<p>I hear that some of the stand-alone polytechics (e.g., Harvey Mudd or Rose-Hulman or RPI) are congenial for brilliant but shy young people, but my oldest is not shy, so I haven’t investigated this issue much.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to emphasize the term “shy” - more the concept that teens are emerging creatures from a variety of experiences and that admissions rewards those who have matured early and have a well developed self-image. This may have nothing to do with intelligence or potential at 17. The expectation that a student would take his developing passion in music and naturally decide on his own to give lessons, perform at fundraisers, etc. seems a little CC skewed. I wonder if that is a natural evolution or one brought on by the demands of having ECs to get into college - I know that is cynical but that is what seems to drive most ECs today. </p>
<p>My son is not shy or inhibited. He is just the opposite but I was a shy child who developed in college as well. I came from a poor background and I did not feel great about myself at that age. However, Northstarmom I do have a doctoral degree and I developed the necessary skills to complete that as well as see patients all day. I gained these skills and grew through normal growth of personality and psyche and positive college experiences. It is only the extreme number of applicants that has created this need to find students who have either exceptional psychosocial and academic development and/or exceptional support/resources and/or exceptional talents. I still do not see that choosing these students for college over those who are still developing them is so critical or valid. Have there been any studies re: outcomes - probably not given the relatively short time that admissions has become so crazy. </p>
<p>It’s as though kids who did not learn to read at 3 should be excluded from preschools or Kindergartens when we know that learning to read is not just about intelligence but also about genetics, development, exposure and even myelination. Most students learn to read within the age range of 3 to 7 and picking out those who read at 4 from those who read at 5 or 6 is pretty tough later baring other issues. I think we are shortchanging a lot of potential.</p>
<p>Rileydog:</p>
<p>I think the Stanford rep was assuming that the student passionate about music probably played in an orchestra. Orchestras perform, whether for school audiences or community audiences, or in Carnegie Hall. She did not seem to try to suggest a level of excellence. As for giving music lessons, it can be done as a form of tutoring in after school programs; we’re not talking Nadine Boulanger here! My S did some tutoring before school (not music).</p>
<p>Rileydog, I share your concerns. The focus on accomplishments - at the age of 17, as most college applicants are - strikes me as unrealistic at best, encouraging of “gaming the system” at worst. Many 17 year olds - including many future world-beaters - are completely unformed at that point in their lives.</p>
<p>well kluge and rileydog, don’t worry too much. This is why, in my business, we care not where the person went to school and ONLY what they can do now. I have not found Ivy degrees to correlate one way or another with competence in my field, and so I have never hired on that basis and do not plan to start. Talent will rise to the top no matter what the college. If we were to base future success on what a person did at 17 we would miss out on enormous amounts of brilliance, talent and ability. THAT is why most people in the real world have other, more tangible and more realistic ways of weighing things. It is only in the rarefied world of collegeconfidential that such things take on this ultimate level of significance --in the actual world, there are many equalizers. so …relax, your kid can go to state u and still be a worldbeater.</p>
<p>
Kluge was looking at CSU data, which is an entirely different population of students. I addressed that in my earlier post – getting all A’s at a mediocre school requires dedication and tenacity, even if it doesn’t require brilliance; getting all B’s & C’s may require little more than showing up to class. The CSU’s have a small percentage of high end kids who are there either for financial reasons or because of a desire for a specific course of study- they tend to offer a more practical, career-oriented curriculum. But the vast majority of CSU matriculants are the B & C students. </p>
<p>The top UC’s like Cal & UCLA are pretty much getting the very top ranked students - they look for challenging curriculum, high test scores, and top GPA’s. ELC status is a tremendous boost – to get that a student needs to have completed a very specific curriculum by the end of junior year, and be in the top 4% of their class – the high schools do not calculate the GPA - rather they send transcripts of the top 12% of students and the UC system calculates GPA and rank. </p>
