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And teachercounsel has a total of 10 posts. He/she could easily be a ■■■■■; such occurrences are not uncommon here.</p>
<p>“A 1300 SAT does not mean someone’s not an amazing student. It can mean that one hasn’t had the benefit of the cultural experiences necessary to succeed on the SAT.”</p>
<p>LOL. That’s why I rolled in to the SAT center, a bleary eyed 8th grader without a calculator, and pulled a 2080…I’m sure I would have scored 700 points worse as an 11th grader without the cultural experience of being white. Sorry, but I could have lived my whole life in a trash can and still scored an 1800, and so could other people with actual aptitude.</p>
<p>edit: and I don’t even put much stock in test scores. but we have to draw the line somewhere. a 1300 sucks.</p>
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yea well honestly it means you’re a terrible student, fire up the community college application, not the stanford one, let’s be honest it means you have no math reasoning or frankly knowledge, you can’t comprehend anything you read, and you can’t write to save your life, so unless the kid got an 800 writing section, and failed the rest, we can safely assume that her essays were probably not the best they’ve ever read. the fact that she could get that and maintain a “respectable gpa” means that there was huge grade inflation, she took jokes courses of no rigor whatsoever, or the both and the school is junk. i’m willing to bet money that it was not one of the 2% of gold and silver medal schools in this country. stanford has a reputation for being an excellent university with some of the best and brightest minds, and letting in someone like this is tantamount to soiling themself. honestly a 1300 sat student can’t handle the work, they couldn’t even handle the sat.</p>
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i don’t think you addressed anything he said.</p>
<p>amen choklitrain, but really you guys shortchange the use and meaning of a standradized test score, sure the reasoning test doesn’t test specific knowledge, but it does test the useful skill of being able to REASON, and solve problems in a timely manner given material you are unfamiliar with,a skill that would be useful in your college endeavours. let’s also not forget te sat subject tests, those in fact do test specific knowledge, and if you do poorly on those you have absolutely no excuse besides the fact that you did not know the material. as for the “cultural differences” mentioned, i am skeptical about the extent to which culture is a factor. in any given area if the student has even mildly shown effort, or followed the curriculum, i do not understand how it is even possible to score that low, i think if you played the numbers right you could get negative points in every section, and still score a 1300+ when accounting for the guessing penalty.</p>
<p>Not going to respond to the posts one by one since that would take too much time, I just want to make a few points (assuming the story is true…which I doubt but it could be true since there are kids who scored lower than 500 on a section on the SAT’s at Stanford):</p>
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<li>Stanford has been admitting students since before any of us were born. Many of them have gone on to do some amazing things, so we should at least give them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they are doing.</li>
<li>While TrinSF no doubt overestimated the grade inflation (I’m guessing the courses her son took were introseminars or some other type of non-lecture based class so it’s easy) you don’t have to be a genius to academically succeed here. With some intervention and summer school courses even the 1300 girl would be able to finish.</li>
<li>Stanford, like other top schools, looks for not just leadership but uniqueness. Even though you can be right and say that there may be people who showed comparable leadership as high school kids, how many of them would have the balls to apply to Stanford if they had a 1300? Yea, that’s right. I thought so. ;)</li>
<li>Everyone graduates. The 2% non-retention rate has kids who transferred out, took a long long leave of absence, left for professional sports, etc. I mean, regardless of how well you did on a test, you can graduate. There will be people to make sure that you do, and then when you start influencing the world in a positive manner (you don’t have to be really smart to succeed, though if you’re really smart it’s easier to succeed) that will no doubt add to Stanford’s prestige.</li>
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<p>Top schools mean it when they say there’s absolutely no GPA or SAT cutoff for admission.</p>
<p>you make some good points, but i can’t get over the fact that all of these things you mention that colleges look at like uniqueness etc… are met by many applicants, and stanford is prestigious and many people go on to do great things from there, but not all of them. only the famous stanford alums are public knowledge, but i’m sure that others have not shared the same success. once you get to the real world your ability and intelligence are the most meaningful factors. colleges take into account many factors, but an interviewer at meryl lynch does not care about your minority status, or whether or not you were the first in your family to go to college. i believe in social darwinism, and that only the strong survive. so i say congratulations to that girl for getting into stanford, but i wish her luck in the working world.</p>
<p>^ large businesses like banks do practice affirmative action. it’s quite possible for someone to get URM-boosted in to Stanford and later URM-boosted in to a job at JP Morgan.</p>
