Which elite schools emphasize test scores?

[Anonymous]

Let's be fair to OP's DS: "elite" does not sound like a high schooler's adjective.

[Anonymous]

OP here.

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions and links. Just to be clear on a few things, DC is a DD, not a DS. Not a recruited athlete. GPA is more like 3.4-3.5 than 3.2. That is unweighted

Very rigorous curriculum

[Anonymous]

I don't know that Duke/Vanderbilt/Chicago/WashU/Northwestern/Cornell/Dartmouth are out of reach. They are reaches, for sure, but not completely not worth applying to. A lot of SLACs might be good as well--the Wesylan/Oberlin level might work out. You should have some safeties that you are OK with as well if you have her apply to a bunch of reaches.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:12:42 again and I apologize if I sounded harsh. But I think your DS is in a great position to ignore prestige which can bee a silly basis to pick a school from anyway. There are a lot of fantastic schools that will take him, schools with excellent reputations that are quite selective. Move away from the herd and he'll have better luck.

I agree - on this chart for Chicago a 35 ACT and 3.5 GPA seems to be good for at least wait list:

http://collegeapps.about.com/od/GPA-SAT-ACT-Graphs/ss/university-of-chicago-admission-gpa-sat-act.htm

I don't think many "hooks" show up on the 35 column of these ACT charts.

[Anonymous]

BTW, congratulations to your DD, an ACT score of 35 places her at or above the top 25% for every school in the country. In hindsight, she may have been better off at a less rigorous high school.

[Anonymous]

If you are willing to consider the top public universities, keep in mind that UVA is an exception. The ACT of 35 and 3.5 GPA should be good enough at all the other public schools, except possibly Cal-Berkeley.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Which elite universities place more emphasis on standardized tests than grades? DC aced the ACT (35), but has just a B+ GPA (at one of the three most rigorous private schools in the area). Varsity athlete, but no legacy or ethnic hooks (we are full pay). Where on the USNEWS list would our “stretch schools” fall? I assume that the less than A average would kill, HYPC + Stanford & Chicago. How about Duke? Dartmouth? Vanderbilt? Washington University? UVA would seem to be a solid safety (we live in Virginia). Are there schools known to place more emphasis on standardized tests?

With regard to your original question, research shows that SAT and ACT scores are growing in importance in admissions decisions. To better reflect this reality, USNEWS adjusted the student selectivity indicator in their ranking model so that the weight of high school class standing dropped from 40 percent to 25 percent, and the weight of SAT and ACT scores increased from 50 percent to 65 percent. Schools that want to improve their USNEWS ranking will value an extraordinary SAT or ACT score.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/how-us-news-calculated-the-2014-best-colleges-rankings?page=2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which elite universities place more emphasis on standardized tests than grades? DC aced the ACT (35), but has just a B+ GPA (at one of the three most rigorous private schools in the area). Varsity athlete, but no legacy or ethnic hooks (we are full pay). Where on the USNEWS list would our “stretch schools” fall? I assume that the less than A average would kill, HYPC + Stanford & Chicago. How about Duke? Dartmouth? Vanderbilt? Washington University? UVA would seem to be a solid safety (we live in Virginia). Are there schools known to place more emphasis on standardized tests?

With regard to your original question, research shows that SAT and ACT scores are growing in importance in admissions decisions. To better reflect this reality, USNEWS adjusted the student selectivity indicator in their ranking model so that the weight of high school class standing dropped from 40 percent to 25 percent, and the weight of SAT and ACT scores increased from 50 percent to 65 percent. Schools that want to improve their USNEWS ranking will value an extraordinary SAT or ACT score.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/how-us-news-calculated-the-2014-best-colleges-rankings?page=2

The US News rankings are widely misunderstood. Some mistakenly think schools can “game” the rankings by encouraging a lot of applications to reduce acceptance rate. As explained below, the acceptance rate accounts for just 0.0125 (a little more than 1% of a school’s rank). SAT or ACT is a bigger factor ( a little more than 8% of the total rank and % in the top 10% of high school class is a bit more than 3%). Here is the “formula” as explained by US NEWS:

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/09/how-us-news-calculated-the-2014-best-colleges-rankings?page=5

• Undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent)

• Retention (22.5 percent) [80% six-year graduation rate, 20% freshman retention]
• Faculty resources (20 percent)[0.30 proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students, 0.10 proportion with 50 or more students, 0.35 faculty salary (adjusted for regional differences),0.15 proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields, 0.05 student-faculty ratio and 0.05 proportion of faculty who are full time.]
• Student selectivity (12.5 percent) [0.65 SAT or ACT, 0.25 Top Ten Percent, 0.10 acceptance rate]
• Financial resources (10 percent): average spending per student on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures. Spending on sports, dorms and hospitals doesn't count.
• Graduation rate performance (7.5 percent)
• Alumni giving rate (5 percent)

To arrive at a school's rank, USNEWS calculates the weighted sum of its scores. The final scores are rescaled so that the top school in each category received a value of 100, and the other schools' weighted scores were calculated as a proportion of that top score. Final scores were rounded to the nearest whole number and ranked in descending order. Schools that are tied appear in alphabetical order.

I do think most schools care about these rankings – A LOT – but it isn’t that easy to move all these needles in the same direction at once. I would say that a stellar ACT or SAT school is more valuable than ever.

