Parents of the HS Class of 2019 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
6001

@Corinthian FYI I KNOW the sat/act are of utmost importance. It might even be the biggest factor at some schools.
It’s at least tied in importance to GPA.

I think the reason these college admissions state that their not the #1 factor is they don’t want to get the kids worked into a frenzy, especially the kids with low to moderate scores. They all said we look at " your whole picture" before making a final decision, and they talked about test optional schools etc. What they didn’t say is that if you apply to a test optional school and have good grades and good EC’s was how they feel about your application without test scores submitted. They probably think you stunk on your tests, otherwise why wouldn’t you submit them.

So that brings up another point, test optional admissions. I’m not buying into that for one minute. I don’t think a kids fate should come down to a standardized test, but they have to come up with some other benchmark then. The vague " we look at your whole picture" thing is a crock.

6002

There are some test-optional schools that are completely committed to it. (A few of them are so committed to it that they don’t even review test scores, in fact.) There are others that are…not so much. My, um, favorites are the ones that will happily let you in without test scores, but will only offer merit aid if you submit them.

6003

@RightCoaster your use of all caps makes me think my post came off the wrong way. I was just trying to say there is a lot of room between test scores being of “utmost importance” and “no one cares” and it depends on someone’s target school. Some schools are more stats driven than others, and @dfbdfb makes a good point that even test optional schools may want or require them for merit aid. I was actually just pointing to my kid’s situation to make the point that a small test score increase will have a significant impact on merit aid at one specific school. She’s very susceptible to stress and I think it’s actually less stressful for her to strive for a 20 point SAT increase than a 0.2 point GPA increase.

6004

How holistic can any app review be when they talk about only spending 7-10 min on each?

6005

There’s a very good reason for standardized tests, and it’s one of the main reasons they are still very important–it’s difficult to compare students from different schools. To take a really simple example, my D19 works a lot harder in her current school district to maintain a 3.8 unweighted than she did in her previous school district to maintain a 4.0. In fact, she literally never studied at all in her previous school.

So if you take two different students from those two school districts, one could assume that the student at D19’s previous school district was a “better” candidate because of a higher GPA. Yeah, if the colleges did a bit of research, they could determine that the current school district is much more rigorous. But with 10 minutes per app, they aren’t going to do so.

6006

You guys need to read The Gatekeepers! (OK I know I already said this but, if you want to see how they evaluate in 10-12 min, this book gives an example.)

The AO in the book was given a card with the main stats of each applicant and it was put on the top of the application. It had school name, location, whether you are an URM, GPA, number of APs, and SAT/ACT scores and any other stats like SAT 2s or AP test info. I know that many schools say they don’t take AP test results into account but I think, with top 50 schools or so, they look at them if you self report them. After he looked at the card, he dove into the app. Now, if those scores and grades were lower, he was looking for something to help the student in the essays and recs. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances or maybe the student is a leader at school or excelled in something else interesting to the school. If the scores were better, he was hoping to find things in the rest of the app that supported what a good catch the student might be. He wanted to know how they would CONTRIBUTE on campus.

He was also charged with looking for things that would help the school accomplish its goals - whether it was females in the sciences, kids from Alaska, first-gen kids, more music kids, etc. All that was already discussed by all AOs and is on their minds when they read. He kept a close eye on the school profile and was told who else from the school was applying so he could see where all of those kids stood in relation to each other. If those kids were from a wealthy school district or private school, he all but expected high SAT/ACT scores. It was a red flag if kids like that had average scores. At the end, he had to circle one of four things on his paperwork - Admit, Admit Minus, Deny Plus, or Deny. Then, the app was sent to a second reader who would not see his comments. (Admit Minus and Deny Plus were ways to say he was leaning a certain way but wasn’t 100 percent sure.) If the second reader ended up agreeing on the Admit or Deny, then that app was done. Otherwise, it went to committee.

(This particular AO seemed to be admitting more than his fair share in the first few weeks so he felt pressure to admit fewer kids in his pile as the reading weeks went by. That is scary. Your child’s fate may depend on when the app is plucked off of the pile and who reads it.)

