Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates arrested

calmom · August 1, 2009, 2:48am

You can rationalize any way that you want, but that is an oversimplistic and probably dead wrong analysis. That simply isn’t the way that ad coms look at or treat scores… or applicants. Unless you had some sort of hook that strongly favored your admission (recruited athlete, development case, offspring of celebrity, etc.) – your odds of admission at any of the Ivies never even approached 50%.

Lets assume, for example, that the odds of admission of students with extremely strong stats at HYP are 1 out 3. (I think that’s a rather liberal assumption, odds are probably far less). If so, then being accepted to one of the 3 schools would be exactly in line with the odds. Acceptance at 2 out of 3 would be exceeding odds, and acceptance at all 3 would be even more impressive. Not impossible, but not likely either.

Its kind of like rolling 7 with dice. (odds are 1 out 5). If a person rolls a combination that comes up 7 several times in a row, its not the most amazing thing in the world – but if they fail to come up with that combination in several tosses, it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with the dice.

The real question is not why you were rejected, but why you were admitted. “Stats” aren’t good enough to answer that question, because most of the applicants have strong stats. Harvard and Princeton probably accepted plenty of students with scores of 680 or below on the Math2 SAT subject test – after all, we know that Harvard and Princeton routinely accept 25% of its student body with scores below 700 on the Math SAT I, and Princeton’s stats tell us that a very tiny percentage of admitted students even have scores below 600 (2% on the 2006 CDS; stats not reported on Harvard’s CDS). Why would they require a higher score on subject tests than the regular SAT?

It’s not about the test score numbers. They use those numbers to inform their choices, not dictate them.

Dbate · August 1, 2009, 2:53am

I am pretty sure that is why. I was pretty hooked. I was a black male, applying for engineering with a 34 ACT, 10 APs, 3.89 GPA, quantum mechanics research, debate captain, football, trumpet, science honor society parlimentarian, and english honor society treasurer. And I spent two months on one essay, and significant time on the other. I also had numerous awards, so many that I didn’t even list them all. And I know my recommendations were glowing. At one point the Harvard regional officer even personally called me and said that Harvard was interested in me, though I was later rejected.

calmom · August 1, 2009, 3:44am

Private or public school? Did you apply SCEA to Yale and, if so, did you get in?

By the way, spending 2 months on an essay is not a good sign, so I don’t quite know why you would think that would favor admission. (Tends to indicate an overworked piece of writing, which in turn tends to suck the life out of things).
Also while your EC’s certainly are more than adequate, they aren’t particularly outstanding, except maybe the quantum mechanics research – and that really depends on something I can’t know, which is the quality and context of the research. But everything else is pretty much run of the mill for a Harvard applicant. (I’m assuming you played football but were not a recruited athlete, simply because I think you’d mention it if you were getting calls from coaches).

I’m not trying to put you down – I just mean that at the Ivy’s a lot of students have EC’s & accomplishments outside or beyond the high school environment. So things like “debate captain”, while a great achievement within your high school, is not impressive at the Ivy level, where you are competing against some applicants who are state or regional winners of debate competitions. It shows you are “well-rounded”, but you haven’t mentioned the sort of accomplishment that puts you in the for-sure admit column. And I’d think that your GPA would be more of a problem than a test score, unless you come from a particularly competitive high school. I’m assuming that is unweighted, in a competitive environment where 4.0 is closer to the norm in the applicant pool.

Dbate · August 1, 2009, 4:34am

No I don’t think you understand. You would have to look through my post history to get the full idea of what i did. And for each speech and debate award I listed I have about two or three others. I eventually ended up as the 12th best speaker in the state of Texas (and there are a lot of competition speakers in Texas). I am not trying to brag, but simply trying to state that I was pretty qualified, I simply copied and pasted:

Rank:13/476
GPA: 3.89 UW 5.59 W
SAT: 2070 (790 CR, 650 M, 630 W)
ACT: 34 (36 R, 35 M, 32 E, 31 S)
SAT 2: 750 Bio M, 710 Lit, 680 Math 2

