<p>This is point that is made frequently on CC. I would suggest that instead of saying “they can do the work” you should say “they will pass” or “they will graduate.” There is a huge difference in peformance between the 2.4 student and the 3.9 student. (There is also a huge difference between the demands of physics and sociology.) </p>
<p>In fact, there are important differences among the 3.9 students as well, even in the same major. There are kids with blinding intellects who have great creativity and will flourish in top Ph.D. programs, and there are less-gifted students who play the grade game extremely well (they care about grades per se, they are good at predicting what will be on exams, they ingratiate themselves to faculty, etc.). These are all useful skills that will serve them well in the workplace, but such students would be in over their heads if they pursued a Ph.D. at a top program.</p>
<p>Congratulations! I think that other factors need to come into play here…if she was accepted, the school thinks she can do the work. But college is more than just academics. I would suggest that she really take a look at the school in its entirety, can she see herself there? Does the vibe work for her? Are there other opportunities beyond academics?</p>
<p>We found that the freshman year transition to be as bumpy as the application process. Some expectations were met, others were not. My D graduated from an excellent HS but she found the academics to be very challenging at a Top 50 school…it surprised her.</p>
<p>A study at University of Oregon (which is not that selective, but does get a wide range of freshmen in terms of high school and test score stats) found that students entering with SAT-R-M below 600 had very little chance of success majoring in math or physics; presumably, if someone had trouble with the relatively simple math found on the SAT-R-M, s/he had very little chance of handling the more advanced math needed when majoring in math or physics.</p>
<p>There are so few math and physics majors, why are we even considering it? (I imagine there are a few lower SAT students who managed AP math and physics just fine and ended up doing just fine in college in these majors as well, but now we are talking fractions of fractions.)</p>
<p>The College Board studies are clear - SATs are weakly predictive of first-year college performance for non-minorities. Past that, not even the College Board (which sells the product) will make any claims.</p>
<p>The students don’t succeed “despite their low SAT scores.” The SAT scores are simply irrelevant.</p>
<p>We are considering this partly because there are even more students who will need to complete clac-based physics, gen-chem, intro to compsci, and calc through diffy-q to earn the types of degrees that are in demand in the STEM job market, so perhaps we should broaden our discussion a bit beyond math and physics. Even the pre-med who majors in chemistry or science-based environmental studies at a “top” school will likely be taking calc at least through multivariable, and will need calc-based physics. </p>
<p>At some reach schools, half or more students who matriculate will start what has been described as the “STEM death march” in other threads, and a large number will not complete a STEM major because these classes can be very difficult, so this is an issue that affects lots of students at “top schools.”</p>
<p>Students who are not successful in these classes might be very successful in other majors, OR at schools where they are at least in the mid-range of standardized test scores, especially if testing at their school is largely (or in some classes, exclusively) multiple choice. If testing is not primarily multiple choice, and a student can do well if partial credit is offered, obviously their performance on multiple choice achievement testing becomes less important.</p>
<p>I do not see SAT scores as irrelevant when considering the type of university a student headed in that direction should attend, especially if it turns out that exams in many of these classes are multiple choice, and they would not be happy with another major. Their choice of school might determine whether or not they can remain in a major that requires these classes.</p>
<p>Like you frazzled2thecore, my son is a STEM major and I don’t see him changing to another major. So while we are waiting to hear from colleges and I encouraged him to apply to a reach school, at the same time I am concerned that the class curve could really make him feel like a mediocre student while in reality he is not. </p>
<p>That is why I wrote about ego in a previous post. You really need to be pretty centered to hold on to knowing that anywhere else, you might be much higher up in the grading scale but still feel okay about being at the harder school with lesser grades.</p>
<p>Even with high SAT scores in Math, a STEM student at a reach school is surrounded by others who all have over 700s in Math. It could be daunting depending on the personality of the kid.</p>
<p>“I do not see SAT scores as irrelevant when considering the type of university a student headed in that direction should attend, especially if it turns out that exams in many of these classes are multiple choice, and they would not be happy with another major. Their choice of school might determine whether or not they can remain in a major that requires these classes.”</p>
<p>So I have done some consulting for top-50 LACs. The schools are indeed concerned about whether the students can do the math, but I’m hearing something different. Profs - in the social sciences, NOT in the hard sciences - are complaining that students with very high (700+) SAT scores in math simply can’t do the math, or won’t. They may have some natural talent in that arena, but many won’t put forth the effort (and hence end up in the softest areas of the social sciences as a result, and can’t do grad schools if they choose.) Not even once have I heard a complaint that they were accepting students with lower Math SATs only to find out that they were incapable - in the hard sciences or anything else. Not even once. </p>
