Where are your UNDER 1400 SAT kids going?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You just have to take everything you read here with a grain of salt. That thread about where your kid is going has like 6 kids going to Stanford. Doubt it. We have a lot of teenagers here and a lot of people who just like to troll.

I know 3 personally. And another who is accepted but weighing choices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Better to have a low test score than a GPA lower than 3.75UW. They say our kids shouldn't stress about grades -- then they make it ALL about grades. You can't have a bad day or a bad year because your 1500 SAT won't make up for those Bs even if was in AP classes.

This is why TO should go away. Someone who has a UW3.6 but took high rigor classes and gets a 1560 on SAT belongs in a elite college, someone who has a UW4.0 but took easier classes , or has grade inflation, and gets a 1290 does not.

Says who? We see your bias, but it doesn't make it so.

I think what a lot of people who cling to test scores as the end-all be-all don't want to admit is that they are malleable too. The difference between the 1300 kid and the 1500 kid is often $10,000 in test prep or a fake diagnosis that gives the latter extra time. I'm not saying test scores don't matter or shouldn't be part of a holistic review but as a parent (with two kids that score pretty well on these things) I would hate for the highest scorers to get in...but not as much as I hate the bumps to legacies and athletes.

Nah you can't test prep a 1300 into a 1500.

Sure you can, especially if the 1300 was early and truly cold.

Worked for both my kids...sub-1300 summer before 11th grade to 1490-1520 summer after. It's not an IQ test. A lot of kids forget a lot of math--especially if they took geometry in 8th or 9th grade--and/or are slow test takers and can't finish when they take it at first. Tutoring and practice helps a lot.

That’s wonderful! I’m glad it worked for them!

[Anonymous]

Above 1300 is still a really high SAT score!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t forget: C’s earn degrees!

+100

They do. They are also doctors and lawyers. Maybe even your doctor or your lawyer.

There is always someone at the bottom of the class and you will never know who they are.

They might get C's in Law or med school. But C's for undergrad do not get you into Med/Law school. Hard to have a 3.9GPA with a few Cs, and you cannot get them in Prereqs for Med school.



But yes if not going onto professional school/grad school, Cs do get degrees

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t forget: C’s earn degrees!

+100

They do. They are also doctors and lawyers. Maybe even your doctor or your lawyer.

There is always someone at the bottom of the class and you will never know who they are.

They might get C's in Law or med school. But C's for undergrad do not get you into Med/Law school. Hard to have a 3.9GPA with a few Cs, and you cannot get them in Prereqs for Med school.



But yes if not going onto professional school/grad school, Cs do get degrees

There are plenty of law schools, including for-profit toilets, that will happily accept C students or anyone who can fog a mirror, pull student loans, and stroke those tuition checks. Will you land in BigLaw from one of these schools? Doubtful without serious connections. But if your goal is simply to become a JD and hang a shingle, you can do it as a C student in undergrad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Above 1300 is still a really high SAT score!

Yes...people on DCUM act like it's not but it is a very good score (1350= 94th/90th national/test taker percentile, respectively; 1390 gets you to 97th/92nd). Now, I assume those numbers are for a single sitting and superscoring and multiple test taking skews things but people here act like a 1350 is subpar. It's absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t forget: C’s earn degrees!

+100

They do. They are also doctors and lawyers. Maybe even your doctor or your lawyer.

There is always someone at the bottom of the class and you will never know who they are.

They might get C's in Law or med school. But C's for undergrad do not get you into Med/Law school. Hard to have a 3.9GPA with a few Cs, and you cannot get them in Prereqs for Med school.



But yes if not going onto professional school/grad school, Cs do get degrees

I know such a student who is now in med school. Had Cs as undergrade and not great final GPA. Did a masters and took 2 gap years with internships and studied hard for the MCAT. It might not have been a direct UG to Med school jump, but they got there with determination.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone here has scores over 1400?!

It's just that these are the only people posting stats on dcum.

Also in TO climate, thear are the only kids sending test scores.
So with all these ranges skewing SO high, it understandably looks like you may as well not bother trying if you don”t have a 1420 or higher.
But I imagine it’s just that the 1250-1420 crowd is doing just fine. They are simply going test optional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Above 1300 is still a really high SAT score!

