The Perfect Admissions System (Hypothetical)

Applying to College
1

<p>If I had a college to manage, this is how I would do admissions: </p>

<p>There should be one, single, published formula for who gets in. That way there won’t be any guess work when student’s apply, students will know beforehand with great precision what schools are practical and which aren’t. </p>

<p>Here is my breakdown: </p>

<p>60% SATs / advanced reasoning tests (basically, if a students SATs +/- margin of error fall within the floor and ceiling, that figure is used, but if a student is at the ceiling with margin of error added, an advanced reasoning test like the AMC may be used to further discriminate. A student with an inability to take timed tests could take the Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices as an alternative, but in that case the Matrices would count as 34% and the AP would count as 56% for reasons difficult to explain)</p>

<p>30% AP Test Results and Subject Test Results as pertinent to the pursued college route (a summation, not average of scores, with subject tests corrected to be on a 1-5 scale)</p>

<p>10% Work Ethic (a committee of adcoms takes a look at extra-curriculars and out of school accomplishments as well as teacher recommendations to determine a 0-10 score for work ethic)</p>

<p>Each student gets a score from 0 to 100, and the students with the scores closest to 100 get in. </p>

<p>This system works because it is:</p>

<p>62% logic and reasoning, general intelligence
28% specific intelligences, like being really good at reading or math
10% Work Ethic</p>

<p>Which to me seems to be a good formula for a successful college student. </p>

<p>The school simply fills it student body with the kids that have the highest scores. It makes perfect sense.</p>

2

<p>As a person who also likes objective facts, I can see the appeal of this system to you. However, colleges want a diverse student body, one that is well rounded. They choose applicants who will mesh well and complement each other to create a unique whole, based on their individual interests. A class chosen with that system has a good chance of being rather boring. With that said I would do much better in the admissions game if your system was used lol.</p>

3

<p>Where does GPA/Transcript, the single most important admissions factor fit into this equation?</p>

4

<p>NOWHERE! BWAHAHAHA. </p>

<p>No really, I think GPA should be used to judge work ethic, but beyond that I think that student’s work performance in school will be reflected on the SATs and the AP tests, so I don’t think that the GPA is necessary. </p>

<p>Students under this system would get good grades because it would tell them how they are doing, and use it as a personal standard, not as a thing necessary to get into college. The nice thing about this would be that students wouldn’t feel compelled to pressure teachers to give them straight A’s, teachers wouldn’t feel the pressure to give into grade inflation, and finally grades would be a better measure of how a student is really doing. The pressure would also be off, because students would be free to learn at their own pace, and if they need to rely on the weekly quiz to learn the material, they can take the quiz. But if the student feels like learning at a different pace, they can just skip the quizzes, get an F in the class, and show that they know the knowledge when AP test time comes around. </p>

<p>Oh yes, one thing I forgot to mention. If a student gets a 4 or 5 on an AP test, then they should be able to submit an advanced test of say history or a historic accomplishment (like winning a history bee) to supplement the score and discriminate them to be above the 90th percentile (the requirements for a 5 on most AP tests). If a student gets a 1, they should be able to submit a basic history requirement, to differentiate them from the 20% or so of the students that got a 1.</p>

5

<p>More like the imperfect admissions system, ahahahahaha.</p>

6

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<p>What about students who genuinely don’t test well? What about the advantages given to students who can afford extensive test prep courses and materials? Do you distinguish between a student who got a 2300 the first time and one with scores of 1950, 2100, and 2300?</p>

<p>What if you have to choose between a bright student with no motivation (higher test scores and lower GPA), and an average student who works hard to succeed in school (lower test scores and higher GPA)? The first may have greater potential, but only one has demonstrated that they have the motivation and persistence necessary to earn success. What happens if the first student is admitted over the second, and arrives at a prestigious college only to demonstrate the same lack of commitment, or discovers that they don’t have the study skills necessary to handle challenging work?</p>

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<p>You’re assuming that classes and standardized tests operate basically independently. But if 90% of college admissions is suddenly based entirely on test scores, teachers will be under pressure to produce high test scores, the same way they’re currently pressured to give students good grades. Schools will tailor curricula to the tests - in fact, this already happens: look at the way New York schools deal with the Regents exams, or the PSAT/SAT prep courses offered in some elite public and private schools as part of the school catalogue. Learning the test material will be seen as the target, rather than viewing tests as one way of measuring a broader body of knowledge, which is what they’re meant to be. And education will be reduced to the type of rote memorization skills found on bubble-the-answer tests, demanding only rudimentary training in composition and critical thinking.</p>

