<p>The rates alone do not tell the story, as there are many reasons for the numbers. I think a good narrative account about the school is important. Many of the schools strong in the tech areas are schools that have some highly motivated students even if the stats are not so high, and the atmosphere of the school is affected by the number of kids who study hard and often.</p>
<p>It’s my understanding that high school GPA, not SAT, is a better indicator of college graduation rate. Schools that do not require SAT, for instance, Bates (who incidentally may have a lower per-student educational expenditure than Stanford), have been tracking this for years. Probably this is a topic for another thread.</p>
<p>What is a reach school? How do you define these terms?</p>
<p>It’s a top school like HPYS, MIT, which are reaches for everyone, even those with 1580 SATs and class presidencies.</p>
<p>In addition, reach schools are those where one’s stats are in the bottom 25% of admitted students. For students applying to out of state public institutions, it’s possible that a school is a reach school even if one’s stats are in the top 25% of admitted students since the bar is set higher at public institutions for students who reside out of state.</p>
<p>It is, depending on the highschool. The reason the SAT1 and 2 are useful is that it can assess the highschool curriculum to some degree. If you are looking at a strong student from a school you don’t know whose teachers swear that he is the best student they have ever had in Latin, for instance, and in general, and if those test scores are not so hot, a rigorous school might decide this is not a good fit. I know a large highschool whose kids seem to bomb math after they leave the school with great grades and studying at calculus level. They dang well better repeat some of the math in college because of that known track record. A tell tale sign is that the kids don’t seem to do that well on the AP calc, but even those who do, have trouble with the college course. I think the top colleges are aware of this as the school has a very low acceptance % for kids applying to top schools, given the socio economics involved.</p>
<p>Jamimom, arguably the SAT II, and APs - and possibly the ACT- are a good “test” against which to weigh a high school GPA … but since the SAT I is not curriculum or content based, it is meaningless. The SAT I really derives from old and largely discredited views of aptitute and intelligence – they changed the name to eliminate the use of the word “aptitude” … but the test itself is still hunting for that elusive “G” that will separate the inherently smart from the mundane hard-workers. </p>
<p>But the reality is that in college, and in life - it is the diligent students who put in effort who do better, no matter what their scores are on tests of aptitude and IQs. Brilliant+lazy isn’t a good recipe for success in college … though of course there are many students who slide through life with a minimum of effort. </p>
<p>So it makes a lot more sense to focus on the GPA as tested by a direct measure of whether A students have also achieved in particular subjects – for which the AP’s and the SAT II’s are the only national tests performing that function.</p>
<p>There are many students who ace standardized tests and breeze through high school without developing good study habits. Some of the best students, when they arrive at college, are in dire need of time management skills and study skills. Then we have the "poor "test taker who has worked harder in school and performed well in high school and can hit the ground running when he arrives at college- IMHO both kids can do well and many kids who are at the “bottom” ranges of a university’s admission stats are qualified to do the work at the institution- It is silly to assume that only kids with the highest scores can be successful. I work in the academic support center of a university and the Honors students often have to learn how to work for the first time.</p>
<p>I certainly believe that the highschool transcript is the strongest indicator of success in college. the colleges know this too. But there are kids who are excellent students in weak curriculums that pay dearly when they get to college. My girls were examples of very strong student with low SAT1 scores who continued their success in college. But they will be the first to say that the rigorous courses they took in highschool were instrumental for their success in college, and that other 4.0 type kids who did not take such courses had a difficult time with the premed curriculum that they took. They did not learn the study technicques and skills necessary to tackle upper level science typ courses, for example. My girls knew the drill well as they had suffered through it in highschool.</p>
<p>Reading this, I wish that the common data set information had schools track and report details about the h.s. curriculum of their students. It would be useful, for instance, to know how many AP and Honors classes the average accepted/enrolled student took, how many years of math, how many years of science, etc. It would also be nice to know if the reported GPA is based on the reported weighted or unweighted GPA from the high school, or a reconfiguration from the college/uni. itself. This would be very useful information to have in hand when you’re comparing schools in terms of who your peers might be.</p>
