So their data suggested it didn’t really matter in terms of odds of admission. This is consistent with what their Dean implied in a podcast, which is that once you are past the initial screen, they really don’t consider test scores again, just the transcript.
So if your transcript alone gets you past the initial screen, it would make sense they just then stop speculating about why no test score.
I was also very deficient in self-advocacy skills for a long time. After becoming a lawyer and a parent (around the same time) that was finally cured, but it is such a big advantage when you get there.
That makes sense and I’m happy to hear that the data bears out. Unfortunately I think this thinking may persist unless they go out of their way to point this out.
Since even the students with the lowest reported SAT scores were finishing their first year with a GPA of close to 3.2, I would say that it really isn’t a problem.
If kids who apply with an SAT of 1200 are still able to pass their first year with a B average, that indicates that a 1200 is high enough to succeed. And a 3.4+ GPA for non-reporters seems OK as well.
Since when is it required to finish the first year with a GPA that is higher than a B in order to be considered “successful”?
Again, though, there is only 22% explained variance, and I do not know what distribution the variances around these mean GPAs is.
Moreover, GPAs are themselves averages, so those points, which are made to look like single data points, are actually averages of averages. The explained variance is likely even lower.
Ive heard AOs say that they can figure out all they need to know about an applicant without test scores. I’m sure some can.
I applaud the Dartmouth AOs for saying they can’t. Worse, the kids they wanted DID apply, but chose not to provide scores and were missed by the AOs. People regularly complain here that high school students should not be decoding when to submit scores. Dartmouth agrees with them for their institution.
Because you’re using the wrong metric, IMO, to gauge success. As you point out, a B-ish average is “fine.” Except it’s not nearly the end of the story. One kid may scratch and kick to the B, another could coast. And still another might hit the ground running and work hard but get an A. Did they all have the same experience? Are they equally ready for what comes next? Did they find a mentor in a prof? Do research with another? Stretch themselves via course selection to explore new and challenging subject areas? Have spare time for clubs, sports, or other forms of community engagement and becoming “a part of?”
I find using “GPA” as a measure of success in college about as useful as “salary X years out of school,” which is to say, not particularly.
That sounds like the First-Year Summer Enrichment program, which started in 2009. The description makes it sounds like the emphasis is on developing sense of community, networks, and mentorship opportunities for first gen, low income students who are transitioning to a new environment; rather than a focus on academic preparation.
You might also be thinking of Prepare to Launch, which is a recent addition, but occurs on campus, rather than summer. It is “a new initiative designed to prepare first-generation Dartmouth College scholars to navigate career, life, and scholarship during and after Dartmouth.” Again, it doesn’t sound like it focuses on academic preparation.
ETA: I had a mildly parallel experience with CS as you did with physics. I’d gotten a 4 on the AP CS test, which nominally placed me into CS10 as opposed to CS5 or whatever the nomenclature was. I was not ready, and it was the last CS course I took.
I also took the most rigorous CS option and had the opposite experience as the physics class I mentioned earlier. CS just clicked for me, and I had a decent background in CS, having taken AP CS in HS and having done programming on the side outside of classes. I won the final project competition in my year, and used the professor for a recommendation when I applied for first job after college.
Duke did a study awhile back that reviewed what admission criteria was most correlated with sticking with a math-heavy major, such as engineering or physics. With full controls, the study found the most predictive variables were harshness of grading in specific Duke classes and gender. I can see the latter having to do with women being in the minority, lack of role models, facing negative discrimination in class, etc. Programs like the Dartmouth ones mentioned above could potentially assist with this, if they targeted women in engineering/physics/math/… and helped develop a better sense of community/networks/mentorship… Among admission criteria, the most predictive section with full controls was not SAT or HS GPA – it was HS curriculum. Kids who had a more rigorous HS curriculum were more likely to stick with the math-heavy major.
Yes that’s it! And the program as described at the session we attended talked a lot about things like time management, self-advocacy, etc. The kind of stuff that’s not technically “academic” but is critical for a successful career both in school and out.
I know some folks on CC only think that STEM achievement is worth talking about- but I’ll describe my cohort in Classics.
By the end (senior year) virtually everyone had a similar GPA. Folks who couldn’t cut it dropped off and found other majors by the beginning of junior year. Nobody had a 4.0. You simply couldn’t make it through the junior and senior seminars with all A’s. And the research requirements-- so fluency in either Latin, Greek (or both) AND French or German for secondary sources-- that was a huge time sink and a slog. And if your interests were in the origins of Christianity or anything first century AD- add Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew to your docket.
So more or less the same in terms of college GPA.
But nobody confused the kids at the top of the pack with everyone else. These were the kids who were being tapped for the top doctorate programs, being funded for a summer or semester in Rome or Athens, editing a professors book AND doing the indexing and fact-checking alongside grad students for a different professor and his/her book. These were the kids (less than a handful) who were doing interdisciplinary work with grad students in Art History and being asked to moderate panels and symposia when visiting scholars showed up.
That wasn’t me. In case you think this is a brag-a-thon. And when I walked in to my advisor’s office to ask for a recommendation for grad school he gave a little groan (and we were on VERY good terms) and said “Are you sure?”