Forgot about Aps: English Lang, Comp Sci, Chemistry, US History, Physics B, Calculus AB (couldn’t take BC bc of Stat), Statistics, Biology, Economics, English Lit, Gov
Work Experience

6/1/07-7/25/07 Target (Missouri City, TX) 30 hrs/week
6/7/08-8/22/08 16 hrs/week
Employee Food Ave.
Mitigate customer relations problems
Provide high-quality food service

Activities

9th-11th Independent Science Research
Conducted individual research on atomic physics

10th-12th Forensics Team 30 hrs/week
Member(10th-11th), Team Captain(12th) 25 weeks/year
Participated in Lincoln-Douglass Debate and Extemporaneous Speaking
Instructed novice debaters

9th-12th Trumpet Player

9th -10th High School Football Team 20 hrs/week
Linebacker, Kickoff, and Receiving Team 36 weeks/year
Directed the Defensive formation
(Quit because of wrist surgery)

11th-12th Science Honor Society 6 hrs/week
Member(11th), Parliamentarian(12th) 15 weeks/year
Judged local science fairs
Participated in community service for science related endeavors

Athletic Awards

9th District Runner-Up Football
2nd Place in district
10th District Champions Football
1st Place in district

Musical Awards
9th
Dallas Lone Star Showcase of Music Outstanding in Division Award
University Interscholastic League Concert Sight-Reading Award
10th
San Francisco Musical Showcase Participant
University Interscholastic League Performance Award

Speech & Debate Awards

10th
State Qualifier in Lincoln Douglass Debate
5th Place Team Texas Forensic League State Tournament
1st place University of Texas Longhorn Classic Tournament
1st Place Aldine Debate Tournament
National Forensic League Distinction Honor

11th
State Qualifier in Lincoln Douglass Debate
State Quarterfinalist Extemporaneous Speaking
3rd Place University Interscholastic League District Extemporaneous Speaking
6th Place National Forensic League District Extemporaneous Speaking
National Forensic League Special Distinction Honor

Science Research Awards

9th
Fort Bend Outstanding Achievement in Science Award

10th
Fort Bend Outstanding Achievement in Science Award
Elkins High School Top Chemistry Student Honor

11th
Evaluation of Photon Tunneling Probability by Spatial Variation published by The Society for Amateur Scientists
4th Place American Physics Society-Texas Chapter
Jacobs Engineering Science Research Award
4th Place Science and Engineering Fair of Houston
Fort Bend Outstanding Achievement in Science Award
Elkins High School Top Chemistry Student Honor

Distinctive Research:

9th Quantitative Analysis of Electron Transition in Helium

calmom · August 1, 2009, 5:43am

Dbate, I didn’t ask for your entire resume.

I did ask one very simple question that you didn’t answer.

I’ll try again: Private or public school? Did you apply SCEA to Yale and, if so, did you get in?

I don’t doubt that you were “pretty qualified”. But to think that your qualifications made your admission at any Ivy a near certainty is simply to misunderstand the admission process at that level. To think that something as trivial as a SAT subject score 10 points shy of 700 would disqualify you in the face of the qualifications you listed is kind of silly – but I do have another question: when you submitted your SAT subject scores, did you (a) use score choice to withhold your SAT I scores, and (b) verify with your school counselor that your SAT I scores wouldn’t be listed on your transcript?

amciw · August 1, 2009, 6:08am

Calmom, you should read [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062185571-post60.html]this[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062185571-post60.html]this[/url</a>] post to answer your questions.

Pizzagirl · August 1, 2009, 8:40am

If my kids said / felt this, I’d wonder why they were such Nosy Nellies that they were even paying attention to or cognizant of anyone else’s test scores. I’d also think that they had a very poor outlook on life and needed to get over it, if they spent more than one minute of their time being jealous of someone else’s good fortune.

See, here’s how it goes. Someone else gets into a school you wanted to get into. A person with character – the “prestigious” person all you high schoolers aspire to be – reacts by saying “Congratulations, how nice for you” and learning to MEAN it. A person with little character spends his or her time being resentful and jealous and letting it consume this and getting all upset anew every time they think of the student going to that school. All the smarts in the world mean nothing if you don’t develop a healthy emotional reaction to events that you have no control over anyway.

