@Akqj10, as I mentioned in my PM, once you get in the 50-100 range, the kids who were top 1 percentile in HS tend to be a small percentage of the student body. Outside of a handful of exceptions, 10% or less.
In any case, I didn’t say you were wrong (granted, I did think it was a tad misleading). I don’t know why you are taking my remark so negatively.
Many top students choose to go to other colleges, flagships or not, because there is something at those schools that they want or even because that’s the school they can afford.
I don’t think anyone is saying that there are not a fair number of “average excellent” students at the most elite schools. There are! That’s why it makes sense for such students to apply to schools at the very top of the rankings. I know plenty of “average excellent” students at schools like NU, Chicago, and ND (although, living where I do, I wonder if that’s because use of legacy hooks, ED, and networking opportunities might have given some just the nudge they needed to stand out at those schools in particular). So, it’s not that average-excellent students aren’t or couldn’t be good candidates for even the tippy-top schools. The main challenge is that it’s more difficult for them to have the kind of impact with an application that would make an adcom at those schools take notice.
I also think it’s important not to conflate “average excellence” vs. “stand-out excellence” with the “smart” vs. “gifted” difference. Or focus too closely on test score ranges or GPAs. If for no other reason than in the context of elite college admissions these days, perfect or near-perfect stats are the ante for consideration, but do not necessarily lead to a winning hand. That’s one of the reasons I framed my off-the-cuff definition primarily in terms of psychographic and social rather cognitive characteristics. An “average excellent” student may be truly gifted, but in their presentation of self, that is not always easily or quickly communicated. And, as others have astutely mentioned, the efforts of “average excellent” students tend to be at the local level rather than moving beyond that, which may be related to confidence, ambition, or guidance rather than ability.
There’s really nothing average about these students, typical may have been a better word. Anyway I do think we’re conflating atypical, non-conventional, “true” excellence with what adcoms look for, i.e. average excellence with hooks.
“The main challenge is that it’s more difficult for them to have the kind of impact with an application that would make an adcom at those schools take notice.”
Adcoms would not notice a lot of these innovators, disruptors, potential Einsteins, as people here seem to think. I give Harvard credit for admitting Gates, McNealy, Zuckerberg but those guys had over 1500 SATs, when that score means a lot more than it does now. (SAT scoring has been changed twice to increase the averages, the average was around 900, back then).
Stanford (and many other schools) could notice Richard Sherman - recruitable athlete, black, from Compton, salutatorian (4.1 GPA) and offer admission, not sure they would notice Steve Jobs in their backyard because his GPA was supposedly a 2.65, would have been on the reject pile. Do you think an adcom from a top university could figure out he would disrupt 4 industries? And if they did wouldn’t they invest in his company? ok joking there
I can only guess what it means, but I have never heard the term.
I agree with blossom’s characterization of these distinctions as not very meaningful.
At my top-tier liberal arts college, I’d say the vast majority of our entering students are earnest, diligent, and bright people who:
-have solid study skills, sufficient to keep up with basic college-level courses, but need to “learn how to learn” at higher levels.
-write in English reasonably well, but have trouble sustaining a coherent argument in prose for more than a few pages.
-have sufficient quantitative reasoning skills to do well in high school level statistics and calculus courses, but struggle with tasks that require outside-the-box thinking or open-ended reasoning.
-are intellectually curious, informed, articulate, and well-read, but are easily frustrated and stressed by their first encounters with material that requires more depth and nuance.
I’d say around 80 percent could be described this way, with some stronger in some areas and others a bit weaker. I don’t really study our admissions data, but I suspect that almost all of our students were “superstars” (or even classified as “gifted”) in some way in their respective high schools, and most have standardized test scores above the 90th percentile. For the most part, they seem like interesting people who are reasonably intelligent and passionate about learning, but are not terribly distinguishable beyond that.
EDIT: I should add that the students I’ve taught here are, for the most part, not appreciably different from many of the students I taught at previous institutions: a moderately selective state flagship, and less selective state flagship.
Maybe this is “average excellent,” I don’t know. Ultimately it doesn’t mean much because students evolve so much during their time with us as their interests develop. Small differences emerge over time among students who exhibit varying levels of engagement, but (with few exceptions) it is difficult to predict who will excel and in what way, especially given the myriad ways in which students can be excellent.
