<p>“If you honestly believe that someone scoring an 800 with a minimal work ethic is less qualified than someone scoring in the 400’s, then you’re seriously deluded. Intelligence is a bell curve, no amount of rhetoric will change that.”</p>
<p>Are you kidding?</p>
<p>The minute you leave the hallowed halls of your fancy pants college, no one cares about test scores or considers them a qualification for much of anything. I am familiar with law firm hiring. Yes, top firms compare grades (not test scores) to make sure a candidate can do the work. But they also need people who can behave like people. People who can speak well. People who can relate well to co-workers and above all clients. And when I hire, I need people who will work <em>crazy hard</em> no matter what, even when the answers don’t pop automatically into their heads like on some standardized test. </p>
<p>Doesn’t the fact that I and people like me do very well despite poor test scores suggest to you that maybe, just maybe, test scores are an imperfect predictor of success and work ethic in the real world?</p>
<p>So to answer your question, your Summa Cum Laude Ivy League degree and eye-popping math scores mean next to nothing once you graduate. I am looking for someone who will grind, grind, grind rather than expect their academic intellect to take them places. </p>
<p>I tell you this because I have a friend, see. Nice guy. Law school classmate. Brilliant mind, great at math. How do I know this? 'Cause he tells me this. Indeed, we have been out of law school for over 20 years, and still he talks about his math prowess. How he was the youngest math prodigy to do this, that and the other thing. Oh, how he feels the world should respect his considerable intellect, how insulting it is that mere mortals such as myself make it and he doesn’t.</p>
<p>Well, he hasn’t done very well. On account of how his sense of entitlement makes it hard for him to hold a flippin’ job. Just couldn’t stand it that his employers didn’t see the value of his huge mind and instead wanted him to <em>produce.</em></p>
<p>“I’ll take someone who is a great and hardworking person with a math score in the 400’s then the next lazy, over-confident or rude person with a score in the upper 700’s-800.”</p>
<p>Uh, are you saying people who study hard for their exams/read extensively/prep for math a lot are generally more lazy/over-confident/rude than the population overall or is this some sort of just-world compensation?</p>
<p>What about a person with a score in the 400’s than a person with a score in the 700’s-800s – you know, a fair comparison?</p>
<p>Obviously people have their own merits, interests, and abilities. Some simply don’t do well on standardized tests (they’re NOT IQ tests), some have more important things to attend to, and others do poorly on one particular day in spite of a solid record of past performance…but when there’s this ridiculous and insidious sentiment that high-scorers must have some sort of deficiencies (can’t socialize/appreciate little things/get the big picture), it’s disturbing. It’s somewhat dehumanizing to those who for whatever reason underperform on a single day’s test, as though that truly is the best they can do. You’re acting as though these scores DO define the person (negatively for high-scorers, positively otherwise).</p>
<p>I am pretty sure it was a specific response to two individuals who earlier on this thread said that anyone who scores lower than 1600 on the SAT should not be ALLOWED to go to college. I, for one, strongly disagree with their position.</p>
<p>High scores are great and are an accomplishment in themselves, and many fine, hardworking individuals achieve them.</p>
<p>You are absolutely right that that comment was ridiculous.</p>
<p>And I realize I am probably being a bit argumentative, but you’ve illustrated a just-world bias previously: your example about a lazy, unmotivated low-gpa high-scorer. I mean, this thread is about a real student with an average gpa and average scores, and you’re talking about an extreme case as though ranking just out of the top 10% is an academic disgrace! Ashraf pointed out that scores may quantify basic skills and you just had to post “aha, but what if a high scorer were LAZY! What then!” when impugning the ethic of this fictitious high-scorer has no bearing on the point that scores may be indicative of ability (whether learned, crammed, or innate). You there imply that scores DO have a definite correlation with ability. The high-scorer is expected to be “able.”</p>
<p>I personally put little stock in standardized test scores. In extreme cases (Duke courses, for example), they will probably be a good predictor given a very low percentile and a very high one. But what do percentiles really mean in terms of raw ability? The difference between the 50th and 95th percentile in height means a difference in 4 inches – hardly some huge difference. It’s the same thing with IQ, another natural distribution. Larges differences are really only apparent at the extreme ends. The same could be said for SAT scores. A 1600 will put one in the top 40% of college-bound seniors – able to do most work. Just 200 points above that puts one at a level to do work at the most elite of schools (Pembroke College at Cambridge requires the equivalent 1300). That sort of improvement is certainly possible with study.</p>
<p>Now, if someone’s scoring 1200/2400 with the most rigorous preparation, that’s another story (and doesn’t necessarily mean inability). But I suspect that isn’t the case with Mandy, who has passed Algebra and Geometry and is taking Alg II in HS, which is more mathematical accomplishment than a very great deal of very intelligent and successful people I’ve known or read about. (Not to mention the amount of people who failed or got D’s in foreign language at my “elite” school, while she has clearly done much better).</p>
