Response of the US college counsellor at my daughter’s school to a question on whether a student who achieved a near-perfect score on a standardised test should retake it so that they could (try to) present perfect scores on their college applications.
This counsellor is highly experienced (at least a couple of decades in role) and has helped students gain admission to most top tier US colleges, including HYPSM-Cs. The student in question attends a selective school and possesses a strong academic and extra-curricular record.
I found this advice comforting and wanted to pass it on, although I fully expect some people to disagree with it.
A couple of years ago there was a debate here on CC about this. I think the common wisdom is that once you reach a certain score, you are better off spending your time delving even deeper into the more holistic part of your app - developing your ECs, community involvement etc. I recall some posters pointed out that there are a few schools who prize the perfect score because it helps with their stats for their rankings. If I recall correctly Vanderbilt was one of them, but the Ivies were not. Another point made was that there is a difference between whether that perfect score was achieved in one sitting (so maybe that student has even more brainpower that hasn’t been tested), or whether that student ground away through many tests to get to that score.
For me, I think an interesting point is what score is good enough? My kid just finished her junior year in college, and back when she was in HS, her HS college counselor (who is also highly experienced and successful placing kids) said for the ACTs 34 for top tier and 30 for the next tier.
Yes to all of the above. Some schools do quite detailed mock admin committee sessions. The good ones use profiles of real students from the previous admission cycle who were in the last round- down to the last couple of places, which of these students do we pick? Typically they will do voting after each element is added- GPA, test scores, ECs, LoR, and then at the end they tell you which one made it through, and what the factor was that tipped it. Obviously, these are edited, and they are designed to make a point. But in the end, it is never the SAT/ACT score that is the ultimate decider. @LostInTheShuffle if you get a chance to do one of them, they really are interesting. Tufts was probably the best one we saw, followed by Swarthmore (though funnily enough, none of the Collegekids ended up applying to either school!).
The AOs that I have known directly agree with @melvin123’s CC that there are informal bands, which have soft edges for students with a strong hook.
US AOs don’t. But that may come as a surprise to people in the UK, where famously Oxbridge don’t want “second-rate historians who happen to play the flute” and it doesn’t matter if you “have no friends or hobbies” Oxford hopefuls urged to ditch the flute and work hard - BBC News
As I noted on OP’s other thread, it’s not just admissions, in the US academic perfectionism simply isn’t thought of as a positive attribute in high school or college either. There have been other CC threads about how some US employers don’t want to recruit people with a 4.0 GPA, because they are “excessively focused on academics” and “don’t know how to fail”. I can’t imagine that happening in the UK, where long tail numeracy tests are still extremely common in recruitment.
I’m not understanding – these are AO’s at colleges that do mock admin committee sessions before starting a new cycle?
You mention they are interesting. How would a typical student/parent get to observe something like this? It seems like it would be a real issue to protect people’s privacy.
The sessions are open to potential applicants and their families- you find out about them by going to roadshows or visiting campus, investigating the admissions info.
When real subjects are used they are heavily anonymized- there is no possibility of invasion of privacy. The point in all of these sessions is to show how a committee approaches the decision process. For example, at Swarthmore after the parent group had ‘voted’, the AO pointed out that Swat had just opened a new center in field X and asked if that would change the vote (on CC the example is the famous ‘the orchestra needs a tuba player this year- lucky break for the tuba player, not so much for the oboe player’). The point was that institutional needs and goals also play a role- and are something that is all but impossible for an applicant to parse. The overall goal is to de-mystify the process, and make it clear that it’s not just a matter of ticking boxes.
Tests have gotten easier over the years. My dad missed a single question on the whole math section in the 50s and that resulted in an 800 and an admission to MIT. An 800 was exceedingly rare back then. My son missed one, ironically a careless, easy one, just like my dad, and that was a 760. After 2015, the test got even easier.
This is a longwinded way of saying that on a multi hour test adcoms know that different scores represent a very small, and inconsequential difference in raw score
At the end of the day, this is true. What’s also true is that no one knows from the outside what the AOs do seek to differentiate otherwise fully qualified students that they have too many of to choose from.
Oxbridge also famously considers your school when deciding whether to interview you. They may do a bit better now, but in 2010, when the article came out, kids from high schools serving the wealthy and powerful were much more likely to be interviewed than kid with similar scores on standardized exams who attended high schools which served lower income communities.
So when the Brits talk about “excellent” people, that also historically meant that they come from “excellent” upper class families, live in “excellent” upper class neighborhoods, and attend “excellent” upper class high schools. In short, historically, in the UK, “excellent” can be translated to “upper class”.