Very helpful perspective @mathprofdad . Do you mind clarifying top tier? Sub 20% acceptance rate? Or tippy-top top ten LAC?
Thanks @Lindagaf . Our peer group includes Carleton, Pomona, and Vassar (and all of those schools would also consider us a peer, LOL). Hopefully that’s clear enough!
I should also say that I hope my post above didn’t come across as negative. Our students are absolutely wonderful and a joy to teach. The vast majority of them do in fact “learn how to learn” and become incisive writers, and deep and nuanced thinkers during their time with us. They aren’t a bunch of future Sergey Brin’s or Terry Tao’s, but most go on to live happy lives and do meaningful (even outstanding and ground-breaking) work in all sorts of fields, including some that I didn’t even know existed. All have something they can teach me.
Ultimately, the point I was trying to make above is that I’ve not found much use in making such fine distinctions in ability (like the difference between “average excellent” and “truly excellent”) at such an early age, before most students have really had a chance to figure out what they like and what they’re truly good at.
@mathprofdad I totally agree with your point about making such fine distinctions at that age.
On the other hand, when we are talking about the top eight or ten schools with the single digit admit rates, aren’t they kind of forced to do so? They have way more apps from students with perfect or near perfect stats than they have spots to hand out. From what I have gleaned they respond by selecting a well rounded class instead of well rounded students. Kids that not only have the stats, but are “interesting” in some other way.
In my mind this was where the “average excellent” term (pure CC parlance) comes in. Average excellent students have the same top shelf academic credentials, but if they don’t have something that makes them stand out they often don’t make the final cut to be admitted. Average excellent as I understood it was just a useful shorthand way of referring to that reality. Again just talking about a handful of schools here.
Put me in the column though that agrees that trying to make fine distinctions at this stage of life ends up being imperfect at the least. I would imagine a fair number of average excellent kids will wind up outpacing those who might have looked more “interesting” as teenagers.
^ Yes, it’s really just for the elite admissions game that the “average excellent” and “uniquely excellent” distinction matters.
For example, do grads of Oxbridge (or Caltech), who tend to focus much more on academic achievements and potential rather than “specialness”, on average, do measurably worse than HYPSM grads later on in life? It doesn’t seem so.
@mathprofdad, Respectfully, I don’t think that when @Lindagaf originally used the term “average excellent” she was referrng to distinctions in ability.
Really, when it comes to college admissions, IMO “average excellent” means what I would call fungible.
Being fungible means to me that an admissions committee reviewing your application htas no reason to think that if you aren’t admitted there won’t be another kid in the class who will make the same contributions to the class that you would have made if you were admitted. (Now, obviously, everyone is unique, but the key is whether you seem unique on paper.)
So, a kid who ranks in the top 5 high school quarterbacks in the US and also is in the top 5% of his class and has a SAT score of 1560 is extremely likely to get into Harvard because it’s unlikely that if H doesn’t admit him it will get another quarterback who is as good and has the same stats.
A Mormon kid from Utah with a high GPA and test scores who is active in his Ward is more likely to get in than the Jewish kid from Connecticut with the same stats who is equally involved in his congregation–simply because it is probable that there are fewer practicing Mormons from Utah in the applicant pool than Jewish kids from Connecticut.
If you are a white or Asian kid with two college educated parents with a great GPA and test scores who lives in the Boston to DC corridor, metro Chicago or metro LA who has been active in high school ECs but has no state or national level recognition in anything, than you’re an “average excellent” student because there are lots of people in the applicant pool just like you and if you aren’t admitted someone very like you wlll be.
Would a larger sample for comparison be found at somewhat less selective universities (e.g. state flagships), using those students with top-end academic credentials that are within the HYPSM admit range?
I think it is valuable to distinguish between what adcoms do to select a class at a super selective school, and anything about the long-term trajectory of 18 year old kids. The reality is when many more people want to go to a school than there are places, you need a way to select them. Our system currently favors precocious kids, ones who are especially focused or driven at a young age, or with a very particularly developed skill, etc. This is after meeting some challenging minimums on regular academic work. Systems in other countries work sometimes focus on detailed high stakes academic tests, with corresponding focused preparation. I am not aware of any studies that show one is better than the other, or whether one can even define better.