[Anonymous]

The elite colleges tend to be least receptive to applicants with high test scores and low GPAs. The assumption is that the kid is smart but unmotivated and not hard working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The elite colleges tend to be least receptive to applicants with high test scores and low GPAs. The assumption is that the kid is smart but unmotivated and not hard working.

That is probably a fair read, but the top private schools value the rigor of elite private high schools as well. The very elite colleges (Top 5) also tend to be less concerned with USNEWS ranking than the colleges that want to move into the top 25. Schools like Duke, Wash U and Vanderbilt have moved up relative to Ivy League schools in the years since USNEWS gained traction. A school like Harvard will also accept more students with hooks despite lower than average scores or GPA:

http://collegeapps.about.com/od/GPA-SAT-ACT-Graphs/ss/duke-admission-gpa-sat-act.htm

than a school like Duke

http://collegeapps.about.com/od/GPA-SAT-ACT-Graphs/ss/harvard-admission-gpa-sat-act.htm

[Anonymous]

Ask your school's college counselor. Ours said high test scores and low grades can be a warning flag -- but it depends on the applicant. But your counselor will tell you how schools perceive applicants with your child's profile.

[Anonymous]

OP is asking about college for her B+, high scoring child with no hooks. USNews doesn't tell you anything about a good fit or admission chances. The scatterplots from the website you're linking to is all self-reported data from a very small number of students.

For real data, her child's school will have Naviance though it might be aggregated since the high school's class sizes may be too small. Since her child is going to a top private high school, a good quarter of his class probably has higher SAT scores and GPA. It will be very difficult for her child to get super strong recs and there will be 10-20 stronger candidates on paper applying to the same elite colleges ahead of him.

For an applicant with his profile, his scores and prep school may be sufficient to get significant merit based aid at schools like Tulane, Vanderbilt, etc.

The other and probably better way to approach the question is what kind of school would work best for the student. Would a SLAC give him the chance to be a leader and learn to use his full potential. Or would a big land grant school give him more room to explore and find some more drive? Would a strong frat culture help or hurt his development to full adulthood?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ask your school's college counselor. Ours said high test scores and low grades can be a warning flag -- but it depends on the applicant. But your counselor will tell you how schools perceive applicants with your child's profile.

So would your counselor suggest trying to go for a lower test score more in line with grades?

The ideal is, of course, high scores, high test scores. But if you "only" have a 3.5 GPA at one of the top schools in the country, I don't think a top test score is going to hurt. That said, the general point that an extraordinary test score will make less than extraordinary grades stand out is true. I experienced this first hand in an admissions interview when an assistant dean questioned why my grades were not as high as my older sibling when I had a near perfect SAT score. I still was admitted - with merit aid - and this was before the US News rankings made high test scores so valuable.

Because every school is different, counselors' advice is only anecdotal at best. The data is hard to get, but it is clear to me that OP should make sure than her DC provides an explanation for the lower GPA in her essay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP is asking about college for her B+, high scoring child with no hooks. USNews doesn't tell you anything about a good fit or admission chances. The scatterplots from the website you're linking to is all self-reported data from a very small number of students.

For real data, her child's school will have Naviance though it might be aggregated since the high school's class sizes may be too small. Since her child is going to a top private high school, a good quarter of his class probably has higher SAT scores and GPA. It will be very difficult for her child to get super strong recs and there will be 10-20 stronger candidates on paper applying to the same elite colleges ahead of him.

For an applicant with his profile, his scores and prep school may be sufficient to get significant merit based aid at schools like Tulane, Vanderbilt, etc.

The other and probably better way to approach the question is what kind of school would work best for the student. Would a SLAC give him the chance to be a leader and learn to use his full potential. Or would a big land grant school give him more room to explore and find some more drive? Would a strong frat culture help or hurt his development to full adulthood?

" a good quarter of his class probably has higher SAT scores "

The ACT score was 35. The only higher score is 36. There is no school in the country where a "good quarter" of the class has a perfect standardized test score. As a point of reference, the vast majority of HYPC Stanford students (more than 75%) score less than 35 on the ACT.

Good point on GPA and recs though. OP didn't say anything to suggest that DD was a standout student who would get good recs.

There is an interesting HBS post on the importance of US News rankings to # of applications. Given the increased importance of standardized test scores to US News rankings, I expect that most schools would love to have that 35 score.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6834.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP is asking about college for her B+, high scoring child with no hooks. USNews doesn't tell you anything about a good fit or admission chances. The scatterplots from the website you're linking to is all self-reported data from a very small number of students.

For real data, her child's school will have Naviance though it might be aggregated since the high school's class sizes may be too small. Since her child is going to a top private high school, a good quarter of his class probably has higher SAT scores and GPA. It will be very difficult for her child to get super strong recs and there will be 10-20 stronger candidates on paper applying to the same elite colleges ahead of him.

For an applicant with his profile, his scores and prep school may be sufficient to get significant merit based aid at schools like Tulane, Vanderbilt, etc.

The other and probably better way to approach the question is what kind of school would work best for the student. Would a SLAC give him the chance to be a leader and learn to use his full potential. Or would a big land grant school give him more room to explore and find some more drive? Would a strong frat culture help or hurt his development to full adulthood?

Interesting to see Tulane and Vanderbilt grouped.