We practice music and sports for at least 38 hrs each week around here so the kids aren’t that special as they need about 76hrs of tutoring on average… (I’m kidding of course, but my DD does about 1hr of music each day plus 2.5hr lesson/wk)
Your numbers for tutoring costs, and advertised test score targets look similar to what it is here. Certainly most people do not do the 20hrs of tutoring here though. A summer course, everyday, lasting over a month sounds unlike what we do here.
I guess that is my observation related to my area: the percentage of students that prep is higher here than average (my wild guess is 60-70%), but the amount of time they put is about 24-30hrs including sessions (ours was around 9-10 hrs), practice tests (2-3), and study. (Ok, that would be a bit heavy for instrumental practice although we’ve had weeks like that, but not too far off for a school sport). Anyway, it’s a small sample size so take it for what it is. There are some that try to shoot the moon, but they’d be the ones that are starting out at 1450+ so don’t need to grind it too long. (there are school districts that are more into it than ours so perhaps it’s worse there).
Are you saying these students shouldn’t be able to attend college based on inadequate math instruction or offerings, and/or below average SAT scores? You do seem to be limiting your posts to students having problems in college math, so I am sticking with that too. Not all college majors require math beyond algebra.
Plenty of data indicate students with low math SATs can graduate from college, be gainfully employed, and contribute to society.
Just to be clear, I am NOT saying everyone should go to college…there are alternatives. And we are seeing that right now, with the numbers of males choosing college dropping off significantly. Which isn’t what I would choose, given a choice. But that’s for another thread.
Editing based on source post edit:
It seems you don’t have a good understanding of high school curricula, especially at underfunded schools. Many students don’t make it to Algebra II until senior year, if at all.
Then, there are students who in fact have taken these classes but their teachers had an ACT score of 18 in math…point being not all students are getting good instruction even if they take a given class.
Are you saying these students shouldn’t be able to go to college?
Speculation only regarding Bowdoin but I suspect that at these levels rigor is often used as a proxy for scores. I had a conversation with an AO liaison to an athletic team at one of the C5 (so opposite coast) that was revealing in terms of their view. It went along the lines of “we like test scores but we need rigor. And, rigor means AP classes. Honors classes are suspect from some areas of the country and all 4.0s aren’t equal.” I took this to mean that they liked test scores as confirmatory but they were comfortable that they could make a solid call on a student as long as they saw high performance with high rigor in their transcript.
I cannot say that all schools feel this way but the specificity of their comments was interesting.
“Latting said Emory’s admissions office has retooled its rankings system for applicants, formally incorporating nontraditional measures such as creative output and educational opportunity for the first time this year. They’re also weighing “external assessment” more heavily than GPA, with a particular focus on AP scores.”
Isn’t this open to the same accusations that it restricts access? In fact, compared to the SAT, it seems much worse to (perhaps silently) require AP classes, especially if they look at sophomore/junior year AP exam scores, since the outcomes are far more dependent on the standard of teaching, and you can’t simply self-study an entire poorly taught AP class syllabus with Khan Academy.
And if these schools drop those standards for disadvantaged students who don’t have access to AP classes, they are guaranteeing that any of those students they admit will be much less prepared than the privileged, well taught students with lots of high AP exam scores.
In addition, AP exams are expensive, now $98 for a single exam (vs SAT, which is $55). While some high schools might pay for the fees, I suspect most do not. Edit, apparently low income students may be eligible for a fee reduction that takes the price down to $53 per exam.
What is interesting to me about Emory’s statement is the comparative value, external assessment (presumably scores of all types) being weighed “more heavily” than GPA. Maybe the Emory person didn’t intend to be that explicit, but that jumped out to me.
Yes, I believe you are completely correct. APs remove the dark history of the SAT, are much more content driven, are more advanced, are more similar to international exams used for college entrance… but ultimately even more discriminatory in terms of access for the reasons you cited. And yet more schools need to take this path (UCLA, UCB, Emory, and now apparently C5) because of some informational void in the application. So are we improving things by taking this path or is the SAT/ACT path the lesser of two weevils?
My take on the article is that they’d much prefer to have scores and that GPAs are basically useless as they stand now. FWIW I know our LPS assigned As to everyone in spring 2020, They are also reteaching Algebra concepts in Calc and the kids are getting As because they are being tested accordingly.
Isn’t this basically what MIT was getting at?
FWIW don’t think they are concerned with volume, but they want to see that an A in an AP Class translates to a 5 on the test. Personally I don’t understand why schools supposedly do not care about AP scores. At our school kids sweat for an A-, but virtually everyone gets a 4 or a 5.
I think they meant exactly what they said. If you read the article, they get into the fact that they are finding GPA to be virtually meaningless post COVID because it does not reflect gaps in knowledge.
Well, I can’t speak for them, and don’t want to put words in their mouth.
I have every confidence that the AOs at many less selective schools like the one yikkblue works at can adequately select students. IMO it’s ok if a student is accepted to engineering, finds out they can’t cut it in their first math class (or whatever class), and moves into a better fit major. That’s not all that problematic.
