Improved Scores on SAT/ACT

curmudgeon
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 10:48:58 +0000

srobin, many of us are very conservative in assessing chances. It is for most of us a fire-tempered experience that guides us. Even with stats well above the 75th anywhere my D was waitlisted at a school where we thought she was a pretty solid candidate, with what we thought was a great app and interview. It is the view of many of us that the bottom 25% of the accepted student range can be thrown out. If your kid was to be in that bunch, we would consider him to be “hooked” in some way (or at least “Lucky Johnny the Lotto-boy”). For un-hooked kids the 75th percentile is the mid-point. It is that conservative bent that leads us to the posts above. Now, does that mean you should not try for the most selective schools? Heck, no. You can’t win if you don’t play. Just don’t for a second let the student think it is anything but a longshot.