<p>Due to the responses, let me qualify the statement i made below:</p>
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<p>I fully agree that work ethic, determination, people skills, etc. are all very important in one’s success. I also agree that these characteristics can help one overcome a decreased intellect. </p>
<p>However, you must understand what college is intended for. College is not a trade school or a community college. These avenues or similarly, a vo-tech education train blue collar workers. College, despite all the yammering here, is an intellectual endeavor with liberal arts and science requirements. Every college demands that one engage with very difficult material that requires complex analysis skills.</p>
<p>Furthermore, it is this complex analysis that allows one to train for white collar positions. Colleges train students for white collar positions, those that require not physical acumen but mental acuity for success. Colleges intend to train teachers, journalists, engineers, scientists, accountants, financial consultants, investment bankers, politicians, psychologists, doctors, lawyers, business executives, writers/authors, professors, and many more. All of these jobs require a base level of intelligence that no amount of hard work can replace. If someone is scoring a 400 in verbal, they’re can’t be an English teacher. If someone is scoring a 400 in math, they can’t be an actuary or a doctor. All these positions require analysis on a day to day basis, analysis that is somewhat similiar to SAT analysis. </p>
<p>You see scores don’t matter once you leave school. But scores do have a somewhat strong correlation with reasoning ability and that is an innate quality that some of us are lucky to have. </p>
<p>And I don’t recall ever implying a person who isn’t intelligent or can’t do well on the SATs is any less of a person than their opposite. Not everyone is the same intelligence but everyone is capable of being a good or likable person. Like all human traits, height, weight, etc., intelligence follows a Bell Curve and the upper half of the curve dominates almost exclusively those white collar positions. The NBA is dominated by the upper half of the height bell curve.</p>
<p>My most recent post was written without looking at your most recent post aaa.</p>
<p>But i’ll respond very briefly.</p>
<p>4 inches is a very big difference. I can’t really argue this though, I guess it’s a matter of opinion.</p>
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<p>1600 isn’t that bad. I never said it was. I said it was the minimum for a person at a four year college. Plus, see my other posts about “college bound seniors”. They’re probably highly skewed with universities I don’t consider “real” colleges (i.e. those with open admissions or Division II or junior colleges amongst others).</p>
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<p>This is incoherent and I’m not even sure you’re talking to me in particular.</p>
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<p>I don’t think so. </p>
<p>I don’t feel like responding to the rest. SATs were originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test. But of course that was very politically incorrect, especially since certain groups scored much worse. The SAT functions almost identically, yet they’ve changed the name so as to avoid the honesty espoused by Ashraf and I.</p>
<p>I can’t BELIEVE some of these responses. How frustrating to come to a website seeking help only to get a bunch of snotty, foolish posts. If you haven’t figured it out already, a lot of the people using this website are… Arrogant. Let’s see if all of the big talkers on this site actually get into MIT. Statistics prove they won’t… And I guess then being rude and obnoxious didn’t help them, did it?</p>
<p>ANYWAY, you can get into TONS of colleges… Trust me! I know a person who nearly dropped out of high school due to a dismal GPA (I’m talking straight D’s, poor reputation with school officials for cheating/cutting class/etc…), and this person, who shall remain nameless, is on her/his way to GRAD school right now. Yep.</p>
<p>If state schools are what you aim for, try for CSU’s first (do re-take the SAT). If you don’t get in, so what? So, you go to community college, and then transfer to an excellent university! Not too bad…</p>
<p>If you want to avoid a CC, try for private schools. Let’s be honest here, there are some private schools (e.g., the ones with a total of three majors available) that would LOVE your money, regardless of your grades. Trust me, you can find those, too. Still, if you want a good LA education, there are plenty of great LA-based schools that don’t look at SAT and still others that are flexible when it comes to grades…</p>
<p>Good luck! And don’t listen to some of the inconsiderate jerks here. You will do wonderfully at whatever you choose to do. :]</p>
<p>dontno, I was actually replying to tocollege so my points weren’t meant to rebuke anything you’d said. Community colleges, etc. serve a different mission for the most part and I absolutely agree that four-year institutions will often have a higher standard for academic inquiry, requiring incoming students who have demonstrated higher educational achievement. Exactly where that line is crossed we disagree on, as I feel that the OP is absolutely 4-year material.</p>
