<h1>58,</h1>
<p>By “better job opportunity” I meant better chance to find a job.</p>
<p>^^ what if the purpose isn’t job opportunity but preparation for, say, law school?</p>
Dad_II
March 8, 2012, 7:24pm
63
<p>OP here. Sorry I have been busy.</p>
<p>The purpose of this thread was my attempt to established some common grounds around the three most talked about subjects in the “Parents”. Because I saw so many threads talking about the same old thing day after day. </p>
<p>Apparently, I was wrong. the only common ground, or agreement, is that we are more than happy to disagree on just about every thing.</p>
<p>I know that there are outliers in every population. But … …</p>
<p>Well, life goes and, the “discussions” continue</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, I can’t “agree” with that at all. It’s just a different set of opportunities.</p>
<p>
What I mean is that it’s my opinion that, all other things being equal, a kid with a 2400 SAT will have noticeably better results in getting in to the most selective schools than a kid with a 2250. There may be some level where it stops mattering, I guess, but I think it’s more like 2350.
</p>
<p>How about some actual data ? Check out the graphs on p.7 of [this</a> paper](<a href=“https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7awsBPg9l2tYWJlZjgyZjYtNzQyNS00YTQwLTk4MzYtNTk4Y2YyMjNhODQ5/edit]this ”>hoxby college ranking.pdf - Google Drive ), showing the probability of admission vs. SAT for four CC favorite schools (MHYP). Since the graphs are in terms of SAT percentiles, it may be useful to refer to the College Board’s [SAT</a> Percentile Ranks table](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools ”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools ).</p>
<p>We agree to disagree</p>
<p>^ You have obviously not been on the contraception thread
<p>You guys did not realize that you all agree with me. Read carefully. I said “not necessarily” and you guys all argueing that it is “not necessarily” true or false.</p>
<p>Re #65 - I’ve seen that data. So for Yale and Princeton getting at least in the 98% is a jump and 99%ile more of a jump. Maybe 750 vs 770ish. But as was posted earlier we have no idea if students with higher scores also tend bring other desirable qualities to the table.</p>
Dad_II
March 9, 2012, 7:00pm
70
<p>Ref # 65. That figure is very misleading. I believe in the later table they show the standard Deviation of those “averages”. Statistically, I don’t think there is a difference. (disclosure: I did not read the whole article)</p>
<p>Post #65 , here is an excerpt from MIT that explains why higher SAT is better, it’s a correlation and NOT causation.http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/the-difficulty-with-data]The ”>The Difficulty With Data | MIT Admissions )</p>
<p>
Now, I and others are on the record as saying that we admit people, not test scores, and that in any case there is really not a difference in our process between someone who scores, say, a 740 on the SAT math, and someone who scores an 800 on the SAT math. So why, as the commentor asks, is there such a difference in the admit rate? Aha! Clearly we DO prefer higher SAT scores!</p>
<p>Well no, we don’t. What we prefer are things which may coincide with higher SAT scores. For example, a student who receives a gold medal at the IMO is probably more likely to score an 800 on the math SAT than a 740. But if we take an IMO medalist (with an 800) over random applicant X (with a 740), does that mean we preferred an 800 to a 740? No. It means we preferred the IMO medalist, who also happened to get an 800!</p>
<p>The same goes for people who are highly ranked in their graduating class. Almost half of the class of 2015 were valedictorians of their high school. Aha! MIT must highly value class rank in our application! No, we don’t. Then why does this happen? Because we do highly value certain academic accomplishments, and if you are doing well enough academically to achieve these things, then you are probably doing pretty well in high school. Additionally, we highly value strong letters of recommendation, and often teachers strongly support students who really blow them away academically. </p>
<p>So we select for these other traits and end up, as a side effect, with a disproportionate number of valedictorians. But it’s not because they’re valedictorians that we select them, but rather that because of the things for which we select they are valedictorians. Or, to paraphrase a line from Llewellyn: being a valedictorian isn’t the reason for the decision; it’s the result of factors which were reason for the decision. </p>
<p>You see what happens here. It’s correlation misdiagnosed as causation, and then interpreted through a particular narrative frame to conform (and confirm) to prior expectations. This happens all the time in shoddy social science. And it inevitably occurs with whatever data we do release. If we released admit rate by state, it would be: The admit rate for students from Wisconsin went up 2%, MIT must really want applicants from Wisconsin! When the reality would be much closer to: we took whom we wanted to take, and they were from Wisconsin. Was Wisconsin considered in a complex ecology of decisionmaking? To some degree, yes; that’s what we mean when we say we “read everything” and have a contextual, holistic process. But was it a determinative characteristic, one which could be separated out as a causal agent? Could Wisconsin be assigned a standard weight in a model of our decision process? Absolutely not. </p>
<p>What’s happening here is a fundamental confusion between our admissions process and the results of that process. When we say that the admit rate for students with a 750-800 was 15%, it does not mean that the chances of a given applicant who scores between 750-800 if 15%. It means that those students whom we chose to admit included 15% of those who scored within the 750-800 range. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one in understanding the agency of admissions.
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Hunt
March 10, 2012, 12:55pm
72
<p>But this is silly: we like really smart people–it’s just a coincidence that they have high scores and grades. We only look at OTHER indications that they are really smart. I just have trouble believing that. I guess it’s true to an extent, with the IMO medalists, etc. But come on!</p>
lol</p>