<p>All good posts ek4, interesteddad, JHS and especially you unbelievable. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>As you define “academic merit” from test scores (and other limited supposedly objective data) without regard to who is earning them or how , may I suggest The University of Boring Interminable Hell. Plenty of tables. No waiting.</p>
<p>Curious. No one wants to attend that school. Not your kid. Not anybody’s kid. What you really want is a place at the head table for your deserving kid. We understand .</p>
<p>Curious, people keep suggesting a school that is all about the life of the mind, that makes a point of not holding your high SATs against you but rather looks for the measure of your intellectual curiousity…and you keep sniffing that your poor student would be superior to the students he would find there. It’s close you say, but Chicago is just not right for your little intellectual. You would much rather the dear boy be at those same glorious institutions that are accepting all those icky non intellectual athletes, legacies and URMs. Do you understand in the least why people are having a hard time with your arguments?</p>
<p>And as long as we’re being argumentative, I sincerely doubt Precious would be accepted into Chicago much less find himself so superior to his classmates. See, Chicago kids tend to be quite passionate about whatever they find themselves doing, they aren’t holding up an EC list and finding their passions fall short so best not to talk about them. A Chicago kid would tell you about WOW and how it totally reminds him of Sun Tzu, Firefly and Byron. He’d write about his bug collection, indian miniatures and Einstein. The point is these kids…like kids found in plenty of colleges and universities…are way to busy exploring and connecting to their world intellectually to stop and wonder if that kid he’s discussing Hegel with got the same SAT score as he did. Your kid sounds like he would choke on the uncommon essay trying desperately to prove how superior he was rather than simply having fun with the absolute freedom to unfurl his imagination the outrageous prompts give.</p>
<p>There’s a huge difference between being smart, driven to find the right answer and being brillant and driven to find the right question.</p>
<p>You know, 100% of colleges that are selective at all select 75-99% of their admittees, including URMs and legacies, based on (a) indications of academic and intellectual ability and achievement (including, but not limited to, SAT scores and grades), (b) indications of leadership (a much-valued quality both in academia and the real world), (c) indications of character (ditto), (d) indications that the applicant can actually get things done (triple ditto), and, to some extent (e) artistic ability and achievement. What’s left are a few really good athletes and a few really rich kids, but they are an eyedropperful except at a few very small LACs that care a lot about sports. </p>
<p>What that produces is the system we have. If you don’t accept the importance of factors (b)-(e), fine, but that means you don’t accept the values of the Anglo-American university. That’s a set of institutions with a pretty spectacular historical track record of institutional survival, achievement, and growth, and contribution to the betterment of society. Factor (a), by the way, is probably more important now than it has been since the university came into existence. But you’re not going to get broad social agreement that it should be the only important factor, nor are you going to get broad social agreement that SATs and GPAs are sufficient metrics for that factor.</p>
<p>interesteddad: Of course Cal Tech is the poster child for pure academic merit, but it spectacularly flunks the 50% test. Also, “Precious” might want to take more than a couple English or Philosophy classes.</p>
<p>Actually, Curmudgeon, I suspect he/she is speaking more of himself than of his child.
Throwing out SAT scores as academic merit would really nix the process. As much as I hate standardized tests, what would be the final arbiter of the strength of the high school curriculum - number of APs taken?? Some kids at my husband’s big public high school had straight As going into his chemistry class, and now they are failing. Not all courses are created equal. And if you go the AP or IB route as a “standard” of rigor, then some very bright kids from some very prestigious schools that don’t emphasize APs, would be left out.</p>
<p>I do know one place that is close to your criteria, and cheap, too, the Computer-Based Honors program at the University of Alabama. I’m not certain a flat 1500 student could actually get in, but if she did, she would definitely be average. Look it up, it has a history of producing USAToday All American Academic Team members.</p>
<p>I agree Caltech comes close to being numbers driven - or at least it seems to be. (Not completely obvious by acceptances from our high school.) Some of the other tech schools come close to Curious’ desire - RPI’s stats from last year were close to 50% with math SATs over 700 and over 50% verbal SATs over 600. Median was 1420 I believe. They even accept about 75% of their applicants. However I think they are much too career oriented to be called an intellectual place. (Which I think of as discussing philosophy and popular culture in the same breath.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yep. My hunch is that CalTech is, overall, probably the hardest undergrad program in the country to get into.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Except that the numbers are so high that they probably don’t mean bupkis in the final analysis. The thing that a lot of folk fail to understand is that the “numbers” for the applicant pool and the accepted pool at many of these schools are essentially identical. When that is the case, the numbers really don’t count for much. The numbers are like opinions (or other things). Everybody’s got one.</p>
<p>
Mathson had the stats to get into Caltech, but he still didn’t. Guess he was in the wrong 50%. ;)</p>
<p>I suspect this hypothetical student would best find his/her “fit” in an institution outside the US., most of which select students on exactly the narrow criteria he/she finds so appealing.</p>
<p>mcmom, I had the same thought when I originally got sucked into this post - that the foreign educational system probably came closer to what the OP was trying to discern. There have been many, many excellent posts on this thread, it’s unfortunate that the OP’s ears are shut…or maybe they aren’t, the OP has not posted in a few hours.</p>
<p>mcmom and mof3boys:I was thinking the same thing…how about McGill?</p>
<p>Out of curiousity – what schools actually have an average SAT of 1500 or better? </p>
<p>Just googling around a couple of minutes ago, I’m not finding any. . . Harvard, Princeton, and UChicago appear to have averages of less than 1500. Not good enough for our hypothetical poster, it would seem.</p>
<p>McGill’s verbal score range for US students is 620 - 640, our hypothetical student would be fairly insulted.</p>
<p>mstee,</p>
<p>Caltech</p>
<p>CalTech. The median SATs are 1470 to 1580.</p>
<p>MIT might be right on the border: 1430 to 1570</p>
<p>Caltech, yes for 1500 SAT but my sample of kids I knew who were like the OP’s example (over the last 12 years) had less than 50% acceptance.</p>
<p>On balance U of Chicago does seem to be the best suggestion so far. Cal Tech if our hypothetical student is science/engineering type.</p>
<p>Yes Cal Tech fails the 50% chance test but they do seem pretty meritocratic in the admissions process.</p>
<p>mom of three boys,</p>
<p>The OP had better things to do. But he’s back.</p>
<p>Actually most of the rest of the world follows the model I am suggesting. Some of you have noticed this yet you find my suggestion: “illogical,” and “arrogant.”</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd is not far off and I think they too are pretty meritocratic.</p>