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1590 SAT and 4.65 GPA Denied

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Mdnerd

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UnfrozenCatfanLawyer said:
Those schools probably see hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants with similar GPAs and test scores every year. I would be curious to see what other things this kid had on his resume.
Click to expand...


The big item on his application was his checking the wrong ethnicity box…

Asian discrimination is very real at these universities of “tolerance”.
 
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Laparkafan

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UnfrozenCatfanLawyer said:
Those schools probably see hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants with similar GPAs and test scores every year. I would be curious to see what other things this kid had on his resume.
Click to expand...
There’s a handful of kids at my alma mater that get a perfect act score every year.
 
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Beatle Bum

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UnfrozenCatfanLawyer said:
Those schools probably see hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants with similar GPAs and test scores every year. I would be curious to see what other things this kid had on his resume.
Click to expand...
I would be more interested to see how his scores compared to the mean and median for those in his class who were admitted. The subjective aspects of the applications to these schools look very similar, because kids follow the same cookie cutter processes and fill their resumes with the same sort of crap. The objective part of the application is more relevant to me, which is why these schools have eliminated them from the process.
 
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UnfrozenCatfanLawyer

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We’re working with a college counselor for my kid and they put it like this - admissions folks see the same GPAs and test scores over and over again. They are looking for something that makes an applicant really stand out. Essays are important, as is evidence of something an applicant is passionate about. A 4.6 GPA may sound incredible, but it really isn’t these days when there are a million AP classes of varying difficulty available. And if you can afford it, there are test prep classes that can make your scores go through the roof.
 
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buster3.0

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At many hard to get into Universities, and I will use University of Georgia as an example, grades and test scores are only part of the criteria. You better have a lot of extra curricular activities on your resume and accomplishments and interests outside of the classroom. This can be school clubs, sports, arts, or even civic or charitable activities. If you don't do anything except just be a student who goes to class, you will be at a disadvantage.
 
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BlueBallz_rivals30790

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Without digging into the individual classes, a 4.65 is great, but not stellar if it’s a 6.0 scale. My daughter has a 4.93, which is all A’s, and not in the top 10%, probably the 25% of her school. They will also look at all the extra curricular activities, volunteering, etc.
 
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roguemocha

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Wow, not much seems worse than reading 100s of college entrance essays that all are just kids trying to BS you enough to say yes and mostly all sound the same.
 
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JumperJack

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UnfrozenCatfanLawyer said:
We’re working with a college counselor for my kid and they put it like this - admissions folks see the same GPAs and test scores over and over again. They are looking for something that makes an applicant really stand out. Essays are important, as is evidence of something an applicant is passionate about. A 4.6 GPA may sound incredible, but it really isn’t these days when there are a million AP classes of varying difficulty available. And if you can afford it, there are test prep classes that can make your scores go through the roof.
Click to expand...
I think this is all true. However, if it’s not academic achievement that matters, why look at GPA at all? Why focus on academics in high school? Why calculate GPA once you’re in a college?

Just tell everybody you want to be an architect and have the Van Buren boys on standby.
 
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Ohiocatfan826

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Ron Mehico said:
A GPA above 4.0 is stupid. Also I love the universities having so much clout that people are spending unreal effort just for the chance to give them hundreds of thousands of dollars to sit in their buildings and possibly never make the money back. Kinda nuts.
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Dont completely disagree, but that has to be a way to reward kids taking the super difficult or college level classes getting beat out by kids taking home ec, autoshop, and Occupational work study (having a job and getting high school credit) from being equally measured for Valedictorian and Top 10.
 
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JonathanW_rivals

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BlueBallz said:
Without digging into the individual classes, a 4.65 is great, but not stellar if it’s a 6.0 scale. My daughter has a 4.93, which is all A’s, and not in the top 10%, probably the 25% of her school. They will also look at all the extra curricular activities, volunteering, etc.
Click to expand...
Never heard of a 6,0 scale. But without consistent scales they are meaningless.
Where my kids went an A was worth 4, + 0.5 if Honors class or 1.0 if AP class, so 5.0 max. And some required classes aren’t AP.
 
