Reply to TJ - admissions: GPA and essays vulnerable to prep and affluence

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Simple and honest question:  Why do so many of you think that GPA and essays are *less* vulnerable to prep and effects of affluence than test scores?  Affluent kids with motivated parents likely have been in enrichment classes for quite awhile and are likely ahead.  If the kid struggles at all, the affluent parents are likely to get a tutor and shore up any deficiencies the kid might have.  If all else fails, the affluent parents are much more likely to badger the teacher and administration until their kid's grade turns into an A.  It honestly doesn't seem hard for any parent with the money and motivation to make sure any average kid could get straight As in middle school.

Likewise, it's pretty easy to talk about love for STEM and such when the kid has been attending enrichment and camps for many years.  Again, it would also be easy to get prep and tutoring to write a highly polished essay.

With tests like PSAT, while prep helps to some degree, there is a pretty strong limit.  Kids who are naturally 99th percentile will likely earn very high scores with no or minimal prep.  Kids who are pretty average but privileged will see score increases, but they're still unlikely to earn super high scores.  It seems easier for affluent parents to ensure that their kids have straight As and can write strong essays than it would be to ensure that their kid would earn a very high PSAT score.

So what am I missing, here?  [/quote]

This appears not to be an issue since the entering classes are economically more diverse than any before the change.[/quote]

There is an explicit preference for FARM students.  Why do we also have to remove merit to achieve the economic diversity?[/quote] Because the fair, objective selection process that other top magnets (Stuy, etc) use to get both highly qualified students who are also economically diverse (an objective test for which prep resources are widely and freely available) is off the table for TJ due to racial reasons.[/quote]
The preference is so important and why is the number of farm students so low?[/quote]
The FARM rate was lower than it needed to be under the old system because the old system included a holistic component.
The kids who tested into the pool had a much higher FARM rate than 2% but very few poor kids made it through the holistic part of the admissions process.[/quote]

You missed the point.  If the FARMS preference gives such a significant bump, why are the number of FARMS students still so low?[/quote]

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