Reply to Is there general agreement that if your score is above 25th percentile, you should submit?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Neo]It doesn't matter, SAT scores are just optics[/quote]

What does matter, then? I'm not looking for what universities care about, because you presumably think they care about GPA and building/shaping their freshman class in a way they desire (and maybe rigor and ECs and LORs, demographics, etc.).

But why do those things really matter, or why do you think they SHOULD be a priority to universities? Most of those non-testing data points are far more prone to manipulation by the individual than standardized testing, and the lone item that isn't (essentially, the desire to enroll URM and lower SES applicants) just seems bizarrely removed from reality.

"[b]I'm going to enhance the reputation of my university and ensure its financial future by finding the poorest kids from the lowest performing schools who performed better than their peers in those low performing schools (but without a standardized test to validate their grades), and they are going to blossom into high achievers in my competitive university, and eventually become generous donors in the future."[/b]

Taking the valedictorian from EBF High School's class of 79 students who is applying TO (with a 4.00 / 4.32) over the 71st ranked FP kid from a class of 500+ at a top performing school who also submits a test score of 36 / 1600 (with a 3.93 / 4.53) ... makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It just doesn't.[/quote]

DP: Higher education is an industry. Schools are businesses. Doesn't matter if you think it is absurd/doesn't make sense because you are not a college president or board member. Most of the schools that you and most of the people on DCUM care about have a large endowment or state funds (e.g., flagship, tech school) to admit the class they want. Also, many economic research studies show that these kids benefit the most from attending a competitive school. The schools know the research, and this allows them to use virtue signals such as making first gen/Pell grant kids an institutional priority. These kids don't need to become high achievers in college; they only need to graduate. These schools will not let them fail to protect their 4- and 6-year graduation rates.

Also, highly competitive schools will cap the number of poorest kids from low-performing schools. I don't know what the cap is-- maybe 25% for some schools, and 15% for others depending on their brand strength and finances. There will always be enough UMC and/or donor-level wealthy kids from top-performing schools to keep the average GPA/SAT scores high and to pay the majority of tuition or full pay. In fact, at this very moment, someone is running an algorithm at a T20 to determine the optimal composition of the incoming class. [/quote]

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