagining: someone for whom having a uniformly intellectual student body is the primary selection criterion. You should notice that among high-prestige universities, Chicago receives far fewer applications, and has a much lower yield on students it accepts, than its academic peers. Swarthmore, which is like the LAC equivalent but which doesn’t have some of Chicago’s negatives, does better with comparative numbers of applicants and yield, but doesn’t outshine schools with other-than-intellectual appeal. Reed is another LAC with an intellectualism-over-everything reputation, and its applications and yield lag way behind many lesser schools. (Reed, I think, is second or third among all LACs in PhDs-per-graduate over a recent ten-year period, and its record in that regard is equivalent to the tippy-top research universities.) That should tell you something about your hypothetical: not enough people care about that to the exclusion of all else to support more than the existing supply of such institutions (which, by the way, surely includes HYPS, MIT, Cal Tech, Columbia, Brown, Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, Pomona, Carleton, even if some of them have a few athletes).

On a personal level, by the way, I have two kids who are more or less as you decribe, both with 1500+ SATs, one with great grades across the board in HS and one with a mix of great grades and merely good ones. The one with the better grades and (slightly) better SATs is the less intellectual of the two. He gets better grades in part because he doesn’t know what he wants, so he doesn’t focus specifically in one area, in part because he’s much less willing to disappoint adults, and in part because he gets caught up in the competition aspect of grades. None of those are especially admirable qualities. (He has many other admirable qualities, though.)

The older one goes to Chicago, and it is chock-full of people like them. Perfectly satisfactory in that respect. They have lots of friends like themselves. This is where their intellectual HS friends are or will be going to college: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Chicago, Columbia, Brown, Reed, Carleton, NYU, Cornell, Penn (lots, because of location), Penn State (lots, ditto), Michigan, McGill, Oxford, Smith, Barnard, Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Vassar, Wesleyan, Carnegie-Mellon, MIT. A couple of the kids at Penn State went there by default as a safety, but most chose it affirmatively; ditto Penn. With a couple more exceptions, each is attending a school that was among his or her top choices, and almost all are happy with their choices. (Ooops. There are a couple of athletes in there, too, but they are both in the top halves of their schools statistically – and one of those schools is Harvard.) The list isn’t exclusive at all, of course, just descriptive of where specific kids I can think of are or will be.

btm · April 18, 2007, 3:59pm

Do you have to pursue your (true) dream if the odds are low or even near impossible this is a rather philosophical question and I dont think there is a simple answer. I do respect you choice, but this strategy does not seem possible for D who is a passionate athlete, loves a good challenge and is used to pushing herself extremely hard (sometimes too hard in my opinion recently shes been injured and insists on participating in important team games even though she is in pain and will definitely damage her ligaments even further). She is a super achiever, but, trust me, she did earn each one of her achievements and she constantly surprises me with her work ethic. Ive just realized that even her college essay was written about pushing herself to overcome difficulties. But being a kid, she expects at least a chance of being rewarded for her extremely hard work cannot blame her.

But I see your point about the intellectual challenge and SAT scores. D has selected her school based on professional education opportunities it offers and school environment (did not care for HYP or the ranking). The trouble is, best professional undergrad schools (regardless of ranking) tend to have applicant pools with tops SAT scores.

dstark · April 18, 2007, 4:01pm

“He gets better grades in part because he doesn’t know what he wants, so he doesn’t focus specifically in one area, in part because he’s much less willing to disappoint adults, and in part because he gets caught up in the competition aspect of grades. None of those are especially admirable qualities. (He has many other admirable qualities, though.)”

JHS, I really like what you wrote above.