<p>I wasn’t trying to argue a point with you-- I was trying to explain something. It seems to me that you simply dismissed everything I said without considering it – because you really didn’t respond to my points – you are just arguing yours. I understand your point – you thing test scores and the quality of the high school education is really important. I get it – but you also said that you didn’t understand why the UC system felt GPA was just as good. I tried to explain that… but you keep reiterating the same point.</p>
<p>My perspective is different. I think work ethic and attitude are a lot more important. Unlike you, I have 2 kids, one who has a lot better test scores than the other but will graduate from a CSU at age 24, whereas the one with the crappy test scores is on Dean’s list at an Ivy-affiliated college. She keeps her eye on the prize and tries to do her very best at whatever she does. It isn’t a matter of how smart each kid is – it is a matter of how motivated and focused they are. </p>
<p>Because the UC’s draw only from the top 12% in terms of rank/high school GPA – they really don’t get any kids who aren’t bright enough to do the work. I know that people think there is some magical distinction between the kids who score 2400 on the SAT and the ones who score 1800, but the reality is that the 1800 scorer has the innate ability to handle the curriculum at just about any college. That kid may have to work a little harder than the kid with the higher scores – but the ability is there. </p>
<p>The CSU’s are drawing from a different population so you really can’t compare their stats. The other problem with Kluge’s analysis is economic: the poorer schools academically tend to have poorer students; the CSU’s are largely commuter schools; the vast majority of CSU students are employed at least part time and paying their own way through college; and the kids with the greatest financial need are the ones most likely to be working longer hours in order to stay in school. Many of these kids are working to support other family members – some are already parents with their own kids to support. So the demographics of the CSU introduces a variable that has nothing whatsoever to do with high school GPA or test scores.</p>
<p><a href=“newmassdad:”>quote</a>
Kluge, what about the regression results [of the 2nd UC study]?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Kluge has correctly interpreted both studies, including the regression results. I would be happy to further dissect the regressions if you have technical questions, but the correct conclusion (not the authors’ conclusion) in both studies is that the test scores are as good as, and usually stronger, than GPA as predictors of all college outcomes that were considered. That includes 4-year college graduation and 4-year college GPA considered in the second study.</p>
<p>Concerning the regressions, the authors seem to have missed the point of their own work in study number two. They find that for predicting 4-year GPA, graduation, etc using grades, test scores and socioeconomic data, the best (linear) model for doing so gives substantial positive weight to the socioeconomic factors: family income, parents’ education, quality of high school. Admissions offices, however, cannot favor the children of the wealthy or well-educated (and may tend to punish them and reward the disadvantaged), so the coefficients in any model usable for admission must be negative or zero for the SES factors. If you try to find the best prediction model of, say, 4-year UC graduation using the authors’ data set but require that the SES coefficients are zero or some specified negative numbers, this requires raising the coefficients of HSGPA and of the SAT scores to compensate. Because SES is more correlated with test scores than with GPA, this means you have to even further increase the weight of SAT scores relative to GPA in your model beyond what the studies found (which was that SAT-II was already beating GPA, and the whole SAT report all the more so).</p>
<p>That is, the admissions advice resulting from the second (and to some extent also the first) UC study is not to ignore the SAT-I and use GPA, but to increase the weight of SAT-I and SAT-II compared to GPA if one wants accurate predictions of graduation rate and the other outcomes.</p>
<p><a href=“marite:”>quote</a>
why [unlike SAT, the HSGPA] is not subject to adjustment for SES or race or type of school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>They are both “adjusted” by the inclusion of SES, but SAT much more so. Including in the regression the socioeconomic factors, especially the one for quality of high school, reduces the weight of both SAT scores and HSGPA in the regression and redistributes some of that weight to the SES factors. This redistribution penalizes the SAT much more than HSGPA because the SAT is better correlated with the socioeconomic factors.</p>
