<p>northstarmom, yes, it is true - H did overlook everyone in the top 10 of the class in our school, yet took the kids who was 27th with less than stellar SAT scores. Oh, yes, but she played soccer - silly me!!! Basically, I think “unqualified” is anyone who doesn’t fit into what the school is looking for that year. And good luck figuring that one out! If you happen to be the only kids in the pile that fits the slot, then the rest doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>jmmom,</p>
<p>Anyone=you.</p>
<p>I suspect they do have internal numbers, across the board, on what qualified is. For instance, to get into a UC there is a set of criteria:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/paths_to_adm/freshman/state_eligibility.html[/url]”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/paths_to_adm/freshman/state_eligibility.html</a></p>
<p>Perusing this you’ll notice it’s not all that strong. You need at less a 3.0 GPA, and some fairly high test scores. As your GPA increases the test scores decrease. If you have a GPA of 3.4 and have taken all the required classes then you are qualified, regardless of test scores. But this is minimum eligibility. From this pile each University in the system get to go back and pull their students. Anything not hitting these qualifications gets rejected immediately. All other applications get looked at. But, the general feeling is if you were able to get a 3.4 GPA while taking all the required classes you should be able to graduate from any of the UCs.</p>
<p>I think curious is right in that the minimum qualification for a HYPSM student is probably much lower than bottom 25% of those they actually admit. The number of applications they reject outright is very small. The rest they look at more closely. They even say so in their press releases, that <insert large=“” number=“” here=“”> percent of applications are qualified, but they do not have room for all qualified applicants.</insert></p>
<p>So yeah, qualified is a low bar.</p>
<p>I do not think that an applicant with a 3.4 GPA would have a chance of admission at HYPSM. Marilee Jones did say mostly As with a couple of Bs. That would mean probably a GPA closer to to 3.7 as a minimum. And even so, it would depend where the Bs were obtained. A B in Spanish would look very different from a B in Pre-calc, for instance.</p>
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<p>Or go on to become billionaires and pick up honorary degrees…</p>
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<p>You just never know…</p>
<p>A young lady at our high school was accepted to MIT about 5 years ago. She was a val, SATs in the 1400s, played in the high school band (no honors bands or all state honors, etc.)–nothing on the surface that really screamed out, “MIT material.” In fact, I wouldn’t have guessed she’d get in–she really didn’t seem to do much outside of school.</p>
<p>It turns out that she is fascinated by artificial intelligence and wrote her IB paper on it. There must have been something in that paper, because she was accepted. She matriculated, graduated and is working in the computer industry now.</p>
<p>But it was this young lady’s acceptance into MIT that first gave my D the idea that perhaps a non-URM kid from our middling high school had a chance to get into HYPSM. </p>
<p>D applied to MIT, got in, but didn’t end up going there. So you can’t really say that non-URMs have no chance at MIT (or anywhere in the super-selective pantheon of schools).</p>
<p>“I do not think that an applicant with a 3.4 GPA would have a chance of admission at HYPSM.”</p>
<p>I agree with you there. The example was from the UC system. And you’ll note, though the 3.4 weighted GPA with anything for test scores may be the minimum, you wouldn’t expect to get into the top tier UCs with the minimum. The minimum at HYPSM might be higher than 3.4 GPA, but I’d bet they do have a similiar table to the UCs, that if you don’t meet those requirements they don’t even look farther to see if perhaps you happen to have received that nobel prize. As they are happy to tell you, 90% of their applicants are qualified, so they meet some sort of criteria.</p>
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<p>Few people outside an admissions office or the devil’s advocacy side of a conversation use that definition. </p>
<p>A more realistic definition, which is part of the graduation requirement at the Harvard Business School, is the ability to rank above a certain percentile in a specified number of classes. Consistently hogging the bottom of the curve doesn’t count as “qualified” in that sense.</p>
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<p>Transfers and (I think) deaths are not counted in a school’s graduation rate. </p>
<p>As you surely know, the nongraduation rate differs substantially (by as much as a factor of six or eight the last time I looked) between groups that are treated differently in admissions; blacks, Asians, whites, etc. The nongraduation rates vary in tandem with the respective levels of admission preference given to the different groups. This is evidence that the popular notion of “unqualified” candidates being admitted, whether due to race or parents’ money or athletic prowess, is not quite a myth and is not answered by repeating the party line from the Harvard admissions office.</p>
<p>“I do not think that an applicant with a 3.4 GPA would have a chance of admission at HYPSM.”</p>
<h2>I agree with you there. The example was from the UC system. And you’ll note, though the 3.4 weighted GPA with anything for test scores may be the minimum, you wouldn’t expect to get into the top tier UCs with the minimum. The minimum at HYPSM might be higher than 3.4 GPA, but I’d bet they do have a similiar table to the UCs, that if you don’t meet those requirements they don’t even look farther to see if perhaps you happen to have received that nobel prize. As they are happy to tell you, 90% of their applicants are qualified, so they meet some sort of criteria.</h2>
<p>I know a non-URM guy with straight “B’s” who got into Stanford. He didn’t really have any hooks either.</p>
<p>Curious14:</p>
