Reply to Aha moment - I know 7 current Ivy League students, and all of them happen to be legacies

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]High stat DC got into an Ivy this year.
-not a legacy
-not an athlete
-not an URM
-not a faculty kid
-public school (not TJ)
-no crazy national/international awards
Just got super super lucky.[/quote]

Stats and major?[/quote]

1580, 4.6 weighted, Engineering[/quote]

Very impressive, congrats to your DC on getting in for one of the toughest majors. Essays must have been excellent![/quote]

The sad thing is the assumption that a kid with these stats wouldn't normally get in without a hook. Back in the day they would have sailed in![/quote]

Test prep culture has considerably cheapened the value of a 1580. [/quote]

No, 1580 is very hard to achieve prep or not.  
Everybody should study and prepare hard for major test such as SAT, MCAT, BAR exam, Professional Engineer exam, etc.

[/quote]

Not a great comparison because the SAT is designed to determine kid’s ability to learn. The bar exam and professional engineering exams are to test what they have already learned.[/quote]

I
-1 it's a great comparison because everyone is free to prepare.

It's like the Olympics where athletes train for 4 or more years. They are supposed to train - even if training gives them advantage. I don't know any elite athlete who simply shows up and expect to win the gold. Showong up and expect to take home the gold on the strength of the color of skin happens only at Harvard. [/quote]

This illustrates the changed attitude toward the SAT since “back in the day.” I think it’s a terrible waste. The SAT used to measure aptitude. Now there’s no way to tell whether a 1540 was achieved cold or after months of intense study. That means it’s not a reliable measure of either effort or aptitude.[/quote]

No it didn't.   SAT never measured aptitude.  "Back in the day," they marketed it as such but had to change the name from "Aptitude " to "Assessment " because it was proven that it did not measure aptitude. It never did. It still doesn't. [/quote]

They actually modified the test to be less like an IQ test and more like an achievement test; removing analogies etc.  Scores on the old SAT correlated well with scores on IQ tests.  It’s changed so that’s it’s not as similar to an IQ test and is more preppable, but it clearly still measures academic aptitude to some degree.  There’s a lot of really large and well researched studies that show that standardized test scores are the single best predictor of college success.  GPA/rigor combined with test scores is the best predictor.  Interestingly enough, standardized test scores predict equally well across all SES levels; a poor kid with a 1400 does as well as a UMC kid with a 1400.  They’ve also looked at the role SES plays with scores; when you add in parental education levels, family income no longer predicts test scores.  In short, smart well educated parents generally will have smart kids.  The high SES is a consequence of being smart and well educated.  When the child of a neurosurgeon and a phd physicist gets high test scores, it’s almost certainly not because the family had money.[/quote]

This is inaccurate.
The name change came when analogies were still on the test. Also, analogies are very easy to improve on w/ prep/strategy.
Former test prep teacher. (I taught analogies years after the name change, btw).[/quote]

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