<p>I look forward to following mathson’s progress. My S scored similarly to hers, with better V than M. However, perhaps 'cuz of a different year in applying, my S accepted at the tech schools and not some all-around schools.</p>
<p>My son is one such person with strong talent in writing. He won our mid-size city’s top writing award for fiction and, while in high school, took five State U courses with creative writing or analytic writing as a major component; he was in class with college students, not college-for-high school, and got straight As. Despite this he got a mediocre score on the essay section of the ACT. Judging from his admissions record and the scholarships he was offered, no one counted that one score against him --instead, we sent a writing portfolio, including both creative and analytic writing and letters from his college professors. Those things, plus his personal appplication essays, surely demonstrated a level of writing ability and sophistication FAR beyond anything measured on the writing section of the ACT. In addition, his ACT essay was available for admissions officers to look at --and we understand from his guidance counselor that, despite the poor score, it was excellent and at college level. The essay sections of the ACT or SAT are both so formulaic that one can be a very ordinary writer, not really that good at all, and still do well. Colleges looking for writing competency might look at these scores. Colleges looking for exceptional writing talent will look elsewhere and are not bound to consider the essay score as part of the formula --the bar is too low, and too many truly gifted writers don’t always score that well.</p>
<p>An afterthought: Ayn Rand writing contest. Would contests like that help the set apart gifted writers?</p>
<p>
Cloverdale’s post illustrates the importance of holistic review–by which I mean looking beyond scores to truly evaluate talent. In this case, it meant both second-guessing the ACT scorers and having additional information about the applicant’s writing skills through the writing portfolio.</p>
<p>Re marite’s question about separate perfect scoring and the weight according to different sections by different adcoms: sometimes the weighting is counterintuitive. Schools valuing math-science achievements may be excited by a rare 800 CR (or not so rare as math-science skills seem to give a leg up on CR as well, but I hope my point is taken), just as schools emphasizing writing may respond well to an 800 on a math score.</p>
<p>Case in point: A friend has four highly gifted children. The boys all achieved perfect scores on the math sections (or near perfect), the girl scored quite well on math but higher on CR. She was accepted to Stanford, whereas only one of her brothers was. The other two went to Brown. (I should add that they were legacies at Stanford.) Schools sometimes look for an applicant who is different from their common profile.</p>
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It probably won’t hurt, but Ayn Rand Institute and their contests are less about writing skills, and more about ideology…</p>
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<p>I agree. I think 800 or close to it on math is expected from anyone applying as math-wizz to elite schools. But similar score from someone interested in art, literature or philosophy is somewhat unusual, and may set the applicant apart.</p>
<p>re tokenadult´s question about evaluating kids with an interest in writing:</p>
<p>It´s easy as pie. They write all over the application, and kids who have an interest in writing tend to have a bunch of writing they can submit supplementally. Most people feel competent to judge writing quality by scanning a few paragraphs quickly, and – much as it pains me to admit it – most people are right, at least insofar as 18-year-old writers are concerned. Writing is the one area where admissions committees really get to judge performance for themselves without relying on hearsay.</p>
<p>That said, there are plenty of competitions for writers, too (although none as universal and respected as Intel or AIME), and the constant competition to get into print. It´s not hard to tell who is doing well at that, either.</p>
<p>JHS: Have you read the poems printed by the New Yorker lately? LOL.</p>
<p>JHS:</p>
<p>The problem with writing portfolios is that adcoms have to trust that the essays were actually written by the applicants themselves, whether they are the application essays or essays submitted for a course or a contest. This is very different from AIME (even Intel awards have been questioned, on CC among other sites, as often being the result of major input by parents or mentors).</p>
<p>this seems like such a perfect thread for me</p>
<p>my SAT score is high, (780 in each, 2340 total) but my GPA (3.5ish?) and EC’s are kinda weak</p>
<p>(principle violinist, 300+ volunteer, wrestling frosh year)</p>
<p>I’m currently looking at Chicago, coz i really don’t think i have a chance at some other top schools. I’m also looking at vanderbilt, BC, tufts, and the like. </p>
<p>At least for me I can understand that I’m no match for schools like Harvard…
btw i’m still making my college list, does anyone have any advice? any input is greatly appreciated</p>
<p>unfortunately, Chicago does not emphasize test scores much (essays rule the day), but USC certainly does.</p>
<p>I found the link I referred to a while back about the number of AP national scholars (or should that be “national AP scholars”?) in the most recently reported year. The link will open up a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, which appears to be the only form in which College Board posts this information. </p>
<p><a href=“Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board”>Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board;
<p>Well, if I read the link properly, my son was one of only five 11th graders in our state to be a National AP scholar in the reported year. He attended a very diverse public high school, and he did not follow the usual program. None of his AP classes were the “softies”. They included Calc BC, bio and Physics C, several histories, Lang…</p>
<p>He was nonetheless rejected by MIT.</p>
<p>With reference to the post that precedes this one: I am not implying that National AP status at 11th grade should have been a significant factor in and of itself. My anecdote was simply to give tokenadult a small bit of information in his quest to determine if there are any objective metrics that are, or can be, used to predict elite school admissions.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. I wonder if MIT admission policy will look different in a few years under new management.</p>
<p>y7bbb6- Take a look at Rice.</p>
<p>I would expect that at schools such as MIT or Caltech, a slew of post-AP courses in math and sciences would count for more than a slew of AP courses in social studies and the humanities or languages. But at non-techie schools, I would expect that National AP scholar would impress adcoms.</p>
<p>^^^CalTech, I agree. MIT, I wouldn’t even want to guess. For the record, my son did have two post-Calc BC university courses in math. He also had 12 university credits in a foreign language that MIT does not offer; that may have been a negative!</p>
<p>I am only guessing, but I think the National AP Scholar status did help win some merit scholarships. The one he accepted was at the engineering school of a high-ranked private that made it very clear to scholarship awardees that they had been offered the scholarship because their records indicated they had additional academic interests outside of engineering (along with a strong math/science focus, of course). That is, a slew of AP courses in social studies, humanities, languages would have been a selling point to them.</p>
<p>tokenadult, I know one of the other National AP scholars (11th grade) from our state. He was rejected from P and S. And that is one of the mysteries of the ages to me–not just because of the AP courses, but because of the very many post-BC math and physics courses, because of the significant musical talent, the gpa, the very active hs activities record…</p>
<p>Good luck to anyone trying to find any unified underlying principles governing elite college admissions.</p>
<p>Well, here’s a theory, offered quite sincerely: Maybe the “elite colleges” figure that just plain really, really smart is good, and that beyond a certain point, even further pursuit of the type of academic and EC activities which are considered a plus in moderation might actually be a negative factor. I mean, this is only an issue at “elite colleges” because all the other U’s are busy trying to land the students with the highest grades, GPA’s, AP totals, math and science contest wins, etc. Those “next level down” schools want all of that they can get, because typically, they aren’t going to get the students with the very highest “stats” plus ECs. But at the elite schools, they’re going to have lots of 4+ GPA students, lots of 2300/34+ test scorers, lots of multiple AP and IB veterans. They don’t really need to pay attention to the absolute fringe level of such achievements - after a certain point it’s kind of like it’s “piling on.”</p>
<p>And there comes a point at which such a school’s adcom might just say: “When has this kid ever had time to do anything else? Has his entire life been nothing but a ceaseless campaign of collecting college-admissions-worthy trophy grades, scores, and medals? Where’s the teenager in all that”</p>
<p>Even though it might not be true for a given student, it may not be an entirely irrational viewpoint for an elite college adcom to adopt.</p>