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lex cath

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It’s all about DEI in those lib schools now, he should apply to LSU or UK and problem solved 🍺
 
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CaptainBoogerBuns

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BlueBallz_rivals30790

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JonathanW said:
Never heard of a 6,0 scale. But without consistent scales they are meaningless.
Where my kids went an A was worth 4, + 0.5 if Honors class or 1.0 if AP class, so 5.0 max. And some required classes aren’t AP.
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They have a different system here. There aren’t really A’s and B’s so much. Every grade point gets a different GPA point up to 100. So if you get a 93 in and AP class, you get a higher point if you get a 95, if that makes sense. AP gets higher points than a non AP class. This adds up to a 6.0 if you get 100’s in all your AP classes.
 
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Ron Mehico

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ohiocatfan826 said:
Dont completely disagree, but that has to be a way to reward kids taking the super difficult or college level classes getting beat out by kids taking home ec, autoshop, and Occupational work study (having a job and getting high school credit) from being equally measured for Valedictorian and Top 10.
Click to expand...


Maybe it’s different now but when I went to school we took pretty much the same classes - history, math, English, etc. there were harder electives you could take junior and senior year but an A is an A imo. But whatever who cares at the end of the day really
 
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Laparkafan

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BlueBallz said:
They have a different system here. There aren’t really A’s and B’s so much. Every grade point gets a different GPA point up to 100. So if you get a 93 in and AP class, you get a higher point if you get a 95, if that makes sense. AP gets higher points than a non AP class. This adds up to a 6.0 if you get 100’s in all your AP classes.
Click to expand...
That just seems silly and objective plus one class at a school might be harder then the same class at a different teacher/school.
 
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WayneDougan_rivals170043

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My little brother got a perfect score on his SAT (1600), was valedictorian of a really good high school in a major city, was world class in computer programming and was still rejected from Harvard, MIT, and Princeton. He did get into Yale, but paid sticker price. This was back in the early 2000's.
  1. There is collusion between the top schools regarding who they let in. Meaning that for too students they get together and determine who they think is going to what school and the others reject them.
  2. If you are black, Hispanic, American Indian, or Pacific Islander and have good scores (SAT in top 10%), regardless of whether your dad is a brain surgeon, or someone who is actually in need, you'll get into whatever school you want and get tons of scholarships.
  3. To me this is represents a monumental opportunity for some second tier schools to step up and takeover the Ivy League’s crown. I don’t understand why say, U Chicago doesn’t just go hard after all the best students regardless of background.
  4. It's BS that Harvard and schools like that haven't really increased the size of their undergraduate classes. That's just them trying to be more and more exclusive to their detriment in my opinion.
  5. College education is a f'ing racket anyway. My little brother went on to work at a top tech company and is still there. From a skills perspective, he probably could have done that just fine right out of high school, but now he gets to brag that he goes to Yale. F'er.
 
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Anon1640710541

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Is CRT an AP level class now, or just honors? Seems like that would be an easy A for many students looking to pad their resume.
 
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BlueBallz_rivals30790

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Wesley91581 said:
That just seems silly and objective plus one class at a school might be harder then the same class at a different teacher/school.
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Yeah it is, even teachers at the same school is different. Some are harder than others, can grade different, etc. they do some dumb sh*t around here. Where it’s important is Texas has a system that if you are in the top 10%, you get auto admitted to any state school, like Texas or A&M. So getting into the top 10% at one school is far harder than a different school.
 
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Mad Max

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Solution is easy. Assign each applicant a number and admissions cannot see any personal information or whatever. Decision solely made based on the quality of the application.

No more “legacy” or “special consideration” and no more quotas.

Build your resume and compete, fight to win.

Its called meritocracy. We havent been a meritocracy for most of my life. Not sure we ever were. Not sure we want to be.

A friend and I applied to an engineering program, and he got in and I was denied. My GPA was higher and our ACT scores were the same. He was a legacy. I wasn’t. Was it due to that? i have no idea. Maybe his outside stuff got more consideration. And honestly, , that’s the system we have,and he followed the process and got in so was glad for him. I went a different direction and am doing fine. But you can see the narrative of bias, which may or may not have actually existed.

