Reply to 90th percentile

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "90th percentile"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m shocked at how many people on here seem to think that only the best and brightest can succeed at top schools. It may be true that kids need to be that to get into those schools, but most people who have been to one admit that it’s not that hard to get good grades there. [/quote]

I don't get this, either. Have college curricula changed much during the past decade?

I was in a PhD program at Harvard and TA-ing many classes. The idea that these classes are so unbelievably hard that 99.9 percentile kids are struggling to keep up sounds insane to me. It was really not that hard. The kids were smart (especially premeds) but not once in a lifetime geniuses. If you came to classes, read the textbook, did the practice problems, you got an A. A+ was another story, and that was difficult.

[/quote]

I can sort of believe that because Harvard has been grade inflated for a long time. But most of those undergrads were probably easily scoring 99th percentile on their SATs though, and a 90th percentile kid would be more unusual. Perhaps this is why they found the courses easy. Moreover, 99.9th percentile is just 1/1000 kids, very smart, and probably more typical of MIT undergrads. This is not the definition of a once in a lifetime genius. [/quote]

Yes, except people are now saying these schools are packed with 99.99 percentilers. Maybe they are. Maybe I just need to adjust how 99.9 and 99.99 percentilers present in the wild.[/quote]

There are a lot of the 99+ kids in the wild, especially in this area. No one would suspect kids like my oldest to be one—who is quiet, performs adequately on things that don’t interest him, and lacks the ability to effectively communicate because a lot of things are intuitive (plus as an URM 99+% on SATs is not an assumption most people make). I’m not saying my kid deserves to get into the most selective schools, but he does “exist.”  Because I can easily see how someone could see him as average, I have to believe there are many, many more low key kids like him out there, and there are even some who _care_ and are intellectually curious. That smaller set are the kids are filling the top schools. [/quote]

Thank you. Is your child, for example, getting As on every single test in MS and HS?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics