Is CC skewing our view on college admissions?

robinsuesanders
Fri, 28 May 2010 12:53:47 +0000

I personally think CC mainly skews our view on the so-called necessity of getting into one of the ivies, top privates, and top publics—as determined by USNews and the CC posters themselves. There are a whole lot of really good schools with really good students out there that simply get lost on this board.

And yes, student stats are “judged” by a vastly different CC standard than they are in real life since all students seem to judge themselves by the impossible standards that are somehow believed to “guarantee” admission into one or more of the top schools, even if they are planning on applying to a less lofty set of highly regarded and very respectable schools.

As commonly noted, HYPS etc. routinely deny admission to students with top SATs–say a three part total of 2250 or above—since they deny admission to over 90% of their applicants. They also admit some students with test scores of around 2100 since their 25%-75% range for admitted students is 2070-2340. What gets lost is the basic fact that there really is a score range somewhere around 720 or 730 for each part of the SAT above which differences in test scores are essentially meaningless “noise” and the scores above that level all indicate the test taker is among the best in the nation at taking SAT tests.

Likewise, what’s a good gpa depends on many, many things starting with the particular high school and the particular student’s schedule relative to the most rigorous course offerings offered by that high school. Admissions folks routinely take the raw data off the student’s transcript and the school profile report provided by the GC and recalculate the student’s GPA using whatever modifications they have decided are important indicators that allow them to more accurately compare good apples to good oranges in order to pick out the most tasty fruit as a whole. So there’s lots and lots of (super-high) GPAs posted with the assurance that the student has taken (or plans to take) the most rigorous schedule possible, overly broad information about what type of high school (that may or may not be accurate), and little or no indication of how their particular high school actually computes a weighted gpa.