<p>This is why when SES considerations are removed or reversed, as in real-life admissions, the weight of SAT and HSGPA will rise, with the SAT rising much more. This would strengthen the SAT’s predictive weight over HSGPA (remember, SAT-II by itself beats GPA) in any admissions process that implicity tries to forecast the likelihood of graduation, college grades, or other academic outcomes.</p>
<p>That SAT correlates with socioeconomics better than GPA does is not necessarily because standardized exams are secretly testing for wealth. All else being equal (and with some reservations, such as middle class or immigrant strivers outworking the wealthy), richer students will have higher grades in any given high school. But high schools, through tuition or property taxes or appeal to educated professionals, are themselves selectors for SES, and within the narrow SES range in a given school, it is to a large extent competition between similar-SES students for the grades. This destroys much of the wealth correlation in the high school GPA.</p>
<p>I said I was done with this thread but now that I see a few posters commenting on the over emphasis on ECs in the admissions process, I can’t resist. All the mania among kids and parents to demonstrate passion/leadership/uniqueness is just getting ridiculous. Very often the kids with the splashiest resumes are also the most ruthlessly ambitious and “political” within the school. I know, I know. You interviewers out there are just sure that they’re really altruistic at heart. If you only knew the flip side from the perspectives of other kids and faculty. That’s why I really do sort of wish we had a much more numbers approach to admissions. The SAT, controversial as it is, seems to me to provide every kid a good chance to show their stuff. That along with transcripts should be 90 percent of the application. The adult world is so full of self aggrandizement. That can often be forgiven when we are trying to house and feed our families in a tough environment. But the way college admissions are going, those unsavory skills are seeping into our high schools, ruining what should be wonderful years for kids, and stocking our elite schools with the type of people who really probably should never have power over anyone.</p>
<p>Okay, I am terribly slow on the uptake.</p>
<p>I absolutely get it that SATII by itself beats GPA. It is not subject to the vagaries of grading by individuals or by schools, favoritism, silly projects; it is better aligned with curricula than the SAT.<br>
I also get it that schools are themselves selectors for SES and that within the same school, it is possible to rely on GPA. My question had to do with comparing GPAs given in different schools with different demographics. That, I think, was the complaint about the TX 10% formula.</p>
<p>Calmom:
What I take from this discussion is that the UCs attract a population of applicants who are mostly middle and upper-middle class and who go to schools with comparable profiles; CSUs attracts applicants of lower SES. In order for UCs to attract some low SES applicants, they have to adjust SAT scores. </p>
<p>I have absolutely no quarrel with this practice. It’s the claim that GPA is a better predictor of college success that I find unconvincing.</p>
<p>Regarding post 209: the word “overemphasis” is your word, not mine. There are not large numbers of students getting into Elite U’s with great e.c’s AND WITHOUT great academics. But those U’s would far prefer to have both aspects than just great academics, and the point is, they can get that. The highschool you speak of sounds pretty hellish. Are all those “self-aggrandizing” students getting into lots of elite U’s? Personally, I’ve noticed a lot more self-aggrandizing going on among those students most hell-bent on scores, but maybe that’s just my experience. As I already mentioned in my previous post, the colleges are not impressed with padded e.c. resumes in themselves. Absolutely none of the roommates I discussed above is a self-aggrandizing type; I know at least one of them was not in highschool either, & it’s doubtful that the other roommates had a personality transformation upon matriculating to an elite U.</p>
<p>No, Marite, you don’t get it at all. The UC’s are restricted by state law to students with GPAs over 3.0. It doesn’t matter what the SAT score is, the law was written with the intent that the top 12% of students state wide would go to the UC’s, and everyone else would go to either CSUs or community colleges. It’s a ranked system.</p>
<p>Some of the UC’s are harder to get into than others. The UCs give a special boost to students who are in the top 4% of their class at the end of junior year, whether they attend school in Compton or Palo Alto. It doesn’t matter if their parents are upper class or not. It’s just a matter of getting good grades. </p>
