1590 SAT and 4.65 GPA Denied
- Thread starter Monroe Claxton
- Start date
I went to college out of state. On scholarship. My boards were good but certainly not blinding. I was a mediocre student in H.S. (And college.) The only thing I can figure out is that the school said, "Well, X from Kentucky is higher than Y from Pennsylvania."
A few years ago, we went on a river cruise. At our table was a guy who worked in college admissions. He seemed wary and weary of the subject. I got the impression that it isn't an easy or happy job. The tone of a lot of these posts is angry and combative as if accusing the schools of malice.
Since Gutenberg the books have been the same everywhere. I finished college at UK which is generally considered a middling school. It was better and harder in every way than the small private school I started in. You want a good education? Read constantly as widely as you can afford. My wife got her masters in Lit. A typical semester for her undergrad was 18 hours of Lit. She read everything. Still does. She's one of the few people I know who have read Gargantua and Pantagruel, and all of The Faerie Queen. In retirement, she reads almost 8 books a month. Last year she read Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. A 1000+ page history of the Balkans!
Last edited:
You might want to look up the definition. Meritocracy wouldn't be my surgeons income level or what they were...Meritocracy would be the one with the most skill, hence why they were considered the best surgeon. So yes, I'd like that.
I know there's some insane argument about capitalism and how meritocracy is impossible bc if it or something. Yeah, maybe that applies to the low skill labor worker who cant move up by blue collar work...it doesn't when it comes to being smart or not.
You probably need to be more subtle than that. I'm sure splatterings of "progressive", "open-minded" (which is so ironic, because those who use that are usually the least open-minded), and a few others.
I think "woke" is getting the stigma attached to it that "liberal" has, is there a new term meaning (the already made up word) "woke" becoming popular?
Not really.
Not all extracurriculars are created the same. What if you are a member of the Anime Club or Wrestling Club (as in pro wrestling like WWE) and Lex Cath Student Republicans? You redact Lex Catholic Student Republicans and there's no way to differentiate between that and Anime or Wrestling Club.
No one really gives a damn if you're the president of the Anime or Wrestling Club unless you're an anime or wrestling fan. That's like taking a joke elective college course like underwater basket weaving. It's all fun and games but accomplishes nothing in your educational pursuits or personal growth.
So you're essentially putting people at a disadvantage for being in groups that can be used to identify someone in some capacity by essentially putting it on pat with Anime Club.
You actually were agreeing with me….read previous posts to understand the whole conversation.
Meritocracy is not possible (not because of capitalism but human nature). Benefits for me are great. Benefit for “those others” is “unfair”. Very interesting phenomenon actually…
Go tell the Alumni who has donated $20m to the university that their kid can’t get into school because their kids ACT doesn’t cut it.
We get what we want, we just don’t always want what we get…
My dad grew up dirt poor. Dirt poor. Joined the Army, got his GI bill and lived a great life as a great dad, who was a middle manager at IBM. A path open to most who are looking for one…followed that path myself.
That's a juvenile thought process.
Clubs, no matter what they are, are going to have a leadership structure.
If you're the head of a wrestling club or anime club or whatever, it shows that you have leadership experience and take initiative.
There's no difference between that and myself being the captain of the golf team or the captain of academic decathlon.
Wish my school had a pro wrestling club. I wanted to wear “stretchy pants” and a mask. I’ll leave it at that.
The head of debate club at my school was also the head of the wrestling club. He was so good at talking he reached state and this was TX. Pretty sure he's a lawyer now.
Yeah no, not remotely the same.
That would be like saying being the CEO of a Fortune 500 is the same as being the CEO of a locally owned restaurant with three locations.
Being President of like Young Republicans carries significantly more weight than Anime Club. Not that there is anything wrong with Anime.
Last edited:
When you focus on things other than intelligence, ability and performance, you get things other than intelligence, ability and performance. And getting intelligence, ability and performance in any given circumstance is by luck and not design. This is an absolute truth. Good luck, everyone!