I do sometimes wish admissions folks would be more honest that there is a lot of groupthink involved in the current favoring of “pointiness” without any real evidence of why it is more wonderful than any other feature of applicants. I know in my area, pointiness when young is not a particularly good indicator of long term success. But adcoms have to decide, and this is one of the ways they do now.
The idea average excellent is any way bad is stupid, and is just currently not the best way to get into a tippy-top school. I’m sure those average excellent kids who end up at not quite a tippy-top do very well on average.
Since the terminology “average excellent” was basically coined to describe those students with excellent stats but unsuccessful in being admitted to those super selective elite schools, we should simply define it as just that in its simplest and original understanding of the terminology.
However, the reality might be that these “average excellent” students not only do often end up at those super selective elite schools but could actually make up to be the majority “average” student body at such institutions. If Robert J. Birgeneau, a former Cal-Berkeley chancellor, could be given credence to his estimation that a typical student body at such institutions each year consists of about 60% hooked students – recruited athletes, URMs, FLI (first-generation, low income), development cases, faculty/adm children, political and Hollywood celebrities, etc. – it’s hard to conclude that the majority of the student body at such institutions would be made up of nothing but “prodigiously excellent” that we imagine it to be. As a former interviewer at one of these institutions, I don’t know of anyone admitted to these super selective elite schools that I could describe as “prodigiously excellent” or, in most cases, even “above average excellent.” Of many students admitted to such schools I can only describe them as “average excellent” students who are mostly well-rounded. But that’s just my own findings in my own region.
And this is where the terminology, “average excellent,” loses its significance if a large body of average excellent students indeed make up the student body at these institutions as well as outside of their walls. Isn’t this, after all, why someone at one of these institutions made a famous comment long ago that the class of accepted students at such school can easily be replaced with the waitlisted students without losing any quality?
One could argue that some of the hooks that you named, specifically recruited athletes and some of the 1G/LI students, are “prodigiously excellent”. Being strong enough at a sport to be recruited by the college implies an unusually high level of achievement in an extracurricular (the sport); if the college holds recruited athletes to high academic standards, then they can be seen as similar to other high academic achievers who have a top-end extracurricular achievement.
Similarly, 1G/LI students are often heavily disadvantaged, so that achieving a level of academic excellence commonly found at the higher ranks of public and private high schools with mostly advantaged students implies a higher level of achievement due to starting from a position of disadvantage (imagine a running race where several runners cross the finish line at the same time, and then realizing that one of them had a start line that was further back).
On the other hand, some of the other hook characteristics (relations to big donors, faculty, celebrities, politicians, etc., as well as ordinary legacy) correlate to growing up in advantaged environments, so those hooks are a further advantage to some who are already advantaged. URMs are more likely to be disadvantaged, but, when considered in the context of super-selective colleges’ students that are highly skewed toward those from advantaged backgrounds, are probably still more likely to be advantaged than disadvantaged (though less so than non-URMs).
@jonri: “So, a kid who ranks in the top 5 high school quarterbacks in the US and also is in the top 5% of his class and has a SAT score of 1560 is extremely likely to get into Harvard because it’s unlikely that if H doesn’t admit him it will get another quarterback who is as good and has the same stats.”
. . .if Harvard thinks they have a chance of landing this kid, the odds of which would be close to nil.
He would most likely go to Stanford or a football powerhouse (like ND or UMich). Possibly Northwestern/Duke or some local P5 school. Pretty much zero chance of him picking Harvard.
You have to remember that in college football, the entire Ivy League is equivalent to a regional or lowest tier flagship.
One of the kids in “Friday Night Lights” went to Harvard but gave up football after a year because Ivy League football didn’t match the intensity or talent-level of top tier Texas HS football.
Plus they don’t offer full-ride athletic scholarships like the schools I named above.
More precisely, the Ivy League is an NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision conference, which is the “lower half” for football purposes (the “upper half” is the Football Bowl Subdivision). The Ivy League also does not participate in the championship playoff that its subdivision has for a post-season.
A list of NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision conferences and teams is given at http://www.ncaa.com/standings/football/fcs .
Yes, @PurpleTitan , I know all that. My point was simply that if someone like that did apply, he’d be admitted…
@jonri: Probably not, actually, as Harvard would know that his application would be done just for scalp-hunting and he’d never pick them.