<p>At any rate, the CollegeBoard sells the exams. They have an interest in demonstrating their usefulness. And their findings are clear.</p>
<p>The Oregon study, “Data Mining the University: College GPA Predictions from SAT Scores,” looked at upper-division, within-major GPA and found that “the best predictor of GPA is a roughly equally weighted sum of SAT and high school GPA, measured in standard deviation units.” Of course there are selection problems inherent in such studies (matriculants are a selected sample), but the impact of selection is ambiguous. </p>
<p>GPA is such a deficient measure of performance that it is not clear why we obsess over it anyway. Even if it is a good ordinal measure (i.e., it ranks students appropriately), it may not be a good cardinal measure (i.e., the absolute level of GPA may not be meaningful), yet the GPA is typically used in regressions. In addition, there are many factors affecting GPA that not directly related to education. Students who pick their classes and teachers to maximize GPA in HS will do the same in college. Students who ingratiate themselves to teachers in HS will do the same in college. Students whose aim in HS is to maximize GPA rather than learn will have the same aim in college. Nonetheless, these two studies hardly suggest that the SAT is irrelevant as a predictor of GPA or graduation rates.</p>
<p>Chemistry is much less popular a major for pre-meds than biology is. Biology majors and pre-meds typically need no more than freshman calculus (often only a semester of the light version, though statistics is also sometimes specified); they can take physics which needs at most the light version of calculus, as opposed to the more heavily calculus based physics that physics and engineering majors take. So most pre-meds do not have particularly heavy math requirements (although math skills are likely to be useful in terms of helping with statistics, which is commonly used in medicine and biology). Some social studies majors, particularly economics and business, can have similar or greater math requirements compared to biology majors and pre-meds.</p>
<p>Indeed, biology is the most popular STEM major, so generalizing about STEM majors with respect to necessary math skills can lead to inaccurate conclusions. While a complete math-phobe may struggle with even light freshman calculus, an average (for those able to go to a four year college as a freshman) math student can probably handle the math needed for biology or pre-med purposes (although remediation of precalculus math may be needed if s/he came from a low quality high school), even if s/he cannot handle the math needed to major in math or physics.</p>
Wow. That statement is insane. My daughter was accepted into all of her top choice colleges. The only “reach” school that didn’t accept here was Brown – and believe it or not, Brown was her 4th choice, and I had actively discouraged her from applying, refusing to pay the application fee. My d’s top 3 choices were NYU, Barnard, Chicago and all 3 accepted her-- as did most of the other colleges that she applied to. </p>
<p>So please don’t make assumptions based on what (I assume) are your own preconceived biases. I didn’t post to complain about the college admission process-- it worked fine for us. My d. wasn’t stupid enough to believe that she could assess her chances at admission based on SAT scores. She applied to – and got into – the colleges that appeared to be the best fit for her academic goals. </p>
<p>My reason for posting here is to encourage a parent who is worried about their d’s performance at a college that has accepted her early in the process not to discount and diminish the abilities of their own child. The college would not have accepted the kid if they didn’t feel she would do well at their school. </p>
<p>I wonder how many students with lower end test scores do poorly at college because of the negative impact of adults around them, including their own parents, conveying lack f faith and lowered expectations. </p>
<p>There are other, far more important issues for parents to address with their kids. There is probably a pretty direct correlation between study habits and grades: students who keep up on their reading and regularly attend classes probably do much better than students who procrastinate with their reading, and then skip class because they haven’t done the reading. Students who start working on term papers at the beginning of the semester do better than those who start their work the week before the paper is due. None of that has anything to do with SAT scores.</p>
<p>In my experience with high school math students, their SAT or ACT score is very predictive of their current math knowledge. Anyone scoring 650/30 or above has a decent shot of doing well in college as far as their academic foundation is concerned. 700 or above scores have a really good shot. Those with scores in the 500 range tend to not do so well in MATH DEPENDENT majors. They may be stellar college students in other fields, so if considering a non-math dependent field I wouldn’t let a low score deter a student.</p>
<p>That said, I agree with everything stated in the quote below:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>An SAT/ACT score is just the base knowledge in two subjects (and quick science/graph reading ability in the ACT). It does matter for some majors and not for others, but other factors also come into play. </p>
<p>Does a student want to be a Spanish or Art major? I wouldn’t let scores sway anything. Do they want to be Pre-med or Engineering? Then I would.</p>
<p>To get back on topic a bit, is this your daughter’s first choice school? Despite it being a reach school, I think if she really likes the school and wants to succeed, she will do just fine. She may need to work a little harder than if she was at another school, but that’s certainly not a bad thing if she’s dedicated to do well. There’s also grade inflation at many top schools, so keep that in mind. Look at her senior year grades (coming up at the end of the semester), see if she’s shown progress from the rest of her grades, and evaluate whether both of you think she can handle it</p>