I take it your son has more than one choice in where to go to college. :)

curious14 · April 18, 2007, 4:13pm

unbeliveable,

The logic is simple: I am looking for a school where the hypothetical student would be intellectualy average and would have 50/50 chance of admission. Why is that “logiically” impossible. It is only impossible because of choices that have been made about how college classes are to be filled.

collegemom16 · April 18, 2007, 4:19pm

^and this is a very good thing indeed^ Thank God our students are regarded as so much more than their SAT scores! Thank God our universities look for so much more than SAT scores to fill their campuses. Our schools are filled with all kinds of talents, diversity and abilities just like our world, thank God!

curious14 · April 18, 2007, 4:21pm

For those of you who are trying to make this about SAT’s tell me the name a school that selects its students on academic merit only.

unbelievablem · April 18, 2007, 4:39pm

you keep saying the same thing over and over – this is what you want. but you can’t deal with the fact that once you say this person is intellectually average for the school, by definition the competition for admission is not going to allow for the 50-50 chance you want. i have provided a clear argument that accepts your ridiculous premise and shows you why what you want makes no logical sense – but the best you’ve come back with is – but this is what you want. the “but i WAAAANT it” argument didn’t work for my kids when they were little – it’s no more persuasive from you.

i’m sorry - this has gotten tiring – its clear you just want to be provocative and bemoan the poor plight of the simply smart unhooked candidate. i’m sorry-- some poor hypothetical student who has to deal with the terrible problem of having to face the fact that very selective schools are very selective EVEN for him just doesn’t inspire any feeling of sympathy.

unbelievablem · April 18, 2007, 4:45pm

well part of your problem is that you just don’t like how they may be defining “academic” merit – examples – that they may recognize that a lower gpa and sat from a low income background may reflect more merit than the high gpa and sat from a student who had every advantage in life; that they may recognize that maintaining a slightly lower gpa and sat while also meeting the time demands of varsity sports may reflect more merit than a higher gpa and sat from a student whose EC hourly commitment was far far less; that they may recognize that more goes into “academic” value than can be quantified in percentile ranges.

the student who sits around and moans about how he’s being deprived something because of these types of decisions leaves him without that 50-50 chance you seek would be better served looking into how he can better demonstrate his particular merit so as to appeal to colleges for whom he truly is a fit.

curious14 · April 18, 2007, 4:48pm

Wow, the defenders of the status quo sure do get upset when change is suggested.

JHS · April 18, 2007, 4:52pm

No, people try to explain what’s wrong with your thinking when you propose a stupid change.

curious14 · April 18, 2007, 4:54pm

Unbelieveable,

Yes, I do prefer the definition of academic merit that does not include how far you can toss a football, who your father was, and what race or ethnicity you are. You, however, seem to belong to the Humpty-Dumpty school of linguistics.

curious14 · April 18, 2007, 5:02pm

Yes JHS, it really is dumb of me to suggest that it would be nice if at least one or two academic institutions selected their students wholly on academic merit. What a truly bizarre idea.

interesteddad · April 18, 2007, 5:03pm

I feel that getting into any of the schools on my daughter’s list would have been ample reward for extremely hard work. They were all great schools, regardless of whether her individual odds were 50/50 or 90/10.

I think a key misconception is that there is some clear stratification in student bodies at various schools. You could take students from the lowest ranked schools on my daughter’s list and put them in the highest ranked schools (or vice versa) and never know the difference. SAT scores (within the narrow ranges we are talking about) are irrelevant. The campus culture is much more signficant in shaping the college experience and many larger schools offer a range of campus cultures.

My daughter has very close friends from her study abroad program, some from lower “ranked” schools, some from schools that weren’t as high on her particular college list. There’s no difference in the kids, just because some ended up at one school and others at another. There’s no difference in the way they explored the world together and wrestled with “intellectual” issues of urban development.

Because they lack experience in college, high school applicants see USNEWS rankings or hear the prestige talk in the hall and have no frame of reference. As parents, I think we owe to them to put things into perspective. There is every bit as good an education available at the #50 school as at the #1 school.

emeraldkity4 · April 18, 2007, 5:10pm

* the name a school that selects its students on academic merit only*

Well if you take test scores out of it- what else is there?
GPA?
Weighted or unweighted?
What about private preps with grade deflation, but no APs?