<p>Of course you meant to start a political discussion. This is about the tenth thread you’ve started in the same vein over a period of months.</p>
<p>Some people – I think you included – are desperate to say “Someone with SATs of 650 (or whatever) is too dumb for HYPS.” That just isn’t the case.</p>
<p>Every college tries to get the best class it can. But on any particular dimension – SATs, GPA, ECs, essays – the “qualified” standard is very low. A kid with 1900 SATs has very little chance of getting into MIT or HYPS unless he or she brings something else really exciting to the table, in which case he or she may have a perfectly good chance of getting in.</p>
<p>“As you surely know, the nongraduation rate differs substantially (by as much as a factor of six or eight the last time I looked) between groups that are treated differently in admissions; blacks, Asians, whites, etc. The nongraduation rates vary in tandem with the respective levels of admission preference given to the different groups. This is evidence that the popular notion of “unqualified” candidates being admitted, whether due to race or parents’ money or athletic prowess, is not quite a myth and is not answered by repeating the party line from the Harvard admissions office.”</p>
<p>The graduation rates for black students at Harvard and similar colleges are sky high, far higher than the graduation rates for white students at probably most colleges in the country. </p>
<p>At some highly competitive colleges, that graduation rate for black students is higher than that for white students at those colleges. There’s no evidence that students of any color who don’t graduate from the below colleges are not qualified for admission. For all we know, the students who didn’t graduate transferred or will return and graduate later. Just how many relatively recent Harvard drop-outs of any race has anyone heard of other than Bill Gates? </p>
<p>Mount Holyoke: Black graduation rate 85%, white graduation rate 79%
Smith 88% 84%</p>
<p>Wellesley 94 91%
Pomona 83 81
Macalester 83 81</p>
<p>Washington University 91 91
Harvard 95 97
Yale 92 96
Princeton 94 98</p>
<p>Stanford 90 95
Williams 94 97
Amherst 94 96</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.jbhe.com/preview/winter07preview.html[/url]”>http://www.jbhe.com/preview/winter07preview.html</a></p>
<p>Re “Gentleman’s C” for a certain well-known Yalie:
It is my impression that G. Bush achieved his elected offices because the GOP and backing corporations decided he was “electable” i.e., not through any merit of his own.</p>
<p>Thus the joke that when Cheney was out for his recent 2 hour surgery–“George Bush was President for 2 hours!” </p>
<p>Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…</p>
<p>I have no love for George Bush. However, if a college manages to admit a person who gets elected to the U.S. presidency for any reason, that’s quite a feather in their cap. In addition, the college will at least have had some chance to mold a future world leader.</p>
<p>northstarmom–agreed, except for the “for any reason” phrase. Some people still question the legitimacy of the 2004 election results. And Bush’s record since then probably leaves the Yale folks cringing. At least I hope it does…</p>
<p>JHS</p>
<p>Try to follow the thread, instead of picking up a random post and going off.</p>
<p>In the post you refer to I was responding to a comment by someone who thought I was taking the thread off topic and into politics because I used the example that we do not automatically assume a political candidate is qualified just because they are elected.</p>
<p>mommusic, I agree with you about the “for any reason” part. I don’t know how I managed to forget that elections travesty when I posted. </p>
<p>The Yale grads I know are cringing about him.</p>
<p>What scares me is thinking about what kind of president he would have been without the critical thinking skills he was exposed to in college and prep school. Surely, he did learn something despite his mediocre grades.</p>
<p>JHS,</p>
<p>IMO the qualified standard is very low across a wide range of dimensions but unfortunately all the public gets to see is the SAT scores.</p>
<p>Here’s how I would put it: At the super-selective school, the point at which a candidate is disqualified based on SATs, GPA, or ECs is quite low. However, a candidate who is close to the bottom on all dimensions is essentially disqualified. And a candidate who has nothing more to offer than 2400 SATs and a perfect GPA is also disqualified.</p>
<p>“IMO the qualified standard is very low across a wide range of dimensions…”</p>
<p>You wouldn’t know that unless you saw all the details of each application of admitted students. Even that would not be fully instructive unless those details were compared with the details for the rejected students – as to what is “very low” vs. “not very low.” </p>
<p>There are about 9 categories of “Very Important” elements for consideration in some of the CDS’ of the various Elites who publish those. And the reason that “the public doesn’t get to see” the non-SAT data is twofold: (a) confidentiality/privacy; (b) many of the other factors are qualitative & thus do not lend themselves to practically reducible data, columns, tables, and lists.</p>
<p>I agree with Epiphany and JHS. When adcoms are considering applicants who are borderline in some of the traditional ways like SAT or gpa, there will be some offestting highly desirable attribute or quality that the institution values. It’ll inevitably be a question of balancing rather than somehow defining unqualified. </p>
<p>There has, however, been a recent case in which colleges seriously sought to design some measure that would essentially define unqualified: the attempts of NESCAC to set a floor for athletic tips. Nothing concrete has come of it, but some of the ideas that were floated included setting the floor a certain standard deviation below the mean for the previous admitted class on standardized tests; to rely on readers’ academic ratings (usually one of the best predictors of gpa and often better than grades or test scores); or to define the floor as a percentage of student distribution on some commonly agreed composite measure. Needless to say, there were significant problems with any approach.</p>