<p>I am just trying to point out, by example, how ridiculous the repsonse that “they must have been qualified they were admitted” is. I can’t believe you thought I was trying to start a political discussion.</p>
<p>My point in starting the thread was to illustrate that the term “qualified” was so lacking in substantive content as to be meaningless. I think many of you have amply demonstated that point, especially jmmom and marite.</p>
<p>But if we all said that “qualified” is defined based on some SAT cutoff and were simply debating where to set the cutoff, you would find that to be substantive and meaningul, I believe.</p>
<p>Makes me want to begin to focus on defining “tiresome.”</p>
<p>
But no one has said that. What has been said is that they proved they were qualified by their successful performance at the school. Which you choose to ignore over and over again, as it fails to suit your agenda. </p>
<p>I’m beginning to hit on a clear definition of tiresome.</p>
<p>Exactly what is the example supposed to prove: that that person was qualified. Ok so what?!</p>
<p>Did I ever say someone was either qualified or unqualified based on SAT scores alone?</p>
<p>Want to talk tiresome. Reasoning my sample sizes of 1 or 2 is tiresome and pointless.</p>
<p>If success is defined by graduating then “able to graduate” is the meaning of qualified. If that is the standard it is a very low one.</p>
<p>
I was actually giving the example of my fiance to counter the idea that it’s impossible for someone to be admitted to HYPSM with a low score on some standardized test. </p>
<p>But I do think my fiance is an excellent example of someone who was extremely qualified with non-knock-your-socks-off standardized test scores – he graduated acknowledged by the faculty as one of the two best aerospace engineers his year, was admitted to the MIT master’s program (he’s not crazy enough to want a PhD like I do :)), and is working at a company which hired him based entirely on his excellent senior project. A team he led won a major international aerospace design competition this year by a large margin.</p>
<p>Why? You think that top schools have such low standards for passing classes? That the classes are not rigorous enough?</p>
<p>If you were on an adcom, how would you define qualified?</p>
<p>I hate the term. I think colleges should try to admit the best students they can (defined academically but multi-dimensionally).
And yes I think passing is a very low standard, even at Harvard.</p>
<p><a href=“mollieb:”>quote</a>
According to MIT’s admissions statistics (here), last year the admit rate for an applicant with a 600-690 on the verbal section of the SAT I was 12.4%, and the admit rate for an applicant with 600-690 on the math section of the SAT I was 8.2%. The overall admit rate was 13%.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If you squint hard enough, any two SAT ranges look alike. </p>
<p>However, if you add further information, such as MIT’s common data set, the freshman survey, and (most pertinently) the graphs of admission by SAT score in the Revealed Preference and the Early Admissions Game studies, a finer breakdown emerges. What it shows is that admissions rate rises steadily and in a convex fashion with SAT score: the influence of 40 more SAT points is higher as you go up the range of scores. People with near-perfect SATs are being admitted at 40-60 percent, and of the 600-690 math SATs, the admits are heavily concentrated at the top end of that range.</p>
<p>curious.<br>
Why don’t you think colleges already do what you are advocating?</p>
<p>A number of posters on various threads have indicated that once a student is academically “qualified” the focus needs to shift to other criteria. I find this ponit of view disconcerting. My point in starting the thread was to illustrate that the term “qualified” was either meaningless or an extremely low standard.</p>
<p>At every school, there will be 50% of the students in the bottom half of the class. Some of those students will have passing grades, some will have C grades. Are you suggesting that only A/B students at Harvard, or any school, were the “qualified” ones?</p>
<p>If a school gives out only A’s and B’s, it will be accused of grade-inflation, whether or not rightfully.</p>
<p>I fail to see how a person who attends a given school, completes the required number of credits for the degree, with grades sufficient to receive the degree can be defined as “unqualified.”</p>
<p>Unqualified for what?</p>
<p>jmmom,</p>
<p>Yor are are a literalist. My point is that the term is meaningless or a very low standard. See my previous post.</p>
<p>You asked to define unqualified. And you seem to imply that someone who is accepted, attends and graduates is unqualified. As you are unwilling to define them as “qualified.” Or else you feel the term is meaningless.</p>
<p>If you feel it is meaningless, why start a thread to pinpoint the threshhold for “qualified-ness?”</p>
<p>To illustrate that for those who use the term freely in these discussions “qualified” is an extremely low test or totally meaningless.
