<p>Tired the SAT is a modified IQ test and the difference between 780 and 740 in minimal but the difference between 590 and 790 is huge. You are fooling yourself if you believe that students with a 590 can on average compete academically with students with high 700’s. Now maybe the student had a bad day and next time will get 700 but the average increase in scores from courses is not very much in general. With all intelligence testing it’s very hard to go from groups to individuals but students who score an 1800 on the SAT are very different from ones that score 2250 with virtually no overlap. </p>
<p>I should pop some popcorn… neither of you know as much as you think you do.</p>
<p>intparent if you have a point to make then make it. Otherwise your post is vacuous. </p>
<p>SAY, I will speak on behalf of intparent. She is correct in both of you don’t know what you think you do. Oh, and I am a parent of an Amherst grad…who worked extensively in admissions. Please don’t bicker back and forth on points that are not true.</p>
<p>Being a parent is nice but irrelevant to the discussion. Tired stated in his posts that the applicant with a 590 CR without a hook had a chance because he knew a friend who was admitted with a 600 WR without a hook but had a 1460 M & CR. I simply explained to him that the WR section is ignored by top schools and that being the first in your family to attend college is a big hook. Therefore his example was not very supportive of the applicant gaining admission with a 590 CR. Everything I said is verifiably true so there is no bickering. If you disagree state your case but drop the tribal attitude. </p>
<p>Can I be honest here? I was just trying to be positive to OP. I realize that the pretense of knowledge in this pursuit can be misleading, but I have an aversion to telling perfectly hardworking students that they’re not good enough.</p>
<p>SAY, you got on my nerves and I let that drag me into an argument where I made claims I didn’t believe in. I shouldn’t have let it go on for as long as I did, but I did and that’s that. I think that your general argument is fair enough (though I disagree with your stance on standardized testing as a measurement of intelligence). I don’t really know why the other posters see you as ignorant, but it’s probably your condescension. </p>
<p>Either way, best of luck to wherever you apply, OP. Sorry about your thread. ¯_(ツ)_/¯</p>
<p>Tired I apologize for tone of my initial post and when I re-read it I can see why it got on your nerves. I have a large experience with college admission at elite universities and have a background in intelligence testing. Mostly I don’t post on this site because quite often it leads to disagreements about well established issues. For instance I frequently hear quite well educated people claim that intelligence does not have a large genetic component. To many people this is an issue that strikes to the core of their personal values despite that fact that numerous longitudinal studies have proven without a shred of doubt that intelligence is largely based on genetics. If I posted this as a thread on this site I would get attacked by scores of people claiming all sorts of hostile things when in fact among the experts in this field this issue is no longer remotely controversial. The Minnesota Twin Study was so definitive even the NYT accepted the results. As to your issue about the SAT not really measuring intelligence I would agree that it is nearly as effective as say the LSAT which really is a direct IQ test. I also would agree that IQ test are not perfect but they do measure an important trait and it remains the single best measure of work performance though it has long been illegal to be used for that purpose. I guess all I can say about the SAT is that the elite schools sure do believe in the importance of the exam since at top schools the student body is almost entirely composed of students with both high GPA’s and top 1-2% SAT’s. My point in a previous post was that 30 points in a section of the SAT means very little from say 740 to 770(often 1 math question) but the difference between 550 and 750 is consistently very significant. Professor Sanders from UCLA has shown this in his recent work about LSAT and law school performance. Twenty years after publication the Bell Curve has been proven time after time to be correct despite all the venom directed at the authors at the time. Charles Murray’s work remains a must read for anyone interested in this area. At any rate I also wish the applicant the best of luck and hope the OP can improve the CR score and gain admission. </p>
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<p>@intparent - the median SAT for each of CR, M and W for both Amherst and Bowdoin is in the 720s. Not sure what type of distinction you’re trying to make.</p>
<p>Well, I would expect Bowdoin’s median scores to be high. Submitting test scores is optional there, so the only applicants who submit them are the ones with very high scores. The percentage of the class who are accepted but had lower scores presumably aren’t included in the calculation of that median. </p>
<p>Not knocking Bowdoin. It’s a great school, and all the schools should deemphasize standardized tests, IMO. Nevertheless, the result of their policy is to make their numbers a bit inflated vis a vis their competitors. </p>
<p>@CHD2013, all 3 of those schools are test optional. The OP can apply without giving them test scores. That 590 CR is going to be an anchor at top schools.</p>
<p>@intparent, I think you’re missing my point. Let me be more clear. I don’t agree that Bowdoin is a match or a safety for this candidate or pretty much anyone so I think your suggestion was a little off base with that particular example.</p>
<p>The OP has straight As" and "…awesome essays, resume, and arts supplement. Bowdoin is certainly a lower reach for the OP than Amherst, since the OP doesn’t have to send their one glaring weakness (CR score) to Bowdoin. Bowdoin’s SAT scores are artificially inflated by not having a lot of their students report scores. You can’t compare their ranges with Amherst, it doesn’t make sense. Bowdoin IS going to be easier for this particular applicant for admissions, although they may not get into either of them. </p>
<p>^That all makes sense. I still don’t think Bowdoin is a match for the OP, but that’s just a quibble.</p>
<p>It’s mistaken to think that the test optional policy at Bowdoin is a back door to being admitted. Only a small percentage of the class are admitted on that basis and they either have a serious hook, or real magic in their application (beyond grades) such as a national level talent. Not having a serious hook or such magic is as much of anchor, maybe more, than a Low section score on the SAT under the non-test optional scenario (at Amherst). Fwiw, I have read stats regarding the non-submitting applicants who were admitted to Bowdoin and their scores were suprisingly not far off the scores of the admitted applicants. I believe you can see that info in the common data set. </p>
<p>My nephew got into Bowdoin without scores a few years ago. He was class president and an Eagle Scout with good grades, but had no national level talent. Bowdoin isn’t HYPS – you don’t need a national level talent to get in.</p>
<p>He was quite fortunate, and congrats to him. The admit rate for non-submitters is <5%, and the non-submitting pool is filled with kids with very good grades and extra- curriculars, so there must have been some magic iin his application that stood out.</p>
<p>I don’t know where you got your info, but from looking at the 2013-14 Common Data Set, it doesn’t seem to be right. Of the accepted students, 53% submitted the SAT and 27% submitted the ACT. I would assume that some small number of those submitted both. That would be 80% maximum of the accepted students that submitted a SAT or ACT, meaning 20% or slightly more did not submit them and were admitted.</p>
<p>Heck, I want to go to Bowdoin, I hear they get fresh lobster weekly…is that true?</p>
<p>Op, give Amherst a shot. From what I understand, it a fabulous school with tons of opportunities for humanities students. Fit seems that Amherst uses test scores to “cull the numbers”, rather than make decisions. Amherst looks for students which have a proven track record of excellence. Best of luck. </p>