College Admissions Doesn't Need to Be So Competitive: Super High Stat Kids are not "a dime a dozen."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The College board needs to release raw scores for the AP tests. That way MIT and Cornell can see whether your 5 on Physics EM was a 98% or a 61%.

We throw away a lot of information that could be useful for everyone in the process.

Sure, if the goal is to assemble a class of kids who test well.

Only dishonest or ignorant people say that standardized tests only measures the ability to take standardized tests

Standardized tests are the best measure we have of cognitive ability. It predicts pretty much everything you would want to predict.

Most AO would rather see smart kids, who rather than spending $$$$$$ and 50+ hours prepping to take the SAT/ACT multiple times, have something they are passionate about and focus their efforts on, something that enriches their lives beyond just "studying for the test".

oh give us a break. We all know they are doing "something they are passionate about" and "enriches their lives" because they want to get into a top colleges. No one thinks they will keep doing that when they are selling out on wall street or silicon valley

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are large numbers of kids tracked into such advanced math classes in high school? It is rarely useful career wise anymore, even in STEM fields. Plus, they have plenty of time in college to take relevant math classes.

I'll answer!!!!

My kid tracked for 2 years ahead. Took Alg 2 in 9th and Precalc in 10th. Then onto AP Calc AB in 11 and Calc BC in 12 because that's how our schools do it.


My kid went to 1 grade ahead in 1st grade. Why? Because that was just how good they were with math and math concepts. No tutoring/Kumon/pressure from us. In fact, in ES when they used to do the "timed math facts" tests, my kid was "so far behind" because they could do it all, just not super fast. They literally never missed a question---they came home in 2nd grade excited they had finally Passed a Timed math test---and I wondered how since they had just taken it. Then I went back and looked and relized they had a 100% accuracy on what they had completed, so by their logic, if they had answered enough questions, they were all correct and they finally would "pass" (Hint they were correct).
My kid understood math concepts above all but 1-2 kids even in their "advanced math" in ES. I watched it happen when helping in class and the teachers told me about it. They also told me when it came time to "advance to GT and be 2 grades ahead in 4th grade" that if my kid didn't make the cut due to a timed test, they want to advocate for them to be 2 grades ahead. (my kid made the cut). The first time my kid had to study for Math (and didn't have a 98/99% without studying) was 12th grade Calc BC.

My kid got the concepts and loved doing higher thinking math problems, but they would have been massively bored if kept on grade level or even 1 grade level ahead.

What it has allowed is my kid skipped the first year of calculus at college and now has room for 2 more advanced electives in their engineering major because of that. Same holds true for their year of chemistry credit .

This shows that anyone can do math, even kids who are naturally slow/have poor processing speed.

A$$hat! My kid is smart at math concepts, and a perfectionist (with anxiety) is what it shows. And when 80-% of the kids around you have been attending Kumon since age 2/3, it shows they just were not pushed to do mindless, worthless training as a toddler/ES student. Ask those same kids word problems/critical thinking problems and they didnt' know the answer---yet my kid did along with 1 or 2 other kids. I know, I sat in the classroom and helped teach. Those other kids might be fast at processing but you had to teach them concepts (and these were in the advanced class). I'll take my kid who automatically gets the concepts and critical thinking and might need 10 seconds to do all the math plugging and chugging---or better yet, who will just write the code they need to crunch the numbers.
In the real world, being fast at Kumon worksheets doesn't matter. Everyone has the computer and processing power to solve it. But if you don't know how to solve it, you are screwed

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I work in higher ed, have lived in Asia, and visit universities and high schools in China, Japan, and Vietnam annually. My opinion is that holistic admissions are imperfect, but they are a hell of a lot better than purely grade- and test-centric admissions, which corrupt not only the colleges that rely on them but also the high schools that teach to them.

the EC centered holistic admissions are more likely to confer advantages on the wealthy

The wealthy have an advantage in nearly everything, including testing and grades. We may never have a complete meritocracy, but most AOs are trained to recognize such disparities. So the kid who does a month of volunteering in Palau on his parent's dime may not have an advantage over the kid who spends 20 hours a week at a parttime job or looking after younger siblings.