So GPA in college? Sure, everyone has one. But it’s hardly the marker for who are the academic superstars and the other solid students. And apparently grad schools didn’t care. There were three or four faculty members and if they picked up the phone for you- you were in whether you had a 3.7 or a 3.2. And if they groaned… like mine did… you went off and got a job, then went to B-school, and the world of academia was spared a “not good enough for primetime” PhD like I likely would have become.
This is an interesting one to me. So in my HS our computer classroom had 1 computer for every 3+ kids in the class. We had to take turns actually sitting at the keyboard and coding, and the lab was not available outside of classroom hours (terrific!) And I did not have a computer at home on which to otherwise practice.
As a result, though I got pretty good at the concepts and could map out in plain English how I’d structure a program, I was horrendous at syntax because I had very little time in practice to get the necessary feedback (a program not actually running!)
So on the AP test I got that 4, and actually didn’t especially bother to write out the code so much as describe the program in plain English. So it was enough to get me to place up in CS. But boy was that the wrong thing for me. And of course I was not equipped to otherwise raise my hand and ask to be dropped to the more appropriate level.
And this relates to my comment above about not all B’s being created equally.
Thank you! I understand why people get stuck on GPA. It’s a pretty simple shorthand and on the surface seems easy to compare one to the next. Not unlike SAT scores!
But it’s interesting to me that some people here on CC are so ready to parse the nuance of holistic admissions, and how not all HS are equal, and thus not all HS GPAs are equal, yet seem all too willing to just ignore the potentially dramatic differences that may underlie the same GPA at the same college, even for two kids having taken the exact same courses.
This is our current public high school. For 9 weeks we have been dealing with the school over a new teacher who started in the district mid quarter, and began by failing every kid in the class (avg grade of 40). Many emails, weighted bubble graphs (analyst at heart) and in person meetings later, the principal came back with an answer to our request for a change - there are 4 easy solutions we proposed, none of which impacted the union teacher, but the principal refused all options. As private sector people, we are gobsmacked. Kids self-advocated using all available paths until parents (multiple families) got involved. At one point I said we are having this discussion only because we are sitting in a government building. I can’t see this happening at the local private schools, esp as the Principal stated that his job was to protect his teachers.
What exactly have we taught (public school) kids here? To sit down, shut up, and take it. It teaches zero agency over one’s choices. So, how do these kids now go off to college? As a seasoned professional, I would not put trust in the current school authorities, why should any kid do so? Will kids suddenly seek help and advocate for themselves at college? Is this railroading also done on the college level, and are public universities more of the same? Finally, schools like Dartmouth have largely pulled from private schools, and perhaps they are well reasoned to do so.
I agree with this. I went to a terrible high school and never even took pre-calc. The farthest Math I went up to is Algebra II without Trig, and that class was a complete disaster. Teacher didn’t know what she was doing and the students were disruptive.
On the SAT, I scored an 800 on the Math section. The SAT correctly identified me as quantitatively gifted, but if you had placed me in a class of MIT freshmen who didn’t need remedial math, I would’ve been slaughtered. I went to a good university (Non-Ivy) and majored in Math after retaking college-level Algebra. There is nothing wrong with going to a lesser-ranked college and going at a pace and rigor more suitable to your current skill-level.
That said, I can vouch that if you can’t even get a 750 on the SAT Math section, you have no business being in a top STEM school. The SAT Math only tests basic Math and problem-solving aptitude. Any top STEM student should easily ace that section without any issue.
Agreed, but when admin and trustees (or state boards) are setting testing policy they are looking at data in the aggregate, not at the individual level.
I was sort of the opposite side of that coin in my humanities field. I started college in a science where I was not particularly remarkable (not after the easy stuff at least), then switched junior year. But I was really good at the new thing. As a result my general GPA was very meh before I switched, and still like meh+ by graduation. But I also graduated with honors in my major, crushed the GRE, and got support from my college department for top PhD programs, ultimately going to the absolute best program for my interests in like the world.
And later became a lawyer after I basically burned out on academia, but that is a different story.
Point being, though, you are completely right that not all GPAs are the same, and actually in my case my GPA as of the end of my first couple years was not at all indicative of what was in store for me by the time I graduated.
Well sure they are and rightly so! But as much as we’re here discussing a testing policy, people come to CC by and large because they are applying to college, not setting policy. And thank the maker for that
Someone above mentioned that test scores don’t predict GPA after first-year or something of that nature. I think the explanation to that is fairly obvious. The reason why the Dartmouth study authors only looked at first-year GPA is that students self-sort themselves into ‘harder’ or ‘easier’ majors after the first-year, where students are forced to take the same base courses. That is to say, if you want to see how certain metrics predict student performance in college, you should only look at the first year and not the whole 4 years.
That makes sense: we’re talking about one school that puts most of its eggs into the Humanities/Social Sciences basket – essentially a U/LAC hybrid – while the other is almost exclusively STEM-oriented. There is likely very little overlap between the applicants and admits to these two very different schools.
I’ll take your word for it and assume this is true. The issue, however, isn’t about attracting talented people. If that were the case, all Ivies would only recruit from select few high schools. Top colleges want talented people of all backgrounds, which means they have to look in places they might not be familiar in. That’s where the value of the SAT comes in.