<p>On a side note, for a project I’m working on, I was just fooling around with the data in the US News & World report premium rankings online. It was very interesting to look at individual pieces of data, instead of just the overall “rank” For instance, there are quite a few schools that ended up in the bottom half of the top 100 LACs that actually had equivalent or HIGHER “peer assessments” than the higher ranked schools. And, if you look just at class sizes, some of those “bottom of the top tier schools” also come out ahead. If you sort them by order of SAT ranges, once you get past the top 10 schools, there is a WIDE variety of ranges, even among “to 30” schools. So, as always, make sure you are comparing apples to apples when you look at schools.</p>
<p>Jamimom, your comment is exactly why it is counterproductive for students to strive for “reach” colleges for the sake of “aiming higher”. Many colleges that are not among the most selective have excellent academics, but do a better job of educating the kids who don’t have the foundation in their high school curriculums. For example, premed students at my son’s LAC (lower half of the US News top 50 list) almost always get accepted into med school; my son’s chemistry class had less than a dozen students in it, with the prof working with the students in the lab - and often my son was working one-on-one with the prof, who had extended lab hours to accommodate various scheduling conflicts. When I took chemistry, it was in a lecture with 600 students and a lab section conducted by a TA who spoke no English. Which one of us learned more about chemistry? I know that I stressed more… my son is the one who thought chemistry was “fun”, whereas I equated it more with “torture.” </p>
<p>It’s not always about capacity to do the work - but the point is that the less selective college may have more resources for students to help fill the gaps, and in the end they may emerge better educated, simply because they have had better support in their college classes.</p>
<p>Both of my girls chose small Catholic colleges with nurturing pre-med programs despite getting accepted at some “better” schools. My niece is graduating from med school next month, my daughter will be applying next year with a 4.0 average to date. My niece’s good friend went to Cornell where my niece was also accepted off the waitlist but decided to not to go there. This young lady did not get into a med school because of some “C’s” in some crucial courses, and she was the val of my niece’s class, and had much higher stats on the tests. Support is very important in college, particularly for some kids. So the top rated schools are not always the best choice.</p>
<p>I am interested in the how the “reach” metaphor and the rankings-obsession of some kids/parent suggests (wrongly I think) that life if some kind of game of Chutes and Ladders in which one navigates by stats. And I am really glad to have discussion about the Value Added of LACs that I think have a very different metaphor for what constitutes excellent education. Please keep unfolding that topic, Carolyn. And Calmom’s narrative on the difference between chemistry being “torture” for her and “fun” for her son captures so much. SInce I seem to be in a metaphorical mindset–I wish USNWR would retire from the field and we could nominate some other “games” that model Outstanding Education. I’ll start with one of my childhood favorites: Clue… Good educations teaches you that somethings take awhile to be revealed, there are interesting secret passages, you should try out a few roles in life, and the dice rolls better for everyone if there is a level playing field…</p>
<p>Heh–“good education teaches you” …you should proofread better before hitting Submit</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/04_27_2000.htm[/url]”>http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/04_27_2000.htm</a></p>
<p>** “Children smart enough to get into elite schools may not need to bother”**</p>
<p>That is the title of the article behind the link. Very interesting. Here’s a caption to wet your whistle…
“One group of students, however, clearly benefited from attending a highly selective college: those from lower-income families – defined approximately as the bottom quarter of families who send children to college. For them, attending a more selective school increased earnings significantly.”</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>“My advice to students: Don’t believe that the only school worth attending is one that would not admit you. That you go to college is more important than where you go. Find a school whose academic strengths match your interests and which devotes resources to instruction in those fields. Recognize that your own motivation, ambition and talents will determine your success more than the college name on your diploma”</p>
