The Fallacies on CC that Won't Stop Being Posted

Parents Forum
81
  1. All NPCs will always be wrong for families that are self-employed or own businesses.

(They were all pretty much spot-on for us, and we both own our own businesses and have no W2 income, and we are neither so rich that we get no FA, nor so poor that we have a zero EFC.)

82

@Sweetbeet - The NPCs are often accurate for business owning families (they mostly were for us too) but it depends on a lot of difficult to predict factors like the type of business or the types of deductions taken. So the warning is still important since these families have no way of knowing which particular NPCs will be accurate.

83

Regarding standardized tests: I posted earlier and @marvin100 posted it again. Colleges do not care if you take your SAT a thousand times. The vast vast vast majority of them consider the highest score. Period. End of story.

84

Not an end to the story: There are circumstances (albeit not applicable to most HS students) where it can be a negative – such as applying to tippy top schools (which describes most student denizens of CC) http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2009/01/16/no-choice-on-scores/

Yale on why they require all scores to be sent

85

Some studies have shown that after 3 attempts, the likelihood of your scores increasing significantly is not great, and you run the risk of them dropping as well… ANd there are other things to do with your time besides taking the tests over and over and over, and in most cases there is more to an application than standardized test scores.

86

@T26e4-As I stated above the vast vast majority don’t care. I didn’t say there weren’t any that don’t care.

@jym626 - That may be true. I did not encourage my kids to take an endless series of standardized tests because I believe they are a enormous waste of time . My son scored very high on one sitting of the ACT. I wish that made him stand out more than the kid who took 3 tries to score 35 but the truth is that it doesn’t.

However, I constantly see posts on CC where kids are worried that colleges will see them as lesser if they see their lower score and then their higher score. The truth is MOST colleges don’t care. A handful do care but most of them just don’t.

87

@DreamSchlDropout
I actually agree with #56. I’m from NJ, and I wouldn’t have been at all thrilled if I had to attend my in-state private safety at the end of it all.

@Marakov29

87...I won't say all of the NJ publics are poor, but there are only two good ones (Rutgers and TCNJ) and one decent one (Rowan). The rest are stonewall average or below...

  1. All regional schools are inferior to all national schools (USNWR) - even if the schools being compared are #16 in the South vs #135 in the nation.
88

More problematic scenarios:

  1. Students do not pay much attention to high college GPA requirements to renew a merit scholarship. (Getting a 3.5 GPA in college is harder than getting a 3.5 GPA in high school.)
  2. Students who need to earn a large merit scholarship to make a school affordable make the reach/match/safety assessment based on admission, when they should really make the assessment based on how selective the scholarship is.
  3. Students do not pay much attention to high college GPA requirements to declare an oversubscribed major if the student enters as an undeclared student or in a different major. (Getting a 3.5 GPA in college is harder than getting a 3.5 GPA in high school.)
  4. Students intending oversubscribed majors make the reach/match/safety assessment based on admission to the school, rather than the more difficult direct admission to the intended oversubscribed major (if offered by the school).
89

Corollary: Students who want to get into a very oversubscribed major by being accepted into the school for a less popular one, then expecting that they will be able to transfer in at a later time.

90

Now we’ve changed from fallacies to prescriptions. This list will be most useful if presented the same way - eg 118 should be “if my scholarship calls for maintaining a 3.5, it will be just as easy for me to get a 3.5 in college as it was in high school.” Or “I can always get into a school by pretending I want a less popular major - once there I can always transfer to the one I want.” Let’s be consistent with the wording of the thread throughout - what are fallacies?

91

@thumper1 It implies your first sentence, but not the second.

@LBad96 Yeah, there are some possible exceptions to #56, particularly tiny states like Rhode Island, but when I hear students from states the size of PA, NY, WA, CO complaining they have to go out of state to get out of their parents’ sphere of influence, I think they are grossly overestimating the size of that sphere.

More:

  1. I can just apply to the least selective major/college at a school and be sure of transferring later to the more selective major/college. (Credit to @NeoDymium for simultaneously and independently arriving at the same corollary of #121)
  2. I'll never go to graduate school, so I can deep into debt to get my undergraduate degree. (The way the job market is going, many of today's undergraduates will end up doing graduate school at some point in their lives.)
  3. I have to major in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering to get into the tech industry.
  4. I can make a sound choice of undergraduate college based on Famous Professors In My Major Who Are There, even if they never teach undergraduates and never take undergraduate research assistants.
  5. The social norm among adults is that if you went to an Ivy, you get to make sure everyone knows it. You name drop your alma mater left and right at cocktail parties.
92
  1. People in other countries overseas have a really good handle on what's prestigious in the US. If they've never heard of it in East Timor, it can't be any good whatsoever. If it were good, they'd know it.
93

It comes and goes with the economy. When times are favorable and there is a larger demand for workers than can be filled, companies become lax on specific requirements. When the economy is tough, stricter degree requirements will be a necessity because there is less recruitment but more risk-aversion.

My prediction in the medium-to-long term is that CS will be widespread enough that most people will be able to do the simple software tasks, and the more difficult tasks will require people with knowledge of the computer science fundamentals.

94
  1. I have a 3.0 GPA but denied at my dream school. I'm going to go to a safety, earn a 4.0 and transfer to my dream school next year.
95
  1. It's impossible for a high-achieving middle-class white kid with no big hooks (no URM, athlete, legacy, celebrity's or big donor's kid, etc.) to get admitted to HYPSM no matter how smart and accomplished they are.

Alternative version: substitute Ivy League for HYPSM.

96
  1. I can't chance myself so you chance me. Then I will chance you.
97

73 is not a fallacy if applicants have very high stats as part of a strong app. that makes them legit contenders for super-selective schools If the stats are mediocre then #73 is indeed fallacy.

98
  1. Should I choose Harvard, Yale, Stanford or Princeton? One of you has attended all four as undergrads, right?
  2. Top schools are filled with cutthroat snobs.
99
  1. There are safety schools in America that are just tripping over themselves to admit international students and give them gobs of financial aid.
  2. The safety schools in #133 are in California and NYC.
  3. And right after the int'l student graduates from this fantasy school, s/he can get job here.
100

Disagree that what can improve a chance is doing something “unique” and doing it big and well. Best chance is to know what they expect and do that well. Guess I’m saying “unique” is a fallacy.