<p>^^I don’t recall whether it was a pure unbroken line or not, but nearly all, if not all, of young Mr. Winthrop’s male paternal ancestors had gone to Harvard.</p>
<p>I posted inaccurate info about the women’s soccer captain. Here is an excerpt from Daniel Golden’s The Chosen (NB:this is not a good example of an unqualified legacy: straight As and scores in the high 1300s?)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ve come late to this thread, but having read through, I have a few comments. First, I understand the OP’s desire for a simple answer. It’s a very common assumption, in every aspect of society, that if we can just figure out the right label or pigeonhole for a complex social situation, we will then “understand” it and the correct answer will be evident. It makes life easier. If we could reduce the college application process to a mathematical formula, rank each applicant in order, then just go down the list until we get to applicant #1,235 - “you’re in, 1,236 is out” - life would be simpler and more manageable. This sentiment is echoed in innumerable posts on this site. </p>
<p>Above all, the OP’s comment that “Any proposition that is incapable of being proven either true or false is meaningless” is telling. But in matters involving individual human behavior, most meaningful things cannot be proven “true” or “false”. The complexity of humans overwhelms the desire to reduce it to a mathematical formula; certainly to a simple “yes” or “no”, yet we still have to make decisions based on our best, yet still imperfect, understandings and estimates. Consider Calmom’s daughter at Barnard and my rising senior daughter. Calmom’s D had modest test scores, 96th+ percentile HS grades, is a skilled dancer and accomplished in Russian. My daughter has 99th+ percentile test scores, modest grades, plays soccer and is fluent in American Sign Language. I’ve just picked a handful of personal attributes, but already the question of “who is more qualified” overwhelms me. And yet - probably neither would be admitted to Harvard, yet both could probably successfully perform the work there and graduate. (Calmom’s daughter most certainly has proven so.) Even the simplest questions, such as “is an applicant with an 800 Math and 600 Verbal more qualified than one with 700s on each test?” defy a ready answer.</p>
<p>To answer the OP’s question, yes: “qualified” means “capable of performing the work well enough to graduate.” And yes, that bar is very low - so low in fact that 90% of the people who exceed that standard have to be rejected, and the selection process based on additional factors, which can be discussed and described, and are weighed and balanced, but which defy quantification or simple calculation. That’s not so hard to understand, is it?</p>
<p>
I hate to belabor the point of the example of my daughter, but I thought I already made it quite clear that none of the private colleges my daughter applied to ever saw her SATs, so no one ever saw her 700. She had a 28 composite on the ACT. You can speculate all you want, but you can’t claim that the colleges based decisions on scores they never saw. Keep in mind that even if they had seen that score, all of the colleges were saying they didn’t know how they would handle the writing score that year, as it was new – the fact that my d. had no assurance that the colleges would even look at that <em>third</em> score (after the 1200 combined math/CR) was one factor weighing into the decision to withhold the SATs.</p>
<p>I fall into this trap since you keep posting her SAT scores. Was her ACT composite score broken down? Was it lopsided? Did it show that she was better at writing than at math and science? If the answer to these questions is yes, then my analysis holds. There is no “despite.”</p>
<p>Marite, the reason I posted scores was on the issue of “qualified to do the work”. Whether the college knows the scores or not, my d’s first year grades show that she is qualified to do the work at the Ivy League school she was not accepted to, but where she happens to take half her course work due to an affiliation agreement with the LAC that did accept her. She’s an example of a 1200 SAT kid physically sitting in a classroom 5 days a week at an Ivy League campus and doing well without too much agony over the effort. Hence she is “qualified” to study at an Ivy League – that was the point --which I thought was the issue raised by this thread.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to trap anyone – Barnard’s admission process has nothing whatsoever to do with Columbia’s in any case, but Barnard’s students are free to enroll in any courses they want at Columbia, including graduate level courses. My daughter has also observed that the most capable students she has encountered in her classes are older students enrolled via Columbia’s General Studies college – which is geared toward nontraditional students and does not require SATs nor report test data on the students it does admit; GS has about a 50% admit rate. So Columbia happens to be an Ivy League campus where a lot of non-Columbia College students have an opportunity to attend classes, and you get a broader range of students than those who meet Columbia’s high admissions bar – which provides some opportunity to see what “qualified” to do the work might mean. </p>
