<p>I guess my question is, who are the students who make up that bottom 25% of standardized test score ranges? While so many competitive students are being turned down, what makes that bottom group stand out? What is their “hook”? What makes them special? I am very curious.</p>
<p>URM’s, Recruited athletes, special life events or circumstances.</p>
<p>That’s an excellent question - I’ve wondered the same thing myself. It must be students who have done something really creative or enterprising outside of school, huh?</p>
<p>Athletes, legacies, full-pay/donor kids, the kid from North Dakota/Alaska, intl’s, URMs, someone with a compelling story. Not saying that if you are in one of these groups you are definitely in the bottom 25%, just that these are the kids who often get a bit of a pass.</p>
<p>What about the kids from Mich/SC? haha</p>
<p>Kids who are Art/Design/Teatre majors. Kids who are dyslexic or have another LD that makes them bad testers.</p>
<p>In addition to the above … Kids with superior class rank/GPA at high schools that are known to adcoms to be rigorous. Not everyone does well on standardized tests.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This explanation works for small privates, but not big publics like UC Berkeley, which does not use race as a factor, has no legacy preference, is need blind, admits a small percentage of athletes, and (up until this year) admits CA residents over OOS. </p>
<p>In the case of big publics, the answer may be that the lower 25% are the next best students in the admitted pool who chose to matriculate there.</p>
<p>You’re right, Bay. I was definitely thinking of privates because they are so favored on cc.</p>
<p>In Texas, an explanation could be those 10% of their class who are guaranteed admission to a state school, regardless of SAT or ACT score.</p>
<p>Often times, it’s people who are strong elsewhere in the application. Take an extreme case – if someone’s SATs were 800, 800, 620. The 620 would be in the bottom 25%, but the candidate may be viewed a strong candidate anyway, if all else is good.</p>
<p>First a correction of a common assumption: the “bottom 25%” cannot be found by adding up the 25th percentiles for each section of the SAT. People on this site often think that because this total is “low,” it must be all those URMs, legacies, etc. when such is far from the truth. In reality there’s likely less deviation from the average, in composite scores, than people would think (e.g. for a given college, someone might score in the 25th percentile in reading, but score in the 90th percentile for math and writing, so their composite score is very high).</p>
<p>For another, legacies are definitely not the ones who would score lower. In fact, legacies tend to be well-off, and it’s the well-off students who score the highest on the SAT. One article from the Stanford Daily noted that legacy students on average score higher than the rest of the student body. That’s to be expected at every top school - they get so many applicants that they only end up taking the “best” legacy students, who on average are more qualified than most. There’s a reason that legacy students do so well in admissions (not so much because of a significant preference), for the same reason that upper-income students do well in admissions: they tend to be the most qualified. (It’s the same reason that 74% of the students at the top 146 colleges are from the top economic quartile, while only 23% are from the middle two economic quartiles.) URMs at top colleges are largely well-to-do - a surprising fact for many.</p>
<p>Also consider that SAT scores are not terribly important for admission to top colleges. These colleges will choose students based on other non-quantifiable factors, like ECs and recommendations, and those who are “the best” in those areas tend to have higher SAT scores. That’s why something like half the students with perfect scores are rejected from Harvard - it’s not the scores that get them in (or not), but rather their other accomplishments, and there’s a high correlation between accomplishments and SAT scores. But this correlation isn’t perfect, so this “bottom 25%” (although the actual data isn’t available) likely has plenty of other factors that make them more qualified, like significant leadership positions and major awards.</p>
<p>Finally, consider that given the stiff competition for admission at all the top colleges, the admissions offices will choose the very best among the many other “special groups” (like URMs and donors). So these are not necessarily the “lower scoring” people. They too are among the very best. </p>
<p>The bottom 25% is better explained through these factors than through some presumptuous “all those athletes and AA cases” statement.</p>
<p>I wonder what percentage of the bottom 25% (of selective colleges) are Asian-Americans.</p>
<p>You’re forgetting the kids of university employees. While they aren’t a large group by any means, they do make up a significant amount of those admitted.</p>
<p>nice post phantasmagoric!</p>
<p>LOL at 20more</p>
<p>give it up…</p>
<p>HiimCole</p>
<p>Are you an Asian American?</p>
<p>"give it up… "</p>
<p>No, I don’t think so.</p>
<p>You’re certainly not achieving anything by posting messages on here, so I don’t know why you want to continue wasting your own time.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>perhaps…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>100% incorrect. By definition, all of the UCs are need-aware: bonus points for low income students, those from a single parent household, those who attend low income schools. If Cal truly was need blind, it would not be comprised of 33% Pell Grantees year after year after year.</p>
<p>Being a low income applicant to UCSD, for example, is as good as being in the top 4% (ELC) of your HS class: both earn 300 admissions points.</p>
<p>According to UC Statfinder, the mean income of those with <1500 scores admitted to Cal is $46k. Scores of 1500-1800 have an income of $64k. Those with an scores of 2100+ have a six figure income ($145k).</p>
<p>UC maybe practicing good public policy, but it definitely ain’t need blind. :)</p>
<p>HiimCole</p>
<p>Are you an Asian American? I am just curious.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m being slow, but what are you implying 20more?</p>