I def wouldn’t put wrasslin or animation club on my Harvard app - just doesn’t seem ideal
Haha well the dude was referring to pro wrasslin not the one Harvard actually calls a sport
I'd take Student A. Comes from good stock.
Joking aside... this is the issue I see. These two students are both top 1%. If I'm a university I want both. I'd scale up operations that I could take any share of the the top 1%
Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford think they are remaining exclusive by keeping numbers low.. If they didn't give a F about social stuff that could theoretically be true. But they are not - they are passing up the better student (student A) because his parents are wealthy for the slightly worse student (student B) because he comes from a broken home in Eastern KY.
That means the better student will go to a lower tier school making that school better.
Last edited:
Well, one could argue that student A has topped out. Parents probably forked over a few grand to push the standardized test scores higher. Parents have the money that lets student A be part of the varsity swim team, time and money are valuable resources that aren’t part of Student B’s life.
Maybe student A is at their ceiling and they aren’t getting much better but student B is at their floor. They have had much less of a chance to realize their potential.
I remember reading somewhere about a baseball scout that had to look for what was the potential of the player vs just going in straight numbers. I mean think about it. One player could have had all the one-on-one coaching he could buy in the region. He played a **** ton of travel ball and has been immersed since birth. The other player was born in a rough part of Venezuela but has had no access to high level training but is a natural. Pretty easy to see who you might pick in that instance. Player B is pretty damn close to A and he hasn’t had any extra help.
Maybe student A is at their ceiling and they aren’t getting much better but student B is at their floor. They have had much less of a chance to realize their potential.
I remember reading somewhere about a baseball scout that had to look for what was the potential of the player vs just going in straight numbers. I mean think about it. One player could have had all the one-on-one coaching he could buy in the region. He played a **** ton of travel ball and has been immersed since birth. The other player was born in a rough part of Venezuela but has had no access to high level training but is a natural. Pretty easy to see who you might pick in that instance. Player B is pretty damn close to A and he hasn’t had any extra help.
Right. The people getting into these schools for their extra curriculars aren't putting Anime club on their application.
Or maybe A has really good genetics and is naturally very smart and inherited great work ethic from his parents. He might have great advice and a mentor in his father or mother when stressed out or when things aren’t going well or if he has a bad breakup with a girl his sophomore year that student B doesn’t have that would cause him to crash and burn when he really needed someone to talk to and help.
I don’t know what university you went to but the one I went to I was in a class of 200 other students and it was up to me to figure **** out or I was screwed. I wasn’t a poor Venezuelan that a baseball team spent 50 million on and surrounded me with mentors and advisors helping me every step of the way.
You are pretty defensive about your station in life.
Flip the SAT scores, are you still going with Student A?
We all were born with some level of privilege over someone else we just don’t like to think that it truly gave us an advantage.
I’m sure you know there were a lot of people placed ahead of you because of your background.
The point of student A or B is that it just isn’t that easy to make a choice but we are all going to default back to what seems more like us.
They both sound like really good students. I just think B has way more potential than A.
Flip the SAT scores, are you still going with Student A?
We all were born with some level of privilege over someone else we just don’t like to think that it truly gave us an advantage.
I’m sure you know there were a lot of people placed ahead of you because of your background.
The point of student A or B is that it just isn’t that easy to make a choice but we are all going to default back to what seems more like us.
They both sound like really good students. I just think B has way more potential than A.
If you flip the score your entire post is stupid because that is changing one of the only objective things in your comparison.
Your last sentence I’ve quoted here is the point I was making. The background information you provided was subjective nonsense. You can make an argument for either and be wrong about either. It’s nonsense and not sure the need to advocate for it being a primary factor for consideration.
Better SAT score, valedictorian of a better school, Eagle Scout, Captain of the Swim team. So on paper, he’s the better candidate. Had student B had the same SAT score plus some better extracurriculars I would have said it was a tie. Your argument seems to be that student B has overcome more, and therefore is more deserving of the spot. I agree that student B has overcome more and may even be a more interesting person to have on campus, but that is speculation.