Yes...people on DCUM act like it's not but it is a very good score (1350= 94th/90th national/test taker percentile, respectively; 1390 gets you to 97th/92nd). Now, I assume those numbers are for a single sitting and superscoring and multiple test taking skews things but people here act like a 1350 is subpar. It's absurd.

The issue is that it’s a good NATIONAL score, but not particularly competitive for DMV area.
For example, even if you scored in the high 1400s, which is GREAT—you have to consider that Stanford isn’t going to admit an entire entering class (or even more than 30 or so) from one geographic area. So your 1480 might get you a good look if you’re that one kid who lives on a farm in Montana, but not from DMV where 600 other 4.0 applicants (with major ECs) scored 1550+ than you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS got a 1290 on the SAT (3.98 weighted gpa from FCPS) and is going to JMU this fall.

He also applied and got into Penn State and GMU.

Did he submit the 1290 at JMU?

Mine got a 1480 and was WL at JMU!

Ummmmm what?!
Please say more about this, PP. GPA? Rigor? No EC’s? Very large percentage of higher stat applicants from same high school??
That seems insane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Above 1300 is still a really high SAT score!

It depends on the area and school one is applying to.

[Anonymous]

Boston University

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Above 1300 is still a really high SAT score!

Yes...people on DCUM act like it's not but it is a very good score (1350= 94th/90th national/test taker percentile, respectively; 1390 gets you to 97th/92nd). Now, I assume those numbers are for a single sitting and superscoring and multiple test taking skews things but people here act like a 1350 is subpar. It's absurd.

The issue is that it’s a good NATIONAL score, but not particularly competitive for DMV area.
For example, even if you scored in the high 1400s, which is GREAT—you have to consider that Stanford isn’t going to admit an entire entering class (or even more than 30 or so) from one geographic area. So your 1480 might get you a good look if you’re that one kid who lives on a farm in Montana, but not from DMV where 600 other 4.0 applicants (with major ECs) scored 1550+ than you.

I wonder about this. Is "DMV" treated like a monolith? Is the "DMV kid" with a 1400 from an underresourced DCPS school that has an average score of 950 treated the same as the "DMV kid" with a 1400 from one of the top privates where that score may very well be the average? I honestly don't know the answer to that question...but assuming that neither kid is first generation and that the colleges can't consider race, do they look at the school resources to contextualize the school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS got a 1290 on the SAT (3.98 weighted gpa from FCPS) and is going to JMU this fall.

He also applied and got into Penn State and GMU.

Did he submit the 1290 at JMU?

Mine got a 1480 and was WL at JMU!

Ummmmm what?!
Please say more about this, PP. GPA? Rigor? No EC’s? Very large percentage of higher stat applicants from same high school??
That seems insane.

Has to be yield protection!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Above 1300 is still a really high SAT score!

Yes...people on DCUM act like it's not but it is a very good score (1350= 94th/90th national/test taker percentile, respectively; 1390 gets you to 97th/92nd). Now, I assume those numbers are for a single sitting and superscoring and multiple test taking skews things but people here act like a 1350 is subpar. It's absurd.

The issue is that it’s a good NATIONAL score, but not particularly competitive for DMV area.
For example, even if you scored in the high 1400s, which is GREAT—you have to consider that Stanford isn’t going to admit an entire entering class (or even more than 30 or so) from one geographic area. So your 1480 might get you a good look if you’re that one kid who lives on a farm in Montana, but not from DMV where 600 other 4.0 applicants (with major ECs) scored 1550+ than you.

I wonder about this. Is "DMV" treated like a monolith? Is the "DMV kid" with a 1400 from an underresourced DCPS school that has an average score of 950 treated the same as the "DMV kid" with a 1400 from one of the top privates where that score may very well be the average? I honestly don't know the answer to that question...but assuming that neither kid is first generation and that the colleges can't consider race, do they look at the school resources to contextualize the school?

The majority of selective colleges consider the resources available at the high school level. A kid at Dunbar who scores 1400 will not be compared to a Sidwell kid who scores 1400. This board assumes that every kid is from a well-resourced public or private high school. Plenty of AOs have gone on the record explaining this, e.g., Yale, UVA, Dartmouth, Brown, etc.