<p>calmom : My “low” is not meant to be in the context of nationwide test-takers. I am well aware that the national median is in the very low 500s. I meant it in the context of the Barnard or Columbia pool–which is what you are doing in post 220, “with well below the 25th percentile for either Columbia or Barnard.” That is exactly the same context in which I use the term 'low." </p>
<p>I don’t understand your comments about “purely numbers-based admission.” Such a method does not have to mean that a score that is largely irrelevant (math in your D’s case) should carry much weight even if it is a numeric index. I happen to think that other components are important, and so do adcoms, as far as I know. </p>
<p>The interesting thing about your D’s scores is that Barnard seems to have put a great deal more weight on the Writing score than on the CR score. Some colleges are still leery of using the Writing score because of the still untested character of the essay.</p>
<p>EDIT: I realize that your D was admitted into Barnard last year and that much has changed over the last few years. USNWR rankings for 2003, based on 2001 scores, list the 25-75% for Barnard as 1250-1410. In other words, scores in the 600s, even low 600s would not be unusual.</p>
<p>Some fields of study would naturally have less correllation to the SAT. Take musical performance as an exampe. OTOH, I don’t imagine someone with a math score in the 500s would do well in engineering (or want to!), although 500s in writing wouldn’t be as much of an obstacle, since the type of writing required is technical in nature and in no way resembles what is expected on the writing essay for the SAT.</p>
<p>I remember how totally bemused my kids were when their cousin danced a gig and shouted that she’d gotten a 16 in biology on the bac 1. to them, 16/20 was like 90/100, good but not worth dancing for! She and I had to explain how rare such grades were.</p>
<p>In regards to Harvard, there is a difference between graduating with honors and being in an honors track which I’d assume many students are in and requires a thesis.</p>
<p>I believe there is a category of honors that is based solely on grades, but most honors categories do require a senior thesis.<br>
Social Studies requires a senior thesis of all its students. The Physics major does not require a senior thesis for honors. I don’t know how high an honors a student can receive without writing a senior thesis, however.
I believe that there was some discussion about making the writing of a senior thesis mandatory for all seniors, but the argument against imposing that requirement was that it might dilute the level of challenge of senior theses.<br>
The point about galloping honors inflation was that the GPA required to qualify was set too low (B-?) raising it a bit halved the number of honors conferred but did nothing to address the issue of grade inflation.</p>
<p>Marite, it might have been unintentional on your part, but while I referred to my daughter’s SAT being low, you used the phrase “low math ability”. Even among Ivy admissions, a 75th percentile range score would not be considered to correlate to low “ability”. It’s not high “ability” either – but the point is that the difference in “ability” between a kid who scores 600 and one who scores 700 is not all that great. The tests simply aren’t that sensitive. </p>
<p>I picked up on it because it seems to reflect an very generalized assumption about how the tests relate to innate ability – which goes to the broader issue of qualifications (the point of this thread). I don’t think a kid with a 580 math SAT is likely to end up majoring in math – but I also think that with that score the kid is probably capable of learning whatever math might be required for most majors, even though perhaps that kid is going to need to seek out extra support along the way. 580 isn’t stupid. Sometimes the kids who have to work a little harder at things end up doing better in the long run simply because they have better study habits and are more willing to work their way through the rough spots. </p>
<p>Also, Barnard did not “put more weight” on the writing than CR score. They never saw either one as she did not submit the SAT to the school. I was raising the issue here to address the “qualifications” question. My d. very clearly won admission to her reach colleges in spite of her scores, not because of them.</p>
<p>Again, I was thinking in the context of selective colleges such as Barnard. By your own account, your D’s score reflects her math ability. It is higher than the national standard (10th grade math) but not comparable to that of students who aim to go into a math-heavy discipline. I don’t see any problem.</p>
<p>I do not see your D getting into Barnard either because of or despite her scores. If Barnard did not see them, it could not possibly discount them. But they do seem to be a fair reflection, visible or not, of her abilities. So Barnard looked at other components of her application, as it should. And was satisfied with these other components, as I’m sure it should. But that does not undermine the validity of SAT scores. Again, I am arguing for the sake of arguing as I have a low opinion of standards pegged at a 10th grade level.</p>
<p><a href=“marite:”>quote</a>
about “purely numbers-based admission.” Such a method does not have to mean that a score that is largely irrelevant (math in your D’s case) should carry much weight even if it is a numeric index.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Exactly so, and admissions apparently works that way, too. For an example see the appendix of Chuck Hughes book on admissions at Harvard. He has some case studies of admitted applicants. In one of them a woman has high verbal SAT score that helps her and a mediocre math score that makes no difference, because her application makes it clear that she will not major in subjects that use mathematics.</p>
The ACT’s she submitted were about the same; the reason she opted to submit ACTs rather than SATs was to avoid submission of some very weak SAT II’s. The ACT composite was also below the 25th percentile for the year she was admitted. (The SAT II situation was complicated by high school scheduling issues which put her in the position of taking SAT II’s in subjects before she had taken the course they covered, and the fact that there is no SAT II given for the foreign language she had studied so intensively.).</p>
<p>As Siserune and I suggested, the composite score is not particularly relevant to adcoms, although it seems to drive public discussion. If her verbal ACT score was high, it did not matter whether she had a weak math or science score. She was not going to major in math or science.</p>
<p>The French bac has a way of coping with students’ different tracks (which correspond to different strengths). Students in the math/science track will have a different coefficient for the math and science tests than the students in the social sciences and the humanities/languages tracks. Conversely they will have different co-efficients for humanities subjects (philosophy, history, literature) depending on their track. Adcoms at colleges such as Barnard or Yale do the same thing in a more informal way: they assign greater importance to the scores asociated with the area in which an applicant is likely to major. MIT made that calculus with regard to Mollie’s fiance and admitted him in spite of a 580 verbal score. If that score had been in math, can we even entertain the notion that MIT would have admitted him? Perhaps, if he had won the IMO. But that seems unlikely.</p>