I compare that to John Wall and Eric Bledsoe. Wall had a more stable home life and was the better prospect (#1 overall). Bledsoe used to live in a car and had trouble qualifying for college, and was still #10 overall. Would you have wanted UK to take Bledsoe instead of Cal because he had a rougher childhood? Of course not.
Basketball recruiting rankings are a GREAT parralell for top high school talent. It's the right side of a bell curve. I am willing to bet it's easy to find the top 5 super geniuses graduating every year. And I bet it's even pretty easy to find who is in the top 5-100 as they stand out. But as you start getting into the 100+, the pool of people probably gets harder to distinguish. Meaning while there's probably a pretty clear difference between the top ranked person and the 30th ranked person, there's little difference between the 200th ranked person and the 400th ranked person.
And since these schools are taking in a couple thousand each year, there's a huge pool of kids qualified to go to these schools but limited spots for them. The right thing to do would be to broaden enrollment. But these schools want to be exclusive so that's that.
Let me guess Wayne, you went to a five figure private school for which part of K-12?
I didn’t say the second kid overcame anything. I just stated that they didn’t have all the help that the first kid had. If only his dad had been around to get him into scouting, if only his school had guidance counselors that would even push them towards something like being a National Merit Scholar.
You are a privileged little turd that thinks he has bootstrapped his way through life. Guess what, none of us really have for the most part.
I didn’t say the second kid overcame anything. I just stated that they didn’t have all the help that the first kid had. If only his dad had been around to get him into scouting, if only his school had guidance counselors that would even push them towards something like being a National Merit Scholar.
You are a privileged little turd that thinks he has bootstrapped his way through life. Guess what, none of us really have for the most part.
It's like sifting through resumes for a job posting. This one person may be perfectly capable of doing the management job, but they've never done anything to quantifiably or qualitatively build their resume. All they do is show up to work, do what they are hired to do quite well, and that's it. They've done nothing to show they are ready/capable to move up to management or that they will be willing to do and learn the things that are needed to move up the chain of command.
Then you have someone else apply for the job with similar job performance in a similar role, but they have gone thru a management training program, maybe they went back to school and got an advanced degree, they been on some committees that are outside the regular job duties, they've actively looked to take on expanded job duties, etc.
The second person is the one you're bringing in to interview. The first person is who you perhaps deem too valuable to take away from their current position and slate them as a backup option in case the first set of interviewees doesn't work out.
Student B is doing essentially the bare minimum to get into an elite school like Yale - they have great grades and a great SAT score. So does everyone literally everyone else that applies to Yale. If your selling point is you have a worse resume than nearly everyone else applying, your application is dead on arrival without someone greasing the wheels with money, and student B isn't going to be able to cough up that much money.
Schools need an indication that the student is going to be willing to put in the work to excel as it is significantly cheaper to keep a student than to recruit a new one. If a student doesn't want to show that effort, they can apply to some safety school and go there instead.
Last edited:
The diesel mechanic locally charges $300/hr... and he goes fishing on Fri whenever he wants -- just puts up a hand-written note on the door....
I work in higher education and Student A would be selected over Student B.
We make our decision based on test scores, GPA and experience.
Both A and B have the scores and GPA.
Student A has experience, B does not.
Admissions will not base their decision making on these scenarios you made up in your head.
I.e. Student A having reached their ceiling while Student B is at their floor.
There's no way for Admissions to know this. They go off what was submitted by the applicant.
If Student B just has the grades and test scores and that's it then they don't have a competitive resume.
To add
I noticed in your multiple retorts you make the supposition that those that selected Student A went to "private schools.". Based on what? Answering your question?
I attended high school in a lower class to lower middle class suburb of Houston. It was just my dad, brother and myself. Father had no job during the 5 years I lived there, 8th through 12th.
Me being "poor" wasn't an excuse for me to just focus on grades and test scores like Student B.