We are told that admissions controls for school quality by comparing the student transcript to their school profile and don't expect students to do more than is offered by the school. Why don't they do the same with ECs? No recognition for ECs not offered by the school or that cost more than a de minimus amount?

That E stands for “Extra” as in outside of

don't be daft. Many ECs are school sanctioned clubs

To get into top schools, you have to do more than what your school has on site. You have to go beyond. And excel at it.

and that means the school just pays lip service to trying to recruit poor kids. What ECs can you do and excel at without money?

Volunteering, running a low capital investment business (crafts, jewelry), Model UN/Debate award winner, Yearbook Editor, Newspaper Editor, Theater, Band and Orchestra with school-provided instruments (be Concertmaster or Drum Major), Student Body President, competitive free summer programs for low-income kids, Girl Scout/Boy Scout awards, fundraiser for charity (vs. own non-profit), Sunday School teacher, church musician, etc.

In my experience, faculty sponsors and public schools have provisions for when students cannot afford add-ons such as EC-related travel.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agreed. T20 universities and T10 lacs admit too many hooked applicants. If they are admitting over 20% QuestBridge, they should increase their class proportionally.

Nobody is admitt 20% QB. It is under 2% at most schools so just stop now.

It's commonplace now for top colleges admitting over 20% QuestBridge.

[url]https://www.questbridge.org/partners/college-partners/swarthmore-college
[/url]

24% affiliated with QuestBridge (Class of 2028)

That is a mistake on the Questbridge site. Swat took 15 QB kids in the class of 28 and 15 in the class of 27.

Don't bother with data. The people who want to blame the "undeserving" poor of darker skin colors will continue to do so, despite facts showing that legacy, donor and athletic preferences far outweigh any preferences for the poor.

Why are people bitter about donor preference? How do you think the schools got the money to cover the cost of educating FGLI?

Then just rip off the bandaid and auction off slots to the highest bidder.

That doesn’t work. The whole point of the current messy system is that rich kids get to imagine that they’re smart and smart kids get to imagine they’re part of the elite. It only works because they cross the streams.

It's not imagination. Smart kid at Harvard has an idea and needs rich friends at Harvard to support it. Isn't that what happened with Facebook?

So once in a generation it’s real, the other 99.9999% of the time it’s imagination. Either way, it’s the reason schools engage in this elaborate holistic scheme instead of either admitting by stats (which would exclude most of the rich kids) or auctioning off the seats (which would exclude most of the smart kids).

Where does this fallacy come from that rich kids are low stats? My kid goes to a private school filled with very rich kids. The are overwhelmingly high IQ, voracious readers, well traveled, have crazy smart parents, etc. Get out of your bubble, grinders.

I didn’t say rich kids were low stats. I said that if Princeton only admitted the 1,500 applicants with the highest test scores, that would exclude a large number of rich kids. Because the cut score would be very, very high. How many hundreds of millions in donations should Princeton be prepared to turn away—ie, send to a competitor—in order to reject a well-traveled voracious reader with amazing connections and athletic skills who scored 1540 on the SAT? Because that’s what they would have to do, over and over again, if they admitted on pure stats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The College board needs to release raw scores for the AP tests. That way MIT and Cornell can see whether your 5 on Physics EM was a 98% or a 61%.

We throw away a lot of information that could be useful for everyone in the process.

Sure, if the goal is to assemble a class of kids who test well.

Only dishonest or ignorant people say that standardized tests only measures the ability to take standardized tests

Standardized tests are the best measure we have of cognitive ability. It predicts pretty much everything you would want to predict.

Not all standardized tests are created equal or have wide-reaching predictive value. You'd think someone would be able to do better than the College Board at this point! They haven't done much to earn our trust.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agreed. T20 universities and T10 lacs admit too many hooked applicants. If they are admitting over 20% QuestBridge, they should increase their class proportionally.

Nobody is admitt 20% QB. It is under 2% at most schools so just stop now.

It's commonplace now for top colleges admitting over 20% QuestBridge.

[url]https://www.questbridge.org/partners/college-partners/swarthmore-college
[/url]

24% affiliated with QuestBridge (Class of 2028)

That is a mistake on the Questbridge site. Swat took 15 QB kids in the class of 28 and 15 in the class of 27.

