How do top scorers on tests fail to gain admission to top schools?

Parents Forum
801

<p>Again, I think one needs to distinguish between drudgery and passion.</p>

<p>There are plenty of highly conscientious students who do excellent work without necessarily being passionate about what they do. Quite often, they work to the maximum of their ability. But being a conscientious and hard worker in high school may not be enough for college-level work (a rec that describes a student as conscientious and diligent may in fact be the kiss of death). Colleges do not look only for well-rounded, life of the party students. In fact, top colleges look for lopsided ones; in other words, for students with a demonstrated passion for something, be it math or literature. That passion can be demonstrated in a variety of ways, such as taking advanced math courses. taking part in academic competitions, writing stories, attending summer programs and so on.
People who are passionate they do do not consider what they do as drudgery. It does not matter what other people think. My S has always loved math and was always ready to tackle a new problem. He’d take math books on vacations. Most of his classmates would say “Ewwww” when they saw him work on problems. But what they saw as boring was a source of joy to him. And continues to be.</p>

802

<p>midmo: You said what I wanted to say. You sound like a lucky wife.</p>

803

<p>Marite: Without a doubt there is a different between drudgery and passion, and it is beyond question that your son falls into the second category. I was trying to say that there are some who lack creativity, passion, adventurousness and have only conscientiousness going for them. I certainly understand that these individuals are not candidates for spots at the best unis and LAC’s, but I still think they can be valued members of society, especially for maximizing what they have.</p>

<p>No one in my family fits that description so I have no personal investment, just sympathy for those laboring souls who are being labelled “drudges”.</p>

804

<p>I understand the point midmo and you are trying to make. But I do not understand the defensiveness about drudges. Has any adcom ever said that drudges are worthless members of society? What has that got to do with admissions to top colleges?</p>

<p>Drudges, by the way, was not my contribution to the discussion of a student with lots of APs and no visible ECs. There are many reasons why someone piles up APs. One of my S’s friend is his state AP scholar. He told me he accumulated APs (some of them self-studied) because the local college was too far for him and he had no transport. Despite his many APs, he also had full set of ECs and is an accomplished musician. He is the total antithesis of a drudge. I am sure his several passions came through his application. Will he make as much of a contribution to society as a “drudge”? Who knows?</p>

805

<p>There may have been other kids or teachers at our high school who thought my son was a drudge. Excellent grades, more AP courses than usual, fairly light ECs in school. But he spent very little time on homework and hours and hours teaching himself about how computers work. In fact his application pretty clearly showed how much he had taught himself and that he did have a passion (one which was pretty academic to boot.) Mind you, my son considers just about everything besides physics and computer programming to be drudgery!</p>

806

<p>

marite, LOL. Nobody wants to be called a drudge. (And no elite adcom will admit a true “drudge” , either.) Pull that barge, carry that bale. Uh-uh. Everybody wants to be creative and inventive and …well, you know the drill. Especially in the Alice in Wonderland world of admissions where up is down and down is up. Where hard-workers are perceived as less valuable than diletantes and diligent souls are relegated to cotton pickin’ choices, and where hardworking diligent but also inventive and creative students are at the mercy of a GC’s/rec writer’s choice of descriptive adjectives. This elite Wonderland is a place where there are those who think brilliance requires instability, laziness, or at least a laissez faire attitude towards grades or awards. There are kids who have the positive attributes of both groups. ;))</p>

<p>Little Johnny just hates competition in all forms. Of course he just found out he’s number in the senior class at HYP. He had no idea. He had never checked his grades!!There is some plaque he gets his name on. He’s so embarrassed by all the attention. I can link you to the story in the Herald. It’s <a href=“http://www.imfullofit%5B/url%5D”>www.imfullofit</a>. </p>

<p>Nope, drudge just won’t do. ;)</p>

807

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Mythmom, this is probably the most elitist comment I’ve heard in a while! Do you REALLY think these poor, concientious souls have value in society? How charitable of you…LOL!</p>

808

<p>Curm:</p>

<p>The butterflies who flit from majors to majors like so many flowers are a well-known phenomenon in colleges, too. I agree that a good balance has to be achieved between creativity and imagination and the willingness to do tedious, painstaking, meticulous work. Think about all those dots of paint that went into making Impressionist masterpieces.</p>

809

<p>Yes, marite. the pointilists continue to amaze me, too. (I have no idea how they do that. None at all.) But I’ve been told I can’t draw the “hangman” game well enough to play, so …that whole “good with visual arts” thing is one talent I didn’t have to worry much about. ;)</p>