So for a meritous system, you want a process the eliminates the possibility of discrimination based on non-merit (read as “unrelated factors”). Go on merit.

The easiest way is a clean application. no names. No legacy check marks. No local designations. No income levels. No personal charastics. No zip codes. Just grades, achievement and key activities. Pick the best qualified Candidate.

I honestly feel if you do that, you will get equality, because people are the same. Different crowds. Different looks or desires or accents, but there are really smart folks in equal proportions of every group that I have dealt with. We just lose sight of thatbsometimes.

Then we will have to fix the crazy “4.65“ GPA stuff. It’s a freaking 4.0 Scale. That’s the tops. Educators lose a lot of credibility with this stuff. “You got a 4.87 GPA”. WHAT???? If folks are getting above a 4.0, you need to check your calculation again, LOL.
 
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wildcatsboston1984_rivals

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4.65, the **** kind of grading scale are they using? Best you could do in any one class when I was in HS was 4.5 and that was only for AP classes. Everything else was capped at 4.0. I’d be interested to see what that grading scale is.

I get the reasoning for allowing GPAs above 4.0, got to reward people more for getting an A in an AP or Advanced version of the class than just the normal version, for example. If not then just incentivize people gaming the system and taking all the easy classes with the dipshits that don’t care about their education so they can get all As.

It’s like sports, if you can average 20 points a game in the NBA you’re going to get rewarded with more money than if you average 20 points in the Spanish ACB League. And people who put up stats on winning teams are going to get more rewards than people who put up stats on losing teams.
 
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AIChatGPT

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Dncmaxwell said:
Its called meritocracy. We havent been a meritocracy for most of my life. Not sure we ever were. Not sure we want to be.
Click to expand...

Uh, this sentence right here should disqualify you from any consideration.

You are certain we haven’t been a meritocracy for your lifetime. I’m guessing you were born in the 90’s.

But you aren’t certain we were a meritocracy before you were born. Uh, do you know what things were like before you were born? Which people were excluded from things?

Who would you take in this scenario?

Student A:
From Lexington
4.0 GPA 1550 SAT
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, 1500 SAT
Governor Scholar
Valedictorian
Mother works at Walmart, Father unknown
 
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wildcatsboston1984_rivals

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Dncmaxwell said:
Solution is easy. Assign each applicant a number and admissions cannot see any personal information or whatever. Decision solely made based on the quality of the application.

No more “legacy” or “special consideration” and no more quotas.

Build your resume and compete, fight to win.

Its called meritocracy. We havent been a meritocracy for most of my life. Not sure we ever were. Not sure we want to be.

A friend and I applied to an engineering program, and he got in and I was denied. My GPA was higher and our ACT scores were the same. He was a legacy. I wasn’t. Was it due to that? i have no idea. Maybe his outside stuff got more consideration. And honestly, , that’s the system we have,and he followed the process and got in so was glad for him. I went a different direction and am doing fine. But you can see the narrative of bias, which may or may not have actually existed.

So for a meritous system, you want a process the eliminates the possibility of discrimination based on non-merit (read as “unrelated factors”). Go on merit.

The easiest way is a clean application. no names. No legacy check marks. No local designations. No income levels. No personal charastics. No zip codes. Just grades, achievement and key activities. Pick the best qualified Candidate.

I honestly feel if you do that, you will get equality, because people are the same. Different crowds. Different looks or desires or accents, but there are really smart folks in equal proportions of every group that I have dealt with. We just lose sight of thatbsometimes.