Pizzagirl · August 1, 2009, 8:46am

amciw, Calmom’s point is that once Dbate had “proven” to them that he was academically qualified enough (which he certainly was), it didn’t become a contest over whether there was an identical candidate who had just 10 more points on a SAT score who would therefore be “more qualified.” Nor did an adcom look at the 690 and say, “Well, hmmm, he’s just not good enough on those dimensions academically.”

Don’t you all get it? How many times do we adults have to say this?

HYP et al are choosing the 1,000 students that interest them most and that they believe will form the most interesting and enriching freshman class out of the 25,000 qualified students who apply. They are NOT choosing the 1,000 students who are “most academically qualified” as ranked by SAT scores and / or GPA. They are not making a statement that you weren’t qualified enough by not admitting you. They are making a statement that they only had 1,000 spots to select, and you didn’t make it.

Good grief, I can’t believe students headed for the finest schools in the land don’t get that it’s about reasons to accept, not reasons to reject.

Surely you understand that if all 1,000 of Harvard’s acceptees suddenly died in a plane crash and H had to re-pick a new freshman class out of the remaining applicants, this new class wouldn’t be inferior in terms of academic qualifications.

Pizzagirl · August 1, 2009, 8:48am

No, you don’t. You don’t know why you were rejected, because here’s a thought: You weren’t rejected. You simply weren’t selected. Don’t you get the distinction?

Northstarmom · August 1, 2009, 8:53am

“I know 100% why I was rejected from Harvard and Princeton, they both required SAT subject tests, whereas Yale did not if you send in the ACT. I scored 750/710/680, and I am sure the 680 on Math 2 is what killed my app at those two.”

You are kidding yourself by thinking you know why you didn’t get in. I have been on selection committees for scholarships, graduate admissions (for a nonIvy), and even as an undergrad sat in on an admissions committee meeting at Harvard.

Outside of things that are blatant – such as if a person didn’t bother to complete their application – it’s virtually impossible to know why a student was not accepted for such opportunities.

I highly doubt that your math score was what kept you from getting an acceptance. What’s probably much more likely is that other people had some things that for a variety of reasons were more appealing to the admissions officers. The reasons include such trivial things as whether the admissions officers were feeling good when they read your application.

To get an inside look on how admissions decisions are made, read “The Gatekeepers.”

"amciw, Calmom’s point is that once Dbate had “proven” to them that he was academically qualified enough (which he certainly was), it didn’t become a contest over whether there was an identical candidate who had just 10 more points on a SAT score who would therefore be “more qualified.” Nor did an adcom look at the 690 and say, “Well, hmmm, he’s just not good enough on those dimensions academically.”

Don’t you all get it? How many times do we adults have to say this?..
Good grief, I can’t believe students headed for the finest schools in the land don’t get that it’s about reasons to accept, not reasons to reject."

What I find amazing is that some of the top colleges in the country accepted students with such deficiencies in their critical thinking skills.

calmom · August 1, 2009, 9:01am

It may simply be a matter of immaturity (in terms of lack of life experience), but it seems to me that these kids are obsessed with test scores in a way that grossly magnifies their significance. I can understand how the pressures of the college admission process would lead them to think that the scores mean so much.

But I think that’s what leads them to be comparing scores and making judgments – or feeling resentful and jealous – based on the scores.

calmom · August 1, 2009, 9:08am

I find that disturbing on many levels, not the least of which is that it shows what a poor proxy the SAT is for measuring reasoning skills. I think unfortunately the standardized test industry has led to kids learn to analyze the world around them in terms of choosing the one “right” answer, rather than exploring and considering alternatives – after all, on a timed test, anyone who takes time to think things through or question underlying assumptions will never be able to answer all the questions in the time alloted.

