<p>Quote:
"Let’s look at the math. If you score a 700, it means you have some trouble with the Pythagorean theorem or answering such questions as “Which number is bigger, x or x^2?”</p>
<p>Huh? That’s a pretty extensive logical leap. 700 on SAT math is around 93 or 94 percentile."</p>
<p>Oh, gag with the pretentiousness already of acting as though a 700 on the SAT is evidence of “trouble” or stupidity compared to the almighty 800. This is just another version of the “my kid was sooooooo bored I had to teach him calculus in second grade.” No one buys it, in the least. It’s massive insecurity coverup.</p>
<p>Look, there’s a lot of stuff on this thread that is really ridiculous, including the fact that this SAT score thing is even being taken seriously as 1. an objective measure. 2. An unbiased test.</p>
<p>In the most recent study, a link to which I posted wayyyyyy back in the beginning of this discussion, the Harvard researchers who studied the test AND found bias in the test pointed out that even the way the test is scored works to the disadvantage of anyone raised outside the common vernacular. So, the MORE DIFFICULT (really read that) the question, the BETTER high scoring african americans did on the question. Think about that. </p>
<p>And, please move on.</p>
<p>The application is made up of: extra curriculars, GPA, rigorousness of course schedule, rigorousness of school, essays, interviews, background, race, gender, location, LORs and SATs. That is 12 data points. </p>
<ol>
<li> Of those 12 data points, the SAT is not even considered to be the most important one. Why do we keep arguing about one test? It’s ridiculous.</li>
</ol>
<p>The people who say it does not bring in the poorer people from the black communities are correct. The only people I met who were on scholarships based on race were people who had way more money than I did. Meanwhile, I had no parents when I applied for college, I was legally an orphan, and was given all student loans. I think if the schools want diversity, they need to bring in people who are actually different…like foster kids and disabled people and homeless people. But the way it is done now, “diversity” only seems to include rich black kids, or at least well off blacks kids, who have generally always been given everything anyway.</p>
<p>Because it’s obvious to anyone with IQ >60 that the SAT is THE most important indicator in life. Personally I wouldn’t date anyone who didn’t have 2350 or better on the SAT … plus 5’s on at least six AP tests. Drug addict, sociopath, spouse beater … I don’t care, those things count for nothing. A high SAT score is E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. Get less than a 2350 and your live is OVER, OVER, OVER.</p>
<p>This is actually not entirely true. coachability, compatibility with the team, all sorts of qualities go into the selection of a team by a coach, and it’s not all about the numbers.</p>
<p>In fact, at the level of national teams in most sports which go to the olympics, there’s a whole bunch of politics involved in team selection and the objectively “best” player isn’t always on the team. There are ways this works at the local, regional, state and national level. If your coach happens to be one of the coaches for your region? You are going to get a different kind of look. </p>
<p>When kids are ranked? coachability is one of the biggest factors. </p>
<p>You really aren’t completely clear on what you are talking about. </p>
<p>When you add in the “college” question, then you get to academic ability and whether or not the athlete will even be admitted by the admissions committee. top recruits are cautioned often by their youth coaches not to stop looking until they get the letter, because nobody really knows how much a coach can and will do. </p>
<p>Yes, the athlete, if he/she meets the NCAA standards, will go somewhere and play, probably, just as the top students will go somewhere and study, but nobody can be sure where they will play. nobody. So it’s a good comparison, but not for the reasons you think.</p>
<p>This from the woman who discounted the worth of a math olympics gold medal by saying, “I would never be caught dead at a math contest.” I guess that is the version of Seinfeld’s “I choose not to run.” Yeah, I got A’s in college-level math classes too; it doesn’t mean I think I’m as good at it as Euler. </p>
<p>And as for the “my kid was sooooo bored I had to teach him calculus.” First of all, I remember that thread and that was your own invented quote. No one else speaks in that cutesy-wutesy folksy type language. Not everyone takes until 6th grade to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide; the consequence of that is that is “advanced” or “gifted” kids. Some people have the abstract reasoning ability early. It’s too bad that some insecure people can’t handle it.</p>
<p>Insecurity is discounting anything beyond one’s own talent or accomplishments.</p>
<p>“Look, if you have a mediocre score…If you score a 700, it means you have some trouble with the Pythagorean theorem”…forgive me for quoting out of context, but this is what I worry about. What will it mean when 700 is mediocre (average)? It COULD be amazing, but maybe not. In any case, right now, 700 is far from average. </p>
<p>“But the way it is done now, “diversity” only seems to include rich black kids, or at least well off blacks kids, who have generally always been*generally always been given everything anyway.”</p>
<p>Wow. Does anyone have a guesstimate of how many of these “well off blacks kids that have generally been given everything” are out there flogging the pipes? Are numbers so huge it generates1300 posts here, and more than 7 race FAQs? </p>
<p>If I could pick one reason to be done with AA, it would be to line them all up. I would like to hang out with them and their folks for just a weekend.</p>
