<p>
</p>
<p>They are basically the same explanation, because inconsistency between scores and other data (grades, college courses, recommendations, etc) counts as a negative factor in admissions. The correlation is selected for and so is enforced, or greatly increased, when one looks at the acceptances.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s pretty plain that colleges that can be most choosy about student characteristics end up choosing students who, whether by direct observation or by correlation, tend to have high test scores. I know of NO college that actively prefers lower-scoring students in groups of students matched by other characteristics. </p>
<p>But, again, this thread is inspired by the observation that students are NOT sorted into a strict rank order by test scores alone (as Marite pointed out in a reply to me earlier in this thread, post #120). It’s easy for someone like me, who has lived in another country where the system really worked that way, to imagine an admission system in which applicants are placed in a strict rank order by test scores. But that is not the United States system. It bears repeating that every year some peak test-scorers, students who submitted a sole-sitting score of 2400 on the new SAT accompanied by a trifecta of 800s on SAT II tests, nonetheless can be, and are, rejected by colleges that overall appear to be very desirous of high-scoring students. Other factors matter. I hope students applying this year, next year, and the year after (and their parents, who in some cases need more reminding about this than the students) are aware of this.</p>
<p>Tokenadult, </p>
<p>Can you provide actual evidence, not annecdotes, about this:</p>
<p>“It bears repeating that every year some peak test-scorers, students who submitted a sole-sitting score of 2400 on the new SAT accompanied by a trifecta of 800s on SAT II tests, nonetheless can be, and are, rejected by colleges that overall appear to be very desirous of high-scoring students.”</p>
<p>And also, can you show that EVERY top school H-Y-P-S-M rejected single sitting 2400s?</p>
<p>Just curious.</p>
<p>Some evidence (anecdotes?) can be found in the admission results threads at the top of individual colleges boards.
Here is a link to the Harvard board:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=316631&page=7[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=316631&page=7</a></p>
<p>mammall, </p>
<p>what is the point of your question to tokenadult? Some (not all) colleges even advertise the number of perfect scores they reject. You want more proof than that? Or are you engaged in sophmoric debates?</p>
<p>All, </p>
<p>FWIW, I do find it curious how, in spite of the low predictive power of SAT scores, colleges, even the elites, DO put a lot of emphasis on scores, probably more than they admit. (always love their discussions of what matters…many put test scores waaaay down the list).</p>
<p>As others have pointed out, test scores help to validate HS GPA and recs. But I think more important is that test score ranges are one of the prime metrics potential students use to select “selective” schools, both directly and through rankings. So colleges pay a lot of attention to accepting kids that strengthen these metrics.</p>
<p>Another example of this is recruiting and admissions behavior to NM finalists. This is curious for two reasons: 1. the PSAT is a rather lousy test: it is short, those “in the know” prep and coach for it, but they are few, and it has had even less validation than the SAT itself. 2. The cutoff score varies widely around the country, so a college may recruit a kid from Kentucky that has a far lower score (and probably poorer academic qualifications, but this is an assumption) than a kid from Maryland who was not a finalist.</p>
<p>But colleges pay a lot of attention to NM finalist numbers, and really go after them. I suspect even the most selective schools do too, but have no data to support this suspicion.</p>
<p>I just attribute all this to the fact that admissions offices play two sometimes inconsistent roles at a college:</p>
<ul>
<li> gatekeeper</li>
<li> marketing</li>
</ul>
<p>Many of their public statements are regarding their gatekeeper role, but many of their behaviours are regarding their marketing role. Hence we all can observe lots of discrepancies.</p>
<p>Mammall: If you pay attention, you will know that all of the schools you mentioned SAY they have rejected students with 2400 SATs. Either they are not lying, and it’s true, or they’re lying but expressing a policy that might make it true next year. Either way, 2400 SATs are not a guarantee of admission on demand.</p>
<p>And either way, I am sure that students with 2400 SATs and decent high school records who are willing to apply to more than one or two schools wind up someplace they are happy with.</p>
<p>Actually, there are students with stellar credentials and enough of everything else who are rejected everywhere (some posted on CC, can’t find links right now.) Although this is a rare occurance, this can happen because of school anxiety about yield and slightly lower tier schools may reject applicant because they view her as as seeing threir school as a safety that the studenbt will not ultimately attend. Most of this students will be waitlisted and can indicate true interest then, but this does not always happen. I personally encountered one such student who was rejected everywhere but 'Fordham which she now attends with full scholarship.</p>
<p>mamall,</p>
<p>If you did not have the opportunity to do so, I would recommend that you read the Overachievers, by Robbins</p>
<p>Although the first paragraph starts out a little over the top, woven in between the student stories is some good sound facts and advice (which is definitely why the book is worth a read for parents and kids going through the admissions cycle).</p>
