<p>How bad does a student have to be, so that acceptance at HYPSM or any other elite college or univeristy should not happen no matter what the “hook” is?</p>
<p>A significantly lower level of academic excellence, which could be ‘average’ nationally, probably doesn’t belong in the top schools.</p>
<p>That said, this is mediocrity in a privileged, middle class background, where no excuses can be made about failing urban public schools or other exceptional situations (grave illness, disability, etc) that would affect the student’s performance.</p>
<p>At the risk of having the anti-standardized test people descend on me like a cloud of locusts, let me suggest how that might be defined. I’m guessing that the bottom edge of “qualified” for top 20 U’s and LAC’s would be test scores in the low 600’s and grades that were consistent with that for students at their HS. Or stated another way, no more than 50 points lower per test section (150 pts on 2100 scale) than the lower 25th percentile for the college in question.</p>
<p>Basically scores v or m below 600, and grades below 3.0 in a college prep curriculum. Virtually all applicants and students at such colleges far exceed such standards.</p>
<p>Some of the most selective colleges have admission office representatives who hazard to say that a competitive score for their college is a score of 650+ per section on the SAT Reasoning Test or a score of 30+ on the ACT composite. And some parents complain that that kind of figure OVERestimates the number of students who actually have a fighting chance of being admitted to such colleges. </p>
<p>When a college says, “We have no cut-off scores,” I believe it, in the sense that if a young person who was busy discovering a cure for cancer applied to the college and “only” had a score of 620 on each section of the SAT applied to the college, I can still imagine the student being admitted. But for the typical college applicant who hasn’t done anything reported in a national news story, I would advise aiming for the TOP quartile of scores at a given college to have a realistic chance. Yes, grades, strength of courses, extracurricular activities, and other issues matter too, but there are plenty of applicants who bring along high scores in their application. </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.act.org/news/data/06/pdf/National2006.pdf[/url]”>http://www.act.org/news/data/06/pdf/National2006.pdf</a> </p>
<p>(table 2.1) </p>
<p>New score tables for the SAT and ACT for high school class of 2007 should be posted on the Web pretty soon. </p>
<p>After edit: this thread prompts me to open another thread, looking at what can be missing for an applicant at the top end of the scoring range.</p>
<p>I would define unqualified as cannot keep a 2.0 average once there, or whatever is considered “satisfactory progress toward the degree” at that particular school.</p>
<p>IMO, it is tempting to try to quantify unqualified in advance. But there can always be the “certain something” that the admissions reps identify in a profile. More likely, the “unqualified” applicants the OP worries about got in “undeservedly” due to a hook (athletic, development, Hollywood, whatever). Even those kids can rise to the occasion once there.</p>
<p>I have no idea how many rise to it and how many don’t. But I don’t think we can call it in advance.</p>
<p>My definition of a 2.0 or the minimum “satisfactory progress” may seem too lenient. But the schools want those other elements the applicant brought to the table, the kid may have other priorities and be happy to keep academic progress at the basically satisfactory level. </p>
<p>It may chafe that a kid with better “stats” doesn’t get in when one of these kids does. But there are lots of talents in life, school smarts being only one of them.</p>
<p>BTW, school smarts is the only thing I bring to the table ;); ditto with my DS and DH, so I don’t have an axe to grind here.</p>
<p>Since these are academic institutions some minimal degree of “school smarts” would seem to be inorder.</p>
<p>“I would define unqualified as cannot keep a 2.0 average once there, or whatever is considered “satisfactory progress toward the degree” at that particular school.”</p>
<p>H defines unqualified applicants as those who wouldn’t be able to graduate from H if they were accepted there. Since 97% of H student end up graduating from H within 6 years, it’s obvious that H does an excellent job of selecting students. Probably the bulk of the 3% that don’t graduate from H within 6 years either transferred and graduated from another institution or will return to H and get their degrees later.</p>
<p>Someone who the year that I entered was infamously kicked out of Harvard for failing all classes due to being involved in activism, but not doing their schoolwork, didn’t return to Harvard at all when I was there. However, years later, I had a student who was dating his son. The Harvard flunk-out had ended up getting a law degree. I think that he also had gotten his undergrad from H or another Ivy.</p>
<p>Someone who was in my class who was kicked out of Harvard for trying to move dorm furniture into his off campus apartment (!) ended up returning to Harvard and getting his degree. According to Harvard’s alum magazine, he became a minister working with troubled youths.</p>
<p>I am sure that there are some people who in recent decades went to Harvard, dropped out and never got a college degree of any kind. However, I’ve never personally run into such a person, and the only person whom I’ve heard of doing that is Bill Gates, who clearly was bright enough to earn a Harvard degree, but didn’t want to bother to do so.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen any evidence that places like HPYS are selecting applicants who lack the smarts to be able to graduate from those institutions. Even the students who are offspring of big donors and celebrities graduate. Some even become president of the U.S.</p>