<p>But yes, many kids are accepted to Ivy League schools “despite” weak test scores. Post #236 provides another example (football player). These kids are accepted for their strengths and because their test scores are not bad enough to disqualify them – but their test scores don’t help them at all in the process. Obviously this is not a statistically high enough number of students to skew the overall score range — but the point is, 25% of all the admitted students are in the bottom 25% as far as test scores. A full 10% are in the bottom 10%. It is possible that a handful of these students have extremely skewed scores, but it is more likely that most of them are accepted primarily for factors that are seen by the ad com as outweighing the significance of their test scores.</p>
<p>calmom:</p>
<p>For the OP, “qualified to do the work” is too low a benchmark for admission and not good enough for colleges to use as a way of explaining their admission decisions (or perhaps more precisely their rejection decisions). I have always considered that 1200 on the SAT (which is somewhere like a 27 on the ACT) makes a student qualified to do the work so long as other components are there (good grades on challenging courses, or enrichment in particular fields).<br>
I also believe you that older students can get better grades, especially in the social sciences and humanities where their work ethic and their life experience can be very valuable. They can be particularly good in discussions.</p>
<p>I have no clue what the OP’s agenda is, but the question asked was, “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?” My interpretation of that is what is the bottom line, not how the admissions decisions can be explained, especially if the reference to “hook” is interpreted broadly.</p>
<p>Do the rest of you agree with Kluge’s definition:</p>
<p>“To answer the OP’s question, yes: “qualified” means “capable of performing the work well enough to graduate.” And yes, that bar is very low - so low in fact that 90% of the people who exceed that standard have to be rejected” ?</p>
<p>Yes, I agree with that – keeping in mind that “qualified” by itself does not get a student in.</p>
<p>What gets the student this formula:</p>
<p>Q+X =A</p>
<p>Q= Qualifications
A= Admission
X= a factor that makes the candidate more attractive to the college</p>
<p>The X factor could be a lot of things: it could be legacy status; it could be athletic prowess; it could be a special talent or characteristic that the college desires. The greater the X factor, the lower the Q factor needs to be in order to get to the requisite A. </p>
<p>So a minimal Q and a very big X gets the student admitted – but it is more typical that the student gets admitted with a higher qualifications.</p>
<p>“so low in fact that 90% of the people who exceed that standard have to be rejected” …</p>
<p>Sorry, but I didn’t see any cited data for that. Was that posted earlier in this thread?</p>
<p>And are you claiming that H, Y, and P accept only the lowest 10% of the qualified set?</p>
<p>No, I would assume that they primarily choose those most qualified, not least, although there is room for people all along the spectrum from minimally qualified to maximally qualified. My point is simple: if a person can do the work successfully and graduate, by what criteria can you say that are “not qualified” to be admitted? Therefore, a person who can do the work is qualified for admission, in my view. But many more people can successfully complete the work than can be accommodated, so greater selectivity must be exercised. 90% is probably low; while some may apply who are genuinely not qualified, most applicants probably are, and there are many more qualified students who don’t apply. The number of graduating students who actually could successfully complete four years at an Ivy League college and graduate is probably very large. But they can’t take them all. I think lot’s of people confuse the concept of “qualified” with that of “should be selected.” They are completely different standards.</p>
<p>I, pretty much, agree with Kluge. The definition that “qualified” is by definition anyone they choose to admit, which some have asserted, is circular and therefore meaningless. “Capable of doing the work” has content but is, as Kluge says, a very low bar. I would say that in about 60% of the cases they choose the most qualified. The rest are the most qualified subject to the constraints of legacy/development admissions and athletic and underrepresented minority recruitment. Some of you will assert that these things constitute “qualifications”. The problem with that approach is that everything that an admissions officer chooses to value can then be thought of as a “qualification” including, for example, that the student is the son of my neighbor or any other random thing. This approach quickly becomes one of defining “qualified” as any one they choose to admit.</p>
<p>To me, post 250 & 252 are not quite adequate. I’ll try to explain.</p>
