<p>Anyone who has glanced at peer reviewed journals would have known what you meant cloverdale. ;)</p>
<p>Cloverdale:</p>
<p>I know one freelance editor who was approached by a scientist to help him with writing an article. He gave her a bundle of his experiment notes and told her to shape them into an article. She refused the assignment, feeling that it was a long way from a bunch of lab reports to a publishable article. The prof was not even trying to write for a lay audience, but for a peer reviewed journal.</p>
<p>Another friend, who did book reviews straight out of SLC, has carved herself a very nice niche as an editor for a particular branch of social sciences. The way she described her role was quite astonishing to me, as I knew only about acquisition and copy editors. Hers is a far more pro-active role, almost as a ghost-writer. She discusses with her authors how to structure their manuscripts, what will go into which chapter, lines of arguments, and so on, which I thought were the responsibility of the authors themselves.</p>
<p>^^ Quite a validation of SLC’s emphasis on writing, it would seem.</p>
<p>Technical writing is an interesting genre. Thirty years ago, I was in an engineering school where this was a required course. Structure & lines of argument, as Marite points out, were stressed. Our teacher chose an interesting assignment to help us realize that tech/scientific writing need not be dry & lifeless — We had to write a children’s book about a tecky subject. It was great preparation for always keeping one’s audience in mind, which is key in tech writing. For literature, it’s just the opposite; you write from your soul & the audience will connect with you (or not.)</p>
<p>Epiphany:</p>
<p>Absolutely agree!
Stickershock’s post validates what I have been trying to say about different kinds of writing (and reading). One is not superior to another, just as one discipline is not superior to another (I leave it to Larry Summers to claim that scientists are smarter than people in the humanities–a comment that had humanities profs, male and female, incensed as one may imagine). But different disciplines involve different kinds of writing.
When H was writing his Ph.D. dissertation, his advisor laughed at an early draft. His comments: “Your whole experiment was a quest for a solution to a puzzle, much like a crime novel is about the search to solve a crime. But please remember that you are writing a dissertation, not a thriller. Clarity, not suspense, is what’s needed.”</p>
<p>“But different disciplines involve different kinds of writing.”</p>
<p>However, there is more similarity to the task of analysis across different disciplines (including humanities) than many people realize, and I think this is the point that mythmom and I were trying to express. Humanities fields are not just about “writing,” creative or not creative. They are first of all about conceptual analysis, often as complex as that expected in the ‘quantitative’ disciplines. In a very reputable University, humanities classes dwell often in theoretical and abstract stratospheres. This is not about writing models of children’s literature. Check out Bard’s, Berkeley’s, many others’ course descriptions.</p>
<p>Of course, humanities fields are not just about writing. And I never said so.<br>
But let’s compare Anna Karenina and a study of the incidence of adultery and suicide. While the latter may start off with the same opening line as Anna Karenina, I would expect statistical data and some discussion of the reliability of the data, and a discussion of their significance. And a study of Anna Karenina would read differently from a paper on adultery and suicide, no? It might make reference to the social and cultural context in which the novel took place, but I would not expect demographic charts, tables of statistics, and similar issues.</p>
<p>One reason I have been particularly exasperated by this discussion is that I have spent much of my professional life dealing with social scientists inclined to dismiss wonderful studies on a particular topic because the studies did not fit their idea of what was worth studying (“too marginal,” “not sufficiently typical”), or had been performed according to methods (“too anecdotal”) different from those acceptable in their own more statistically-driven and modeling-based fields. It is odd and not a little annoying therefore to see myself mis-characterized as a humanities-basher.</p>
<p>While to most, Alan Sokal’s article in Social Text was about puncturing the reputation of some poseurs, it was also about the inappropriateness of one kind of analysis (and style) associated with one particular discipline, to a topic from a totally different field.</p>
<p>If I may return to the question of test scores… :)</p>
<p>DS2 is an outstanding creative writer. He is great in synthesis, not so strong in analysis. His essays on literature, history and philosophy are pleasure to read, and they do present evidence of good thinking. I am not sure how his future dissertation (if any) will look, though - one might suppose it could turn out to appear kinda like a thriller… Oh well, I guess if he never gets into a PhD program, he can always become a ghost-writer. </p>
<p>DS3 is all about analysis. His work in every class (humanities included) looks like an excerpt from a dissertation. Dry, brief, clear, succinct… up to the point. No style to speak of, no colorful metaphors or vignettes. Which, I believe, annoys his Ivy professors - but what can he do? This is his way of thinking. His father, btw, is writing like this all his life - which seems to be perfectly fine for a physicist.</p>
<p>Well, I would tell that overall, DS2 has verbal abilities greatly surpassing those of his brother, and he is much better as a writer (and anybody who knows them agrees). But… guess which one has got much, much better scores in Verbal and Writing SATs? ;)</p>
<p>Marmat:</p>
<p>You’ve described my own two Ss perfectly!</p>