<p>From p. 202</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>One of the main reasons that a kid with perfect scores would be rejected or waitlisted is because when reviewing their applications, the admissions committee may reach concensus that this student would be better suited somewhere else.</p>
<p>I think post 245 is a good summary, that puts these conflicting perceptions into perspective. Especially helpful, I think, were these points:</p>
<p>//“test score ranges are one of the prime metrics potential students use to select “selective” schools, both directly and through rankings.”//</p>
<p>Although the point he was making referred to rankings, I think it provides another indirect boost to scores as a factor, given that for the most capable students, such ranges are a crtiical aspect of their own selection process. Less high-scoring students (including many below the 25% range) will often still select those schools, choosing to ignore those ranges; others will believe they are still “material” for those schools. But those ranges do provide a measure for students to self-select both in and out of an application effort for that particular college. The higher the score ranges (& the narrower that range), the less likely that the admissions committees will be sifting through piles of mediocre applications. And the more – -from a numerical viewpoint–those applications will look somewhat “interchangeable.”</p>
<p>//“FWIW, I do find it curious how, in spite of the low predictive power of SAT scores, colleges, even the elites, DO put a lot of emphasis on scores, probably more than they admit.”//</p>
<p>I agree, but I think this mostly relates to the gatekeeping function. I really think that if the application numbers to HYPSM were half what they are, the role of scores in selection would diminish. The informal evidence supporting that contention is that the accepted score ranges have not diminished in the last five years (that I can tell), yet statements from the collleges within this same time period (including some of their reps who post on CC) indicate skepticism about the relative importance of scores in choosing students of quality. This may only show that the push toward high scores is coming from the students, not the colleges, but that it sure is convenient/helpful for the colleges.</p>
<p>mammall,
Not only is validation about 2400-score rejects available directly from the elite U’s, many of those public statements have been cited on various threads on CC over the last few years. Further, many students have posted on CC results threads, such rejections. They are always asked on those threads to report their data. Sure, 100% of them could be lying about their scores, but it is not likely. The vast majority of those posting 2400 scores & announcing rejection, have ALSO posted that they had not much else in their profile that was very remarkable when it came to sustained accomplishment, OR (somewhere between a third and one-half of such postings) that the content of their application (effort put into it, including statement of purpose, essay, reporting of important details) was substandard. Most of the students on those CC results threads come across as remarkably honest & self-aware. Not surprisingly, many of those threads include acceptances of 2400-score applicants, but invariably those accepted students have much more than that going for them in the category of concrete academic accomplishments (not school clubs), such as the kind of research that grad students do, such as national competitions/awards, on and on. The only posts that I can recall that list almost nothing besides a 2400 score & great GPA, plus an acceptance, are those that admit to having a major hook such as significant donor, etc.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s a good summation of the matter. Certainly any College Confidential member who has followed the posts here since 2004, as I have, is aware of student self-reports of having perfect SAT scores and yet not getting into the most favored college. Google is our friend. A very simple Google search reveals such statements as </p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www-tech.mit.edu/V127/N16/apps.html[/url]”>http://www-tech.mit.edu/V127/N16/apps.html</a> </p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=349986[/url]”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=349986</a> </p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2003/02/wsj022703.html[/url]”>http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2003/02/wsj022703.html</a> </p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www2.aya.yale.edu/clubs/hongkong/apply_txt.htm[/url]”>http://www2.aya.yale.edu/clubs/hongkong/apply_txt.htm</a> </p>
<p>There are more quotations where those came from. One nationally reported case was the case of Jian Li, who applied to several elite colleges but didn’t get into all of them.</p>
<p>sybbie719 – </p>
<p>I like your post and agree with it. I, too, read the statement by the Harvard admissions dean. He references 200-300 top minds as the first picks. There are under 300 scores of 36 on the ACT and/or 2400 on the SAT per year. I still think he’s talking, in large part, about those kids. Sure, sure. Intel. Siemens, Olympiads. Those competitions, however, are starting to be tainted by the perception that kids of affluent families from high-power high schools get those opportunities. The SAT and ACT are, despite all the cries to the contrary, the evenest playing field. JMO</p>
<p>By the way, how many of the parents posting in this thread have children who participated in Talent Search testing when middle-school age? </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=78732[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=78732</a> </p>
