Reply to The Best Public High Schools in the U.S. by SAT & ACT Scores

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Please await next years’ scores - the class of 25 will be the first coming out of the new and improved process.  [/quote]

I’m the loudest and most well-informed advocate for TJ admissions on this thread. I’ve probably sent a thousand replies and posts over the last few years talking about the critical importance of opening TJ to the entire spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds represented in Northern Virginia. And I will go to war with anyone on here about the fact that things are going really well at TJ three years into the new process.

But I expect standardized exam scores to go down somewhat next year because [i]we are no longer overselecting for test taking ability in the admissions process.[/i]

In the old process you literally could not become a semifinalist without strong test-taking skills. Students could be absolutely brilliant but if they were not strong in a standardized test environment, for whatever reason, they were cut out of the process.

So yes, the scores will go down slightly, almost for certain. And it doesn’t matter, but you’ll get a bunch of myopic trolls on here with an archaic and limited idea of the concept of merit who think it does. And they’ll needlessly insult thousands of kids in the process.[/quote]

Even if your argument is right (that the prior admissions process overselected for test taking), how do you know that the current admissions brings in a more meritous population?  "Not overselecting" is not congruent to "more meritous."

As evidence, note that SAT scores are highly correlated to college success outcomes, so there is a strong positive correlation between test taking skills and college success.  To the extent that these are correlated, admitting worse test takers means admitting worse college-succeeders (on average).[/quote]

I’m not arguing that the new population is [i]more[/i] meritorious. I’m merely arguing that they’re not inherently less so.[/quote]

But statistically, they are less meritorious. [b] Noisy as it is, test (SAT) scores are positively correlated with merit (or aptitude, or whatever non-observable measure of ability you want to call it)[/b]. Removing test scores from an admissions process will thus lower the admitted population's average merit, all else equal. If the substitute admissions process doesn't have a measure that is more positively correlated with merit than test scores, the new population will be less meritorious*.

* I'm using "college success" as the observable instrument for measuring merit.  Feel free to suggest other observable measures.  [/quote]

This is where you ran into difficulty. "Merit" is simply not a concept that is observable in such a way that everyone will agree on it and truly evaluating it depends entirely on context. It just does and every single business in America understands this.

Say you have two students that you're evaluating for admission to your elite school. You are trying to predict which of these students is going to be the best endorsement for your school in four years when they graduate and in ten, twenty, and thirty years down the road. You have space for only one and these two are the only two candidates.

Student A comes from a wealthy, two-parent family and has attended the best advanced programs in the area. Their older sister attended your school. On your standardized exam this student gets a 93/100 and when asked why they want to attend your school, they respond "because it's the best school in the area and my sister went there".

Student B comes from a disadvantaged background and only has one parent in the house who works two jobs. No one from their school has ever attended your school, nor even applied. On your standardized exam this student gets an 89/100 and when asked, they reply "because it's always been my dream to study the thing you specialize in at the highest level and I want to use my studies to solve this problem that exists in my community and others like it".

If you understand admissions at all, you select Student B 100% of the time - not because you're trying to do a favor for kids from disadvantaged communities, but because it's fairly obvious that [i]Student B is going to contribute more to your school and probably by a mile[/i].[/quote]

I assume you picked 93 and 89 in your example because they were close enough so that the difference could be attributed to noise (you don't state the standard deviation).  Can I recast your example using real world numbers: suppose student A has 1530 SAT (average at TJ last year) and student B has a 1300 (average at Langley last year).  Does the AO still take Student B who wrote the "better" essay?

I agree that merit is unobservable: the above example used merit as the term to describe the unobserved characteristic. But observable outcomes can (noisily) proxy for merit... College success is one used by any researchers, and that outcome has been shown to be highly correlated to SAT scores.

Your anecdotal hypothetical can be extended to a statistical hypothetical: supposed there are two groups of students, one with 1500 SATs and one with 1300 SATs. Can you devise a strategy where you admit the most "[b]meritorious[/b]" 1300 SAT students that would be more [b]successful[/b] (on average) than the group of 1500 SAT students?
[/quote]

NP, the bolded words are doing a lot of work in that sentence, and when putting together an incoming class colleges care about a lot more than individual likelihood of "success" (even if you allow for an appropriately broad definition thereof) but on the face of it, yes, of course, a strategy where you also consider GPA, personal background and life challenges, whether their passions and interests are conveyed in the essay/interview and seem like a good fit for the school, what sports or music or other ECs do they stand out in and are those aligned with what the school offers or is looking to achieve, do they have ambition?... on and on. This is exactly what schools do in their admission process.

Are they going to pick the 1500s at a higher rate than 1300s from this pool? Yeah, almost certainly. That seems to be your point. But so what?
Are they going to pick the 3.9UWs at a higher rate than 3.8UWs from this pool? Yeah, almost certainly.
Are they going to pick the standout musician/artist/athletes at a higher rate than the non-standout musician/artist/athletes from this pool? Yeah, almost certainly.
Are they going to pick the kids with passion at a higher rate than kids with vanilla essays/interviews from this pool? Yeah, almost certainly.
Etc.

There are going to be many criteria which will be positively correlated with admissions chances (and merit), but the SATs are just one measure, upon which you seem to be overindexing. Most folks (self included) aren't suggesting that such scores should be completely ignored, but just that they should be seen for what they are... merely one of many elements of what constitutes merit, and one which seems to be frequently overemphasized due to convenience.[/quote]

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