Then we will have to fix the crazy “4.65“ GPA stuff. It’s a freaking 4.0 Scale. That’s the tops. Educators lose a lot of credibility with this stuff. “You got a 4.87 GPA”. WHAT???? If folks are getting above a 4.0, you need to check your calculation again, LOL.
Click to expand...
Alas your approach is flawed. Many activities will give away demographics about an individual without it haven't to be expressly stated in the demographics portion of their application. Three notable examples would be...
  • Any religious based group like Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Muslim Student Association, etc. - reveals religion
  • Groups for LGBTQ+ people - reveals your non-heterosexual sexuality or that you're transgender
  • Any gender specific group reveals gender
  • Black Student Association, Native American Student Association, etc. - reveals race
  • Republican or Democrat student groups - reveals political affiliation
  • Any sport labeled men's/women's, or ones that are 99.99% one gender like football - reveals your either a boy or a girl (or transgender depending on state)
  • ROTC/JROTC - reveals that you likely support the armed forces, which allows people who are anti-armed forces to potentially discriminate against these applicants.
  • School attended - This is important to know because an A+ at an easy school means a hell of a lot less than an A+ at a prestigious school, so can't be eliminated in a meritocracy. Doesn't entirely eliminate one's gender unless they went to an all-boys or all-girls school. And doesn't entirely eliminate race, but the race demographics are out there for schools and if you went to a school that's almost exclusively white (like most private schools) or black (like inner city schools), for two examples, then chances are pretty high you can successfully guess the race of the student just from what school they went to. Does reveal the general area where one lives though. And can very likely reveal someone's financial situation, which can be used to discriminate.
  • Commuter Student Association (when applying for graduate school) - reveals location.
And you can't just eliminate extracurriculars because they are a very important part of the application process, especially if a person has an elected/appointed position within the group.

And then there are academic programs that almost exclusively attract people of one gender, like shop and beauty classes, for examples off the top of my head. Obviously not exclusive to boys and girls, but the likelihood of finding a girl in a shop class or a boy in a beauty class are pretty miniscule.

And there are scholarship programs that are linked to minorities - gender and/or race - or regions/states/localities.
 
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Catsfan29

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wildcatsboston1984 said:
Alas your approach is flawed. Many activities will give away demographics about an individual without it haven't to be expressly stated in the demographics portion of their application. Three notable examples would be...
  • Any religious based group like Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Muslim Student Association, etc. - reveals religion
  • Groups for LGBTQ+ people - reveals your non-heterosexual sexuality or that you're transgender
  • Any gender specific group reveals gender
  • Black Student Association, Native American Student Association, etc. - reveals race
  • Republican or Democrat student groups - reveals political affiliation
  • Any sport labeled men's/women's, or ones that are 99.99% one gender like football - reveals your either a boy or a girl (or transgender depending on state)
  • ROTC/JROTC - reveals that you likely support the armed forces, which allows people who are anti-armed forces to potentially discriminate against these applicants.
  • School attended - This is important to know because an A+ at an easy school means a hell of a lot less than an A+ at a prestigious school, so can't be eliminated in a meritocracy. Doesn't entirely eliminate one's gender unless they went to an all-boys or all-girls school. And doesn't entirely eliminate race, but the race demographics are out there for schools and if you went to a school that's almost exclusively white (like most private schools) or black (like inner city schools), for two examples, then chances are pretty high you can successfully guess the race of the student just from what school they went to. Does reveal the general area where one lives though. And can very likely reveal someone's financial situation, which can be used to discriminate.
  • Commuter Student Association (when applying for graduate school) - reveals location.
And you can't just eliminate extracurriculars because they are a very important part of the application process, especially if a person has an elected/appointed position within the group.

And then there are academic programs that almost exclusively attract people of one gender, like shop and beauty classes, for examples off the top of my head. Obviously not exclusive to boys and girls, but the likelihood of finding a girl in a shop class or a boy in a beauty class are pretty miniscule.

And there are scholarship programs that are linked to minorities - gender and/or race - or regions/states/localities.
Click to expand...
That's not entirely true though.

If you're in a club it doesn't necessarily mean said club will identify anything about your background.

Someone that's not black and be in the Black Student Association.

Someone that's not Hispanic can be in the Spanish club.

Someone that's not wealthy or with connections can be in the Finance Club or Student Council.

You may be right that these groups point admissions in the direction of determining the background but that's about it. They don't use race a factor unless it has to with specific scholarships.