I am sure many on this thread would not think an Ivy is a good fit for a student with a math ACT of 20, yet I personally know some students with scores in that neighborhood and they are doing just fine in non-STEM majors. And the AOs knew that would likely be the case.
Schools mostly seem to care about students getting a “passing” score of 3+ since that is often listed in the profile they report externally.
I’ve seen lots of advice on CC threads not to report AP scores if they aren’t all 4 or 5. Are we getting to the point where going AP score optional will look just as bad as going SAT optional for privileged students? That would suggest those students will need to pick sophomore and junior year AP courses quite carefully (saving the hardest ones for senior year?). This is also an inherent problem with using AP scores for admissions: most students take nearly half of their total APs in senior year where the scores aren’t known before admissions decisions are made.
I don’t think the portion I bolded is true if the scores are considered within the context of what the school offers. The UCs, for example, have detailed information available from every high school in the state, so they know what AP courses (and what honors courses) are offered (along with quite a bit more information), how kids have performed from those schools, etc. So they have a good idea of what a certain score AP score means in the context of a particular high school. So reliance on the APs (where offered) makes much more sense to me because at least the students have supposedly covered roughly the same material, and we have some idea what the results of the test mean. And there are no fantasies about the APs being an aptitude or IQ test.
Friedman seems to be committing the same error here as does Leonhardt. Getting a 4.0 may not mean much by itself, but in context, and when used with other factors, it may mean a whole lot. Focusing on raw gpa alone misses all of this. Vigdor addresses this in the same article . . .
Jacob Vigdor, a professor of public policy at the University of Washington, teaches a class on statistics and quantitative methods. Each week, he brings his students a news story in which data are exploited to support a foregone conclusion; last week his example was Leonhardt’s piece.
“Quantitative data is often brought to rhetorical arguments for the same reason children’s books have illustrations: to make the author’s point,” he said.
Vigdor said it’s nonsensical to compare test scores and GPAs one on one when in reality they are pieces of an increasingly varied puzzle of admission considerations.
“If the question at hand is ‘If colleges can only base their admissions decisions on one thing, what should that thing be?’ then sure, the data shows test scores are a little better than high school grades,” he said. “But that’s not the question relevant to this policy debate. It does happen to be the question that delivers a good answer for the testing companies.”
Leonhardt actually uses this point to make his argument in favor of testing: wealthy students are more likely to take private music lessons or have a dozen résumé-padding extracurriculars recommended by counselors, he writes, whereas everyone takes the same SAT. But Vigdor says that framing is a sleight of hand that masks the ways standardized test scores—when considered as one piece of a decision matrix—can tip the advantage slightly in favor of wealthy white applicants.
Vigdor also addresses it in the tweet thread linked above, and he demonstrates that as different factors are added in the additive value of SAT scores greatly diminishes.
Part of the problem is that measuring achievement on regular level material is less doable now that SAT subject tests (formerly Achievement tests) have been discontinued. Use of them had long been in decline, due to the incumbency advantage of the SAT (and ACT) – colleges that wanted the SAT subject tests found them to be more of a barrier to entry against students from high schools where there is little or no awareness of them, even if the SAT (or ACT) was reasonably well known. With only AP tests available to test achievement mainly on advanced level material that is less commonly taken prior to 12th grade and not by all college-prep students, that creates access issues as you mention, as well as creating incentive for trying for more AP courses / tests earlier in high school.
Note that as you go down the selectivity scale of colleges, there is a transition from “we can choose from only applicants (even hooked ones) whom we have high confidence of succeeding in college” to “we give everyone a chance, even though we know not all will succeed (but those who do succeed will help society and economy more than the costs of those who do not)”. Broad access state universities and community colleges are based on the latter model.
Frankly it seems some want public colleges to just admit by lottery and offer courses starting at remedial reading and arithmetic. That way nobody is left out regardless of their test scores, prior preparation,or any other possible factor. A very expensive and inefficient way to conduct what is supposed to be tertiary education, but that would address all the complaints-plus we can give A grades to those who can master elementary reading and learn to add successfully, so everyone will be happy. Except the taxpayers who are funding this charade. And, I suppose, some of the students who are paying college tuition to master reading.
Its not like colleges don’t know which AP classes are more challenging/ reflect rigor.
Maybe the AP score value is more at a macro level. It seems like they are trying to suss out how inflated a schools GPA policy is. They are interested in, what does it take to get an A? I think this is not dissimilar from Princeton or Williams asking for a graded paper.
Colleges generally don’t know which teachers at your HS are bad. That’s often the biggest issue that can trip up a strong student when choosing their APs, especially ones in sophomore year when they don’t know what they don’t know.
I can appreciate that an admitted student can find a home in some major. Some students will have preferred to stay in their major of choice (I know I would have). Yeah, it’s a tough call as to whether a school that can better handle such a student’s situation would have been the better option or not.
Financials aside, with only an Alg2 completion, a student can attend a california CC and then transfer to a CSU or UC and finish there. If it were me, I’d prefer that path to a change in major, but I can’t say how many students would be like me.
(I’m kidding of course, but my DD does about 1hr of music each day plus 2.5hr lesson/wk)