Don't bother with data. The people who want to blame the "undeserving" poor of darker skin colors will continue to do so, despite facts showing that legacy, donor and athletic preferences far outweigh any preferences for the poor.

Why are people bitter about donor preference? How do you think the schools got the money to cover the cost of educating FGLI?

Then just rip off the bandaid and auction off slots to the highest bidder.

That doesn’t work. The whole point of the current messy system is that rich kids get to imagine that they’re smart and smart kids get to imagine they’re part of the elite. It only works because they cross the streams.

It's not imagination. Smart kid at Harvard has an idea and needs rich friends at Harvard to support it. Isn't that what happened with Facebook?

So once in a generation it’s real, the other 99.9999% of the time it’s imagination. Either way, it’s the reason schools engage in this elaborate holistic scheme instead of either admitting by stats (which would exclude most of the rich kids) or auctioning off the seats (which would exclude most of the smart kids).

Where does this fallacy come from that rich kids are low stats? My kid goes to a private school filled with very rich kids. The are overwhelmingly high IQ, voracious readers, well traveled, have crazy smart parents, etc. Get out of your bubble, grinders.

I didn’t say rich kids were low stats. I said that if Princeton only admitted the 1,500 applicants with the highest test scores, that would exclude a large number of rich kids. Because the cut score would be very, very high. How many hundreds of millions in donations should Princeton be prepared to turn away—ie, send to a competitor—in order to reject a well-traveled voracious reader with amazing connections and athletic skills who scored 1540 on the SAT? Because that’s what they would have to do, over and over again, if they admitted on pure stats.

on the other hand, if Princeton auctioned the slots off, I think they would fetch $2mm each easy, $3bn for 1500 kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agreed. T20 universities and T10 lacs admit too many hooked applicants. If they are admitting over 20% QuestBridge, they should increase their class proportionally.

Nobody is admitt 20% QB. It is under 2% at most schools so just stop now.

It's commonplace now for top colleges admitting over 20% QuestBridge.

[url]https://www.questbridge.org/partners/college-partners/swarthmore-college
[/url]

24% affiliated with QuestBridge (Class of 2028)

That is a mistake on the Questbridge site. Swat took 15 QB kids in the class of 28 and 15 in the class of 27.

Could you please provide a source for this?

Do a bit of work. There is dat for almost every partner school available.

I did , and I provided the link stating 24% Swat admits are QuestBridge.

If you are serious, burden is on you to counter evidence.

Already done upthread. Anway, Swathmore is not in the Ivy League.

I am new to this thread and am not used to sports references. Why do people keep mentioning the Ivy League here on DCUM without talking about sports?
I confirmed with a little research that Swarthmore is an elite NCAA Division III school. Barnard is the one I'm confused about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agreed. T20 universities and T10 lacs admit too many hooked applicants. If they are admitting over 20% QuestBridge, they should increase their class proportionally.

Nobody is admitt 20% QB. It is under 2% at most schools so just stop now.

It's commonplace now for top colleges admitting over 20% QuestBridge.

[url]https://www.questbridge.org/partners/college-partners/swarthmore-college
[/url]

24% affiliated with QuestBridge (Class of 2028)

That is a mistake on the Questbridge site. Swat took 15 QB kids in the class of 28 and 15 in the class of 27.

Could you please provide a source for this?

Do a bit of work. There is dat for almost every partner school available.

I did , and I provided the link stating 24% Swat admits are QuestBridge.

If you are serious, burden is on you to counter evidence.

Already done upthread. Anway, Swathmore is not in the Ivy League.

Swathmore is a little ivy

[Anonymous]

Wouldn’t it be interesting if a school decided to go to stats only to see what would happen to their rankings and results.

If a good but not tip top school…like let’s say hypothetically Virginia Tech…announced that it would only consider SAT score and nothing else in their admissions decisions next year. Would their applications increase or decrease? What would their incoming class look like compared to the old system?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agreed. T20 universities and T10 lacs admit too many hooked applicants. If they are admitting over 20% QuestBridge, they should increase their class proportionally.