<p>Grades would also lose meaning, because if students know that they only count for 10% of the admissions process (and that combined with ECs), it’s far more practical to spend time on test prep than classwork. So intelligent schools - realizing that colleges and students are overwhelmingly concerned with test scores over schoolwork - will begin tying grades to test scores. Rather than test scores reflecting schoolwork, schoolwork will become a reflection of test scores, since they will be overwhelmingly the pertinent factor in determining admissions.</p>

7

<p>Not to offend the OP but this “formula” for admissions is more like a formula for disaster.</p>

8

<p>Quere, you bring up some good points but there are a few flaws in your arguement, </p>

<ol>
<li><p>If students spend time studying for the AP test, this time will be spent learning history, art, or whatever subject is being tested. Studying for the test is studying the pertinent material. Likewise, time spent prepping for the SAT is 99% spent learning rudimentary material like calculating the circumference of a circle</p></li>
<li><p>The AP tests and SATs, and especially Raven’s Progressive Matrices emphasize reasoning skills, and not rote memory. On the contrary, much non-standardized school-work emphasizes memorization. </p></li>
<li><p>There’s nothing one can do to “study for the test”. The CollegeBoard has published a plethora of research showing that doing test prep work only raises SAT scores 20-30 points on average. The only thing that one can do to study for the SAT effectively is to gain a solid understanding of algebra skills, and be able to exercise these skills quickly. Which isn’t such a bad thing imo. </p></li>
<li><p>I said at one point that work ethic would be 10% of the score. But the fact is, work ethic is going to show up in the AP tests and the SATs. To an extant, “specific intelligences” encompasses work ethic. </p></li>
<li><p>Schoolwork reflecting test scores would be a good thing, since schooling would be geared towards activities statistically shown to correlate with college and career success. </p></li>
<li><p>Perhaps if students had a quantitative grasp of what they needed to know to get into college and get good grades, there would be less stress and school would be more about having fun while learning, not trying to impress the teacher for the daily grades. </p></li>
<li><p>I believe I said somewhere in my first post that a student who doesn’t test well can take the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test instead of the SATs. The Progressive Matrices have no time limit, and have few of the problems that people complain about with the SAT. </p></li>
<li><p>If a student takes the SAT multiple times and gets different scores, highest score should be taken and the other scores should be used to determine a margin of error. Now this is something I have wrong with the SAT. It should be “imo”, 3 or more times longer than it is today to reduce the margin of error so multiple testings won’t show differences. </p></li>
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<p>For the time being though, the best system would be to just take the best score, since averaging the scores would favor rich kids who can just cancel scores if they got bad questions, and take it every month.</p>

9

<p>Ok, so everyone spends their time studying/memorizing for tests rather than pursuing things that make them unique and you have a student body that does nothing but study. What a mind you have al6200!</p>

10

<p>I’m surprised that you would come up with such brilliance, judging by the plan; you just took yourself out of the running for admission.</p>

11

<p>I have one child who is a terrible tester, but very smart and hard worker. 1390 out of 2400 on the SAT, but 28 on the ACT. Another child who is a phenomenal test-taker (192 on the PSAT as a freshman), but lazy as the day is long and whose GPA thus far reflects that. Which of these biologically related students would get into your school?</p>

12

<p>al6200: the fact is, some schools do admit very much like you’re suggesting. However, those schools tend not to be in the so-called “top 50”. Now what does that say? </p>

<p>I’d also hazard a guess that YOU are a very good standardized test taker, right? LOL</p>

13

<p>Your perfect school will contain a student body of “x”, of which .99x will represent the asian student population and <.1x everyone else. are you serious? not only would this system cause like 1 trillion times the stress already on high school students, the student body would be incredibly uniform and boring.</p>

14

<p>your system sucks. i think standardized tests completely fail to measure what they’re designed to measure, and i’d be happy if they weren’t considered at all. and before anyone yells “sour grapes,” be aware that i got three 800’s on sat ii’s and a 2390 on the sat i.</p>

<p>ideally, college admissions would be something like 75% extracurriculars / personal accomplishments outside the classroom, 25% grades / strength of schedule. extracurriculars would account for the fact that courses differ in difficulty from school to school. if you’re as good as you say you are in some field, you’ll prove it through research, prestigious internships, etc.</p>

<p>your focus on predictability is laudable, but academic quality shouldn’t take a backseat to it.</p>

