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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's an anecdote for you.  I'm a white guy from a working class background with parents who never finished high school.  I went to a no-name college because it never even occurred to me to apply anywhere else.  I ended up with an extremely high GPA and, with coaxing and coaching from a dean of the college, ended up winning a highly prestigious scholarship for graduate studies abroad .

I did not do well on the SAT and also bombed the LSAT.  Coming from my background, it honestly never even occurred to me that I needed to or should prep for it.  I literally thought to myself "ok, to apply to law school you need to take the LSAT," so I simply signed up and walk into the exam room and took it.

My LSAT score easily placed me in the bottom ten percent of accepted applicants.  In a school where the median score of my entering class was well above the 90th percentile, my score was in the 60th percentile.  I was admitted to the law school solely on the basis of my GPA and because I applied from abroad while on my graduate scholarship.

I finished my 1L year first in the class, and it wasn't close.  Number 2 was an Ivy League grad with a perfect LSAT score.  I was retroactively awarded a full scholarship.  I ended up graduating in the top 5, landing a top federal court of appeals clerkship, getting hired by one of the most selective Biglaw firms in the country, and eventually made equity partner.

Bottom line: my test scores obviously did not reflect the full extent of my abilities in any way, shape or form.   My law school apparently knew that and took a chance on me.  I'm grateful for that.

My kids, on the other hand, all had SAT and ACT scores that blew mine completely out of the water, and all of them ended up attending top colleges and universities.  I love my kids and obviously think they're smart, but I don't think for a second that a bunch of near geniuses (exaggerating but you get the point) were the spawn of idiot genes.  It typically doesn't happen that way.

No, what happened is this:  my kids' test scores were the combined product of both their natural intelligence AND the privilege of being raised in a high income environment with educated parents who understood the system and had the wherewithal to make it work for them. It's just so painfully obvious.

This board suffers from the delusion that standardized test scores used for college admissions are more than just a blunt instrument.  They're not.  They're axes, not scalpel.  The notion that high test scores should trump everything else -- or that low test scores should be disqualifying -- is ridiculous.
 [/quote]

In my opinion, GPA is not a good academic indicator.  In my area, public schools have very low academic standards. It’s very easy to get an A with minimal effort.  There are many kids with very high GPA who drop out of first year of college because it’s hard and they don’t have study habits.[/quote]

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