810

<p>marite, if I exhibited any defensiveness about The Drudges, it was certainly not directed at you. I think you have done a fine job of explaining that students with exceptional talents at academic subjects are a type that should be valued by any university–even if they can’t dance, sing or twirl a baton. </p>

<p>But I don’t think all posters here agree with you that this is the way it is, or the way it should be.</p>

811

<p>midmo, I may understand you. Then again, I may not. :wink: My guess is that although I am ripping into the charectorization of grade or AP award oriented kids ( or “Drudges” ) as “lessor” on some elite admissions totem , I probably am one of those folks you refer to in your post here .

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<p>I still don’t cotton to the idea that “Brain in a jar” kids are by virtue of academic merit alone at the top of the totem. I think all groups need to bring more to the party in the way of personality and character. Now if they have shown personality and character throughout High School , and have the grades and awards to go along with their academic star firepower - they’ll pretty much have a fair shot anywhere including HYP. A star oboeist shot (when they need an oboeist) ? Nope. A star quarterback’s shot? Not a chance. A disadvantaged URM’s shot? Not really. But as good a shot as any other un-hooked kid? Yeah. I think they deserve it and I think that at most schools they get it (and at some they may get more than that). </p>

<p>But an academic star with a poor personality (whatever the adcom thinks that is) or dubious or selfish character that will not contribute to the campus in any other meaningful way, that kid has an uphill fight at the super selectives and I still think rightly so.</p>

<p>(BTW-I also think that every once in a while a kid is so outstanding at some academic discipline that HYP will take them even if they did nothing out of class but sit silently alone in their room. But that would be rare. As always, JMO. I’m not on a elite admissions committee and I have no dog in this fight. )</p>

812

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<p>And I think they ARE! I remember reading comments by an admissions dean (was it Fitzsimmons?) who said that in a pool of 2000 admits there are about 300 academic superstars. By that, I don’t think he means AP State scholars, but gold medalists at international competitions or Intel finalists and the like. But that still leaves 1700 slots for not only facbrats, donors’ kids and legacies, athletes, internationals, URMs, artists, etc… And among those 1700 slots there will be many whose chief achievements are academic. But the academic achievers who have something else to contribute, like music, or an interest in community service, or a sport, will have a greater chance of getting admitted.</p>

813

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And IMO the reverse is also true. The academic achievers who have nothing else to contribute will have a lesser chance of being admitted.</p>

814

<p>StickerShock: I am sorry my wording offended you; that was not my intent, which I am sure you know if you read my posts on the subject. I was attempting to counter the elitist attitudes I perceived in others.</p>

815

<p>curmudgeon, no, I didn’t have you in mind. I have forgiven you for the “brain in a jar” comment. (You will have to imagine a smiley face here.) To the extent that I wasn’t just rambling, I was thinking of a poster a few pages ago who seemed to think that any kid who took a lot of AP classes and participated heavily in math and science teams was AUTOMATICALLY a total, one dimensional dud, and that explained the rejections from super-selects. I’m just hoping that his sentiments are not shared by admissions committees.</p>

<p>It has no bearing on me or my kids. My son is already set for undergrad (I hope) and my daughter has neither the inclination, nor likely, the record to aim for the top.</p>

816

<p>Well, I may be veering off course here, but… I will assume that many candidates for elite colleges will have some combination of high grades, high test scores, and have taken a number of AP, IB, or dual enrollment courses (as the opportunity may have presented itself to them) - or all of the above. It’s certainly possible to do those things without being a “drudge” - my own slacker kids have done so, and they pretty much qualify as the antithesis of drudges. </p>

<p>But when two otherwise well qualified students apply, and one submits a resume of traditionally “college adcom-approved” EC’s - piano recitals, debate team, class officer, lettered in some minor HS varsity sport, MD shadowing, etc, and the other one says something along the lines of “I went to a lot of parties, participated in the Booster club car washes, and hung out with my friends in my spare time” the standard answer is “pick the pianist.” But if that’s the choice you make 100% of the time, after a while you end up with a school full of piano playing debaters and no cheerleaders, or reunion organizers, or rabble-rousers or whatever, and you really don’t have a balanced social/academic environment at your university, if that’s what you’re after. </p>