<p>URM (at least for hispanics) is something I’ve seen gives people a false sense of security.</p>
<p>This Stanford Girl is just extremely lucky as well. I mea to get a 1300 you’d pretty much need 400, 400, 500 in each section. That’s not even average lol. But I don’t know if we should jump on the bandwagon in saying that she needs remedial classes. Did it say anywhere her GPA?</p>
<p>I wish colleges could just post theri exact admissions critera, it’d be a lot easier.</p>
<p>Also, I think maybe URM and legacy status are overrated. I’m URM, but I’m not going to apply to Harvard or something and expect them to admit me because I’m black and my mom(hypothetically) went there. That’s a mistake lots of people make. URM is a way to get you over the fence after you climbed on it, not as a way to run 100 yards and jump clean over it.</p>
<p>Yeah, the remedial class thing is a bit silly. My daughter’s SAT and ACT results the first time round are pretty much in the 1300 / 21 range. She takes all AP courses and does pretty well. She’s always had a problem doing well on tests, but is not “remedial” by any stretch of the imagination – she’s just a very visual thinker. She isn’t floating through easy classes; like every student in her school, she takes the same rigorous AP curriculum. She also takes Japanese at night at CC and runs her own successful business. </p>
<p>Amusingly enough, I think all of her teachers except one have at least MA’s from Stanford. Her school is a sort of unofficial lab for implementing a lot of the ideas coming out of Stanford’s school of education, so most of the school’s faculty, student teachers, and some staff are Stanford grads. They’re not “famous”, but they’re making a difference – and based on my conversations with them, they don’t think she’s an idiot, or destined for remedial coursework. :-)</p>
<p>JAJdude: Stanford <em>does</em> post their criteria; I posted a link to it earlier. The point is that their criteria doesn’t include specific numbers. It’s not that they won’t post some definite number range – it’s that they don’t use that as a determining factor.</p>
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they have to use it as criteria to some extent, because the type of student they admit usually falls into that range. i’m not saying that they admit students because they have these numbers, but the students they admit usually have these numbers, and if the majority of students fall in that range then they must have something in common. i don’t believe that you can take ap classes and do well, and still get a 1300/ 21 on your standardized tests. they are not that hard, and demand the same type of reasoning that ap tests require on their multiple choice sections. i have to suspect extra credit, or grade inflation to some extent.</p>
<p>mahomushi68: Define “do well.” unweighted 3.3? 3.5? 3.8? Wanna see report cards? Yes, my daughter’s SAT/ACT scores are in that range, and yes, she takes an all-AP load. No, there is no extra credit, no test extensions, nothing like that. She works hard and does well; she just doesn’t test well. Of course, her test scores are less important than many of her classmates, since she’s planning to pursue a BFA and has no interest in any Ivy. She’s just not that into essays. 
(Well, she has a tangential interest in Brown, in that she’ll be applying to RISD and they allow cross-registration for classes.)</p>
<p>The very fact that I know one student like that means that others may exist. For all yall know, the infamous “Stanford 1300” had references explaining that she was only able to take the SAT test once for financial reasons (or more dramatic circumstances), that she’s the most amazing student the writer had ever encountered, etc. We don’t know. What I do know is that it’s entirely possible to have a low SAT and be an intelligent student. My daughter’s school – which was recently highly ranked in the heavily-AP-score-influenced Newsweek public school rankings – has Stanford acceptances, a Gates Millenium Scholar, 100% of seniors going to college. It also has many first generation college applicants, and more than a few students whose SAT scores don’t seem to reflect your thinking. </p>
<p>Yall need to let go of the SAT thing. High scores don’t always get you into Ivies. Low scores don’t always keep you out. End of story. :-)</p>
<p>^SAT scores are an imperfect science but they are not negligible. An applicant with a 1300 SAT score is less academically capable than pretty much the rest of the applicant pool no matter how you look at it. It is one thing to argue the insignificance of the difference of a few dozen points or even 100-150 points; it is another to even consider a 1300 on par with a 2300+.</p>
<p>May I ask why you specified for hispanics?</p>
<p>Most people who go to Stanford are ugly, sorry</p>
<p>^^
Thank you.</p>
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<p>I’m sorry, but as I’ve pointed out in another thread, “doesn’t test well” is the absolute worst excuse ever. I’m sorry, but truth is truth. A hyperinflated 3.5 means NOTHING. just because you think your daughter is smart, doesn’t mean she is. Although it doesn’t mean she isn’t, and she could be smart in other ways such as street smart. And we don’t even know how low your daughter scored. If it was 1800+, it’s not that low. If it’s something like 1300 though, then…</p>
<p>The only way I can see a person with reasonable intelligence not getting higher than 1300 is if that person never took classes above grade 8.</p>
<p>Are you talking about “1300” as the combination of critical reading and math only or on all three sections? Or are some of you talking about each?</p>
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<p>does that answer your question? (Pg.6 if you want to check it out; first time this person was mentioned)</p>