I would prefer that we never use the term.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t believe you’ve convinced anyone.</p>
<p>“I was hoping that we could restrict the definition of qualified to something less circular than whoever was admitted.”</p>
<p>According to Harvard’s admissions office, “qualified” for admission means that if a student were admitted to Harvard, they’d have the ability to graduate. According to the head of admissions at Harvard, 90% of Harvard’s 20,000+ applicants qualify for admission given the definition above. Since about 97% of Harvard undergraduates graduate from Harvard in 6 years (and since some of the other 3% transfer to other colleges, including Ivies, from where they graduate while others end up graduating from Harvard more than 6 years after admission, and some students also die before they’d graduate), I don’t see evidence that many if any unqualified students are admitted.</p>
<p>“My two cents. It is very hard to flunk out of places like HYPS for academic reasons (that is true for almost all places). Note that I exclude from my statement M, where a student actually needs to pursue a “hard science major”. If you have average writing skills, there are a bunch of majors that you can muddle along. If you can’t write straight to save your life, you can always do a soft science (or be a creative writing major LOL).”</p>
<p>You are right that it’s hard to flunk out of those places. However, the work that a so-called easy major at a place like Harvard requires probably would be the equivalent of work at the most difficult majors at less competitive colleges.</p>
<p>When I was at Harvard, I considered an easy course to be one that required an essay exam midterm and a 20-page paper due at semester’s end. I remember meeting a student from a 3rd tier who was talking about the “hard” multiple choice tests that were required in one of her courses, which she thought were “hard.” I couldn’t imagine taking multiple choice tests in college. I had barely done that in high school.</p>
<p>Certainly there are students at places like HPY who wouldn’t be able to graduate if they were hard sciences majors there. However HPY etc. select students to create well rounded classes, so some students will have lopsided talents. A student who couldn’t survive premed there may have the ability to be a stellar English major or a “C” student social science major who spends 40 hours a week running the Harvard Crimson newspaper and after graduation wins some Pulitzers.</p>
<p>" don’t think that even with no posted minimal scores, HYPSM would admit many with sub-600s scores. Those admitted might be internationals. "</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen on CC, I doubt if there are internationals admitted with sub 600 scores. The internationals who get in seem to have very high scores.</p>
<p>I suspect that the sub 600 scorers are students who are lopsided – have extraordinary talent in one area – far above even most talented students in that area at HPYS – and are just OK in another. They would, however, be able to squeak through the required classes in the fields that aren’t their natural talents.</p>
<p>I also suspect that students who have, for instance, major disabilities that could impair part of their performance on the SAT , and students who have overcome major hardships (such as a student who managed to have some remarkable academic achievements despite periods of homelessness), yet have achieved at an extraordinary academic level despite being in inferior schools. About 8 years ago, I did hear of a student who had been homeless, and had gone to a variety of inferior schools, had m, v scores around 550 each, and got into H, but turned it down for a much less competitive school because she was intimidated by the idea of going there. I learned about this from her longtime mentor.</p>
<p>If the student had chosen to go to H, I believe she would have had the ability to graduate. Her low scores for that school weren’t due to lack of intelligence, but lack of a good education, and lack of living in an environment that was conducive to her attaining her potential. She had to be extremely bright, and to have extraordinary levels of motivation, creativity and discipline to have done so well despite the challenges she had faced.</p>
<p>“One of the reasons that there are no official cutoffs, is that even the most selective schools want everyone to apply”</p>
<p>No evidence at all that they want “everyone” to apply. So that they can create the best possible freshmen classes, those schools want the largest field possible of qualified applicants to apply. Even with Harvard’s getting more than 20,000 applicants, there still are tens of thousands of qualified students who aren’t applying.</p>
<p>According to the College Board, in 2006, close to 70,000 students score 700 or above on the SAT reasoning test, and more than 95,000 scored that well on the SAT I math test. Using that very narrow standard of being “qualified” for admission, all of thse top colleges could more than double their number of applicants, and there still woudl be plenty of qualified students who weren’t applying.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to a pdf file for anyone who wants to see the College Board’s data on this: <a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;