Sorry @gumbogal most sources estimate Stanford’s legacy rate at triple the regular admission rate so that is a significant bump.
Few years ago our high school counselor was discussing about a 20 year study concerning correlation of high school academic performance combined with SAT/ACT as having an extremely high predictor of how you will perform in college. The discussion then unfolded into a concern for having so many kids scoring super high SAT and ACT scores but still getting rejected from top notch schools.
Counselor then says that both the ACT and SAT had experimented and have long considered making exams much more difficult so that there would be more dispersion of test scores and far fewer kids obtaining the super high SAT/ACT test scores. College board thought that this would be a good idea and would help the elite schools to truly separate the most elite students so that it would make it easier for them to choose the right kids.
Apparently, there was a major push back from the top universities. The reason for not having an even better tool for selecting students was based on a concern that if you make the SAT tests harder…guess which race of students will get the highest scores.
By having whole bunch of kids with hi SAT scores due to its current easiness, the pool of high scorers tend to be pretty diverse but if you make the test harder then certain race of kids will dominate…ad com does not want to deal with that situation bc it does not give them a shield or cover for picking an inferior student. Instead, ad com prefers to say that we are all equally smart so let me choose kids with other variables.
Current form of SAT is like asking people on this board, WHAT IS 2+2? If we answer 4, we all have perfect scores so this would then justifiably allow the school to weigh many other non academic variables.
@southswell inferior student??!!
@USCWolverine its not USC that’s the problem it’s the administration and in particular the athletic dept.
@gumbogal to your excellent point, I know the family of an African American girl, straight A student from Horace Mann, who was rejected EA by Harvard. For those not familiar with Horace Mann, it is a prestigious Prep school in NY that sends almost 40% of its graduating class to HYPCMS. We were shocked thinking based on public opinion she was a lock.
@ShanFerg3 Wow. That just goes to show you. But I am sure she is going somewhere wonderful.
Fair enough, CU, and I agree. But what does this scandal, which has been difficult for all of us connected to USC, have to do with a chance at bashing the Viterbi School of Engineering?
@CU123 Let’s assume you are right. So 85% of legacies get rejected? Far from a sure thing.
The basic point is the same. It is impossible to know all of the institutional needs a particular college has in a particular year. Everyone’s kid has to take their best shot but at the end of the day, you have no way of knowing why or why not a particular kid was rejected. So chalking it up to being “unhooked” as it is commonly defined is overly simplistic.
because @PurpleTitan has an issue with USC…
@southswell I find this post comical…a student scoring 1300 on the SAT, puts that student in the 84 percentile. So, the overwhelming majority of students taking this test, presumably the majority in the ethnic group you are referring to, don’t reach this mark on this “easy” test lol.
Schools are not monoliths. They aren’t the buildings or the statues.
They are a group of fellow human beings trying to make their way through life.
We can’t bash usc or any school. We are bashing other people. Students profs and staff trying to do their best. Some are scoundrels and some are saints.
Can we please stop it.
What is missing from our lives that the superiority one feels over another based on a usnwr ranking means something to you. It’s weak sauce stuff.
Let’s peak down the road instead of twenty years ago.
Viterbi is an excellent program. I have many family members tied to this program and they have had nothing but great things to say. With silicon beach gaining dominance, I think Viterbi and Marshall rankings will escalate far beyond what most people would expect outside of socal.
@privatebanker not an Ivy…but a great school and she is thriving.
That’s awesome to hear. Bet this isn’t the last we’ve heard from her.
@gumbogal You wrote "Not sure why people say things like “If people knew how few spots there really are for unhooked kids.” The answer is because there are very few spots. A few years back, a Princeton prof wrote a book on college admissions. His analysis was that at schools like HYP, there were only about 100-200 spots per year for pure academically talented students. The rest went to fill one or another bucket like: legacy, development, racial/ethnic diversity, athletic recruit, geographic diversity, international etc.
@southswell wrote
I’ll take a guess . . . the students who would get the highest scores would be bright students who are best prepared by their schools, who have the means to supplement this education, and who have the family support/pressure to excel on these tests. In other words, their “race” is beside the point.
@ShanFerg3 ^^^. #2255
Here we go for round three hundred. I’m sitting this one out. Lol.
@mtmind Agreed and fair comment.
Grades/GPA and race/ethnicity alone do not determine admission*. The public opinion of outsiders (relative to the admission office) commonly overstates chances at HYPetc, especially for those with the smaller hooks (URM or legacy). Generally, outsiders can only say that HYPetc are reach, high reach, or unrealistic reach. However, if the counselors at the prep school have better or privileged information relating to the target college, they may be able to give an assessment other than reach.
*Note all of the other parts of an application that tend to be much less visible to outsiders, including how they compare to the rest of the applicant pool: essays, recommendations (especially), extracurricular achievements, interview, institutional wants beyond the usual hook categories, etc…
@tdy123 So are there unlimited spots for athletes, legacies, etc? No, there’s not. When 95% of the kids are politely rejected, there are very few spots period. And those five percent that end up at orientation that year are a sprinkling of all kinds - even unhooked ones.