Recruitment in the UK also historically follows the same pattern in regards to class:
OP’s D attends one of those “excellent” British high schools. Whether or not OP would agree with your negative perceptions of the UK, the fact is that admissions in the US (and success in school/college more generally) are based on strikingly different criteria, and a disdain for academic perfectionism (with a preference for “interesting” applicants instead) is certainly one of those differences.
That means choosing a US college over a UK university may in fact be better for a kid from the UK who doesn’t thrive in an environment which is very focused on academic competition, just as it may be better for a kid from the UK who is a sports superstar, or a kid who wants a broad rather than deep curriculum.
I think a place to get an idea would be the common data set for the school. It would give you the 25/75 percentile scores. I am of the opinion that the application should be about who the student is and not about how the student can check boxes they think the school wants. It seems that would create a better match all the way around if accepted. It’s probably better to apply with that attitude in the first place. Here I am. Am I what you are looking for?
Some colleges at the very top seem to take pride in publishing statistics on what % of 4.0 UWGPA/1600 SAT candidates were turned down. The quote that started the thread seems to refer directly to that. @LostInTheShuffle: I’m sure you have these kids in your daughter’s selective school… they get 4.0 UWGPA/1600 SAT (or local equivalent) quite easily while they focus on their international math olympiads or another huge and prestigious competition. I don’t think their “perfectionism” doesn’t read well to AOs, it’s the kids focusing all their energies on these two metrics - because that’s all they can hope to excel at - whoset themselves up for disappointment.
Translated: those “overqualified” people are likely to have other more competitive offers, so their yield will be too low and therefore they are not worth the effort to recruit and interview for a less competitive employer.
I suspect the difference is having a centralized admissions process (US) vs department by department. US graduate programs also don’t give a hoot about well-roundedness, and those are handled by the specific department applied to.
Maybe the difference is that US undergrad college is expected to be not just an academic endeavor but a rite of passage? Or a seasoning process on the way to adulthood (some would argue an extension of high school)? That would make the centralized admissions and de-emphasis on pure academics/perfection make sense. Exposure to a carefully crafted community is part of what you are buying, not just advanced schooling. You buy the label of that particular school’s community reputation.
The way the UK system gets that diverse community thing, sort of, is the college one is in while attending, made of of people studying all sorts of different things. In the US the admissions office curates that academic diversity campus-wide, and factors in several extracurricular angles, too.
Actually, if you are trying to maximize donations (happiness of parents and of future alums as well as rich donors) as well as fend off bad publicity. Athletics with their admissions hooks are kept at the FBS programs because winning brings in donations. At the Ivies and Div3, they are kept because alums would raise heck if they are cut while Wall Street likes high-achieving athletes at elite schools. Low-SES and URM get hooks because rich families like diversity (and so do politicians and the general public, in general). World/country-famous achievers and compelling stories make alums feel good about their alma mater (donations).
There are a few elite American privates that deviate from that worldview (present at nearly all Ivies/equivalents) and tend to hold the view that academic prowess and potential trumps all. Caltech. Mudd and MIT to some extent. The old U of C. How many of those schools are/were popular with the billionaire and Hollywood/politicians set?
Note that all those hooks/athletes/diversity also ensures a range of academic ability, meaning the academic environment is not as insanely difficult or stressful or cutthroat as it could potentially be. I reckon most progeny of billionaires/Hollywood/politicians aren’t terribly keen to drink through a firehose (the way Caltech has been described) or deal with the high-stakes stress that exist at Oxbridge. BTW, I don’t know if it is intentional by them, but JHU is a school that seems to value research above all else and may belong with the other schools listed above.
Oh, and a lot of publics are more straightforward with their admissions process for various reasons.
Compared to the US, yes, undergrad in the UK is essentially junior grad school. You’d cover as much ground reading (studying) 1 subject in 3 years at a good English uni as a major+masters (in a non-professsional major) in the US (Scotland is the same except they get an extra year of space to studying other subjects: 4 years of undergrad also makes many more joint honours degrees possible).
At top American math PhD programs, the first year (during the masters phase) is spent getting the American kids up to speed while the European and Asian kids sit in class bored (well, all that TA labor is useful to the uni, and everyone is fully funded with free tuition and a stipend so still a win-win deal for everyone).
Oh, and as for everyone else unhooked, yes, they are looking for you to contribute to the campus and to show the potential to be a standout alum (in some way). Likely to make the college experience better, making the college more attractive to applicants and alums to feel warm fuzzies towards their alma mater (and more donations).