15

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<p>A standardized test can’t test a full range of knowledge in a subject area; that would require an enormous test. So AP exams, at least, often hit on the core elements of a subject and assume that, in the process of conveying the essentials, in-class instruction goes deeper and gives students a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the subject than a standardized test is able to measure. The problem is that as more and more weight is put on tests, testing becomes the end instead of the means – rather than viewing the test as a partial measurement of a broader base of knowledge, students and teachers see the test material as the ultimate determination of what should be covered in class. Tests can measure components of student knowledge, but studying straight to the test doesn’t lead to comprehensive understanding because the tests aren’t designed to be comprehensive. This is why many colleges only grant credit/placement for 5s on exams, or don’t grant credit/placement at all.</p>

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<p>Many of the AP exams – for example, US and World History, US and Comparative Government, Biology, etc. - ask for a lot of factual memorization. The SATs also require different types of memorization, some (vocabulary) more pointless than others (rules of grammar and various mathematical principles), but memorization nonetheless. Because of the time and space constraints of the test, as well as what is easy to grade, students are rarely asked to present and defend opinions or do complex problem-solving. The SAT essay, in particular, tends to present questions with obvious answers and is more a test of coherency under time limits than actual critical thought or compositional ability. By contrast, in a classroom it’s possible to present discussions, complex problems or labs, or essays and projects that ask students to take time, solve problems, think seriously, move outside the box, and back up their opinions.</p>

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<p>The College Board says test prep raises scores 20-30 points on average. There are also test prep companies who claim average score raises of 100-300 points. I don’t believe either source is trustworthy, but it is important to acknowledge the biases in research. I haven’t found an independent study of the effectivity of test prep that had conclusive results – which does weaken my claim as well. My statement was based on the increases I’ve seen in testing/chances threads here on CC.</p>

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<p>I question the SAT, at least, as a measure of work ethic. For example, I got 2300 on my SATs the first time and have no plans to retake them. One of my friends got a score in the 1800s the first time, studied extensively with a test-prep book and got a 2050 on her second try. She displayed far more work ethic than I did, yet that persistence and motivation isn’t represented at all in our final scores. This is anecdotal evidence, obviously, but the general underlying principle is accurate: scores don’t differentiate between a lazy student with high prior knowledge/ability and an average student who works hard to boost their score.</p>

<p>AP exams are probably a more reliable measure of work ethic, since they do test more specialized areas. But even then, many students come in with background knowledge. An enthusiastic reader or writer in AP English; a student who reads the paper in AP Gov; a musician or artist in AP Music Theory or Art History; a native speaker in an AP Language course – these students already know a decent amount of the course material on the first day, whereas other students will have to work to acquire the same background.</p>

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<p>The data I’ve seen have suggested that test scores do not correlate highly with college success. For example, [url=<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/06/sat]this[/url”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/06/sat]this[/url</a>] article examines SAT-optional schools and finds that students who don’t submit SAT scores tend to have scores that are 140-160 points lower than students who do submit scores, yet the gap between the two groups in terms of college GPA is 0.05 points. Likewise, [url=<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/education/31sat.html?ex=1314676800&en=6eeee6c9f43834ab&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss]these[/url”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/education/31sat.html?ex=1314676800&en=6eeee6c9f43834ab&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss]these[/url</a>] [url=<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/19/admit]two[/url”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/19/admit]two[/url</a>] articles provide quotations and data from admissions officers suggesting that high school grades are a much more reliable predictor of success than SAT scores.</p>

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<p>Many colleges must turn away perfectly qualified applicants each year because of enrollment constraints. A college can’t pledge to take all students with a score higher than 80. It can say it will take the top 690 applicants, but even if a student knows their score is a 93, they still don’t know whether they’re in the top 690. And because so many applicants to top colleges have similar standardized test scores (lots of 5s on AP exams and 700-800 SAT scores), the margins between applicants will be very narrow. Much of admissions will depend on that 10% attributed to transcript and ECs, which is also the portion of the application for which you’ve given the vaguest criteria. How does this help to give students more of a quantitative grasp than the current system?</p>

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<p>I have to admit I’m not familiar with Raven’s Progressive Matrices, but if the test has successfully overcome the problematic aspects of the SAT, why not use it instead of the SAT in the first place?</p>