<p>I.m.o. its a little more complex than that, only because the X factor is so fluid, on many dimensions. For example, even the supposedly hooked categories that have come to be staples in the admissions process even those are relative. Everything is comparative, & in a current, contemporary, real-time context. Starting from a baseline in a particular admissions year, the college may know only that Student A gets in practically no matter what, because parent donated major campus fine arts center, and Junior is a h.s. senior this year. Other than that, they want to admit enough of the capable-of-doing-the-work group who fit certain campus needs such as athletics. Beyond that, all bets are off. And the more capable all the applicants are, across a variety of measures, the less the U will need to lower standards. It depends on the applicant pool. </p>
<p>Example: A sometime poster on cc (an admissions officer) has said that recruited college athletes are academically much more competitive for admission than was once true. (And further, that such athletes are maintaining that level of excellence, overall, during their college years.) If all the available, recruitable athletes (it obviously should really be broken down by sport, and even maybe by position) have GPAs no lower than 3.7 and scores no lower than 2100, then that becomes the definition of qualified this admissions year at University Y, for that category.</p>
<p>The term qualified is modified (+ or -) by the existing pool, and within a context of category of need.</p>
<p>Different example: Say, lots of middle easterners from Michigan apply to Elite College Y with stand-out academics. They all have high test scores, in a very narrow range of scores (2300-2400, including several of the latter), grades to match, and are all applying for similar academic majors. Four things will tend to happen: (1) It is quite unlikely that all of that group will be admitted, if that group is quite large; (2) It is likely that at least a few of them will be admitted, as an acknowledgement of a regional representation of a highly qualified subset probably even more than what would be usual for that region, because thats the way the Elites operate; (3) middle-easterners from Michigan without such high scores (& with the same academic interests) have very little chance of admission that academic year to THAT college Y, (4) other non-URM students from Michigan, from different natl/ethnic backgrounds, & without such scores, will have a tough time being recognized/admitted unless they are entering a very different major and are otherwise very unlike that accomplished set (stand-out artist, obscure language major, etc.) Dont laugh (anyone) at this last element. Those of us educated in very large Us with very large departments do forget (self included) how tiny some of these depts at elite (& non-elite) private Us can be: were talking <10 students majoring in certain languages, often. </p>
<p>So obviously, that academic year, if you are a middle-easterner residing in Michigan, applying to Elite College Y, intending to major (or likely to major) in the same subject as your similar local peers, you are only qualified if you have a minimum 2300 score. [I’m not meaning to lump all middle-easterners together; I understand the ethnic/nat’l differences; and indeed it is more likely that these would all be a subset of a particular middle-eastern country/culture – i.e., Afghans, Persians, etc.]</p>
<p>Back to my paragraph one, and the last sentence of it. Depends on the applicant pool is the key phrase, not just in the way Ive explained it. The important aspect of that is that the applicant pools to elites are just so bleepin qualified these days; they have been for many years: ACADEMICALLY qualified in several measures, including & exceeding those of scores. If anything, the admissions committees are <em>decreasingly</em> contorting standards, because they barely need to, at all. They are not stretching for reasons to admit students but for reasons to deny students. (sometimes known as, the waitlist)</p>
<p>The other obvious conclusion is, Know Thy Similar Competition (if you can). Smile and say youre applying to College Y, while additionally applying to College Q, where your chances of admission will magnify. You cant change who you are. If youre a science major, youre a science major, & the kind of foolish name-changing & other charades are in the end self-defeating, in my view, & compromise your soul. </p>
<p>Bottom line that the OP has asked for:
In my definition, qualified would mean as the Elite Us admissions practices reveal that term, meaning a combination of three things: (1) able to do the work WELL (not just do it barely), + (2) able to graduate without continual struggle & huge commitment of support from the U, + (3) positively competitive with/superior to those applying in that admission year, given their evaluated strengths & their categorical similarities to you. The third factor is the strongest factor in admissions, because #1 and #2 have been a given (mostly) for quite some time that there will be excessive numbers of these. Factor Three is also something you cannot control, & its useless to pretend that you can. (But it is the reason that there can be no absolute standard of qualification.) </p>
<p>Just a footnote about Factor (2). Elites have been known to admit students on rare occasion who do need more academic support than the typical elite admit. In recent years, there have been a few such cases with the highly gifted (often lopsidedly gifted in one area) who may also be LD. Since I sometimes work with independent LD professionals, I know of some of these cases. Were talking about a genius level in one particular area, accompanied by an LD challenge which is often a byproduct, actually, of such a brain. Clearly the U in that case has made a calculated business decision that the addition of that student is cost-effective relative to his or her contribution.</p>
