<p>^ And I’m not too good with “No child is perfect of course. Mine only got 2370 on the SAT.”</p>
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<p>Like this guy?
[Aleksey</a> Vayner - “Impossible is Nothing” - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_aM_UiHeFM]Aleksey”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_aM_UiHeFM)</p>
<p>Dad, did you look at this? <a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/160146/data/table31-enrll-race-sch-2011.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/160146/data/table31-enrll-race-sch-2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>Aleksy Vayner, like what’s his name who famously scammed Harvard, Adam Wheeler, is but one example- and pretty outrageous, to boot.</p>
<p>Hope when we say, participation, engagement, leadership, etc, are important to top campuses, no one is saying, but Aleksey…so there’s no value…</p>
<p>Well, there’s a nonsequitur, collegealum314. (I’ve been meaning to ask, is that a reference to March 14, or to St. Louis? I used to live in St. Louis and the 314 area code strikes me every time.)</p>
<p>I’ve had the great fortune to have worked for four great managers. One was a Nobel Laureate (Medicine), one graduated from that academic powerhouse North Carolina State, and two had no college at all. Their techniques and skill sets were different, but each got excellent contributions from those who worked with him. All were amazingly successful and well-loved. </p>
<p>It never occurred to me to ask what their SAT scores were.</p>
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<p>It’s a reference to pi. </p>
<p>With cases like Vayner where the level of BS is so high, I just don’t see how he was able to slip through the admissions process at a place like Yale.</p>
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<p>Yes, and even my beloved SATs have been corrupted on occasion – in a recent case many students on Long Island paid someone to take their test. But please consider that judging intangibles such as “participation, engagement, and leadership” based on a college application is done with a lot of error and tends to favor self-promoters.</p>
<p>I have never asked my managers what their SAT scores were either. For that matter, I don’t think I have asked anyone their SAT scores, except for people I have hired. How is this related to the topic at hand?</p>
<p>The Bayes’ stuff sounds cool, shawbridge. That’s real critical thinking it seems. If posters think like that this thread might be much shorter. Is it possible to go backward, i.e., someone makes a conclusion and you deduce what his/her belief is?</p>
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<p>I do and thanks collegealum314 for the link. He makes many who talk about SAT/GPA look so not smart.</p>
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<p>I think the scientists are amazing at predicting the storm. I wonder if this were to happen in other countries like India or China what would happen.</p>
<p>Because an earlier poster was indicating that if he was evaluating future potential study partners, he needed to know what their stats were, otherwise he’d assume the black student was < the white or Asian student and had a lower probability of having legitimately “earned” his way in. Don’t worry, we all thought it was funny too.</p>
<p>I did have a manager who asked me (loudly and publicly) about my GMAT scores when I was applying to b-school. No one thought, “Oh, wow, that’s really terrific that he’s asking about her GMAT’s so he can estimate probabilities of her being worthy!” Everyone thought - what a boor.</p>
<p>Asking you publicly was in poor taste. This is private information.</p>
<p>If he was asking privately you afterwards as part of a hiring decision, that is wise.</p>
<p>Looking forward,</p>
<p>I do not have any problem with legacy preferences and understand that they fit colleges’ institutional needs (although I am surprised by the 45% bump in the Harvard study). But so too does AA, as these colleges have made the decision that diversity benefits all students. All of this serves to underscore that NO COLLEGE IN AMERICA bases its admissions decisions solely on academic merit. They also want legacies, URMs, athletes, musicians, kids from Wyoming, and maybe even someone to study the course offerings of the philosophy department.</p>
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<p>Not all of us (and I was not that poster). Especially in a freshman course where you don’t have prior college experiences to go on, it is reasonable to consider the SAT scores of a potential study partner, not to judge their general worthiness to be at the college, but to estimate if they are at your approximate intellectual level. This judgement goes in both directions – there were people in college who I would not have tried to study with, because I recognized they were much smarter than I was.</p>
<p>“I have never asked my managers what their SAT scores were either. For that matter, I don’t think I have asked anyone their SAT scores, except for people I have hired. How is this related to the topic at hand?”</p>
<p>Precisely. Advocating SAT scores as the primary criterion for college admission, and then acknowledging that those scores are completely unrelated to success in life does leave one pause … yes?</p>
<p>(I’ve given up on using common sense to get elitists’ attention. So I’m reduced to working the “High SAT? So What?” gambit.)</p>
<p>Lake, lake lake, I sat here for a few days waiting for something more than pictures of the storm off the coast of NC. That’s all. It’s okay. And, I do hope the funding for modelling, emergency services, et al, continues. </p>
<p>Muck, I think we have mostly agreed. I’ve been on the thread since early, so some of my comments now are built upon others or the trend in discussions among several posters, that’s all.</p>
<p>“I was so embarrassed by my D’s SAT scores. They were in the 99+ percentile for sure, but only in the middle of it … not nearly high enough to gain the respect of her future classmates. And what will she have to talk about at weekend parties?”</p>
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<p>I thought Cal Tech comes pretty close, as described in
[Why</a> Caltech Is in a Class by Itself
by Russell K. Nieli](<a href=“http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_class_by_i.html]Why”>http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_class_by_i.html)</p>
<p>Aren’t there public universities that use an academic index to choose students, in part because they don’t have enough admissions staff to conduct “holistic review” of tens of thousands of applications?</p>
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<p>Well, according to Beliavsky they would have done a BETTER job, being Asian and all. :)</p>
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<p>Nearly all of the California State University campuses admit by just a GPA and test score formula, which is their proxy for “academic merit” (whether or not you believe it is accurate). Whether one is a legacy, URM, or musician matters not at all. Being from Wyoming merely makes the applicant subject to the higher out-of-state minimum formula value. Choosing to major in philosophy or something else only matters if the major is impacted at the campus so that it has a higher threshold on the formula for admission. Recruited athletes may get help at the few with NCAA D1 athletics.</p>
<p>It would not be surprising if the colleges that most students attend were more like the CSUs than the highly selective colleges with very opaque holistic admissions processes that seem random to outsiders that this forum bubble seems to think mostly in terms of.</p>