<p>There’s more.</p>

<p>The broker’s disclaimer: “Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results” seems pretty apt to me when considering 17 year olds. Certainly a high high school GPA is a reasonably good predictor of ability to graduate from college (as studies have found) but is it as good a predictor of actual excellence later in life? And we’ve all run across high IQ types who no doubt aced the SAT’s but who are duds in adult life because they never seem to get any traction on anything. So between the various criteria and “stats” and differing philosophies about how to “put together a class” of students, the random element looks pretty large from here. Bottom line? Beyond the concept of selecting applicants for likelihood of graduation it seems to me that college admissions is a gamble and an art form - and we know how few Picassos there are out there. ;)</p>

817

<p>A few of my own crack-pot theories, in response to the OP’s question of “How?”</p>

<p>Theory #1: Rising time-costs of EC mediocrity</p>

<p>It seems to me that it’s harder to be a stand-out in extra-curricular activities than it was 35 years ago (within my own experience range—it could be different elsewhere). I’m basing this on a comparison of my high school experience with my child’s. Socio-economic circumstances and local communities are reasonably similar, and the section of the country is the same. The EC time-cost makes it harder for the “top scorer” to add really attention-grabbing extra-curriculars to other qualifications. </p>

<p>Three off-hand comparisons follow.</p>

<p>Debate<br>
35 years ago: One hour team meeting per week, plus some time in the library, competing Saturdays from about 7 am to 3 pm, and qualifying for the state tournament was a realistic possibility. In our league, the only teams with file cabinets full of evidence came from Toledo. One of our senior debaters had a single “evidence” card, which said “Smile.” He and his partner still won the majority of their debates, on logic.
Now: Twenty plus hours a week, multiple out-of-state weekend tournaments that require school absences on Fridays, summer debate camps, and qualifying for the state tournament is a realistic possibility.</p>

<p>Orchestra
35 years ago (actual case): The cello “section” of the orchestra consisted of one person, who did not take private lessons and transposed most notes in real time to the two lowest strings.
Now: The school has three separate orchestras. It’s more or less the case that the top twelve first violinists and the top twelve cellists all started before age 5, in the Suzuki program, and this is also true of the top six or so second violinists. The violists are the sole exception; they often didn’t start till age 10. Most “good” players attend summer music programs, beginning in sixth grade, at the latest; the best practice 4 to 5 hours per day during the school year, 10+ hours a day in the summers.</p>

<p>Soccer
35 years ago: Our school didn’t have a team.
Now: It helps if the player started on a U8 travel team at age 6.</p>

<p>When I was at MIT (as a post doc), you could play in one of several leagues: baseball, fast-pitch softball, slow-pitch, and “Kentucky Fried.” Granted that there is much to be learned by pursuing an activity to the highest levels of excellence, still I’d like for our local high school students to have more opportunities to try out their interests at the “Kentucky Fried” level, to start.</p>

818

<p>Theory #2: Low cost (to admissions personnel) of rejections that later seem erroneous</p>

<p>Richard Shaw, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Stanford, wrote a column that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on March 30 this year, in which he remarked that Prof. Andrew Fire had been denied admission to Stanford in 1975. In 2003, Fire joined the School of Medicine at Stanford. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2006. The cachet Stanford gains by having him on the faculty is unaffected by their undergraduate admissions decision; and almost no one would turn down an offer from Stanford because of a 28-year-old grudge. So, given a “top scorer,” who seems likely to become a researcher, there is often little real cost to admissions personnel if the university simply waits for real distinction to be attained–and then makes the job offer, reaping the benefits of certainty.</p>

819

<p>Well, here goes and I know I’ll get set straight on this. If you add up the top 25% at HYPSMC - that’s about 2,000 kids, maybe 2500. If you look at UNSWR rankings, those schools show their top 25% of admits scoring 790 or higher in CR and M. Even if you factor in superscoring, I think the tip-top power scorers are in by their sheer scarcity. The college board report for class of 2007 shows barely 2,000 kids putting down those kind of scores. Provided the grades are good, curriculum is aggressive, essays are pleasant, and recs don’t raise concerns - they are definitely in to at least one of these top schools. Now of course this does assume these most elite schools are going to deem it important to sustain their upper 25% SAT parameters. So far they have; it’s the bottom 25% that is moving downward. But if that continues to be a priority I would have to say that a 2400 or 2390 is a really good hook.</p>

820

<p>I can confirm some of the differences between my generation and my son’s in the extracurricular activities mentioned in the post by QuantMech.</p>