<p>Can we quit obsessing over SAT scores? SAT scores are not the only factor in holistic admissions that AAs are generally weak in; they are generally weak in all of them but race.</p>
<p>The very idea that the are genetic differences substantial enough to explain the IQ score differences between races in America is both insulting and incorrect. Every single bit of the disparity between the two races comes from the socioeconomic and sociocultural hole that history has put them in and to suggest that there is any consensus among scientists asstering otherwise is to speak falsities.</p>
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<p>This is a terrible way of thinking of college admissions. Football coaches work in a zero-sum reality and have totally different goals than institutions of higher learning. As I have said earlier, I believe that universities should direct their efforts toward using education to change and better the world.</p>
<p>That is the whole idea behind affirmative action in education. It is thought to help make the world a better place by educating an elite, fostering social mobility, reversing inequality. It helps ensure that URMs will never be shut out of the Great Conversation for want of education and skill as it occurs in politics, science and industry. It digs deep into the central point of the love of knowledge in the first place, the reason we all seek the truth — it is useful for pursuing the good.</p>
<p>The educational state of URMs in America already really, really sucks. It has been proven that affirmative action helps offset this. Eliminating race from colleges will only make things worse. Just so groups already doing relatively well “can do better”.</p>
<p>I, for one, don’t think that any groups will actually do better if this occurs. We can’t move forward if part our nation, essentially excluded on the basis of color not very long ago, is limping behind now. </p>
<p>Just looknat the gravity of the situation. How can anyone who is not apathetic to problems of race in our society say that the time has come to stop trying?</p>
<p>Except let me add: Nobody benefits from diversity on campus more than those who believe diversity is irrelevent. And very few top students want to be on a campus without a representative number of URMs anymore than they want to be on a campus divided 75/25 women to men. This is the reason colleges give consideration to differently qualified men than women, depending on the place either one needs a boost. </p>
<p>I need to add something: “differently qualified” does not mean poor Blacks are pulled into some academic vortex in a vacuum, simply because AA expects opportunities to be shared. Or benefits are to be had.</p>
<p>This isn’t a case where, as some seem to suggest, from the beginning, that URMs get a medal just for showing up.</p>
<p>I’m editing out some stuff, but each kid, any kid, with few exceptions, has to have some evident pattern of having the right stuff. As pgrl pointed out, that covers a variety of “data points.” Not just in classroom potential, but also evidence he’lll add to the vibrance of campus life- not only “diversity,” in all its respects and glory, but join the activities, take on some responsibilities, make some impact of some sort on the peer group, as a whole and in personal relationships.</p>
<p>“Thrive” does not mean a high college gpa, STEM major, IB- or that, in December of hs senior year a kid decided his future path and, by gummy, stuck with it. </p>
<p>Of course there is the possibility of mismatches. You can read the woe-is-me threads in the College Life forum or posts from worried parents- it crosses all lines. </p>
<p>This whole concept of “mismatch” seems to be interpreted by some in a very inflexible way. So, they transfered out of STEM? It’s college, a buffet of opportunities.</p>
<p>“Can we quit obsessing over SAT scores? SAT scores are not the only factor in holistic admissions that AAs are generally weak in; they are generally weak in all of them but race.”</p>
<p>Your point is good, but I was not aware of significant data on that. When I look aat the “real results threads”, which admittedly are not necessarily a matched sample , that was not at all clear to me. Where are you getting that data? </p>
<p>Please don’t say Espanshade. </p>
<p>Urelated perhaps, but to me, the most fascinating piece of the Espanshade data was that scoring below about 1200, or above about 1300 was actually "punished " more for URM ‘s than others. Why would that’ be?</p>
<p>Well, I’ve seen some explicit stats, but I can’t remember their source. That book by Rachel Toor (Admissions Confidential) suggested that admissions standards are reduced in all domains for black applicants. </p>
<p>The sum of the ratings Duke applicants got (in scores, course rigor, recs, grades, essays, etc.), if high enough (along with acceptable performance in all domains) resulted in an “auto-admit”. That means counselors didn’t discuss the applicant in conference like they do those in the middle of the pack (there are auto-denies, too). They are admitted. Straightforward.</p>
<p>The auto-admit sum for blacks was significantly lower, and applications from URMs got read one more time by a URM Adcom than apps from others applicants. And the news articles I’ve read and been lead to around CC suggest that this is normal and still ongoing. Though no one but adcoms themselves can be certain.</p>
<p>Stamdards wouldn’t be reduced this way uf they didn’t have to be.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>But more basically, it follows from the association of low income and poor opportunities associated with being of a URM. </p>
<p>(You really can’t do a sustained research internship if your family isn’t well-off and the “local” university is a 30 minute drive away, for example.)</p>
