<p>For those of you think that anyone who is admitted is by definition qualified, it would be interesting to reconstruct the debates on legacy, URM and recruited athlete admissions preferences and insert “were admitted” for the word “qualified.” My point in starting this thread was to illustrate how circular and content less the argument that these preferences are ok because only qualified students are admitted is. For that argument to have substance “qualified” has to have an objective verifiable meaning. The only non-circular definition offered seems to be “able to graduate". My guess is that this really is what adcoms mean when they use the word “qualified”. IMO, that definition is not terribly restrictive since, again, IMO anyone with above average intelligence and careful course selection could graduate from any school in this country, with the possible exception of Caltech and a few similar schools.</p>
<p>"My guess is that this really is what adcoms mean when they use the word “qualified”. IMO, that definition is not terribly restrictive since, again, IMO anyone with above average intelligence and careful course selection could graduate from any school in this country,:</p>
<p>Not true at all. I’ve taught at 3rd tier and 2nd tier colleges, and have also mentored students at similar colleges. Some of the students at the very top of such colleges would have been capable of graduating from some of the most competitive colleges in the country.</p>
<p>However, many other students at such colleges wouldn’t have been able to do that even if they tried their best. The top colleges require much more writing, reading, and critical thinking skills than many people are capable of.</p>
<p>Also, what’s required in “easy” courses at places like Ivies, is what’s required in some of the most difficult courses in lower ranked schools.</p>
<p>Factor in differences in campus life, and what makes students comfortable enough to remain in college, and you add more reasons why many students at lower ranked colleges wouldn’t be able to graduate from places like Ivies. The many students who dislike being around people who passionately participate in intellectual activities, and get pleasure out of learning for the pure enjoyment of it, not because it will help them get a good job are not going to be happy on campuses in which the majority of students do the things that I just mentioned. Most students want a more laid back experience in college, and would quickly transfer if they were stuck on an Ivy.</p>
<p>Curious have you ever taught at the college level or taken classes at a highly competitive college? I’m curious about how you’ve developed your opinions on this subject.</p>
<p>Just to add to NSM’s post. The guidelines for courses in the humanities or social sciences at top schools are, from what i know, about 200-250 pages of reading per course per week. I know someone who, as a graduate student, used to lead sections for Harvard courses. He got a one year visiting lectureship at a college while finishing his dissertation. He was told not to assign more than 25 pages of reading per week. Granted, this was not a liberal arts college (I won’t say more as I do not want to identify it) and the students were not going into the humanities and social sciences. Nonetheless, at Harvard (or other top schools) no quarter is given to students who are not majoring in the humanities and social sciences but still need to fulfill their gen ed requirements. There is a difference surely between getting As in courses that have 25 pages of reading per week and Bs or even Cs in courses with 250 pages?</p>
<p>Consider also that Chicago, which, superficially, has lower admission standards than some other top schools (in terms of SAT scores in particular) is considered by all to be as rigorous and perhaps even more rigorous than these other schools. Its idea of “qualified” rests more on application essays (which cannot be reduced to quantifiable indices) than on GPAs and SAT scores.</p>
<p>I invite anyone who wants to reflect on the serious possible answers to the question, to do what Prosecuting Attorneys implore juries to do, at Closing Argument: Use your common sense. Do not focus mainly on the ultimate possible options in the legal case, on the extreme exceptions, and on every conceivable shadow of a doubt. Consider the Universe of the Reasonable.</p>
<p>Given that traveling admissions representatives of the most selective U’s are oft-quoted as saying, “We could fill the freshman class 3-4 times over with the group of excellent candidates who apply to our U every year,” Ask yourselves – those who do not have an agenda --, the following: Why would such U’s choose to discard such excessively large numbers of the uber-qualified, in preference to the under- or barely-qualified? Not, Is it possible? But, Is it reasonable? While answering that question, consider both the short-term and long-term consequences to such a cavalier decision – consequences to the immediate & ultimate reputation of the school, to its attractiveness to potential illustrious faculty (including faculty from overseas), to its position in graduate school rankings, to the ability of the U to parade the academic accomplishments of its undergrads/recent grads.</p>
<p>Then ask yourself if this is just another attempt to prove how stupid or incapable the admitted students are – or will be – if person X does not get accepted, did not in fact get accepted, or if more than just ‘high scorers’ get accepted. </p>
<p>Then ask yourself another logical question. If there is such an epidemic of low caliber students at highly regarded U’s, surely there must be a large population of rejected high-caliber students & their parents, in protest numbers so immense that the Elites dare not ignore them. Why, then, are the elites not quivering in their public relations boots at the vast unhappy population of the Super Students who supposedly have nowhere to go, because they’re supposedly so overqualified & must have been rejected by <em>every</em> elite in the land. </p>