<p>I do understand where you’re coming from as far as whether the SAT is valid indicator of g – yes, of course it is. (Just not entirely reliable). Just because a few test-takers don’t do their best doesn’t mean it isn’t an accurate measure of how they performed. But people don’t need to react well in new situations (analogous to a mid-high first-sitting score) in many jobs, but only to have familiarity with the SOP. (And I realize that some people, like my principal and a certain politician, are just dumb regardless of experience). Maybe I’ve been caught at an optimistic moment. Sometimes I read the news and think very cynical thoughts – well no wonder x% believe this or that; just look at educational achievement data! --, but right now I’m firmly of the opinion most that people can do better, given an incentive and time. Or perhaps I’m just misunderestimating the level of intellectual curiosity that college coursework really entails. (Perhaps the 2/4 year distinction makes all the difference?)</p>
<p>You mention “with a minimal work ethic” (which might be interpreted, I suppose, as “deliberately putting in the minimum” when it really means “who requires initial little effort to get top-notch scores”) which raises another point: why is that considered ingrained (oh, he’s smart but lazy so I won’t hire him because he’ll always be lazy) while SAT scores aren’t? (he hasn’t demonstrated aptitude but he will *politely *and obediently be able to manage complex tasks). Why can’t people change their habits for employers? I would certainly throw out no application without reviewing it thoroughly; even if someone were lazy I would consider potential and motivation ($$) to use it.</p>
<p>As for one more thought regarding the OP, and what’s informing my opinions about the potential to succeed at reputable schools: 50% of non-science PSU students have a 2.9 GPA or below. That’s weighted. Generously. 50% score below 550 on M and below 550 on V. Yet the graduation rate is 80+%. These are 2008 stats. I’ll again point out that Math up to Alg II indicates math prowess above and beyond the minimum even at such reputable colleges, especially in non-math-related majors. These numbers may seem low in this Ivy-obsessed forum but it doesn’t mean such students are incapable of handling the intellectual rigor at anything other than trade/voc/cc. I’m not sure how Mandy ended up with such a low SAT score but honestly it just doesn’t seem commensurate with her academics.</p>
<p>But who says those people are actually “handling the intellectual rigor.” I think you’re interpreting this optimistically. Maybe it says that OVER 50% of PSU (a pretty good school) non-science students aren’t qualified for the academic rigor of a real four year university. It says something that a top state school like PSU may have this problem. What you’re doing is comparing PSU students to PSU students. There’s a curve, not everyone can fail. A better comparison or data is the job placement and job advancement. Are these English majors with verbal scores of 550 (AVERAGE! or close to it), becoming high school English teachers? Are psych majors (which at any level requires proficiency in stat) scoring even a 600 in math becoming professional pyschologists? I could keep going but you get the point. Yes, they’re graduating, but anyone can graduate really because schools don’t like to fail people. The better indicator of whether they were able to handle college intellectually is job placement in-field.</p>
<p>Let me respond to a few things you have said. I was thinking on this more last night, and I think I’ve been awfully hard on you. I apologize for my tone.</p>
<p>I think you and I have something in common that many other people share: We tend to appreciate in others the qualities we see in ourselves. I appreciate people with guts who press on and succeed despite the odds. You seem to appreciate the people who demonstrate their intellect in test scores (although you probably appreciate other things as well). Fair enough.</p>
<p>But I do want to take issue with a couple of other points you made, below:</p>
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<p>I disagree. </p>
<p>College is for learning. </p>
<p>People can wish to learn for many reasons or no reason. The world is full of people who went to college, achieved this or that degree and level of success, and then went on to do something totally different. Or nothing at all.</p>
<p>And honestly, it isn’t even true that all college material is difficult. An average student in high school can find a 4-year institution filled with students of the same background, and that average student will be enriched by attending that institution. Not every college is MIT, after all.</p>
<p>Remember that “D” I told you I made in high school? It was in freshman algebra. I just didn’t understand algebra at all in high school. But I went to a 4-year university, and they insisted that I take math. Algebra, in fact. So I did. I poured over my books, determined to figure it out. I went to the special math labs to help students who were not good in math. I worked and worked. And I got an “A” in each of my math requirements and went on to major in finance.</p>
<p>College is for learning. Despite being math-challenged, I learned enough math to get by. Who’s to say that the OP can’t do the same thing?</p>
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<p>This makes no sense at all.</p>
<p>If someone gets poor test scores, attends college and graduates, why would this mean that they cannot be an executive assistant? Legal secretary? Paralegal? Pre-school teacher or administrator? Grocery store manager? Journalist? Novelist? English teacher? High school principal? </p>
