<p>And how long before the truly brightest kids experience an Emperors New Clothes moment and decide that the elite schools with their contorted admissions logic and $200K price tags are . . . kind of stupid?</p>
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<p>Are we talking about the U.C. as in University of California system? And what does “some” means in this context? Two or three? Fifty? Two hundreds? </p>
<p>If it the UC did indeed reject students with perfect 2400, do you know at what readership level this may happen? </p>
<p>And, out of curiosity, how many students with a 2400 SAT do you think **applied **to the entire UC system in 2006?</p>
<p>I am sure Token has posted the link, but here is a little pinch of reality:</p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>
2006 College-Bound SeniorsCritical Reading + Mathematics + Writing
Score Total Males Female
2400 238 131 107
2390 240 122 118
2380 153 81 72
2370 227 122 105
</p>
<p>If the UC only accepts score from one sitting, the number of 2400 candidates must extremely low.</p>
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<p>That made me giggle a bit. Answer: a long, long, long time. Because even if those brightest kids truly believed that the admissions logic was contorted and the schools kind of stupid, they would be left with some undeniable facts: </p>
<p>– those schools still have the best faculties
– those schools still have the best facilities
– those schools have endowments so large as to boggle the imagination
– those schools have extensive loyalty networks and universal respect, and most importantly
– those schools still attract a greater concentration of students like them than any other university in the English-speaking world</p>
<p>So until there’s an attractive alternative, even if you think their admissions logic is nuts there’s still plenty of reason to want to go to Harvard. And the institution that replaces it as the greatest university in America is, as of today, either (a) one that shares Harvard’s admissions philosophy, or (b) $40 billion dollars of endowment, $30 billion at least of real estate and equipment at fair market value, decades and decades of faculty-building, at least 4,000-5,000 of the highest testing students, and nearly 500 years of reputation-building behind. It’s going to take Brave New University at least a generation or five to catch up.</p>
<p>Gosh, xiggi. I don’t keep statistical tables handy 24/7. I can think of one applicant at least 2 admissions rounds ago, who was rejected from Berkeley with perfect SAT’s. As I recall, this was the final readership round.</p>
<p>I also recall some posters on some of the CC student forums, with at least very high scores (I don’t recall offhand if any of those were 2400) who were rejected from BERKELEY. Being “eligible” in U.C.'s definition of that, does not mean acceptance to Berkeley or UCLA, even if your scores are perfect or nearly so. I didn’t say they applied to every U.C. & were rejected from all of them, & it’s very doubtful that the students I’m thinking of did apply to all campuses.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I don’t know if the data you asked for is available, but the 2002 Moore’s report found that 32% of the applicants to Berkeley with SAT scores of 1510 to 1600 (out of 1600) were rejected. Those rejected applicants, about 650 in all, were roughly half Californians and half out of state applicants.</p>
<p>Interestingly, former Harvard president Larry Summers weighed in on this very issue. He thought it was messed up how many perfect scores (1600 on the old system) got rejected from Harvard, but then he changed his mind. </p>
<p>If you google Larry Summers and Charlie Rose, he talks about this briefly. It’s an hour interview, though, so you may not want to sit through that.</p>
<p>I don’t understand what mammall’s problem is. Clearly she believes that HYPSM are inferior institutions, admitting inferior students. I’m kind of surprised, actually, that she’s making this information public, as this is valuable inside information: superior education elsewhere, at better prices. I wouldn’t want to release that info until after my own children’s acceptances (all of them, if I had several) to the “better” institutions. Just let all those other, foolish students continue to be supposedly hoodwinked into assuming there’s something special about a private selective university with the facilities, individual attention, maximum international diversity on the undergraduate level, Extreme financial aid, mostly small classes, residential college systems, and exceptional academic field trips for the price tag. (Oh, whoops: that’s right, they’re not “selective.” Bad word choice on my part. Non-selective, apparently.)</p>
<p>It’s a simple question but the answer seems murky. Problem is everyone has a different definition of “perfect” - one 800 out of the three sections? 2300/2400? Superscoring to patch together 2400? There are a million ways to define it. And there really doesn’t seem to be reliable data on the actual percentage of rejects who scored 2400. It’s not on the common data sets. Most of the information out there gives a band of scores. Sure, there are comments from admissions folks about rejecting lots of “perfect” scores. But maybe that’s a bit of PR intended to dampen the anger toward the SAT. After all, if they admitted that it really is mostly about the SAT, then far fewer kids would bother to apply and the beloved admission rate would have to go up.</p>
<p>Kluge – your numbers actually make xiggi’s point for him:</p>
<p>They imply that in 2002 about 2,000 Berkeley applicants had SAT > 1500. As I remember, there used to be about 10,000 kids/year with combined scores > 1500, with about 10% of those having single-test 1600. So I would estimate that about 200 1600-scorers applied to Berkeley in 2002, and they represented about 20% of all 1600-scorers that year (which is plausible, I guess).</p>
<p>Well, 20% of single-test 2400-scorers is about 45 kids. That’s not very many. If rejections among the earlier group of top 2,000 SAT testtakers were evenly distributed, about 65 of the 1600-scorers would have been rejected; the equivalent figure for the 2400-scorers would be . . . 15. It wouldn’t take a WHOLE lot of imbalance in the distribution of rejections among the top 2,000 combined SAT scorers in 2006 to wipe out those 15 expected rejections. And in any event, it doesn’t look very likely that Berkeley gets enough applications from 2400-scorers to make very robust conclusions about the pattern of acceptance or rejection among them, at least not for a few years.</p>
