<p>Yes, indeed. Many are endlessly fetishizing HYP; but most of those who do are people who are not there. If HYP do not deserve kids and their parents’ $200k, the solution is simple: don’t apply there.</p>
<p>A bit of arithmetics: Harvard claims that in any given year, 80% of its applicants are qualified for admission–in other words, more than 16,000 are qualified out of a pool of 20,000.</p>
<p>The admitted classes at HYPSM in a given year would not total 16,000. At most, they would total about 10,000. The matriculating classes would be even smaller. And this is from a single pool of applicants. So the qualified students who cannot be admitted at HYPSM must go elsewhere. And these “elsewhere” offer a great education to students whose profile is pretty similar to those at HYPSM.
This is a refrain that many of us have been saying for a long time.</p>
<p>I think my resentment of HYP is similar to some posters resentment of the 2400/36. It’s out there darn it and if it’s rare then I want my kids to have it and if they can’t have it then it must not be worthwhile. Now I have to work. CC is taking over my life and that’s not good. Have a good day, everyone.</p>
<p>My take on 2400 is that the Math-SAT measures only math knowledge through Pre-calc. Not a very significant achievement in my opinion. And indeed, there are plenty of applicants to HYPSM and other schools who have achieved more. As for HYPSM worship, I’ve already written about this topic.</p>
<p>“Just try to be fair and not hold it against the graduates of the inferior schools.”</p>
<p>Again with the double messages. If they’re inferior schools, why are you getting in a tizzy that your high-scoring children may not get admitted to these inferior privates? (And I’ll still point out that it’s a tad early to make such judgments. I thought my non-leaderly D would not get into her Ivy choices, but that was not true. Nor are any of her college roommates leaderly types. She did not apply to Harvard, however. The “elite” colleges of her choice were more interested in her quietly persistent academic accomplishments.)</p>
<p>You’ve said it yourself: U.C. supposedly has a superior system, producing apparently superior students in your eyes. So all you need do, is continue to support your children in their “pride that they have no e.c.'s,” have them only go to class in high school, maybe take more standardized tests, and move to CA one year before the oldest one’s application year. She or he will be In Like Flint in the U.C. system. (You will, however, have to stay as residents for the following 4 yrs. to have the student continue to qualify for in-state tuition, etc.)</p>
<p>Sounds to me as if your problems are solved, and no add’l hand-wringing is necessary about the “inferior schools.”</p>
<p>please point out which posts show “resentment of the 2400/36”. </p>
<p>The only disconnect that I percieve is towards those individuals who harbor the beleif that:</p>
<p>“…a student with a 2400 SAT and a 36 ACT [should be] 100 percent sure of being admitted to the top colleges in the United States…” which is significantly different than resenting the score itself.</p>
<p>“It has been a couple of generations since the Ivy League (and a few of its New England LAC cousins) lost the monopoly on great students.”</p>
<p>They never had the monopoly on great students. For various reasons ranging from financial to racial and religious (Jewish) quotas to lack of knowledge about what types of colleges were available, the Ivies have never been the only colleges that got the “great students.”</p>
<p>Let’s say someone were to start a university that took only the top 500 students a year, based on SAT I, SAT II, ACT, and AP scores only. No ECs, no GPAs, no essays, no recommendations, no applications, they just pull the list from the college board. Hypothetically, let’s also say whatever major you or your child is leaning toward is offered at this school. Let’s even assume that whomever endowed this university, put enough into it that all tuition is free. Would you prefer this school to HYPSM?</p>
<p>Would you see this school as a top university?</p>
<p>What the 36 shows is aptitude. The 36 does not show accomplishment. Most colleges (esp. the Elites) are interested in a combination of aptitude & accomplishment. Your child has only one half of the equation. Colleges do not normally admit students in 8th grade. There are some exceptions, but those are usually homeschooled ones who have passed h.school graduation requirements because of early acceleration. Their admission is rare & controversial. Do you want HYPSM to guarantee your child a later admission because of this early score? They’re not interested in her skipping over her high school yrs. They’ll want to <em>compare</em> her 36 score <em>against</em> her high school accomplishment, in senior year. If there are students from her h.school who score a 34 in 11th grade, but outdo her in weighted GPA & actual classwork, they may be admitted over her – even if they are also “proud to have no e.c.'s.” AdOfficer just weighed in over the last couple of days on the ACT thread, reiterating that his/her U weighs most heavily the high school transcript.</p>
<p>Cur wrote: “They state over and over that they take each student’s stats within the context of their environment.”</p>
<p>That said, whenever a college attempts to have a diverse mix of students, there will always be “issues” of “bias”. I, for one, am glad some colleges are willing to risk being accused of such. I can’t imagine wanting to attend a college where everyone, looks, believes, studies the same. That said, there are others who want a more homogeneous environment. </p>
<p>Females traditionally have an “edge” at engineering schools. Male students who wish to major in literature at an LAC often experience a similar “edge”.</p>
<p>Many threads speak of “geographic” diversity. Or, URM status. </p>