Context, I work in higher education. We'd rather choose a student with a 3.5 1200 SAT who participated in extra curriculum and was involved in their community over someone with perfect grades and test scores with zero involvement elsewhere.

The students applying to Harvard all have top notch resumes and some just don't get in.
 
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Catsfan29

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Another thing, back in my HS days I would go to school at 7 and come home at 7. I did everything imaginable and there were still students who did more.

Someone may get rejected and feel bad because they had the perfect resume but there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of others with similar or better resumes.

Context, there are close to 4,000,000 hs graduates each year. Top 3% would be 120,000, 1% 40,000.

Harvard has around 20k in their undergraduate school so say 5k a class.

There are only so many seats at the table even if you graduated near the top of your hs class.
 
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Mad Max

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AIChatGPT said:
Uh, this sentence right here should disqualify you from any consideration.

You are certain we haven’t been a meritocracy for your lifetime. I’m guessing you were born in the 90’s.

But you aren’t certain we were a meritocracy before you were born. Uh, do you know what things were like before you were born? Which people were excluded from things?

Who would you take in this scenario?

Student A:
From Lexington
4.0 GPA 1550 SAT
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, 1500 SAT
Governor Scholar
Valedictorian
Mother works at Walmart, Father unknown
Click to expand...
wildcatsboston1984 said:
Alas your approach is flawed. Many activities will give away demographics about an individual without it haven't to be expressly stated in the demographics portion of their application. Three notable examples would be...
  • Any religious based group like Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Muslim Student Association, etc. - reveals religion
  • Groups for LGBTQ+ people - reveals your non-heterosexual sexuality or that you're transgender
  • Any gender specific group reveals gender
  • Black Student Association, Native American Student Association, etc. - reveals race
  • Republican or Democrat student groups - reveals political affiliation
  • Any sport labeled men's/women's, or ones that are 99.99% one gender like football - reveals your either a boy or a girl (or transgender depending on state)
  • ROTC/JROTC - reveals that you likely support the armed forces, which allows people who are anti-armed forces to potentially discriminate against these applicants.
  • School attended - This is important to know because an A+ at an easy school means a hell of a lot less than an A+ at a prestigious school, so can't be eliminated in a meritocracy. Doesn't entirely eliminate one's gender unless they went to an all-boys or all-girls school. And doesn't entirely eliminate race, but the race demographics are out there for schools and if you went to a school that's almost exclusively white (like most private schools) or black (like inner city schools), for two examples, then chances are pretty high you can successfully guess the race of the student just from what school they went to. Does reveal the general area where one lives though. And can very likely reveal someone's financial situation, which can be used to discriminate.
  • Commuter Student Association (when applying for graduate school) - reveals location.
And you can't just eliminate extracurriculars because they are a very important part of the application process, especially if a person has an elected/appointed position within the group.

And then there are academic programs that almost exclusively attract people of one gender, like shop and beauty classes, for examples off the top of my head. Obviously not exclusive to boys and girls, but the likelihood of finding a girl in a shop class or a boy in a beauty class are pretty miniscule.

And there are scholarship programs that are linked to minorities - gender and/or race - or regions/states/localities.
Click to expand...
Yes. Like I said. No one will support a 100% merit based system.

So we add exceptions. We love the exception we love, and we hate the exceptions we hate.

And we argue and yell at each other over it….
 
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Mad Max

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AIChatGPT said:
Uh, this sentence right here should disqualify you from any consideration.

You are certain we haven’t been a meritocracy for your lifetime. I’m guessing you were born in the 90’s.

But you aren’t certain we were a meritocracy before you were born. Uh, do you know what things were like before you were born? Which people were excluded from things?

Who would you take in this scenario?

Student A:
From Lexington
4.0 GPA 1550 SAT
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, 1500 SAT
Governor Scholar
Valedictorian
Mother works at Walmart, Father unknown
Click to expand...
Born in the 1970s. And no there was not meritocracy in most admissions. Never was.

Even by your argument, you don’t want it. When you go into surgery, do you ask about the surgeons parents income level? Whether they were farmers, factory workers, or engineers?
 
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