My daughter is a high school senior and in this pre-college prep program she’s been involved in, she knows a few non-athlete '18s who were admitted into Penn, Brown, Northwestern and Stanford with 24-28 on the ACT and very few if any top honors courses. Looking at common data sets, they’re in the bottom of their respective classes. What is campus life like for these kids? Based on high grad rates, I assume they’ll earn a degree, so I was wondering if they fully catch up to their peers or does the college try to nudge them into easier majors? Does the college surround them with free tutoring and other support? Do the more advanced classmates associate with them? Thank you.
Any parents with or know of a child in the bottom of their entering class at very selective college?
I found out only 25 years later, via the Facebook alumni group, that one of my friends from Yale had only had math through Algebra 2 in high school - because that was the highest math their high school offered. There was no nudging. A couple of similarly situated people requested that a section of pre-calc be offered, and one was. There was plenty of free tutoring and support for everyone; I spent two nights a week every week at the math and science tutoring hours, sitting in a big lump with a dozen equally lost kids from my physics class. Yale did not indelibly stamp your forehead with your test scores or other indication of advancement; people just hung out with cool people we liked. We liked this particular person because they were funny and kind and absolutely brilliant.
“Fully catch up to their peers” is relative. Which peers? The ones in engineering or tough weed out pre-med classes or the ones working part time in addition to going to school, or the double majors – or the partiers or the trust funders who know they don’t really need to work after graduation? Plenty elite schools have kids from the latter categories, too.
That said, many elite schools, especially ones that recruit a lot of athletes, often do offer excellent tutoring and support services. MIT has no grades in the freshman year, all those classes are pass/fail. Some have pre-matriculation summer programs (Princeton makes all their freshmen athletes do summer school to ease their first sememster) and encourage summer school so students can take fewer classes. Yes, many schools have infamous mick majors in which it’s easier to get a degree than in, for example, astrophysics.
“Do the more advanced classmates associate with them?” Totally depends on the individuals involved. You can’t really make a blanket statement one way or another.
@allyphoe Aw, what a lovely story. So s/he graduated on time and went onto a successful career?
From one article about a Stanford recruited football athlete that had 3.8/28 ACT was eventually denied admission due to his declared major of Engineering. I imagine if he had declared communications he would have had a better chance so I seriously doubt that any one in the 24-28 range would go into STEM.
I’m going to stick my neck out and say…these admitted students with 24-28 ACT scores very likely had something else notable on their applications that made these competitive colleges admit them. Perhaps it was an honor of some sort. Maybe overcoming some sort of adversity. Maybe some activity that stood out. Something.
Oh…and maybe very tippy top grades.
I knew some people taking what was pre-calc at Harvard. My best friend (who remarkably scored higher on the SAT math section than I did) also went to Harvard without anything beyond Algebra 2. (I took Calc, but she got a higher SAT score, and I am still mad at her!) She was a brilliant test taker. Also very, very smart. She majored in anthropology and spent many years doing animal observations. No math required.
@mumoffour Yeah, Yale gives you eight semesters and then you’re out. Virtually everyone graduates on time. Successful career, married with adorable kids, not noticeably different than any other alum.
A lower SAT/ACT score does not mean the student is at the “bottom” of their class. There are two kinds of students: those who have been admitted, and those who haven’t. They all enter on the same footing. At the end of the first quarter or semester, the admitted students will have grades and while they won’t know from their GPA where they rank, they will know whether or not they are on academic probation, which is a good proxy for “bottom”.
As yet one more example, my daughter entered a prestige, elite college with ACT scores that put her in the bottom quartile based on CDS data, and like some others mentioned in this thread she had no high school math beyond Algebra 2. Four years later she graduated summa cum laude, which meant basically that her GPA was in the top 5% of her class.
The SAT/ACT tests do not measure intelligence and they do not measure academic ability. They measure standardized test-taking ability. After graduating at the top of her college class, my daughter took the GRE and also received an unimpressive score. My daughter is not particularly good at standardized tests.
None of my daughter’s college courses were graded by standardized tests, however. My daughter was very good at the stuff that college professors want to see. (Showing up to class; participating in class discussions; showing mastery of material on midterms and final exams; producing high-quality written material; turning written assignments on time; etc.)
Based on the information you provided, my guess is that the non-athlete students who your or your daughter seem to disdain will probably also do very well, because like my daughter, they were probably admitted on the basis of strong essay, letters of recommendation, and/or other accomplishments or achievements. Those students are more than their test scores.
It’s the kids who are thinking they have it made because they did what was expected of them for 4 years and studied and prepped to get excellent test scores who often are in for a very rude awakening at college. Because the skills that enabled them to “win” at high school aren’t co-extensive with the skills needed to succeed in college.
Eh, I don’t really see a substantial difference between the top and bottoms at highly selective colleges. A lot of times any differences are due to life situations, differences in educational opportunities and personal priorities. If there are lower stat atheletes struggling I suspect it has more to do with the kind of schedule they are required to keep than there truly being unable to handle the work load.