How about schools that encourage students to take APs but doesn’t care what they get on the test?

Wow, the defenders of the status quo sure do get upset when change is suggested

I must have missed something- change was suggested?
Many posters did suggest that students should look for other qualities in addition to finding a good academic match, but that isn’t resisting change.

I did post that large universities have used GPA and SAT scores to admit the bulk of their students- isn’t that what you are looking for?

Apparently not- because that isn’t what you want to hear.
Do you think rephrasing the same question will get you a different answer?

No- the most competitive- highly academic universities, do not admit students solely on the basis of GPA & SAT.
There are TOO MANY qualified students to do it that way.
Instead they use additional criteria in selecting students.
If they only wanted to use numbers- I suppose they could use a lottery system- but again- there are too many top students applying to those schools to accept all who apply.

Is it really that hard to understand?

curious14 · April 18, 2007, 5:14pm

Large state universities are just as bad as everyone else on this front, but I have to go, I"ll address the rest of it latter.

JHS · April 18, 2007, 5:16pm

And anyway, what’s wrong with Chicago and Reed? Both of them (because of their reputations) attract disproportionately few applicants relative to “quality”, select overwhelmingly for academic and intellectual merit, market overwhelmingly on academic and intellectual merit, recruit few athletes (and the ones they get sure as hell better be prepared to get less prestige out of their athletic skills than they would almost anywhere else), and don’t do especially well on the URM-recruiting front, either. Both admit more than a third of their applicants. 1500 SATs are above average but not top quartile for Chicago; they would be top quartile at Reed, but the selection process at both schools is specifically directed at those intellectual qualities for which you are using the SAT as a proxy.

So, there you have it: Two schools at which your hypo kid probably has close to a 50% chance of admission, and which pretty much guarantee that hypo kid won’t know for sure he’s smarter than his roommate. What more do you want?

interesteddad · April 18, 2007, 5:29pm

OK. Finally after pages and pages, we are getting somewhere. You have outlined some individual priorities for a college search and we can offer some real advice to your hypothetical student.

You have outlined:

a) a desire for a school with high median SATs

b) a school that tends to emphasis test scores in the admissions process

c) a school that downplays varsity athletics in the admissions process

d) a school that does not practice aggressive affirmative action

See, that’s how you start to narrow down a college search, by defining priorities and looking for “fit” with those priorities.

There are schools, good schools, that meet your requirements. You could start by identifying schools in Division III athletics or modest Div I, have very low diversity numbers, and high median SATs.

Caltech would be perfect. Highest SATs in the country and zero discernable affirmative action. Read the apps and let the chips fall where they may. Not much of a sports school.

One that comes to mind right off the bat would be Washington & Lee. Little or no diversity. Very rigorous academics. Students really love it.

Several of the top midwestern universities would also fit the bill. In larger universities, you get a range of students, so it’s not possible be quite as clearcut, but there are many top mid-size privates that would offer sizeable chunks of what you are looking for. UWash-Stl has very high SATs, not much athletic emphasis, and only moderate diversity. Vanderbilt would be another good choice to consider. They are a little bigger into athletics, but the academic standards are too high for them to be competitive in the SEC in most sports.

The Honors programs at many, many public universities would fit the bill nicely – very numbers driven, often minimal affirmative action, etc.

These are all excellent schools and would, to one degree or another, meet the priorities you’ve enumerated. Not perfectly, but I don’t know of a school that perfectly matches any list of priorities. There’s almost always some tradeoff.

interesteddad · April 18, 2007, 5:35pm

Chicago would be perfect except that it looks like they practice aggressive affirmative action, both ethnically and socio-economic.

Really, Caltech is the place. However, I’m not sure that our hypothetical applicant is “intellectual” enough to have 50/50 odds. Brutal academic standards in admissions there.

A question of fit?

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