At the committee, they looked at the Admit Minus kids first. At that point, they had a pool of Admit kids and knew what they were still looking for in the class. They would go through those kids and each of the two readers would defend why they decided what they did. The committee could ask questions and then they voted. It happened quickly. At least at Wesleyan during this year, there were a lot of waitlisted kids and it seemed like that’s where kids went when the committee just couldn’t agree. Ties were all sent to waitlist. There was no extra discussion to try to decide on Admit vs. Deny. So easy to waitlist.

Now, Wesleyan is pretty small but they had 9,000 apps that year. The author makes it sound like other schools up to 15,000 apps still did this about the same way.

At the very end, and get this, some of the AOs would be disappointed about one of the kids in their territory being denied and they would sometimes go to the head of admissions and ask for her to reevaluate the candidate and then give her more insight. Sometimes, they would be asked to pick two kids that they would be willing to take off of the Admit list to get their student on. Yikes.

6007

Too late to edit but one more important thing about SAT/ACT scores. The average accepted student SAT/ACT scores are calculated after the ED round. Those averages are given to the AOs for RD and, if they are lower than last year, then the AOs need to be very particular when they admit kids with lower scores in RD and they need to seek out the kids with higher scores to make sure that average for the overall admits is the same or higher than last year. It sounded like that average was done after ED and then again after the first kids got in RD. By the time they went to committee, they were shooting to get the SAT/ACT scores where they need them to be.

6008

Yes, it’s a great book. But bear in mind that the book is 15 years old and the process didn’t involve any technology. I’m sure a LOT has changed in that regard.

6009

@Gatormama yes. I’m sure that is true but some schools still insist that they read every app and this is just one way a school accomplishes having holistic admissions.

6010

Speaking of standardized tests, good luck to all of your kids taking the ACT tomorrow. Hopefully, this will be the last time D19 has to take it.

6011

Many of the most selective schools do exactly that. They know which high schools have grade inflation and which do not. They may have their own internal high school ranking 1-5 that they assign to schools. I have heard Admissions officers say, ‘we know that and A from your school really means an A’. That leads me to believe that many colleges do distinguish between high schools

6012

yeah, and that’s when the school profile that each HS has – and the guidance counselor written reports that I don’t know anything about but I know they do – become quite important. Also, previous students from your school set the tone for your school’s rigor (or lack thereof).

6013

good luck to ACT test takers tomorrow!

I would’ve liked son19 to have this test, but his track team has a big regional meet all day tomorrow. He took the ACT once and he didn’t love the format, but he did OK. He’d probably do better on it with more tries. But he may just stick with SAT from here on out.

6014

@homerdog Thanks for writing all that out! I read the daunting 8 minute article in the WSJ, and your posts actually made me feel better about it. D doesn’t have a hook, and isn’t “angular”. But she doesn’t have a dream school, and her stats are solid. I feel like something about her application will be what they are looking for at some academically strong college on the east coast . . . :slight_smile:

6015

DD looked through a math test tonight while watching Opening Ceremonies. Centers to the east and south have cancelled and it’s snowing (lightly) here. She’s feeling ready so praying she can just get it done tomorrow.

6016

D19’s doing some last-minute ACT-science-section review. (It’s easily her weakest area, which annoys her STEM-kid self.) No worries on cancellations here, barring the remote but always real possibility of an epic earthquake, so hopefully she’s good to go by the morning.

6017

I am at the ACT test site, waiting on the kid. Man, what a long morning for them! The kids who are taking the test without essay just left. None of them were crying so I guess the test went ok…?

6018

Ours went on. I checked the site at 3:30 am and kept refreshing it from 6:00-7:00. The plow had gone over the gravel, the interstate was decent, the highways were snow packed. I was glad DH came with and drove. DD feels good about the test. She had to guess on 4 or 5 math problems at the end because time was up but felt she knew most of the rest.

6019

Kiddo feels guardedly confident that he scored well but not spectacularly well.

He also let slip that he met a cute girl who is homeschooled and attends classes at the community college where the test center was. I am biting my tongue to stop from asking more questions about this girl.

6020

Oh and DD said her group took some sample tests at the end (questions they are thinking about putting on future tests perhaps?) so she came out about a half hour after we saw the first kids come out to the parking lot. Hers was Science and about 16 questions.