<p>Knowing a lot of young people who were high test-scorers at an early age is a good reality check on how America’s future scholars develop. A subset of those students form the [Study</a> of Exceptional Talent](<a href=“http://cty.jhu.edu/set/index.html]Study”>http://cty.jhu.edu/set/index.html), which is an effort to understand how such high scorers develop during their teen years, in their college studies, and throughout their early careers.</p>
<p>Count on sybbie & tokenadult to be handy with those citations.<br>
Much obliged.</p>
<p>mammall:</p>
<p>you can also search the UC press releases for the past few Aprils: Cal and UCLA routinely announce how many 1600/2400 scorers are rejected (note, that is a single sitting). The data is easily available. </p>
<p>For example,</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But, to follow onto sybbie’s point and quote… the key IMO is that a typical (using this work lightly) 2400 does not fit into Fitzsimmon’s first two categories, so they have to compete for an admissions slot in category #3…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>“Those competitions, however, are starting to be tainted by the perception that kids of affluent families from high-power high schools get those opportunities.”</p>
<p>I do know that such opportunities are not universally available, or at least not universally known. However, what is missing from your expressed cynicism about ‘high powered high schools’ is that they also produce (often) an exceptional academic product. The quality of the coursework, and what is expected from those students, is a far cry from the lower common denominator of what is available at simply any school in the land. Greater opportunity or not, graduates from such high schools, who have already proven that they can do both – score high and provide other validating evidence of academic worth – are going to be considered by an elite U as better risks because they provide more validating data. If anything, this speaks to the importance of opportunity, not to the importance of scores.</p>
<p>Such discrepancies in opportunity are the reason that the vast majority of public flagship U’s & even many privates offer full-ride scholarships, honors admissions, etc. to high-scoring, high-GPA applicants who lack the high-power-high-school experience.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, that is the key in my opinion too. The most selective colleges see plenty of applicants each year with peak test scores. Those colleges can and do look for more among their applicants. High test scores raise the probability of admission at most colleges–unless there are still some colleges practicing “strategic” admission for yield-management purposes–but they guarantee admission only at “by the numbers” colleges, which are increasingly rare in an era when most colleges claim to practice “holistic” admission.</p>
<p>I agree that, all things considered, the SATs and ACT are the “evenest playing field”, but college admissions, from the standpoint of the colleges, isn’t a game. Perfect SATs pretty much guarantee high intelligence, but do not make anyone “among the most exciting potential scholars of the coming generation”. To judge that, you also need to look at what kind of person an applicant is, and what kind of work he or she is producing (taking account of the opportunities presented to him or her). And the range of SAT scores that an exciting potential scholar might have is pretty broad, especially since at least one of the scores is likely to be collateral to the applicant’s scholarly focus. So the 300-400 perfect scorers are still in a pretty big pool in the “exciting scholar” category, and in an even bigger pool in the “strong all around” category. It’s not like anyone ignores their tests, and it’s not like kids with those scores don’t often have a lot of other stuff to their credit, too. They do very well in college admissions. But that single piece of information is just not all that important.</p>
<p>By the way, if you looked at the actual exciting scholars of the current generation – a population for which the Harvard faculty could well serve as a representative sample – I would bet that you find comparatively few former perfect SAT scores. Is it any wonder, then, that the admissions departments who answer to them don’t overvalue those tests?</p>
<p>blue’s post is an indirect reminder that U.C. also rejects some 2400-scores, certainly has recently. If the substance of the application is not up to what U.C. is looking for in motivation, academic commitment, expression of purpose, goal orientation – that student is rejected. So this is not just some fluke of the private elites. The only kinds of colleges that will virtually blindly not only accept but often solicit high-scoring students on the basis of “numbers” alone, are colleges that do not fit into the category of “elite” by anyone’s definition. They need/desire those scorers to pull up their rankings.</p>
<p>It is amazing to hear that colleges are looking less at these tests or at least more at our personalities. My school is a very small private school, and we do not put hardly any emphasis on taking these types of tests; therefore, the students do not always get the best scores. In addition, it seems that we are beginning to have to buy are test scores, dont get me wrong you still have to wrok hard, but many people dont have the money to take month long courses on the act or sat.
YAY for personalities!! not for a test on testing</p>
<p>Tainted? I prefer affected unless there is some concern that the students engaged in these high-powered endeavors have not earned the right to be involved in them or that the results were not achieved by them.</p>