<p>The fallacy in your argument is you seem to suggest that if someone does not have the analytical skills needed to pursue a difficult profession at the beginning of their senior year of high school, they will never have these skills. You seem to suggest that analytical skills cannot be learned. That’s just wrong. If people believed their analytical skills were set in stone and could not be improved, few would pay for standardized testing prep courses.</p>
<p>Going to college augments one’s high school education. A person with a 4-year degree from any college will be a smarter, more experienced, worldly person and employee than that person would have been had they not attended college.</p>
<p>Besides, I just explained to you that it <em>is</em> possible to enter college horrible at math or some other academic skill but learn it in college. Had I wanted to become an actuary or a doctor, I could have done it. It would have taken <em>forever,</em> but it would have been possible.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I think your view of the world is very, very narrow. That’s OK for now. You’ll see more of what I’m talking about when you get out there and see all the ways in which people put their non-test-taking skills to good use. </p>
<p>In the meantime, please be very careful about discouraging others from bettering themselves just because they might not be doing it on the same level you are at the moment. Please?</p>
<p>Cindy I agree with you that there’s no absolute limit on someone’s intelligence, but won’t you admit that a law of diminishing returns applies? Yes, you were able to struggle through college math, but most people don’t have your gumption or grit. Dontno was speaking in absolutes, but there will be rare exceptions like you. Yet I think it’s good advice for everyone else. You must admit that you’re an exception, someone who couldn’t complete high school algebra graduating from a 4 year.</p>
<p>But cindy I am interested to hear more about your journey, sounds very unique and inspirational.</p>
<p>Of course it holds that the better prepared one is for college, the better one will do all other things being equal. My point is that the game isn’t over the first day you enter college. Once you show up, how you do is up to you. Maybe the OP wouldn’t graduate high in her college class as I did. Maybe she would just graduate.</p>
<p>Or maybe she wouldn’t ever earn her degree but would take 2-3 years of classes and then stop. She would leave with whatever she learned in that time. Which is totally up to her.</p>
<p>But remember, many of us were objecting to the advice that the OP should chuck it now. “College isn’t for people like you.” That’s just not cool.</p>
<p>And my initial point still holds, which is that having abysmal test scores does not necessarily mean someone is too dumb to attend college. It just means they have a lot of work to do. I do not think people like me are as rare as some of you think. You’d be surprised.</p>
<p>That’s a nice anecdote and i surely applaud your determination. However, there are a lot of factors absent from your story. Most importantly among them, did the college exams require a higher understanding of the material? Did they challenge the student or was it simply regurgitation or identical problems to the homework? I’m not saying these are true, but they could explain why your hard work wasn’t necessarily the factor by which you improved your grade. Again, I’m just throwing out some ideas that are simply conjecture. </p>
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<p>This is ridiculous. Becoming a doctor requires a base level of intelligence. I can’t convince you otherwise it seems. But here’s an example: I’m really good at physics, even getting an A+ in a 300 level course as a non-physics major. Yet, there’s no way I could be a physics prof at Harvard or Princeton or some other top school. I can study the equations, learn all the proofs and experiments, but I’ll never be able to reason at such an incredibly high level. There’s a discrepancy between reasoning skills and knowledge. Only so much of the latter can help overcome a deficiency in the former. </p>
<p>Finally, I think the main dispute we have is in our initial assumptions. I believe that the SAT (and other test scores) reflect well (not nearly a perfect correlation) on one’s innate intelligence. You disagree. Everything else is based off of this.</p>
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<p>Ad hominem attack, thanks. I am surely aware of other skills and talents. Do I live in a bubble? Seriously. It doesn’t make my world narrow to understand that intelligence is a bell curve and certain professions require a given level of intelligence. It’s pretty simple actually.</p>
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<p>You’re right. This wasn’t the appropriate forum to express these ideas.</p>
<p>Oh just a few interesting notes: The ideas I’ve presented here are very un-PC and never voiced in America. But in China, Japan, India (infamous for IIT tests) and Singapore, it’s government mandate. They identify the intelligent and not intelligent children by standardized test scores in their early teens. Subsequently, they’re siphoned off to either blue collar or college and white collar work. I don’t agree with this plan, but I do agree with the thinking, which is identical to the ideas I’ve expressed.</p>
<p>Alos, here’s a quote from Charles Murray, a Harvard educated America policy writer whose book Losing Ground revolutionized our welfare system:</p>
