This all nuance and as discussed previously not how admissions use them.
The question is would you rather have:
Student A: 4.0 GPA, 1200 SAT or
Student B: 3.9 GPA, 1600 SAT
?
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I’ve placed this thread in slow mode while I review and cleanup posts that do not meet ToS.
Might I remind members of the forum rules: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others."
and
“College Confidential forums exist to discuss college admission and other topics of interest. It is not a place for contentious debate. If you find yourself repeating talking points, it might be time to step away and do something else… If a thread starts to get heated, it might be closed or heavily moderated.”
very well written, thank you.
I realize that many folks do consider SAT as a measure of talent or intelligence, but since I never have…
And I agree with yoru second issue, in part. The SAT goes beyond just mastery of material: it adds (or used to) critical thinking (aka 'reasoning skills), something that is short supply in K12. Heck, it’s not in much higher supply in college. (The first year of law school is all about 'thinking like a lawyer" which mostly means gaining the critical thinking skills that you haven’t yet learned). The ACT is less reasoning but more speed, i.e., processing power. I like think of it as a computer RAM: 16 MB processes faster than 8 MB. Someone with 32 MB (or more) is gonna blow thru the ACT science section with ease. OTOH, someone could have hours on teh SAT and not be able to solve the classic: 'if a train leaves Chicago going east at the same time a train leaves Clevelend going west… And thanks to a historic poster, Xiggi, the solution is easy.
That’s not how the colleges that have been discussed in this thread make admission decisions. It could be more like below, in which case I’d expect student A would be favored over student B.
Student A: Prospective history major – Straight A’s in all classes in a HS where average GPA is 3.0 and nobody else had straight As (valedictorian) . Full AP schedule during junior and senior year, including APUSH (5 on AP history exam, 5s on most other APs). Dual enrollment in some college classes, with straight A’s State ranked in Citizen Bee and other history competitions. Started history club in HS that inspires young persons to get in to history via Hamilton play discussion. Varsity athlete, team captain, and potential walk-on. Glowing LORs from all teachers, including history LOR. Incredible essays discussing how they developed a passion for history through overcoming challenging family event. Scored 700 EBRW and 500 math, on SAT. First gen, low income.
Student B: Prospective computer science major – A’s in almost all classes, including all of freshmen/sophomore year of HS. >10% of HS class had 4.0, so not in top 10% of HS class. Only took 2 AP classes – calculus and chemistry, received B’s in both and 3 on AP exam. Did not take any CS classes in HS or pursue any CS-related ECs. Main EC was participating in a juggling club during HS. Generic LORs and essays that do not stand out. Interviewer notes that he wants to go to the college because it’s a “good school” and wants to major in the competitive CS major because he heard it pays a lot. Scored 1600 SAT.
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Have they given a general definition of “less advantaged”? Is it demographics based or family asset based?
Don’t believe the determination is binary but is part of the holistic evaluation. It is clear they use College Board’s Landscape, info on the high school, and career and educational level of parents. Since FA and admissions have a “chinese wall”, the AO would not have access to parent asset data.
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Agreed, but Landscape has median family income at the census tract level.
Interesting, I didn’t know that they didn’t have access to FA data. Although the hypothetical example someone posted above (Preference to be given to Student A with 1200 SAT, low income, best in a HS with lower academic standards vs. Student B with 1600 SAT from presumably upper middle class family and more competitive HS) implies that they know family wealth status. Or would they infer “less advantaged” by what area the HS is in?
Random aside, but we live in a census tract where that could be pretty far off, either way. I suspect other things like our education and jobs can help correct for that, but I do wonder sometimes if proxies don’t get it right in material ways.
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Need blind colleges typically must have some sort of wall like that. But there is an active lawsuit alleging those walls were often circumvented in practice.
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Agreed. Census tracts do have a wide population range too, ~1,200 to 8,000.
ETA: adding CB landscape methodology if @Strannik or anyone else is interested. Many of the more selective schools use this.https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/landscape/comprehensive-data-methodology-overview.pdf
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There is lots info that schools can use, like your address, high school, and jobs, to figure out your ability to pay or more importantly what you are willing to do. Middle income families often get hurt the most in this equation. Schools know that for these families the amount of aid offered will be less than these families hope. Therefore, these families tend to look at schools with more generous aid packages or lower cost schools. Schools are concerned with yield. It’s important to their rankings. Therefore, middle income families tend to get rejected.
As @Mwfan1921 notes, Landscape will give them a good idea of at least income. They might also look at home address zip code. Other indicias are the high school profile, parent employment and education level, including school(s) they graduated from. I also suspect lower SES students will also have EC’s (e.g. jobs, taking care of family members) and essays that make their SES status clearer.
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Thanks, I always had a feeling that moving to a wealthy suburb would come back and bite me at one point 
I am less concerned with aid than having lower chances of getting admitted - other things being equal - if one comes from a family that they may consider “advantaged”
It’s not the chance of aid but rather the perception by need blind schools that middle income families tend to reject an offer because they won’t receive enough aid. These schools are concerned about rank and yield is a factor in ranking. Therefore, these schools tend to reject middle income families merely because they assume these families will reject them.
I note this premise is not true as to the most popular rankings, the US News:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
Off hand I am not actually aware of any college ranking using yield, although there are many out there so maybe I just do not know about it.
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I don’t think this is necessarily true, do you have a link to any supporting data? I will note that plenty of middle income families qualify for partial pell grants.
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I’m trying to find it. It was something I read several months back. Take it for what it is worth.
So it might be worth looking back again at the Dartmouth data released:
As usual, for a given high score, applicants they classified as disadvantaged had a higher admit rate. However, applicants they classified as advantaged were much more likely to have high scores.
So in the end, there was about a 6:1 ratio of advantaged enrollees to disadvantaged.
OK, so if you are advantaged in the real world, but imagine instead you had all the same test scores, grades, rigor, and other qualifications, but were disadvantaged, you would likely have a better chance of admission to Dartmouth.
But that is a meaningless hypothetical, because very likely if you had been disadvantaged instead, you would not have had all the same test scores, grades, rigor, and other qualifications.
Of course some people do not want to accept that conclusion, they want to believe everything would have been the same by the time they applied to college no matter what their circumstances. But we know that simply is not a realistic belief.
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