I’d be willing to bet there’s a strong correlation between their kid’s score and their personal beliefs. Strong scorers are team Venn diagram. Mediocre/low scorers are team disjoint sets.
Finally, you say it. That was important.
There are creative students who are excellent in math. There are creative students who are terrible in math. You want them to be treated as equals by Stanford and Princeton. Stanford and Princeton disagree. This is upsetting to you and you feel it is unfair.
My concern is that students who are gifted but, not in math, are being adversely impacted by SAT requirements.
No one is being adversely affected by SAT requirements. Students are going where they belong.
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The irony here is that there was a time when SATs and other standardized tests were being touted as a boon for bright, hard working minority or underpriveleged students because the tests provided an objective measure of their academic qualifications. Students who didn’t have the benefits of legacy parents, money for expensive activities, or fancy private high schools could demonstrate to colleges that they were prepared.
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But this is College Confidential, the Lake Wobegon of the internet! All the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. There are no low scorers here!
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Top notch violin player, and, if he were growing up today, he would have certainly participated in all of the different math and science competitions and would likely have had a long string of competition awards.
So he would have almost certainly done very well in holistic admissions.
He also hated regimented thinking and would probably not done so well on the standardized testing. His specialty was creative ways of thinking of solutions, and would not have done well on tests like the SATs which award cookie-cutter solutions. Well, the math is far lower level that what he was doing, so he probably would have gotten 800, but the language part may have been more of a challenge. So he could easily have gotten 800 Math and 700 language, which would not have put him in the top scorers these days.
Considering that he also had issues with his high school teachers, his grades in subjects other than math and science would also not have been that high, so it would be unlikely that his GPA with have been maybe in the mid 3.8 range.
So here we would have had a students with a long list of top math awards, probably music awards, possibly even a publication, but with a GPA of 3.87 and an SAT of 1500.
So no, he would have done far better in holistic admissions than if he were being evaluated based on very standardized measures which penalize original and atypical ways of solving problems.
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The question isn’t what he could have done differently to boost his application, but would he be admitted in the US today, and that is less clear. Not an award winning musician. No math Competition ( less common in those days, still not as popular today in Europe). No real “adversity/ low income hook”. An over represented demographic. Demonstrated exceptionally strong math ability is his only real strength. Not great odds at US T10. Might get in, might not.
I am glad that universities like Oxbridge and ETH Zurich exist where such a talent is clearly recognized.
The SAT certainly does not penalize original/atypical ways of solving problems-it doesn’t require any original thinking. It is a very basic test of foundational skills, particularly in math. There really aren’t original ways of solving fraction addition or basic reading comprehension.
I don’t really care what private schools do, but let’s not pretend that those who can’t demonstrate basic literacy and numeracy are somehow engaged in “atypical” thinking.
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Ha! Wait 'til I start posting about my second son applying to forestry schools.
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Please explain for community appreciation.
Note that SAT is far from a perfect measure of where kids “belong”. For example, one of the studies linked earlier in the thread found SAT score explained 4% of variance in graduation rate. That’s statistically significant, but the other 96% is explained by other things besides SAT. Similarly the previously noted UC task force study found that math SAT explained 7% of within course GPA in engineering classes. Again statistically significant, but there is a much larger 93% of variance explained by other things. I could continue. There are many kids for which SAT score is not a good measure of “where they belong.”
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Is there really that much a difference between a 1500 SAT kid and a 1200 kid? These has always baffled me that such “important” admissions are based on that distinction.
Why does this baffle you?
If the kids are typical, then the biggest difference between the kids may be socioeconomic. Rich kids (top 1%) are 13x more likely than poor kids (lowest 20%) to score 1300+. As the score increases so does the disparity, and the differences are even more pronounced if we consider that most low SES kids don’t even bother to take the test.
Could you please? Those are fun.
ETA: Never mind. I was thinking of Rorschach diagrams.
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This is not true, though. Elite universities (ivy/plus) accept kids, unhooked, all the time who are literary geniuses who have less than a 750 math (close to pre-covid median at many top schools). I know many humanities majors, highly intuitive thinkers with creative minds, who got in with less than a 750 math. Some had crazy high verbal scores, OR other evidence of non-stem academic strengths. AND some of them are literary geniuses who also happen to have an 800 math.
Both of my kids are artistic and highly creative, AND scored well. One is a humanities kid who can analyze history well and was called the best in over a decade by one of her humanities HS teachers–and based on her reports, the majority of kids at her college are on a similar level, making for many profound in- class discussions. My Engineering kid (who was tops in all subjects in HS, humanities too) reports more than half of her Engineering peers have skills in the arts fields, including her, and the academic work even in STEM does require intellectual creativity and yes, artistry at times. It is not a coincidence that the majority who attend have both the stem prowess plus the creative side.
I agree with posters that there are pockets of CC that seem to act as though pure math smarts is the “better” kind of smarts. That is ridiculous, of course.
I also agree with posters who have noted the trend on CC to frame kids with top SATs/ a wall of 5s in APs as non-creative robots. This is also ridiculous. Neither of my kids has ever met one of these “robots” who “lack creativity”–instead they have met amazing intellectual kids who are dynamic and creative thinkers, regardless of their actual academic focus.
The colleges that have reinstated the SAT have stated their data for doing it, some saying higher scorers do better at their college. But are we really concerned that a “bad” test taker with a 1300 but yet a music or visual arts genius is rejected from all the ivy/+ and that is somehow not fair? Despite there being 100s of colleges, and likely some top art conservatories, that would be happy to take that kid?
They ivy/+ curriculum and education is not a good fit for many kids. Why do posters begrudge these schools for admitting they need the scores as part of the process to help figure out who to admit?
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As a former pell grant poor kid who scored 99th%ile, then attended college and then med school with many other poor kids who were of similar smarts (and married a slightly less poor high scoring first gen), these kind of comments really irk me. Yes there are real SES disadvantages. I know that. But there also many many gifted disadvantaged students who score high with minimal prep.
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Wow. I’m just impressed you personally know so many “literary geniuses.” Plus you know they’re exact SAT breakdowns? I’m doubly impressed.
I’m not sure this is a representative sample.
Couldn’t we say the same about high scorers who think (probably erroneously) that they didn’t get in to any Ivy’s because of TO?
As I said, more than half their college peers are the same. It is a very common combination at their colleges, even though they are in different academic areas for the major.
I’m not sure that is a representative sample either. For one thing, IIRC your kids attended a HS where the SAT scores are inordinately high. In my opinion, this isn’t because they are all double “geniuses” in math and creativity, but rather it is more readily explained by SES factors. After all, the most predictive factor for college success is the name of the High School, and I don’t think it makes sense to assume that kids coming from such schools are a representative.
Plus, offering your personal anecdotes as if they are fact doesn’t really provide a sound basis for discussion for what I assume are obvious reasons.