There is always risk to taking a non-direct admit admission.
This is life…competitive, subject to variations in performance. It’s impossible to isolate those variables, there are many reasons that students change majors and often it’s not due to just one reason. It doesn’t necessarily mean someone picked the wrong school or were academically unprepared. All people can do is make the most informed choice at each step of the way.
I just don’t accept the premise that some college graduations aren’t a success.
It reminds me of the old saying:
Q. What do you call the person who graduated last in their med school class?
For the first case she wouldnt have made it into her major without transferring. It’s not a failure for her, but it is for those like her who don’t have the means to transfer.
The CS cases are obvious, and the post baccs are really expensive and lost years in a process that takes many years.
These examples do not mean that the students are unprepared for college, but indicate that the paths in question are capacity constrained.
Regarding UCB L&S CS, in the mid to late '00s, students just needed to pass (C grades / 2.0 GPA) the prerequisites to declare the major. The more recent GPA requirement was 3.3. Does this mean that you would consider a student who gets a 3.0 in beginning CS courses in 2008 better prepared than one who gets a 3.0 in beginning CS courses in 2018?
While true for many reasons (mainly due to varying capacity constraints), being weeded out does not necessarily imply that the student was unprepared for college.
If you get to unilaterally decide the definition of failure vs success you are indeed going to wait for a long time!
None of these families considered their situation good. The point is that if they were better positioned by being admitted to the appropriate fit school for them the results would have been indeed better.
Schools with 100% of grads happy with their major? Still looking for that reply too
Anyway, graduating gpa in those intended majors is also of interest. A student that leaves with a 3.0 in one school could have received a 3.6 in another in the same major.
Because they had the means. They were not happy about extra years and extra money. Apparently you don’t care about time or money? Others without the means - like the ones that get helped by considering scores in context - won’t have that choice. They’re stuck.
When you disagree with a “not all” statement, you are stating at “all” is true. You asked me to give you examples so you can try to tear it apart. I guess I won’t get that favor returned. Ok, let’s stop.
The examples you gave us are of two people who graduated and are successful. Their/their family’s disappointment in their journey to success doesn’t make the graduations failures. Also seems like money wasn’t a limitation in their journeys, even if no one liked spending the ‘extra’ money necessary.
None of us can go back and show that if they had chosen a different school the first time, they would have had different results. Too many variables that can’t be controlled (or re-run).
I get being disappointed with having to spend more money and time than first planned. But, none of us can back in time to stop their first decisions…and those decisions did not stop either from success, nor did they graduate failures.
The problem is lower scores are not a reliable indicator of any measure of academic success. It’s common to find that SAT score in isolation explains 15-20% of variance in a particular student’s cumulative college GPA and 5-10% of variance in a particular student’s chance of graduating. That reaches the level of statistically significant, but the bulk of chance of academic success is not explained by score alone. Many students with relatively low scores will be academically success during college, and many students with relatively high scores will not be academically successful during college.
To determine whether the tests add additional useful information beyond the other academic indicators used to admit test optional kids, instead of looking at these correlation for tests alone; you need to look at how much tests add beyond the combination of academic indicators used to admit test optional kids. At the colleges discussed in this forum, this is more than just looking at HS GPA in isolation, without considering rigor, which classes were taken, which classes had lower grades, harshness of grading at particular, HS, etc. As I’ve previously posted in this thread, studies I have seen that do such analyses at selective college consistently show similar cumulative GPA at graduation and graduation rate between test optional admits and test submitter admits.
As discussed on the thread, such metrics do not capture how many switch majors. I haven’t seen any stats discussing whether test optional kids are more likely to switch majors than test submitter kids. The closest review I am aware is the Duke study that did a regression analysis to review what aspects of application were most correlated with switching out of a math-heavy major. With full controls, the predictors of switching from a math-heavy major to humanities or social sciences that reached statistical significance were as follows.
Not listing a prospective major on application (undecided)
Being female
Admissions reader rating of HS curriculum
Harshness of grading in specific classes at Duke
Not being Asian
SAT score was a significant predictor in isolation, but no longer became statistically significant after adding the factors above. The same was true of being a URM, which was the primary point of the study. It’s not being a URM that’s the problem. It’s that being a URM was correlated with weaker HS preparation, particularly weaker HS curriculum. Similarly it’s primarily not the SAT score that was predictive of switching majors. It’s that the SAT score was correlated with having a weaker HS curriculum (and other factors). When admission readers also considered the HS curriculum in addition to just looking at SAT score, the benefit of SAT became much less significant.
I expect the specific degree of prediction of factors above will also vary wildly between schools, depending on how well the specific college addresses the factors above. For example, being female was the strongest predictor of switching out the major at Duke, besides being undecided. I expect colleges that are more friendly to women in engineering might look very different. This could include having a high % of women in engineering majors, having female engineering professors/TAs/role models, having women in engineering type support networks, etc.
There is also variation for the influence of HS curriculum. Does the college just throw everyone in the deep end regardless of HS background and see who switches out. Or do they have all freshmen take a math/science placement exam, and recommend that students with weaker HS curriculum start out at different math/science class or different level of rigor? Most of the colleges discussed on this forum fall in to the latter group. For example, Harvard has all students take a math placement test. Based on placement exam score, HS course background, AP scores, personal goals, planned major, feedback from placement officer, and other factors; the student decides on which math course to choose. Harvard offers any of the following intro math starting points and sequence options – Math Ma,b; 1a,b; 19a,b; 20; 21a,b; 23a,b; 25a,b; and 55a,b. The lowest level (MA) is a half normal speed calc/pre-calc type class , while Harvard’s website describes math 55 as “probably the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country”.
It’s a similar idea for harshness of grading. Does the college have harsh freshmen grading with expectation of “weeding out” students, or do they have lenient grading with strong support networks and try to have as many students persist in major as possible? This can vary wildly between colleges. Continuing with the Harvard example, in the senior survey, the median cumulative GPA was 3.9 out of 4.0. Hardly anyone had a GPA below 3.5. I’ve heard some students claim it’s easier to get an A than get a C. I don’t know whether that is accurate or not, but I certainly wouldn’t assume that students who are on the lower end of Harvard’s SAT range are not getting high enough grades for pre-med and/or would have higher GPA and/or be less likely to switch majors had they attended a less selective college.
To be clear: many of these stories involve people who are happy now. That I’m not contesting. What they considered at the time, namely of their school helped or hindered their path, how much time, money, and heartache was involved, while they did have great memories they wished they had started elsewhere. Not everyone. But not no one either.
I think it’s allowed that happy people now had things in their past they wish had happened differently.
Have we considered that being at the top of a not so great HS may not, in fact, require so much hard work?
I say this based on my own experience. I actually went to what, in the greater scheme, were perfectly good, even excellent schools. I did little beyond showing up for class and completing assignments and got straight As. When I got to college (an Ivy) I did not know what hit me.
My kids have similarly been at the top of their classes, but once they got to their prestigious HS they had learn to really put in the time. Being smart was no longer enough to get you by. They are infinitely better prepared for college than I ever was.
