<p>My $.02 on this debate:</p>
<p>I looked at the 2011 and the 2012 threads, and in 2011 I noticed that the SAT scores tended to be >2100, so I decided to use that as my cutoff. Just looking at the first five pages (1/2) of each thread (I’m not so into this that I’ll waste ALL of my time, at least not until christmas break :-p ), I counted 5 accepted 2011 students with SATs at 2100 or below, and 4 accepted 2012 students that met the same criteria. I also noticed multiple examples of very high-scoring (and even high-GPA) candidates on the 2012 thread who were not accepted (e.g., see the deferred person someone on pages 1-5 who had a 2400 and a 4.0). As far as minority consideration goes, you can’t use CC stats as a representative sample of all accepted students, because if you did then you’d expect UChicago to be a nearly all-Asian school.</p>
<p>Also, a note in defense of standardized testing: though it shouldn’t be the only major factor, we need to recognize that these tests are generally the ONLY aspect of the ENTIRE application that the admissions people can be sure was a product of the student alone. True, there may be indirect help in the form of tutoring, etc. - but the tests (the SATs, at least) are designed so that it is very possible to score a 2400 without any outside help whatsoever beyond the general principles learned ordinary classes (and maybe some practice questions), whereas an essay may be heavily influenced by someone other than the applicant.</p>
<p>I think, though, that the folks at admissions - if they take pride in their job - look for a <em>lot</em> more than some of you folks give them credit for. For the 2400/4.0/Asian person earlier in this thread, who presumably wrote decent essays and had decent recommendations, something was clearly missing - something that doesn’t fit into some of your neat categories like “minority status,” “superscoring,” and the like.</p>