<p>The UC’s have many lower SES students – I think someone above cited a 30% figure for number of Pell grant qualifiers. The UC’s don’t have to do anything about their test scores – the minimum score required for a high GPA student to attend is actually quite low. (I remember that last year I calculated that my daughter could get scores of under 400 on each of her SAT II exams and still qualify for admission). </p>
<p>What the UC’s have to do to attract more lower SES students is lower their tuitions and cost of room and board. UC tuition is about double the cost of a CSU, and the UC’s are primarily residential colleges; many are located far from urban centers. </p>
<p>The primary reason that a UC-qualifying student would choose a CSU is financial. A Pell grant is actually enough to cover the full tuition at a CSU with money left over to be refunded to the student. </p>
<p>So the correct way to complete your sentence is:
“In order for UCs to attract some low SES applicants, they have to reduce their tuition.”</p>
<p>I’m sure this has been mentioned previously in this thread but with so many of the very top SAT scorers (perfect scores) applying to the same schools some are going to be rejected. Take into account that a “regular” student is competing against legacies, athletes, special talents, and students from exclusive private schools there just aren’t enough spots for everyone to get in!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is Compton as good a district as Palo Alto? Does an A in Compton reflect the same level of challenge as in Palo Alto? That is what I am trying to figure out. I do understand that the UCs have a minimal GPA of 3.00 . What I am trying to figure out is whether the 3.00 in Compton is equivalent to the 3.00 in Palo Alto.</p>
<p>^^No way. She was giving you opposite extreme examples. The 3.0 in Compton would not be equivalent to the 3.0 in Palo Alto. (For that matter, a 3.0 at Compton could possibly be top 4% , depending on the school/student body.)</p>
<p>And then there is Uprep in Oakland <a href=“http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/23/MNG9RR56CT1.DTL[/url]”>http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/23/MNG9RR56CT1.DTL</a> where a 3.5 on a transcript may actually be a 1.0 in the classroom…</p>
<p>
No, the neighborhood around Compton High School is a lot rougher than Palo Alto High. Compton students have are more likely to have parents who don’t speak English; most of them are lower income; and per-pupil spending is less than 70% of that of Palo Alto High. Only 2/3 of the Compton teachers are fully credentialed, compared to 95% at Palo Alto High. Average class size is 34, compared to 27 at Palo Alto, and the Compton guidance counselors carry twice the caseload. </p>
<p>So, without a doubt, it is much, much harder for Compton kids to stay on track & qualify for UC admissions.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That kind of statement would explain why not all high school valedictorians or students with perfect high school grade averages are admitted to their first-choice colleges: they are simply too commonplace. That’s not MATHEMATICALLY sure in regard to perfect test scorers for reasons posted earlier in the thread (e.g., post #112). In actual practice, most (all?) colleges could admit every perfect scorer who applies without filling up the entering class. </p>
<p>It does indeed happen that some students with perfect scores on either of the big brand names of college admission tests do get rejected from colleges they thought they liked best. That’s anomalous insofar as high test scores are a desirable characteristic to any of the colleges that regard test scores (which college PREFERS lower scores to higher scores?) and suggests that sometimes factors other than test scores TRUMP test scores as a basis for admission decisions. This thread is all about what high school students should think about as they apply to colleges, knowing, as one thoughtful reply to this thread put it, that high test scores are necessary but not sufficient for admission to the most sought-after colleges.</p>
<p>I understand both Epiphany’s and Calmom’s points. But that is precisely why I wonder about the utility of the GPA.</p>
<p>The description of Compton would suggest that a student who scored high on the SAT or SATII from that school would compare favorably against a student from Palo Alto (other factors than SES being equal). But the A from Compton would not be equivalent to the A from Palo Alto, and hence the two sets of GPAs would not be equivalent.
Or put another way, the fact that Compton high had 1/3 of uncredentialed teachers, large class sizes, etc… should be factored in when looking at the GPA. My question is: is it?</p>
<p>Yes the difference is factored in. There is a process called “comprehensive review” that takes in other factors. The Compton kid would probably be given a boost under item 11:
</p>