Eldest was in the lower 25th percentile for admitted students at her college and thrived. Lots of accolades. Picked up a full-tuition endowed scholarship last 3 years of school. Awarded Department merit scholarships last two years. Graduated Summa cum laude in 4 years. Middle is also in the 25th at his school but just started and I have faith. He may have been an imperfect HS student with only “decent” test scores but he’s a brilliant kid with a passion for learning. He’s going to do fine.
I happen to be a very good test taker. But I was a terrible high school student. If I wasn’t interested in the class, I blew off the homework and barely stayed awake and drew in the margins of my notebooks.
My brilliant test scores got me into Wellesley, where my terrible study habits caught up with me. The college bent over backwards to teach me better ways of studying and get me into classes that kept my interest. But I was quite definitely at the bottom of my class and struggling that first year. And second year. I pulled through third year though.
Yes I always entertained the idea that once the freshman cohort landed on campus they were all at the same starting line. There are huge variabilities in high schools and their testing and grading. Standardized testing is somewhat of a level testing field but too many people put too much emphasis on statistically what amount to very minor differences.
Colleges, especially selective colleges admit student they think will succeed. The ones that falter and end up on probation or in the bottom quarter are not 100 percent of the kids who entered into the class with 25th or lower high school stats.
LDs can influence also with all the props that happen in K-12. The student could appear very high on high school stAts but incapable of functioning in the very different college environment.
And finally many colleges have academic supports but it is on the student to access and not all kids do what they should do either because everything was done for them in k-12 or they never needed to access academic supports.
It is no accident that many Cornell recruited athletes are in UG business school (AEM few years back) and that’s why its admission rate for regular students (RD) is so low.
My brother just recently hired an athlete from Williams with a major major. He said that’s total respect.
Not all majors at elite colleges are hard. I am sure many athletes, due to their commitment to sports, can’t spend as much time on school work, so it is perfectly reasonable for them to choose majors that are easier and also receive additional tutoring. There is only so much time in a day.
My son, a recruited athlete, was accepted to a Patriot League school 10 years ago and his SAT was in the bottom 10% of admitted student. NO honors or AP classes and a b+ average for a strong prep school. He graduated for college in 4 years a double major and just a fraction @% GPA below honors. He’d learned good academic habits and writing skills in HS and outperformed many many peers with MUCH higher stats.
know a kid who’s at one of the schools mentioned by OP, with an ACT in that range. Kid is a “development” kid - extended family gigantic donation. Kid went to elementary/middle/high school with my kid, never in gifted classes or honors; but kid is doing fine at college and loves it; will graduate this year. Kid’s sibling is there too now; doing fine as well.
I know a couple of kids who were athletic recruits at Harvard toward the end of the last decade, with “stats” that were perfectly fine but would not have made you think they were headed toward Harvard. One was taken off the wait list, and would otherwise have gone to Franklin & Marshall. The other was actually rejected SCEA from Princeton, notwithstanding a positive “early read” on the application, but got a likely letter from Harvard within days of submitting an application. That kid was looking at Drexel as the place to go if the Ivy schools did not come through.
The first kid was completely miserable at Harvard, and transferred out after a year. Felt dumb (notwithstanding having been in the top quarter of her class at a strong private school), thought the other kids were snobs, struggled balancing academics and sports. The second really worked like a dog, but liked the team, and basically was OK with not having a social life besides the team. Academics were never easy, and she chose a relatively easy major, but she did fine, and spoke very positively about her experience at Harvard. I’ll note – it’s probably relevant – that kid #2 was at a much higher level in her sport than kid #1. Kid #1 was a legitimate Division I prospect, but not really as a potential star, and was obviously not at the top of the Harvard coach’s list. Kid #2 was one of the two top recruits on a team with a higher profile at Harvard than kid #1’s team, and went on to be an All-American and potential Olympian.
My neighbors’s children went to Stanford as athletic recruits. They were awarded five year scholarships to finish their degrees.
I think the bigger issue is academic and study skills development. I went to an ivy with a student who had lived on a boat. She was on the college sailing team, but was likely admitted more for her unusual background and life experiences than as an athletic recruit. However, she had taken all her high school classes as correspondence courses. And I’m not sure that she was well prepared for the rigor of an elite college. She ended up not graduating.
I know a few who had to take some remedial classes before they started in the Fall of freshman year at their Ivy League schools. They’ve all graduated and have jobs, so I assume they found suitable majors and finished by the skin of their teeth.
I mean, we have had presidents and senators (on both sides of the aisle) who weren’t exactly academic stars at their posh colleges and it didn’t seem to hurt them.
I will also add that most of the people I know who did poorly in elite colleges floundered because of mental or physical health issues and/or unknown learning disabilities. Nearly all of them did graduate after dealing with those issues.