<p>I don’t necessarily think you’re a “humanities basher.” But I do wonder how wide your interface has been with humanities folks on the university level (students and/or profs) with penetrating minds. If you had studied with, taught to, studied under some of these people, you would not be stating the kinds of broad contrasts you have stated. </p>
<p>And let me just add that, speaking of scores, my classmates in college who scored above me in the “analytical,” “reasoning” – whatever fancy name CB wants to give it test – were lost when it came to the analytical & reasoning demands in the humanities fields there. In the verbal areas, they could not reason & analyze, and they were certainly not ESL or ELL students. Not a statistical sample, but an example of how a score is not necessarily predictive of college-level work – depending on the curriculum & standards.</p>
<p>marite:</p>
<p>I always knew our youngest sons were twins separated at birth… 
I did not quite realise that the older ones are so similar, too.</p>
<p>P.S. If I show this posting to DS3, I’m pretty sure he will point to me that there is a logical flaw and that the aforementioned twins could not possibly have two mothers discussing them… :D</p>
<p>Marmat and Marite,
I have a matched set of those, too…</p>
<p>Updating the thread with the latest score distribution charts from the College Board. </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>
<p>Only 269 students in class of 2007 got single-sitting scores of 2400 on the SAT, so all colleges will have to admit some students with lower scores. What’s puzzling, and what this thread is about, is that some students with peak scores don’t get into their first-choice college. </p>
<p>Peak scores are much more common on one section alone. </p>
<p>critical reading </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>
<p>math </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>
<p>writing </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>
<p>There are more female than male test-takers. </p>
<p>Total: 1,491,749 Male: 688,999 Female: 796,749 </p>
<p>Evidently, there were 6001 test-takers who didn’t indicate their sex.</p>
<br>
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<p>Just like you, Tokenadult</p>
<p>Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: in the land of Lake Wobegon
Gender: Not Saying
Threads: 283
Posts: 4,542 </p>
<p>Given the discussion on CC re: SAT-Math as an indicator of math achievement vs. IMO,Intel, and other competitions on the one hand, and the dearth of competitions and awards for students who excel in writing on the other, I wonder whether it is possible to discover whether students with perfect writing scores have better luck getting admitted into their top choice colleges than students with perfect math scores, or is there any difference?</p>
<p>Harvard certainly regards writing scores (consistent with its former practice of regarding SAT II writing scores) </p>
<p><a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board; </p>
<p>and generally any college that reports an interquartile range for the writing section in its Common Data Set filings is thereby declaring that it regards writing scores (cf. Dartmouth, which does not consider those scores). </p>
<p>So, yes, I suspect that at some colleges being strong on the writing section is a help to admission.</p>
<p>Tokenadult.</p>
<p>Sorry, if I was not clear. I was wondering whether prefect writing scores are a greater factor in admission than perfect math scores or whether there is no difference in the success of high scorers in getting admitted into top colleges.</p>
<p>Of course, perfect scorers get perfect scores in both verbal and math sections. But what about those who get perfect scores in only one section?</p>
<p>For example, I would expect MIT, Caltech and other engineering schools to put more weight on math scores. At the same time, I would expect that perfect math scores would not guarantee admission into MIT, Caltech and other top math and engineering schools because of the likelihood that perfect SAT-math scores would be trumped by AIME and other similar scores. But for non-engineering schools and for students aiming to go into non-math/engineering/science fields, would perfect writing and critical reading scores be more of a tip since there are few programs and competitions similar to AMC or Intel to validate skills beyond what the SAT tests?</p>
<p>As you know, I’m not too familiar with the world of children who are “natural” writers. (My second son seems to be much more like that than my oldest, who has a fairly classic math-liker’s profile of interests.) I too would love to hear from knowledgeable people about how a college evaluates the admission application of a young person with a strong interest in writing or in language.</p>
<p>And then there are weirdos like my math oriented kid who got an 800 on the critical reading twice, but never managed to do the same in math, though his score was very high. (I think it reflected one wrong answer the second time and two the first, both silly mistakes on fourth grade level problems.) His Math2 score was perfect however it didn’t get him in at either Caltech or MIT.</p>
<p>Yeah, mathmom, I’m glad you reminded us of your son’s case. I’ve just spent the last hour talking to my oldest son about what he thinks today about his college application list. He’s likely to end up with a pretty high degree of overlap in colleges applied to with your son. There doesn’t seem to be any sure-fire admission formula at any of those colleges, just probabilistic odds-improving things one might naturally do along the way of pursuing interests during the high school years.</p>
<p>Well the good news is from what we’ve seen so far, I think Carnegie Mellon is the perfect place for him. Probably better even than MIT. So it has a happy ending. I think he’s pretty much a poster child for the idea that top kids who want to apply to top ten schools shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket. You need to have four or five good choices. My kid got 3 rejections, 4 acceptances and 1 waitlist and two of the acceptances were at schools that are not in USNWR’s top 25. I think not being well-rounded (except score-wise and gradewise) helped him as much as it hurt him.</p>