<p>If that was a reference to George Bush, then it’s a little weak at best. Bush went through Yale getting gentleman’s Cs. There is a professor at UMD right now who justifies his grading methods by telling a story about giving good ole George a gentleman’s C may years ago so that he could pass his class.</p>
<p>“And look what happened!” he says.</p>
<p>The point is that Bush graduated from an Ivy and got his masters from another. He also became governor of one of the most populous states, and then became president of the U.S. All of the evidence I’ve seen about his high school academic records indicates he probably entered his undergraduate college as one of the weaker students. He still graduated and also achieved professional success.</p>
<p>I attended an info session at MIT at which Marilee Jones (remember her? :)) said that MIT looked for applicants who scored 600+ on the SAT, in each part (that was before it went 2400); who had mostly As but some Bs were okay. Most people looked rather taken aback when she mentioned the 600 SAT. Then I heard her talk to a couple of African girls about the SAT verbal and she said that in their cases, a score in the upper 500s would not be out of bounds, provided, of course, that other aspects of their profiles were strong.</p>
<p>I took this to mean that MIT, like other super-selective schools, does not want to box itself into a corner by demanding very high SAT scores as some applicants may shine in other ways.</p>
<p>^All of these policies at MIT were instituted by their now disgraced former Dean. I doubt that their more holistic form of admissions will continue in the wake of that scandal.</p>
<p>ses, that’s not true – MIT’s holistic admissions policies were well established under Marilee Jones’ predecessor, Michael Behnke.</p>
<p>I agree with Mollie. And what’s more, the policies are not unique to MIT.</p>
<p>I wonder if one of the reasons HYPSM takes students with lower academic credentials is so that there will be people on campus who are happy to be at the bottom half of the class. Imagine a school with all valedictorians. You’d have a rude awakening for a lot of kids. With the holistic admissions, you have less of a problem. People who know they’re outmatched academically are happy just to be there and can find a way to contribute in other ways.</p>
<p>I think it’s important to realize that the HPY and similar schools aren’t scraping the bottom of the barrel to take anyone. It’s not as if such colleges are taking high schools 50th ranked students yet overlooking the students in the top 5 nor are the colleges taking students with 1500 total scores on the SAT while rejecting studetns who have 2400 scores.</p>
<p>If a student seemed to live, eat and breathe to get perfect scores, be the best student in every class, and be valedictorian, I think such a student would be a prime one to reject because as classicrockerdad indicated, such a student would have a rude awaking at a place like HPYS because there’s no way that student would always be at the top.</p>
<p>Consequently, places like HPYS do, I think, try to avoid accepting students who are motivated by being #1 and having perfect scores. Instead, the places like HPYS try to find students who have excellent grades and scores because of their own interest in learning, a motivation that will exist whehter or not they’re at the top or bottom of their class in college.</p>
<ol>
<li>There are more vals than can be accommodated by HYPSM.</li>
<li>Vals are not necessarily the most accomplished students within a particular high school. Again, see thread “mom, our val is not very smart” and other discussions about valedictorians.</li>
<li> Harvard’s Fitzsimmons has made a reference to the “happy bottom quarter” but in the context of students having something to contribute to the college community, either through artistic talent, athletics or community service. These are students who can do the work (and this includes the often maligned athletes) but choose to devote much of their energy to something that makes them–and their fellow students and the community around the college–happy.</li>
</ol>
<p>Holistic admissions can be confounding as an applicant on the outside looking in — what do they wantfor pete’s sake! — but it works well for those who get in and for the universities themselves.</p>
<p>The approach allows colleges to not be locked in by one set of criteria, allowing them to search for the creative as well as the academic diamond in the rough and to admit a range of talent. But it also serves as a application magnet that doesn’t cost them anything; the “go ahead and try” message encourages thousands and thousands of applicants all over the country to do just that. </p>
<p>The holistic policy, and the marketing approach that emphasizes a quirkly fun-loving atmosphere at MIT, has been extremely effective. It’s the only campus with “tech” in its name that seems to have overcome an image of a male-dominated student body filled with pencil-protector-wearing geeks who talk about math or physics all the time.</p>
<p>I wish schools like MIT would just be honest. A person who is not a URM, a Nobel Prize winner, or (perhaps) the favorite of a huge donor has two chances of being admitted there–slim and none, and slim just left town.</p>
<p>The secret to be a Nobel prize winner, it has been said, is longevity. No 18-year old will qualify by this minimal standard. I know quite a few students at MIT. None are URMs, none has received a Nobel prize (see reason above), and none has parents affluent enough to do more than cover tuition; some are actually on financial aid. What they have in common is that they are all extremely bright and creative.</p>