I'd go to school at 7 AM and would come home at 7 PM with half the time being school and the other half being extra curricular activities.
I was in student council, Spanish club, National Honor Society, Varsity Golf and Captain for 3 years, theater club, Thespian Society, Math Club, Academic Decathlon.
I graduated near the top of my class, I was a Texas Scholar and UIL Scholar.
I say all of this because there were people with better resumes at my school. These people did everything I did AND worked 20+ hrs a week.
These people, traveled around the state and nation for meets.
Student B reminds me of the students with similar grades but rather than participate in extra curriculars, they'd just go home to study.
Student B is lacking, grades and test scores are a dime a dozen and that was 20 years ago. It's even more competitive now.
You needed experience 20 years ago, you need even more now.
With tech being where it's at you have middle and high school student's who possess the knowledge that people could only get in 300+ level courses 20 years ago.
Student B has no shot against Student A. Student A will have trouble getting into an Ivy.
Student A can get into schools a tier below Ivy. Think Cal, UMich, Duke (barf)
Student B would be a tier or two below Student A. They might be lucky to get accepted to the schools above just like A would be lucky to get into an Ivy.
Think schools like UT-Austin, Rice, W&M.
Those aren't the same.
Whether the student is in Republican Club or Anime Club, they're still high school student's. Assuming a leadership position is leadership regardless of club.
In your scenario, you're comparing people with vastly different experiences.
This won't be the case for high school student's because they're in high school. They're kids.
A CEO is going to have decades of experience in their field. They'll have 6 to 10 years of education at the college level.
A self employed business owner would range from a secondary school dropout all the way to someone as educated as a CEO.
One could argue the business owner had more skin in the game versus the CEO. Both face challenges in their respective fields.
This isn't the case for the high school student in the Republican Club or Anime Club.**
**Now if they chose the same club in college then yeah you're right. I say that because there are infinite networking opportunities in college. One could parlay that experience to something more rewarding.
However, in high school it's not going to make a difference because they're still basically kids.
Last edited:
Student A:
From Lexington
4.0 GPA 1500SAT
National Merit Scholar
Valedictorian
Varsity swim team
Volunteers at children's hospital
Eagle Scout
Father is a surgeon, mother is a professor
Student B:
From Pike County
4.0 GPA, 1565 SAT
Governor Scholar
Valedictorian
Mother works at Walmart, Father unknown
Ok. Since this thread started about merit.
Does the higher SAT score now push student B past student A?
From Lexington
4.0 GPA 1500SAT
National Merit Scholar
Valedictorian
Varsity swim team
Volunteers at children's hospital
Eagle Scout
Father is a surgeon, mother is a professor
Student B:
From Pike County
4.0 GPA, 1565 SAT
Governor Scholar
Valedictorian
Mother works at Walmart, Father unknown
Ok. Since this thread started about merit.
Does the higher SAT score now push student B past student A?
I vote Student B in that scenario.
- He has the higher SAT score - and one that puts him in like the top 0.1%
- Anybody can be on the varsity swim team - so throw that out
- Merit scholar is a wash with governor scholar
- If I'm student B, I argue that I have to work and therefore can't take the time to be an Eagle Scout or Volunteer
Tale of two great kids I know well. Both from middle class families where mom and dad work. Both from the same part of town. Both athletes. Great friends. They take the same classes in HS with the white kid doing a little better and a little better on the ACT. UK gives an iPad and a full ride to the black friend and a $1000 scholly to the white friend. While in school, the black friend learns for the first time that his white buddy did not get the same deal as he and is really upset, thinks it unfair (such a good kid).
On paper, these kids were fairly indistinguishable.
The full-ride kid helps UK. A great kid, good student, from a great family who won’t hurt UK’s minority attrition numbers.
The best news is that I know they will be friends for life.
I think if a white HS kid believes in an undefinable systemic racism in 2023, he/she should avoid applying to any school but a state school and should agree to pay full tuition.