<p>If such students were true prizes, they have been snatched up by at least one Elite, to begin with – such as the story on this or another thread about the guy at UPenn. No harm has been done. If every elite rejected such students, then the students were never so spectacular or had problems conveying that substantively in the applications, and/or had not much more than scores and grades to recommend them, ever.</p>
<p>To the usual suspects,</p>
<p>So much smoke and mirrors and so little to say about the underlying question. First, some prima facie evidence that makes my point. Yale and Princeton (Harvard is mum on the issue) have a student body in which 75% of the students score over 700 on each section of the SAT. Yet these same schools have 2 to 4% of the student body composed of folks with test scores in the 500’s i.e. just above average. If these students graduate and are not just window dressing, they are evidence that someone with just above average intelligence can do so, even at these august institutions. I would classify Chicago with Caltech for what it’s worth by the way.</p>
<p>I see no reason to back off from my earlier statement: if “qualified” means that they got in it is a content-less measure for our purposes and if “qualified” means able to graduate it is a very low standard. </p>
<p>And yes I have taught at the college level.</p>
<p>“Yet these same schools have 2 to 4% of the student body composed of folks with test scores in the 500’s :”</p>
<p>For all we know, the students with the 500s are very lopsided – may be total geniuses verbally, with 800 cr scores, for example, but just above average in math. As I stated before, they also may have things like disabilities that cause their scores to be depressed even though their intelligence is high, and they would be able to handle the curriculum. </p>
<p>“And yes I have taught at the college level.”</p>
<p>At what kind of college did you teach?
At what kind of college did you attend?</p>
<p>As someone pointed out in this thread, there is a big difference between a school where professors assign no more than 25 pages of reading per week for a class, and one in which the average amount of reading per class is 250 pages a week.</p>
<p>I was thinking about this thread on the train home today, and I decided that the process of picking students for a highly selective school is somewhat analogous to picking a mate, albeit on a quite different scale.</p>
<p>When you set out to pick a mate, you (hopefully) don’t restrict your search to the very top of the applicant pool in terms of numbers – the ones who are tall and wealthy and objectively good-looking. You set your standards fairly low, because you’re aware that there’s more to a good match than height and looks and money, and once somebody meets your minimum qualifications, you don’t care what their “numbers” are anymore – you don’t want to automatically marry the 6’4’’ underwear model millionaire over the 5’6’’ underwear model millionaire just because the first guy is taller. You’re looking for a lot of unquantifiable characteristics, presumably.</p>
<p>Curious, you are correct that some students with test scores in the 500’s can do well – but that is only because of the limited value of the test scores. In general, those students are being admitted based on their grades or on some sort of strong qualifier in a specific area – that is, those students are being admitted because there are strong indications that they will succeed despite lower test scores.</p>
<p>My daughter is a case in point – her math SAT was 580. CR was 620. Writing, well above 700. She focused on her interest in studying Russian & her Russian foreign exchange experience in her apps. She was within the top 4% of students in her high school class. </p>
<p>She is at Barnard where she is on Dean’s list. She takes Russian at Columbia, where she earned an A+ in her Russian course. </p>
<p>Math? She hasn’t taken any. Her college requires her to take a single “quantitative reasoning” course to graduate - she will end up opting for the easiest, least rigorous course she can find. It won’t be a “real” math course like calculus. </p>
<p>It won’t matter because it was clear from her application that she wasn’t headed for math and sciences, so, quite frankly, it wouldn’t have mattered if her math score had been 100 points lower in terms of her likelihood of success. </p>
<p>But her aptitude for writing is probably far more important. She is also a very fast reader, something not really measured in standardized tests-- but a skill that has come in rather handy in college. (Actually, in her case, her tendency to race through the reading might have hurt her CR score – it’s easy for a speed reader to miss little details here & there, a big problem on standardized tests, not so significant in a college courses where there is a high volume of reading.)</p>
<p>The point: you can’t decide from my daughter’s experience that 580 on math is a perfectly good score for any student at Columbia. I don’t think it would bode well for most pre-med students. And kids with strong test scores who can’t keep up with the reading & writing required at college could struggle as well – the 5 paragraph essay required for the SAT is trivial compared with the regular assignments my daughter faced in her required first year writing course. (The SAT is a sprint; a college semester is a marathon – sometimes the people who lag behind in first quarter mile do a lot better over the long haul).</p>