Nobody is admitt 20% QB. It is under 2% at most schools so just stop now.

It's commonplace now for top colleges admitting over 20% QuestBridge.

[url]https://www.questbridge.org/partners/college-partners/swarthmore-college
[/url]

24% affiliated with QuestBridge (Class of 2028)

That is a mistake on the Questbridge site. Swat took 15 QB kids in the class of 28 and 15 in the class of 27.

Could you please provide a source for this?

Do a bit of work. There is dat for almost every partner school available.

I did , and I provided the link stating 24% Swat admits are QuestBridge.

If you are serious, burden is on you to counter evidence.

Already done upthread. Anway, Swathmore is not in the Ivy League.

I am new to this thread and am not used to sports references. Why do people keep mentioning the Ivy League here on DCUM without talking about sports?
I confirmed with a little research that Swarthmore is an elite NCAA Division III school. Barnard is the one I'm confused about.

barnard is part of columbia, the ivy in nyc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agreed. T20 universities and T10 lacs admit too many hooked applicants. If they are admitting over 20% QuestBridge, they should increase their class proportionally.

Nobody is admitt 20% QB. It is under 2% at most schools so just stop now.

It's commonplace now for top colleges admitting over 20% QuestBridge.

[url]https://www.questbridge.org/partners/college-partners/swarthmore-college
[/url]

24% affiliated with QuestBridge (Class of 2028)

That is a mistake on the Questbridge site. Swat took 15 QB kids in the class of 28 and 15 in the class of 27.

Could you please provide a source for this?

Do a bit of work. There is dat for almost every partner school available.

I did , and I provided the link stating 24% Swat admits are QuestBridge.

If you are serious, burden is on you to counter evidence.

Already done upthread. Anway, Swathmore is not in the Ivy League.

Swathmore is a little ivy

Can none of you spell? It's SwaRthmore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agreed. T20 universities and T10 lacs admit too many hooked applicants. If they are admitting over 20% QuestBridge, they should increase their class proportionally.

Nobody is admitt 20% QB. It is under 2% at most schools so just stop now.

It's commonplace now for top colleges admitting over 20% QuestBridge.

[url]https://www.questbridge.org/partners/college-partners/swarthmore-college
[/url]

24% affiliated with QuestBridge (Class of 2028)

That is a mistake on the Questbridge site. Swat took 15 QB kids in the class of 28 and 15 in the class of 27.

Could you please provide a source for this?

Do a bit of work. There is dat for almost every partner school available.

I did , and I provided the link stating 24% Swat admits are QuestBridge.

If you are serious, burden is on you to counter evidence.

Already done upthread. Anway, Swathmore is not in the Ivy League.

I am new to this thread and am not used to sports references. Why do people keep mentioning the Ivy League here on DCUM without talking about sports?
I confirmed with a little research that Swarthmore is an elite NCAA Division III school. Barnard is the one I'm confused about.

barnard is part of columbia, the ivy in nyc

Barnard is Ivy League. Their athletes play in the Ivy League for Columbia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The College board needs to release raw scores for the AP tests. That way MIT and Cornell can see whether your 5 on Physics EM was a 98% or a 61%.

We throw away a lot of information that could be useful for everyone in the process.

Sure, if the goal is to assemble a class of kids who test well.

Only dishonest or ignorant people say that standardized tests only measures the ability to take standardized tests

Standardized tests are the best measure we have of cognitive ability. It predicts pretty much everything you would want to predict.

Sure.

It's the best test money can buy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The College board needs to release raw scores for the AP tests. That way MIT and Cornell can see whether your 5 on Physics EM was a 98% or a 61%.

We throw away a lot of information that could be useful for everyone in the process.

Sure, if the goal is to assemble a class of kids who test well.

Only dishonest or ignorant people say that standardized tests only measures the ability to take standardized tests

Standardized tests are the best measure we have of cognitive ability. It predicts pretty much everything you would want to predict.

Sure.

It's the best test money can buy.

Of course affluence helps. But it's more fair than having people get in because of some far more nebulous criteria.

[Anonymous]

Isn't being good at basketball or volleyball less nebulous?