Northstarmom · August 1, 2009, 9:29am

Dbate,

Here’s a question to ask yourself. Is there any chance that you blew the interview? Sometimes this happens with students who have applied to lots of colleges and by the time of an interview already have interviewed a lot and have some excellent acceptances and likely letters. By the time they interview with an individual college, they may be burned out on the interview process and also very stressed because of having to squeeze in many interviews in their busy schedules. They also may even be assuming that due to their other acceptances and promises of acceptances from similar colleges, they’ll be a shoo-in for admission.

I am fairly sure that a bad interview is what kept one stellar student whom I interviewed out of Harvard. The student was interviewed late in the admissions cycle (the timing of Harvard interviews is random).

I had a hard time getting information from the student because the student would anticipate my questions and virtually cut me off before giving me very terse answers that sounded highly practiced. Halfway through the interview, the student apparently felt that I had asked my last question because the student stood up, thanked me, shook my hand and left.

After I submitted my narrative report to Harvard, the regional admissions officer called me back to get more details, something that happens only rarely and reflects Harvard’s interest in an applicant.

I also caught the student in a lie. The student exaggerated the student’s role in a community organization that my son happened to be president of. The student didn’t even know my son, which indicated the scope of the exaggeration. The club just happened to be on the student’s resume, and was a minor inclusion that only caught my eye because my son was involved. I did not tell the student that I realized the student was exaggerating their role in the club.

The student was waitlisted and ultimately not accepted, though the student did get an acceptance to at least one other top Ivy, and to my knowledge all of the dozen or so schools that the student applied to.

Later, I learned through a mutual acquaintance that the student is a very nice person who remembers me and the interview warmly. That tells me that the bad interview in which the student acted more like an overly rehearsed robot probably reflected the fact that the student had applied to something like 12 top schools that required interviews.

Anyway, the bottom line for you is that you have no idea why you were rejected. Yes, your background was stellar, but you don’t know the inner workings of the admissions committee. It’s highly unlikely that they rejected you because of one relatively low score (which still was high enough to indicate you could do the academic work in that field).

TutuTaxi · August 1, 2009, 10:51am

Pizzagirl, calmom and Northstarmon, excellent posts. What concerns me and my motherly instincts is the continual obsessing by these young people, over college admissions so long after the process has been completed. The summer between hs and college is a time to be with friends and enjoying yourself not hanging around CCs Parents Café.

Northstarmom · August 1, 2009, 11:15am

More evidence of the dishonesty of some cops.

"HOLLYWOOD - Police Chief Chad Wagner asked for the public’s patience Friday as his agency investigates four officers under suspicion of falsifying a crash report and said a crime scene technician is also being scrutinized for her role in the incident.

Wagner said he asked the Broward State Attorney’s Office to aid in the investigation, but Broward Chief Public Defender Howard Finkelstein continued to call for an outside agency, such as the FBI, to take over.

Though the crash at the root of the controversy happened more than five months ago a patrol officer rear-ended a woman’s car Wagner said he first learned of the alleged cover-up that it spawned only this week.

On Tuesday, he ordered the four officers and crime scene technician suspended with pay and launched an internal investigation.

“I realize and understand those that feel a sense of betrayal over this incident,” Wagner told a news conference. “And I ask each and every one of you to allow this investigative process to run its course, and to have confidence that this matter will be investigated accurately and professionally.”

Finkelstein, whose office is reviewing pending and past cases in which the officers and crime scene technician were involved, remained wary.

“One has to wonder, why did it take so long?” he said of the internal investigation. It was ordered only after a police dashboard camera video surfaced, in which one can hear police officers and the crime scene technician discussing how they will falsify their report to pin blame for the crash on a drunken driving suspect, instead of the officer who ran into her from behind.

Finkelstein said Friday that he was the one who leaked the video, because he felt the public, defense attorneys in particular, should know about the incident.

“I really do believe their intent was to keep it quiet,” Finkelstein said of Hollywood police…"
[Hollywood</a> police scandal: Hollywood police crash cover-up throws into question several other court cases - OrlandoSentinel.com](<a href=“http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-hollywood-cops-fake-report-b072809,0,4707202.story]Hollywood”>http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-hollywood-cops-fake-report-b072809,0,4707202.story)

BCEagle91 · August 1, 2009, 11:36am

That’s five out of five that failed.