<p>A student with significant musical accomplishments is much less competitive at a college with a music conservatory. Similarly, many pre-med undergrads looking for research opportunities avoid colleges with large graduate populations in their major.</p>
<p>It’s not that a school is actively “against” any group. It’s more a supply demand function.</p>
<p>Post 470…“What the 36 shows is aptitude. The 36 does not show accomplishment. Most colleges (esp. the Elites) are interested in a combination of aptitude & accomplishment”</p>
<p>My brother had phenomenally high SAT scores and extremely low grades. This is apparently a red flag to admissions committees. It says, “I just might be lazy and unmotivated.” Or maybe I’m just immature, or haven’t found my niche yet. But it makes you look risky.</p>
Nope. Not a chance. I think the unabomber would have gotten in his year, though. Pretty sure of it in fact. </p>
<p>Standardized tests really don’t tell you all that much about who a person is, do they?. The highest scoring kid in our COUNTY (not school, county) my graduating year was a dope fiend serving time in a juvenile facility. I distinguish dope fiends from other imbibers of that era because, well…just because . Brilliant mind. I watched it come out his ears many nights. Ever seen the movie where Matt Dillon is the 70’s dope fiend who along with his bunch crack open drugstores for the prize inside? That was this fool. He’d be in that class. </p>
<p>For those who don’t know, several of us posting on this thread have kids who were in the top 5000 kids in the nation on these tests. As was our UCB student. We aren’t whining about some test our kids couldn’t do well on. I just wanted you to know.</p>
<p>^One of my school’s National Merit Semifinalists was unilaterally despised by all faculty and students. He was caught cheating senior year and denied by every college he applied to except for UMiami.</p>
<p>A system based solely on scores would have rewarded him, while a holistic admissions system gave him what he deserved.</p>
<p>top scorers get turned away because of those mysterious things called essays, extracurriculars, and special hooks. the US college admissions system needs to be completely overhauled. unfortunately, the powers that be have brainwashed people into buying all of this holistic mumbo jumbo. a system based on tests and grades is the way to go. not only is it more fair for kids, it will improve the academic quality of the student body at universities. I know I would feel a lot better if I did not get into _____ University if my grades or standardized scores were too low rather than losing out to someone who did 1000 hours of community service.</p>
<p>There are a lot of students who can perform major community service and still turn in high test scores and grades. I wouldn’t mind going to college with students like that, if I were still that age. I hope my children meet some students in college who HOLISTICALLY showed readiness for college. I don’t despise young people who get high test scores–I was such a person myself, and my oldest son is now–but I don’t despise young people who do community service either. My community volunteer work for a statewide nonprofit organization (which this year will co-host the annual convention of our affiliated national organization) is one of the delights of my life, and I hope it is making a positive difference for young people in families other than my own. I’m happy to see my son developing his own forms of community involvement as he grows up.</p>
<p>Parents get so suckered in by this ‘top-school’ and school rankings garbage. It’s pretty much totally bogus (there are hundreds of articles written on the lunancy of the USNWR rankings). The whole point of college is for the young person to get a good-paying job with good career prospects doing something he or she can be happy at doing and to develop into a healthy, well-adjusted, and responsible adult. That is easily (and wisely) obtained at a state university. I know plenty of kids who were pressured by their parents to take out $100000 in loans to attend MIT, harvard, cornell, etc, only to end up with the same type of job the state-college grad had (or no job at all) plus a $1500/month loan repayment. Law schools and medical schools don’t care either. I got into one of the <em>best</em> law schools in the country coming out of a state college undergraduate. (the only place rankings actually matter are in law and business graduate programs – don’t get me started on that either). And what people really just don’t get is that an undergraduate education is virtually the same anywhere you go. The classes are all the same; they use the same textbooks; they teach the same material.</p>
<p>Really the only thing you’re buying in those ‘top schools’ is a completely socially maladjusted young adult who will invariably either end up:
A college professor (who are stereotypically the most mal-adjusted people on the planet)
A corporate/banking lemming (the ‘lucky’ 5% of grads who actually get these ‘ideal’ IB jobs) who can’t function outside of an office and has to work 100 hours/wk.
Unemployed.</p>
<p>Granted, there are some normal people coming out of these schools, but they are the minority.</p>
<p>Parents, if you want your children to be well-adjusted, functioning adults with healthy relationships and mental states, send them to a reputable state school and encourage them to study a respectable subject that they find interesting. The most successful people I have ever known in my life did just that and didn’t fret about sat scores, gpas, or resume padding. They just went out there with a positive attitude, tried their best, and made fisically wise decisions (such as minizming school debt).</p>
Brilliant mind. I watched it come out his ears many nights. Ever seen the movie where Matt Dillon is the 70’s dope fiend who along with his bunch crack open drugstores for the prize inside? That was this fool. He’d be in that class. </p>