<p>Marite, you are correct that the test scores are viewed in context, but the reason I say my d. was admitted “in spite” of scores is because even though her verbal skills where higher, they weren’t high enough to impress. She presented with low-end math & science, ballpark English language scores. Her unique strengths happened to be in areas that are not easy to quantify-- as noted, no SAT II or AP test available for Russian. She did include a dance resume that included a photo of her in first arabesque, which to a trained eye is more than enough to get the point across. </p>
<p>If a student has a distinguishing quality they want – whether its art or athletics or a published novel – they are going to focus on the qualities, not the test score. The problem is that most students present with more “typical” high school records and choices of ECs – so the SAT scores become more important as a way to distinguish among them. </p>
<p>If we are talking about qualiTy rather than merely qualiFy - then I would agree with you, the higher the score the better. But “qualify” is a lower bar to overcome. </p>
<p>That doesn’t mean the college is going to turn around and take all comers. As I posted before, the elites are looking for excellence. They want the best students and in no way are they going to settle for mediocrity. It’s just that “best” is defined in many different ways to fill many different niches. I have no doubt at all that my d. presented as one of the very “best” of the prospective Russian-studiers. She earned 2 A+ grades at college last year, without much effort: Russian and ballet. It turned out that she was, indeed, very, very good at the things she said she was good at. They just happen to be things that wouldn’t show up well in tests.</p>
Haha, it was worse than that – 450 (on the writing SAT II)! But he had a 690 on the verbal section of the SAT, so I think it was probably clear that the 450 was an outlying score. (He’s a good writer, too, although admittedly not much of a grammarian. He avoided taking writing-heavy courses in college, although he couldn’t avoid them entirely, and I am somewhat miffed to admit that he outscored me on several papers in an anthropology course we took together, despite the fact that I had done the readings and had scored a 790 on the writing SAT II.) ;)</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation. It looks that the issue indeed is what we mean by “qualify.” Some of us think that “qualify” is what it takes to be acceptable and for other parts of the application to be considered; for others it means what it takes to outscore other applicants. </p>
<p>If we take the first definition, and agree that some scores are relevant and others not, then your daughter was highly qualified with her 700 score since an acceptable score could be as low as something in the 500s. It need not be the very highest score–800. But 700+ would certainly prompt adcom readers to move on to other parts of her application where it would become clear that she shines in some specific areas. I don’t think that the bar was set too low. If your D had had scores in the 500s all around, then I doubt she would have earned a look at the rest of her application. But qualified numerically does not have to mean most qualified numerically.</p>
<p>Given the fact that the SAT tests 2 areas and the ACT 3, it makes sense that selective colleges use the SAT or ACT in combination with other factors, either SAT IIs, or recs or some other evidence of achievement. To go to a purely numerical method and still capture relevant information, one would have to test in every subject as is done in the Bac, even PE. The UC requirement of SATIIs is an attempt to supplement the limited information provided by the SAT and ACT and some of the most selective colleges do require them.</p>
<p>That’s true, but the difference is that most people are not so attractive that they have thousands of people banging down the door to marry them.</p>
<p>If I were a single Bill Gates and thousands of women wanted me, you better believe I would have a lot of minimum standards in terms of their height, appearance, intelligence, ethnicity, etc. </p>
<p>In the same way, you can’t tell me that Harvard doesn’t have an informal cutoff. Actually, a few cutoffs depending on whether you are an affirmative action case; an desired athlete; or an ordinary applicant. If you are below the cutoff, they may take a cursory look at your application to see if you are a nobel prize winner or something. But basically, I agree with the “slim and none” theory.</p>
<p>In fact, I went to high school in the Boston metro area and one of my classmates was the son of a senior staff member at Harvard. The kid was bright, but not brilliant. Anyway, the kid applied to Harvard early, and the admissions officer sat down with the father and told the guy that his son had to get his SAT up to a certain threshold to get in. If he hit that number, he was in, otherwise he would be rejected. So he took a Princeton Review class, re-took the SAT, and hit the required number. So he got in.</p>
<p>He had what is called “facbrat” status which is more of a hook than legacy.<br>
Do you happen to remember what the SAT threshhold was? And when would that have been?</p>
<p>^^^A friend of my son’s was told that 1200 was the magic number. He ended up, several thousand $ later (private tutors, prep course) in the high 1100’s which was good enough because now he’s at an Ivy (football).</p>
<p>I recall reading about the captain of the Harvard women’s soccer team , a 13th generation legacy (yes, there are some of those!) who had SATs in the 1200s, as well, and had thought of her scores as quite respectable until she compared them with those of her college friends.
If we remember Marilee Jones’ claims that MIT looks for scores 600 and above, a score of 1200 would be a qualifying score. Whether it is too low a qualifying score is open to debate. But obviously, what is necessary is not sufficient. In the young woman’s case, she had two strong hooks going in.</p>
<p>Wow, talk about a legacy boost! Humans usually produce three or four generations per century. Thirteen generations would stretch back to Harvard’s very earliest days in the 1600s.</p>
<p>I remember reading about some modern Winthrop who graduated from Harvard about ten years ago and was a direct descendant from John Winthrop himself, but I think this girl would have even him beat.</p>
<p>I’m sure there are lots of direct descendants of John Winthrop running around. The trick is finding a line where everyone has gone to Harvard.</p>
<p>My high school / college best friend was a direct descendant of Jonathan Edwards and Timothy Dwight – something that’s not hard to document at all. But no one in his family line had been at Yale in 200 years before he went.</p>