<p>Colleges look at scores in context of every other bit of information they have about the student. That’s why the minimum acceptable test score may be quite low, but the point is that the test scores don’t determine qualifications. They just provide an additional, fairly objective piece of information.</p>
<p>oh my gosh, I can certainly see how 2-4% is a national emergency. And by the way, as calmom notes, that would be 2-4% not accounting for any other aspect of the students’ achievements. But let’s set that aside and hold a congressional investigation.</p>
<p>I have indeed made the prima facie point, but you refuse to see it. I never made the point that acceptance = qualification, although there’s an aspect to the equation that I would rewrite. But you yourself engage in questionable argumention with the assumption, imbedded in your statements, as to the relative value of an SAT score, in the assessment of any person’s potential and in the assessment of the selection process/selectivity value of the elite schools in question. If you think a score has absolute value, the admissions committees do not share that perception.</p>
<p>^^ Chicago, in particular, does not share that perception.</p>
<p>Ok,</p>
<p>We have two offered definitions:</p>
<p>1) admitted: which is pointlessly circular
2) capable of graduating: which is (with the exception of a few institutions) a low standard</p>
<p>Would anyone else care to offer another definition?</p>
<p>It would be nice if it was something that could actually be measured.</p>
<p>Curious, the only flawed logic I see is your own – you have set up an argument based on a false premise: that college admissions is based on a uniform standard against which all applicants are weighed.</p>
<p>That is not the case at all – college admissions is based on meeting the needs of the college in terms of creating a class to meet a variety of different goals. They need strong students to fill the classes in all their departments – but they don’t need any particular student to be strong in all areas. </p>
<p>They need good athletes to field their teams, but they don’t need all students to be athletes nor do they need any athlete to be good in all sports. </p>
<p>They may want greater geographic diversity, or ethnic diversity. </p>
<p>They definitely need to have a sizeable chunk of full-paying students – but they also need (or want) students who will be the beneficiaries of their need-based financial aid system. </p>
<p>When they get an application, they look to see what niche the student seems to fill. Among the students in that niche, they are looking for the strongest possible students who are also likely to attend – so they will definitely want to see strong math scores among their prospective engineering majors. </p>
<p>It isn’t about “who can do the work” – the colleges are striving for excellence – they are just looking to assemble 500 or 1000 or 2000 separate points of excellence (depending on the size of their freshman class) – with the hopes that they have the best overall community possible to meet their needs.</p>
<p>My daughter is at an Ivy-affiliated LAC because of what she excels in… not because of her weakest points. And that is true of every other student at her school.</p>
<p>Attempting to communicate with the OP on the question he claims to want to discuss, but clearly doesn’t, reminds me of the lyrics from “Vincent:”</p>
<p>They would not listen
They did not know how
Perhaps they’ll listen now…</p>
<p>They would not listen
they’re not
list’ning still
perhaps they never will.</p>
<p>To the ususal suspects,</p>
<p>Look, if you have never used the defense that a particular admissions policy is OK because colleges are just chosing among “qualified” candidates, then we have nothing to argue about (at least on this thread). But if you do use that argument then I think you have a responsibility to step up and define “qualified” in some meainingful, non-circular way. If you are content to make your arguments with out reference to the “qualified” crutch then I am content to declare victory and go on to something else.</p>
<p>If there is no standard, even some kind of measureable multidimensional one, then the concept of “qualified” is just so much hand waving.</p>
<p>If you’re defining qualified in the same way colleges are, it means that you can pass all your classes in college (i.e., “do the work.”)</p>
<p>LOL, you’ve just declared “victory” over the straw man argument you set up but which no one else has made.</p>
<p>Cal mom,</p>
<p>Care to state the “stawman” argument that you are talking about?</p>
<p>I think collegealum has stated the definition that adcoms tend to mean when they toss the term around. My point is that by that standard there are hundreds of thousands of students who would be “qualified” at HYPS. As a consequence it is essentially meaningless to offer as a defense of various admissions preferences that we are, of course, only choosing amoung “qualified” candidates.</p>
<p>There may well be hundreds of thousands of students who are qualified. But they do not all apply to HYPS. Many go elsewhere because of financial considerations, weather, distance from home, opportunities to play sports, social scene, and so on. None of these factors means that they are weaker (unqualified) than those who do apply to HYPS. And that does not undermine the claim that colleges choose among qualified students. They have to, since they can only accommodate around 10& of the pool of applicants. And while many of these qualified applicants could graduate with a GPA of 2.00, colleges would prefer to admit the stronger ones among these qualified applicants. </p>
<p>I don’t see the problem.</p>
<p>The problem is that the term “qualified” is pretty close to meaningless. It is not much more than saying all those accepted were of at lesst average intelligence.</p>