<p>Re Post 269: except that those of us who do share our children’s scores + acceptance histories with each other, and those students who share this with each other and publicly on CC, confirm that it is extremely unlikely that all 3 groups are lying: the administrators at elite U’s, the students posting on CC, and the individuals with actual official score reports who have shared such information with others (many of whom in turn also post on CC).</p>
<p>JHS & Xiggi:
My point was not to assert a large number of 2400 rejects. My point was, and I’ll still make it, that even those institutions who claim to be numbers-driven when it comes to the selection process – they also employ holistic admissions, often, in one form or another, and have been known, at select campuses, to consider elements other than and/or in addition to scores in the selection decisions. Iin this country, there aren’t a lot of institutions in which a 2400 and a 4.0, in and by themselves, entitle anyone to anything except possibly “automatic” merit scholarships at colleges which state a numerical qualification for such awards.</p>
<p>No one is lying! I don’t think that at all, epiphany. I just think our defnitions and comments are ambiguous. And of course I respect the elite schools and in my heart of hearts hope my kids can get into them. I’m honestly just trying to make sense of a very confusing process. Obviously, all on this board are hugely engaged in their kids’ education and care deeply that their kids attend wonderful colleges. Some of my best friends went to elite schools!</p>
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<p>No problem here. I defined my terms in post #242, “students who submitted a sole-sitting score of 2400 on the new SAT accompanied by a trifecta of 800s on SAT II tests.” Yes, it is anomalous that a college would reject such a student, but, yes, it is possible for that to happen. </p>
<p>Let me ask you a direct question or two: what are you counting on to ensure that your children get into the very best college they can get into? What college does that appear to be, at the moment?</p>
<p>Wow - I don’t count on anything but our state U. I do hope that the SAT endures because I do believe in an objective measure by which to evaluate applicants. My kids have scored well in middle school on the SAT and will probably do well on it in high school. I guess my concern is that it’s gong to disappear by then and I worry that it will be tough for them to stand out without it.</p>
<p>Perfect SAT scores do not mean perfect applicant.</p>
<p>I just looked at the profiles of the US International Physics Olympiad Team of 5 that took third place (tied with Korea and behind PRC and Russia).
Two are going to MIT, one to Harvard and one to Stanford. One is a junior.</p>
<p>For the US IMO team of 6 (fourth place after the Russian Federation, PRC, Vietnam and Korea (tied): 1 sophomore! 1 junior; 2 to Harvard, 1 to Caltech and 1 to MIT.</p>
<p>Those gold medals are worth a lot more than perfect SAT scores.</p>
<p>QUOTE FROM MAMMALL:
//“But maybe that’s a bit of PR intended to dampen the anger toward the SAT. After all, if they admitted that it really is mostly about the SAT, then far fewer kids would bother to apply and the beloved admission rate would have to go up.”//</p>
<p>QUOTE FROM MAMMALL:
//“No one is lying!”//</p>
<p>Consider the discrepancies in the above.
Then also consider the discrepancies below:</p>
<p>QUOTE:
//“How long before the truly brightest kids have an Emperors New Clothes experience and decide that the elite schools with their contorted admissions logic and $200K price tags are . . . kind of stupid?”//</p>
<p>vs.</p>
<p>QUOTE:
//“And of course I respect the elite schools and in my heart of hearts hope my kids can get into them.”//</p>
<p>So, if you didn’t mean what you actually said in the first instances, next time please save us a lot of trouble and say what you <em>do</em> mean.</p>
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<p>Kluge, I was not really posing a question, but openly musing about a couple of numbers, especially the rarity of 2400 SAT. For what it is worth, I am still amazed by how we intertwined an entire debate about the UC with the questions posed by Token. I think that Token’s questions about perfect scores 2400 or 4800 are quite irrelevant for the state schools in California. </p>
<p>Regarding the numbers of perfect 2400 in 2006, one can safely assume that California did not “collect” more than three dozens of them, counting a generous 15% of the national numbers. </p>
<p>Further, the number of scores between 1500 and 1600 are not relevant to the statement that the University of California rejected several candidates who had perfect scores. My personal speculation about such rejections is that the “rejections” were probably caused by an incomplete application or a request to withdraw as opposed to a rejection by an adcom. Further, I’d say that, in the freshman class of the entire UC system, you could count ALL the 2400 scorers on the digits of your hands and feet! The number of 2400 rejects? One hand would be generous. </p>
<p>Voila, I said it! :)</p>
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<p>Thanks for the clarification, Epiphany.</p>
<p>To be exact, xiggi, California “collected” 43 of 'em in ‘06…how many did good ole’ Techsus “collect”?</p>
<p>The relevance to token’s original question is nill. However, it is relevant to those on this thread that believe that tests are the end-all, be-all for admissions.</p>
<p>Well, if it can be shown that UC Berkeley, which is said to be quite a numbers-driven campus, does indeed reject a 2400-scorer from time to time, the relevance to my original question would be high: why does that happen? </p>
<p>I didn’t jump in much in lengthy discussion of the latest UC admission study, but the conclusion I draw from it is that any thinking college admission committee will continue to consider admission test scores as an important factor in deciding which applicants are admitted. Certainly HYPSM will stay in the business of considering admission test scores for quite a few more years.</p>