<p>“One thing about the SAT II for languages–that seems to only favor native-speakers (ref. the jillions of chances posters who have 800 in Chinese or Korean).”</p>
<p>It’s just a feeling, but I think many of those students are just the ones we are looking for at SSU.</p>
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<p>Still people are getting very high scores. They think this makes them geniuses, and they think they therefore deserve entry into top universities. They are applying the old-score mentality to the new-score reality, and that leads them to think that there should be a stats-based university, to recognize their unrecognized genius.</p>
<p>I think the handful of people who would have a Super-Stat of 6300 or above would be pretty impressive folks, intellect-wise.</p>
<p>What about factoring in college courses? Would you somehow include college courses for motivated students stuck at schools that don’t offer many AP’s?</p>
<p>Hunt has already taken the supposed ease of the “recentered” SAT Reasoning Test into account by setting up an admission standard under which students would also have to perform well on other tests. As Hunt says, few students ace all of those tests.</p>
<p>Woo-hoo! The perfect college for my kid!</p>
<p>Would SSU be willing to admit students straight from, say, 9th or 10th grade? I know students who would do quite well in the Super-stat and would be easily competitive with 11th and 12th graders.</p>
<p>Students taking college courses can take the related AP exams. At SSU, we don’t care what courses you’ve taken, only the mastery you’ve demonstrated through standardized testing.</p>
<p>I think for students who don’t yet have a high school diploma, we might want to add some criteria to ensure that they are high achievers in all areas. Perhaps I might add a requirement for all students that one of the APs or SAT Subject tests must be in Social Studies and at least one in a science.</p>
<p>So for students at schools with AP courses, they could enroll in a commensurate college level course for extra skill building before taking the AP test?</p>
<p>(1) So . . . here’s a speculative question. SSU has a class of about 1,000 students. (a) How many kids will it have to accept to fill it (no relying on a waitlist)? (b) Will its 75-25 range on standardized tests be above or below, say, Berkeley or Tufts? I imagine lots of high-stats kids would use it as a safety school (since its admissions will be very predictable), but would ultimately choose to attend almost any other college to which they were accepted (because, like everyone else, they like parties, drama clubs, football games, and meeting diverse people). Assuming they applied, a few ultra-high-stats kids will filter in, but SSU is going to have to go way up the bell curve to find 1,000 kids.</p>
<p>(2) Surely there ought to be some way to factor in scores in national competitions like AIME or the National Latin Test. Maybe some Intel placement conversion number, too. I know we don’t want to miss out on those kids!</p>
<p>(3) Will students know their ranks going in?</p>
<p>(4) Besides MCAT, LSAT, GMAT, GRE, and Engineering, what other majors will be offered?</p>
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<p>Ah, I can see SSU is coming into its own now, and developing its voice.:)</p>
<p>Not Swift again… lol.</p>
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<p>An alternative would be to use the same system used by UK universities like Oxford/Cambridge. UK students basically have to apply to universities before the results of their final A-level exams are known. They include then in their application their predicted exam results, as opposed to their actual grades. Based on the predicted grades, universities may make a ** conditional offer ** of admission, conditioned of course on the applicant’s achieving the predicted exam results when the results become available. In the case of US applicants, conditional offers are routinely made based on expected AP test scores. </p>
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<p>It is pretty straightforward actually. A score of 6 or 7 in an HL (higher level) IB course is normally considered equivalent to a score of 5 in an AP exam or a grade A in a British A-Level (GCE) certificate. </p>
<p>For a discussion on equivalence of different international pre-university qualifications, see [this link](<a href=“Study at Cambridge | University of Cambridge”>Study at Cambridge | University of Cambridge).</p>
<p>bruno123 is correct that it would be possible for a university with a United-States style school year to wait until senior year AP test results are available before making final admission offers. Some other countries test in early July for a school year that starts by late August. </p>
<p>But Hunt’s point is also well taken that a student who has the requisite number of AP tests by the end of junior year is arguably a different student from the one who doesn’t reach that number of AP tests until senior year. I suppose SSU can decide for itself which admission cycle it desires.</p>
<p>Yes, collegemom15, we don’t care what courses they take.
For JHS:
(1) I expect to attract many students who have very high scores, but whose high school grades fail to reflect their actual mastery of the material, probably caused by jealousy on the part of their less-bright teachers. I also don’t know why you would think SSU won’t have vibrant extracurricular activities: I think many of our students will revel in the opportunity to engage in activities, for the first time for many, with students as bright as themselves.
(2) As noted earlier, we are not interested in lopsided students, only those who excel in all areas. Including tests such as those you mention would skew our results.
(3) Yes. In fact, tuition will be adjusted according to rank, with the very highest scorers paying the least.
(4) No majors will be offered. The curriculum will be entirely open, and students (with help from SSU advisors) will be responsible for constructing a curriculim that will prepare them for the next level of standardized tests.</p>
<p>A 6 on an IB HL exam is waaaaaay beyond the 5 level on an AP exam.</p>
<p>My son did SL Latin alongside other students preparing for AP - Vergil. There was no question in my mind that the IB SL curriculum was more rigorous than the AP curriculum.</p>
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<p>There is a HUGE assumption here that students who score high on tests don’t party, act in dramas, play football, or come from diverse backgrounds, but what is the basis for that assumption?</p>
<p>I suppose we could start SSU’s academic year six months after other colleges, and require all senior AP scores to be included. That way we might have success in recruiting students who failed to get into any of their conventional reach schools.</p>
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<p>This should get buy-in from quite a few CC parents.</p>
<p>For the students who need FA, SSU could offer work study jobs through test prep companies like Kaplan and Princeton Review, so that their students can help others become super scores like themselves while simultaneously earning their tuition.</p>
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<p>See the Cambridge link above. SL IB courses are ** not ** normally considered equivalent to AP tests or A-Levels for admission purposes. Oxford also uses [similar criteria](<a href=“http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/courses/courses_and_entrance_requirements/”>http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/courses/courses_and_entrance_requirements/</a>).</p>