Suprise Acceptance Stories?

calmom
Sun, 02 Dec 2007 03:41:49 +0000

JohnC, I don’t understand your question. My d was an A student in high school and her college GPA is slightly lower than her high school GPA. She doesn’t test well on SATs but did fine on AP exams, which I think are more reflective of the ability to do college level work.

Ivy League & many elite colleges are notorious for grade inflation, so it is not particularly surprising that once she figured out what was expected she would earn A’s. I have read most of my daughter’s papers and even sat in on a review session for one of her classes so I have an idea of what she has done to get an A. I am proud of her and think she has done good work, but I don’t think it is amazing or would require someone to be brilliant – it just requires a good understanding of the underlying material, which means basically doing the reading and showing up regularly to class.

I know that there are a lot of people on these boards that – both students and parents – who think that having a score of 1500 means the person is inherently smarter than someone with a score of 1200 – but that just isn’t the case. SATs are not valid as an IQ score; as briansteffy correctly noted, and validity they may have had as a an aptitude test is undermined by the practice of studying for and retaking the test; and the tests aren’t a good measure of the foundational high school curriculum appropriate for most college courses. Basically the tests are used as a quick & dirty way for highly selective colleges to weed through a mass of applicants, and they also help keep the “elite” elite by preventing too many of the hoi polloi from qualifying simply because of the income and class bias built into the test.

The most significant predictor of success in college is simply motivation. The students who try harder will tend to do better over time. But there is no objective way to test for motivation – though I am sure that in my daughter’s case, her recs and essay were important factors in getting that message across.