<p>I tell you I took these math classes, worked hard, got tutoring and learned the stuff, and you decide that means I must have just been regurgitating identical problems to the homework. Huh? I learned how to do math up to a certain level because I decided to apply myself and try hard. Why is it so hard for you to believe that someone can learn math in college rather than in high school? </p>
<p>This is the point I am having some trouble communicating, apparently. To the extent the OP or someone like her might have some weaknesses in high school, these can be addressed in college if the OP wants to take on the challenge.</p>
<p>That is why, IMHO, it is just plain wrong to tell someone that they are not college material based on their test scores. If someone has a poor math background, no amount of innate intelligence is going to get them a 700 on the SAT math section. That poor SAT score doesn’t mean, however, that they don’t have innate intelligence in math or in other areas. It simply means they don’t yet know enough math and they will have some challenges ahead should they opt to attend college.</p>
<p>I don’t think dontno is ignoring that the SAT is coachable or discounting that people may underperform. Clearly, someone intelligent who has no special talent in math (or who aspires to learn it to the level required to pass HS) will not do well on the SAT but will be perfectly able to learn it in college, and not via rote either. He is just commenting that people whose SAT scores are final and do represent their ability no matter how much studying and retakes they do are probably going to have a hard time in some fields. This is not outrageous or unreasonable, especially in general. It’s much easier to accept this if you look at national dropout rates and SAT averages of various professions rather than focusing on a single example. Remember that on cc a low scorer is likely a motivated student anyway, in contrast to the millions of kids who do poorly and have no ambition to become educated.</p>
<p>One of those difficult fields may well be college. Most of us have certain ideas about a) the level of education a college education is supposed to provide, and b) the level of mastery of this education at which a student is considered sucessful. dontno’s ideas are very lofty indeed but they wouldn’t be out-of-line at all in, say, the UK. 4-year institutions are meant for extreme academic rigor, not dabbling in remedial material. </p>
<p>Just a comment – you say in other posts that you are dissatisfied with the academic quality of many Cornellians, who boast high SAT scores. I wouldn’t disagree, because our school ships around 20 kids to Duke yearly and some of them are…numbers without curiosity. You should consider that a) true intellectual interests may not be correlated with SAT scores at all, so it’s entirely possible that people’s interests and intelligence allow them to pick up math or English despite scores; and b) if you think the academic atmosphere at Cornell is unacceptable, your standards of a 4-year U.S. education are too high. You seem to think many 4-years should be HYPSMC-level, while simultaneously acknowledging that even at lower Ivies people could not hope to compete there. You’re mistaking a good education with a super-super-elite one. </p>
<p>It doesn’t make much sense to provide anecdotal rebuttals about score/ability discrepancies either because that’s not what he’s talking about.
“In the majority of cases, people who like blue also --”
“But wait, I like red! Theory disproven!”</p>
<p>Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree with almost everything you stated. I’ll respond to a few of the points directly.</p>
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<p>Definitely. In America, where the media supports the notion of intellectual egalitarianism, these ideas are polemical. In Japan and China, it’s the accepted paradigm. In China, at the end of 5th grade, students are separated on the basis of mainly test scores into Vo-tech and academic tracks. In India, admission to college is almost solely based on standardized testing. In Japan, trillions are spent on full immersion training in blue collar work, therby churning out more proficient workers while not wasting their time learning material of which they’re not qualified and have no use for. I did fully expect a response like the one I received though because it is America.</p>
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<p>I’ve had similiar debates on other contentious issues. I’ve used the above logic ad nasuem. It’s laughable how people can’t wrap their head around the concept of average and expectation as opposed to individual results.</p>
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<p>Agreed. Many of my friends, while scoring high on the SATs, had no desire to broaden themselves intellectually.</p>
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<p>Kudos for looking up my previous posts. I think my dissatisfaction with the majority of Cornellians isn’t a result of their intellectual apathy, but rather the discrepancy between my expectation of an Ivy League student and what being an Ivy Leaguer actually entails. I had expected every Ivy League school to be populated by the leading thinkers of tomorrow, people who had nary a problem with difficult material. This wasn’t the case as there were a disarming amount of students who I felt were undeserving of the stereotypical Ivy League label. In comparison to the general public, Cornellians are surely a highly able sort though. I also attended a decent state school for my freshmen year and the disparity between the intellectual ABILITIES of both student bodies is evident. This is of course quantified very well by SAT averages.</p>
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<p>That may be implied, but I don’t believe that.</p>