<p>Also, in terms of trends, I’m willing to make a prediction about these 2 factors:</p>
<p>(1) mandatory reporting/evaluating of SAT scores
(2) comparative holistic admissions</p>
<p>^^ Both will be operative for the near future, but #1 will be extinct before #2 will be. </p>
<p>Anyone who wants a rigid determination of “qualification” (one that does not change in relation to the applicant pool, or subsets of that pool) will find that at some U.S. publics and many U’s outside of this country. Given that there has been no ceiling put on the number of applicants to private U’s, comparative holistic admissions is here to stay unless the population applying to these Elite U’s diminishes to one-third or one-quarter of what it has been for many years.</p>
<p>I probably agree with much of the substance of what you wrote about collegiate admissions policy, Epiphany, but it is, in my opinion, non-responsive to the OP’s question, and defines its terms in decidedly non-standard ways. The OP’s question was: “Let’s define ‘unqualified’. 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?” The OP’s question is about minimum qualifiaction, which is the standard meaning of “qualified.” You’ve addressed a different question: who should be considered to be unlikely to be admitted. If a group of generally similar applicants apply, and some are admitted and other aren’t, that doesn’t mean those who aren’t aren’t “qualified” - just that they weren’t “selected.” And your factor 3 is positively Woebegonish: to be qualified an applicant has to be as good or better than every other applicant!?!?</p>
<p>As I’ve tried to explain, kluge, the OP’s question is unanswerable as he has limited (and you have now) the substance of the answer. Qualified means competitive; that’s what it means. More competitive than your neighboring applicant. Unqualified would be a significant term if that were very much part of the mix to begin with, but it isn’t. Unqualified means not very competitive, given what the college has in front of it in a finite time frame, with specific college goals, which include much more than score ranges (but do include those). There is no static or meaningful answer to “unqualified.” Over the past about 8 years, that competition bar has heightened, notch by notch, or even yard by yard in some cases. Combining greater opportunities with greater knowledge about admissions with higher college-age populations (echo baby boom) has perforce decreased the number of relatively unqualified students. Unqualified means (in my context) the opposite of any of those three critical areas I named two posts ago.</p>
<p>As to the remark about Lake Wobegon, it’s actually the colleges to whom you should look for such implied comparisons: they are the ones who declare their incoming applicant pools to be superby & quite similarly qualified, not I.</p>
<p>
I understand that that’s is what you have defined it as; it’s just that that’s neither the standard English definition of “qualified” nor the definition the OP used. The OP’s question is both answerable and relevant to a subject it has been discussed in connection with: the rejection letters which refer to having too many “qualified applicants” to be able to admit them all. Those statements are, in fact, true.</p>
<p>By your definition someone like Calmom’s daughter would be “unqualified” to be admitted to Columbia despite having proven her ability to excel in courses at that school, simply because she was not competitive in the admissions process. I would dispute that conclusion. I think she is qualified to be admitted to and attend the school; simply not selected. It happens in the job world all the time: multiple qualified candidates, but only one job.</p>
<p>Kluge,</p>
<p>Well said. I think that epiphany, and some like-minded posters, want to have the word “qualified” carry the additional meaning of fulfilling the objectives of the admissions committee along virtually all dimensions. Once they do this the term "qualified’ begins to loose all meaning. I’ve tried to explain this but I don’t seem to be able to get thru.</p>
<p>^^And I’m trying to explain to YOU that an LCD definition of qualified is virtually meaningless in today’s admissions market. Essentially, the incoming class determines what/who is qualified. </p>
<p>Jumping from calmom’s D being accepted to BARNARD, and defending the fact that she can handle classes at COLUMBIA, is neither here nor there. Columbia didn’t examine calmom’s D for her qualifications for C, as the student did not apply there. Barnard examined her for B. qualifications & found those qualifications anywhere from adequate to fabulous. The fact that B&C have a mutual relationship may or may not have been figured into the D’s acceptance at B.</p>
<p>It is not of much value to discuss the definition of bare-bones qualification when there are few people with <em>only</em> that to offer an Elite U, and who are also admitted. The Elites are way beyond “qualified.” It’s more, most, & super-qualified.</p>