16

<p>Um. That was a really long post. Sorry about that.</p>

17

<p>AP tests don’t test rote memorization?
Pffffft.</p>

<p>APUSH. I spent two weeks in class purely memorizing facts (literally- we had a circle game where you had to stand until you answered a question correctly. Boy did we learn those facts fast).
Look where it got me- a 4 on the exam and credit for all schools I’m applying to (except JHU, but that’s because they barely accept any ap tests).
Right after the test what did I do? I dumped all USH facts stored in my brain and proceeded to dump most information into the trash section of my memory.</p>

<p>All that I remember from that class is some random useless facts and an anagram to remember the order of the presidents. (I would like to note, however, that the class did dramatically improve my analytical writing skills).</p>

<p>A system that favors the above over GPA/work ethic needs to be rethought.</p>

18

<p>Wow, I really missed a lot in such a short period of time, let me address each poster: </p>

<p>1MX:</p>

<p>“Ok, so everyone spends their time studying/memorizing for tests rather than pursuing things that make them unique and you have a student body that does nothing but study. What a mind you have al6200!”</p>

<p>Almost all classes in high school focus on tests and homework. I don’t think that switching to a system with one standardized, effective test would change anything. </p>

<p>What does it matter if it would take me out of the running (although it would only take me out of the running at MIT and Caltech, where I’m already out of the running)? Can’t I make a suggestion whether I would be positively or adversely effected by the suggestion? </p>

<p>Why the negative tone? </p>

<p>Quaere:</p>

<p>I agree with you 100% that classes should teach more than the tests. But I think that “teaching to the test” happens whether you give kids one standardized test or 10 random tests. And kids have to have some quantitative way of knowing whether they’re learning the material well or not. </p>

<p>As for the score being a predictable measure of college success. </p>

<p>On the note of students being able to predict college success based on SATs, etc, if a college does have more 1600s then they can handle, then they can just raise the bar and use a test like AMC as baseline for admissions. </p>

<p>Raven’s is a test of visual recognition of patterns. </p>

<p>I only suggested it because there’s no time limit (on the real thing), so people who get test anxiety might prefer it. </p>

<p>@iostream: </p>

<p>The problem with judging students based on out of school contests/awards is objectivity and the fact that students who go to elite high schools will be more introduced to the opportunities than private school kids. </p>

<p>Also consider that many of the extracurriculars are unfairly swayed by parental involvement. Poor students, who may very well have the resources to learn mathematics and ace the SATs, probably don’t have the luxury of entering numerous contests, and probably don’t have the connections to do certain things like publish a book. </p>

<p>In addition, if you look at my original post, I said that awards, accomplishments, and such, like writing a book, could be used to quantify the 30% of the admissions from AP tests. </p>

<p>Taking into consideration everything that has been said, I don’t think that all colleges should use this system, and grades probably do have a place in the admissions process. Extracurriculars should be given some weight. But I still believe that having a common yardstick is key, not just for the schools, but for the students. With standardized tests, you know when you’re in trouble and need to improve your learning, but with grades you are only given a distorted vision of what you’re really learning. </p>

<p>I’d suppose I have something of a conflict of interests. I don’t think education at schools should be geared towards taking tests, but I also think that tests should be used so that grade inflation doesn’t get out of hand. Perhaps if students just do their learning in school, and then study for the tests as a supplement to that, then students will be enriched in the best way possible. </p>

<p>On one hand I am frustrated to see the “human element” in admissions sway us away from objectivity and possibly accept a student who is less qualified then another, but in another way there is something undesirable to an excessively quantitative approach. I do agree with all the posters that some emphasis on accomplishments is necessary, but I feel that these factors are overemphasized by the current admissions system, and the approach does need to be more quantitative.</p>

19

<p>Void of some fundamental mistakes, it was a nice try al6200. At least you have the pelotas to post something like this, knowing it’d get an unfavorable greeting, kudos.</p>

20

<p>Since the post title says hypothetical…</p>

<p>Step one: Obtain a time machine. If your school is so great that so many applicants beating down your doors, this shouldn’t be a problem.</p>

<p>Step two: Select a random cohort of students from your applicants and mail them their acceptance letters.</p>

<p>Step three: Go forward in time in several increments of 10 years or so. At each point, thoroughly research how the cohort is doing.</p>

<p>Step four: Return in time to your starting point.</p>

<p>Step five: Repeat steps 2-5, choosing a new random cohort every time until you have evaluated the success of every possible group. This may sound time consuming, but remember that the time machine makes that issue moot.</p>

<p>Step six: After every possible cohort has been evaluated, choose the group that was most successful and admit them.</p>