I would think that technicians wouldn’t pull this stuff but I guess I’m wrong.

Reminds me of the DNA crime lab in the Duke Lacrosse case.

Schools require ethics courses for engineers. I guess they don’t for police officers.

tom1944 · August 1, 2009, 11:51am

Surely you understand that if all 1,000 of Harvard’s acceptees suddenly died in a plane crash and H had to re-pick a new freshman class out of the remaining applicants, this new class wouldn’t be inferior in terms of academic qualifications.

Pizzagirl - I read that the Dean of Admissions at Williams said that if they took all of the applications to the roof of a building and threw the applications to the ground a random selection of 300-400 applications would give them an equivalent class to the one they select. So I am in complete agreement with your post.

younghoss · August 1, 2009, 12:56pm

I’d like to add something about student concern with testing numbers.
Could it be part of assigning the overimportance of those numbers is affected by their parents? Could it be a parent overvalues numbers they read in US News, and similar ranking sources?

<pre><code>The real world doesn’t rank colleges as 1,2, or 3… or as “Best in the South”,… or other terms. Those are rankings created by people in the business of selling rankings. Parents who feel #10 is far superior than #24(examples) because “X” magazine says so may be inadvertently teaching their student that the numbers are more important than they really are. Just one angle to consider.
</code></pre>

calmom · August 1, 2009, 2:00pm

This is a parent’s thread – but it isn’t parents who have come in to turn it into a discussion over Affirmative Action and the perceived unfairness of someone with lower test scores being admitted over someone with higher test scores – nor are parents speculating that a rejection from an Ivy occurred because of a particular exam score. (Maybe in other threads – but it doesn’t seem so here).

It’s pulled the thread way off topic, but as far as it relates to race, it is harmful because it creates a very distorted view of the concept of “Affirmative Action”. The problem is that ad coms are looking at applicants holistically – and a person’s race and ethnic background is part of the big picture, as well as numerous other factors, including the particular interests and accomplishments of the student, and the academic profile presented. But the kids are looking it as: student X has 2300 on the SATs, and student Y has 2200; if student X is rejected and student Y gets in, then there must be something unfair about the process. If student Y happens to be a URM, then that is cause for a rant over the unfairness of Affirmative Action.

But the Ivies don’t really practice “Affirmative Action” in the way that these students are looking at it. The ad coms don’t look at each minority applicant and automatically give that person a make-weight of 100 or 200 SAT points, or set a different standard for minority admissions. What they do is evaluate applicants as individuals, and at the same time keep an overall look at their own stats. If sometime during the admission season they get a report that indicates that they are not achieving the level of diversity they want, at that point they may take a second look at some students who would otherwise be on the waitlist, or start to weight the URM status a little more. But the “diversity” could be something different than ethnicity – for example, their stats might tell them that their desired gender balance is off, or that the desired geographic diversity isn’t being met.

But these factors have much greater impact on a group level than on an individual level. At the individual level it can be more a matter of timing – that is, the student’s race or ethnic background might be weighted more or less heavily at different points during the admission season depending on what the priorities are at that point.

So maybe the black engineering student who thinks he is hooked because of his race and academic focus is having his file read the week that the Director of Admissions has informed the staff that the developing class is top-heavy with math and science students, and there is a need for more students leaning toward arts and humanities. Maybe race is not so important at that point, or maybe it is - but there’s an African American applicant who wants to study art history who better fills the college’s agenda at that point. And it doesn’t matter that the art history major has math SAT scores that suck – she’s written an intriguing essay and she speaks 3 languages so she makes the cut and the engineering student doesn’t.

That’s how it works in the real world, and that’s the part that the kids who are weighing in on this thread don’t see, when all they do is comparing one set of scores to another.

StitchInTime · August 1, 2009, 2:38pm

[“Let’s</a> cut Obama some slack about this photograph.”](<a href=“http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/08/lets-cut-obama-some-slack-about-this.html][i]"Let’s”>Althouse: Let's cut Obama some slack about this photograph.)

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates arrested

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