<p>The most elite colleges are a “reach” for everyone because of their very low acceptance rate. However, such reaches may be very desireable for the high achieving students who are lucky enough to get in,— not because of prestige, not necessarily because they provide the best courses/professors, and not because they will necessarily enhance one’s career— but because the students can learn so much from their classmates (my cousin, a 1970’s grad of Harvard said he learned more from other students --in class discussions, and in many other less formal ways—than he did from his profs.) In addition, a very high achieving student may have more in common with a higher proportion of his/her classmates than at a state school, where there is a much wider range of students. Now, this is not to say that there aren’t many very bright kids at state unversities…however, for kids who want to be literally surrounded students that share their intellect, deep interest in academics and strong motivation to learn, a so-called reach school might be where they’ll find the greatest satisfaction. If, however, being surounded be such classmates feels like pressure, it certainly would not be a good choice.</p>
<p>Donemom, I understand what you are trying to say. The camraderie and intensity of my son’s IB Diploma program was the capstone of his HS career. For college, I disagree that this environment is limited to a few “reach” schools. Not so. In today’s economics of paying college tuition, there are very many bright students at state universities with amazing credentials. They are everywhere. Some schools do a better job of creating an academic environment than others…but people need to individually search for the gems like you describe that are perfect places for them to study and grow. They are not necessarily at the top of the “lists.” They are probably small and have a very secure sense of mission i.e. Earlham, Reed etc.</p>
<p>I’d like to add a cautionary tale on the concept of academic rigor.</p>
<p>I had a close friend (decades ago) who was a national merit finalist, and who yielded to family pressure to choose the same small, religious college his parents and older brother had attended before him. My friend’s SAT scores may well have been the highest in the history of the school. </p>
<p>The school achieved a type of academic rigor by requiring its students to perform rote memorization of vast quantities of material. Instead of being tested on his conceptual understanding of the material, and his ability to apply that understanding to different sets of data or different factual situations, my friend often found himself being tested on his ability and willingness to memorize and regurgitate long lists of facts. He was temprementally unsuited to that style of education; it simply wasn’t tailored to the way his mind worked. His GPA suffered, he lost his merit scholarship, and he left the school in frustration. </p>
<p>Being too far to either side of the mean for a school can be problematic.</p>
<p>Overseas, --like your son, mine found that camaraderie in the debate world. While he has great friends at home, travelling around the country and interacting with some of the best and brightest through this activity was so rewarding. In this environment, intellectualism was embraced. It was very important to him that he find this at college as well. And frankly, I think that when you can have the humbling experience of being among other brilliant kids, it builds character–a very accomplished kid might otherwise continue with the illusion that they’ll always be the best, and eventually, that bubble will burst.
So while I certainly agree that a higly intellectual peer environment can be found in other places besides HYP etc., (no question it exists in certain small schools as well), I think its unrealistic to pretend that a exremely high achieving student will find the same proportion of such students at most colleges.</p>
<p>College adcoms always say that if you are admitted then you are prepared to handle the academics. I believe that this is true. However a student had better be in the top quarter of the food chain if he/she wants to:
- take the most challenging courses in the college catalogue</p>
<ol>
<li><p>qualify for departmental scholarships</p></li>
<li><p>be recognized for academic honors</p></li>
<li><p>invited to participate in research(there are often only so<br>
many faculty and department resources available), and </p></li>
<li><p>be admitted into accelerated academic programs(some specialty
majors, bs/ms programs, etc.)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Our son chose the big fish-small pond approach and, in addition to receiving $25,000/yr in merit scholarships, was invited to the Institute’s Awards Convocation ceremony, was accepted into the special dual degree AI program and was academically challenged like never before, scrapping his way to a first year 3.5 gpa.</p>
<p>Carolyn : I have just read your post with interest. My son is a high school junior, so we are just beginning the college search. He has one school he really likes (right now the only one on his list in fact). We are constantly told that it is way below his ability, it is a party school, etc, etc. At first, I was concerned that perhaps everyone is correct. His SATs and GPA are significantly higher than those listed in the review books for this particular school. But, he felt very comfortable there when we visited - he liked the kids we met. Also, when talking to kids, everyone commented that because classes are small, it would be hard to “hide” in the crowd. My son is a very shy, quiet kid so I am getting more comfortable that this might be a good environment for him. We are encouraging him to try to apply to one reach school, but since cost is going to be critical, even if he were to get in to a reach, we likely won’t be able to pay the cost. The next year will certainly be interesting.</p>