<p>“those with scores in the 500 range tend to not do so well in MATH DEPENDENT majors. They may be stellar college students in other fields, so if considering a non-math dependent field I wouldn’t let a low score deter a student”</p>
<p>Anecdotes are not evidence, of course (I already presented evidence.) My d., with scores in that range (and in the bottom 15% of students entering), graduated in three years magna cum laude, and was named top student in the department - ACCOUNTING! (like a little “math-dependent”?) Her GMAT scores were even worse. They waived them for her graduate program, where she is now carrying a 3.9 GPA. </p>
<p>Don’t make assumptions. The College Board has been studying this issue for more than 20 years. It’s their test, and they make money by selling it. If they could find more correlations than they have, they’d be trumpeting it to the skies.</p>
<p>OP said nothing about her daughter’s major - that is why I mentioned that she should be especially careful if her daughter were to anticipate a STEM major.</p>
<p>At our public high school, at least half of all the students enrolled in AP math and science apply to college with the intention of majoring in STEM or pre-med. Far fewer graduate with these majors or career plans. Some honestly change interests, some fall short of the curve, and some are advised to leave STEM if they have any ambitions of attending a top law school or another graduate program that will not evaluate GPA holistically.<br>
I specifically brought up STEM when OP mentioned low test scores and “reach school” because - </p>
<p>At Frazzled D’s school and several others that her friends attended, in some top 30 research universities that are not tech schools, over half of all the freshmen initially enroll in gen chem. There are several easier ways to satisfy the science requirement and preserve GPA, but these will not count in the pre-req chain for medical school or STEM majors. Enrollment in physics is probably lower, because by the time students who do not anticipate becoming engineers or majoring in a physical science are ready to take it in sophomore and junior years, quite a few have given up and changed majors.</p>
<p>It seemed to Frazzled D that most of the students in gen chem, even before declaring a major, anticipated attending medical school, and a good many will enroll with the intention of majoring in a STEM field. I am told that it is not unusual for about a third to drop the class after the first exam. </p>
<p>Luckily, most of these schools have many other majors in social sciences and humanities that are well-regarded and attract superbly talented students.</p>
<p>Accounting is not math heavy the way math and physics are. Yes, accountants may do a lot of calculations, but they do not involve what would be considered advanced college level math.</p>
<p>The observation about students with SAT-R-M scores less than 600 being unlikely to succeed in math heavy majors applied only to math and physics (though it may also apply to engineering, which is not offered at the University of Oregon where the study was done). So a lower SAT-R-M score should not be considered too big a deal in other majors, even though it may be a big warning sign for majoring in math or physics.</p>
<p>The reality is that SAT math is MUCH MORE like accounting than it is like college math or physics or any other subject. (Don’t confuse it with AP Calculus or SAT IIs.) In fact, I doubt there is a single subject more like SAT math than accounting.</p>
<p>For her job, she beat out 200 other applicants, the majority from Ivy League and similar schools (including Wharton), those with all that “advanced college math”.</p>
<p>Of course, that is all anecdote. For evidence, I look to the College Board.</p>
<p>The tune never changed. What I wrote only applied to math and physics majors; if you read my other posts, you would have noticed the citing of the UC studies indicating that SAT-R-M and SAT-S-M gave zero prediction on college grades overall (presumably because of self-sorting of students into math heavy versus math light or no math majors).</p>
<p>(Or are you mixing up my writings with those of other posters who view SATs with greater importance than I do?)</p>
<p>And the flipside anecdote concerns my older daughter, who never took a math course post homeschool, and, after five years without a math course, a music composition and Italian Studies major, had a math GRE score higher than average entering engineering graduate student at Caltech. (But you wouldn’t want her building a rocket, because she’d want to know how it’s tuned.)</p>
<p>But it still remains true that SAT math is much more like accounting than like college math or physics.</p>
<p>Surprised to see the number of replies. She is a likely STEM major (wants to major in Math, looking at actuary/analyst type of career path). She’s in a public high school, they tend to slot students in middle school. She wasn’t slotted in to any advance courses, in fact we had to fight to get her enrolled in the regular science course sequence. </p>
<p>She had a tough freshman year and had lots of C’s, but hasn’t had a C since. She had only one semester since with 2 B’s, and has had A’s 5 out of 6 courses every other semester. </p>
<p>She does well and works at it each night, dedicating herself to homework assignments and studying. I feel like she has earned the right to try. She has had only one AP course, and is doing well in it. She has had 5 years of French, although the school doesn’t offer it as a AP class, I’m not sure if anyone does. </p>
<p>I’m just worried that if she ends up at a school where she is at the bottom of the curve, she may find it difficult. I didn’t have any AP classes either, in fact her schedule was just like mine, with the exception of her foreign language courses. I ended up OK, no problems in math or anything, I’m just worried about how much it may have changed. I am frankly especially worried about her writing ability and her English courses. They just don’t write as much as I would like to see.</p>