<p>I see. But as far as I can tell that was one school, and more than 10 years ago, and hardly peer reviewed … The actual threads here suggests thecrelatively few AA kids on CC, like yourself, applying to “elite” schools are solidly in ballpark, and not “significantly” lower, and that with an"N" of maybe 20… Many, maybe another 20, are NOT it he ballpark, applying to “regular” schools. But I haven’t reallocate parsed out any group other than AA students applying to Duke, and students in general, applying to UC’s.</p>
<p>But I’m done here, and your’e doing fine.I just hope you find better place to spend your passion.</p>
<p>@PCHOPE Your post, #1341(I still don’t know how to quote)…</p>
<p>You felt that I was being prejudice… I have friends who live in NYC. The daughter attends Hunter College High School. They speak of these test prep centers all the time and how the asians focus on the SAT and other standardized tests. So of course it stands to reason, that these students will have higher SAT scores. As they have been studying to “beat” the test since they were young children. Her classmates resent their parents obsession with test prep centers which doesn’t allow for other EC’s or down time.</p>
<p>We also have another friend who lives in NYC, goes to a prestigious private school on scholarship. She is urm and attends a hagwon in Queens. She sticks out like a sore thumb as she is like no one else there. The students treat her like an outcast and are very hostile. She has been told by a sympathizer that the students don’t want her there. They are afraid that she will do better than they will. They are also afraid that more urm’s will eventually flock to these testing centers. </p>
<p>I was only stating why many asians do better on the SAT. They spend their whole lives preparing for that test(or a huge chunk of it). There have been articles on this subject in the NYT and WSJ. I am only stating what I have read/learned from these publications. I had never even heard of these testing centers until recently(of course I knew of KUMON). </p>
<p>This is why I take umbrage with this thread. There are many here that feel that urm’s scores are low b/c we are dimwitted. </p>
<p>If a student is given violin lessons since the age of 5 or 6(or even 9 or 10) he/she will play better than a student who comes to the violin at the age of 16/17? In most cases right?</p>
<p>Just like the hagwons… all that practice/being immersed in that one pursuit makes a huge difference.</p>
<p>"This from the woman who discounted the worth of a math olympics gold medal by saying, “I would never be caught dead at a math contest.” I guess that is the version of Seinfeld’s “I choose not to run.” Yeah, I got A’s in college-level math classes too; it doesn’t mean I think I’m as good at it as Euler. "</p>
<p>I don’t remember that quote, but I’m sadly quite sure you’ve got files on me (binders full of my posts?) so I’ll let that go. As for “not as good as Euler” - here’s the great thing. To be successful in life you don’t need to be the very smartest. You just need to be smart. Look, I was a great standardized test taker - always did exceedingly well on those things. That has very little to do with life success in the least. I think you actually think that if you lined up people by test scores later in life, the 800s would be doing amazing things that the 750s barely understand and the 700s could dream of. 700 is 93rd percentile like the other poster said. It’s pretentious AND nerdy to act as though it’s meaningfully lower. Statistically, yes; meaningfully, no.</p>
<p>“And as for the “my kid was sooooo bored I had to teach him calculus.” First of all, I remember that thread and that was your own invented quote. No one else speaks in that cutesy-wutesy folksy type language.”</p>
<p>That’s hardly cutesy-wutesy. Sorry, I think it is a fair representation of some parents on CC. If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it.</p>
<p>I would like to participate in a discussion of whether the difference between a 700 and and 800 SAT score means anything, whether USAMO qualification means anything, and/or whether being as smart as Euler means anything, but not in the context of a thread on affirmative action. I support affirmative action. I also believe that the universities take steps to avoid “mismatch,” generally speaking.</p>
<p>If someone starts a separate thread on whether the differences are meaningful, when limited to comparisons of people from similar environments, with similar opportunities, I will show up. I would like for issues of race and AA to be excluded from that discussion.</p>
<p>What you just stated is probably very true, at least for some Asian families. While you and I may not want to take a similar path for our children, it is these people’s choice and I respect that. While we preach diversity and holistic views, should we appreciate other people’s cultures and ways of doing things even if we disagree with them?</p>
<p>^ Right, QM. Because one level of accomplishment can mean different things for different challenge sets.</p>
<p>Philo, the nature of myths (or “whisper down the lane”) is that they “seem to” have some validity and catch like their own wildfires. Obviously that includes CC. Each time someone adds, “yes, yes, I saw that in my hs” or “I know someone who swears that…” it magnifies, takes on purported validity. </p>
<p>With the info access of the web, anyone can go find some study. Or go spread what they think is accurate. To make a long story short, it’s necessary to apply critical thinking, whether in science or matters of society. Continue the hunt for understanding. Assume only when one is using it to explore.</p>
<p>My experience is that adcoms take each kid (who gets past the first weeder round,) through a series of individual reviews. Multiple reads. Then, those who hold the most promise, got consistently positive reactions (the proverbial 6k kids for 2k seats,) get discussed. No time to say more now, but imagine how those savvy adcoms and their elites would open themselves to litigation, otherwise.</p>