I’m convinced that Rudy doesn’t exactly know what he’s doing and his kids are having him do all this so they can laugh at it later.
Pretty sure he’ll be on RuPaul’s Drag Race next!
It’s a really good score in general, but it’s not a really good score if you’re from a privileged background and want to make an Ivy League admissions officer think you might be an academic superstar.
All my high school classmates who went to Ivies or places like Stanford were in the 1400s. White or Asian. Privileged backgrounds but not donor parents.
Higher than her score is really rare. Or at least it used to be. Is it easier to get a 1600 now or something?
When I was applying, and looking at schools that showed their 25th percentile and 75th percentile SAT scores, I don’t think a single one had 75th percentile at or above her score.
Which 75th percentile should be right in the middle of the academic merit acceptances if Riverman’s “half are legacies/athletes” is correct
I attended Northwestern with a record nowhere near as good as her’s. Wasn’t an affirmative action case either
Out of curiosity, I looked up the percentiles at a few of the schools she applied to. The numbers I saw were:
- UC Berkeley - 25th = 1300 75th = 1530
- UPenn - 25th = 1440 75th = 1560
- Harvard - 25th = 1460 75th = 1580
Yeah, so like 10-20% of the entering classes are perfect, and you know it’s a ton of athletes and legacies fleshing out the lower ends.
1 Like
As I’d said, if half of them are athletes/legacies, then 75th percentile of everyone is a fine enough substitute for 50th percentile of academic merit acceptances
Her SAT score is just flat out not a poison pill
1550 is plenty high to get into a top school, but it’s not high enough to get you in for academics alone.
The 50% legacy/athletic stat doesn’t mean that the remaining 50% were purely academic. That 50% also includes all the concert pianists and independent filmmakers and people who took a year off to organize a relief effort in Haiti and people who wrote moving statements about their legacies of overcoming personal hardship and challenges. People who get in just because they’re geniuses is way smaller, probably like 10-15%. Smart theater kid who started an accounting club (??) is not going to get you in unless you mean really really smart or serious theater stuff.
I will confess that I skimmed the reject list and it’s a little surprising to see some of the names on there. But not at all surprising to see her get rejected from the tip-top schools if there wasn’t more to her file than what was in that quote.
I’ve been making it clear since they were in 4th grade that if they refuse to do the work it would limit their college options, both in terms of which colleges would accept them and what I’d be willing to pay. I make too much to be eligible for any financial aid but too little to make $70K a year easy to handle, so I’ll be damned if I’m going to do if they’re not even a little committed.
1 Like
22,000 students scored as high or higher than her the year she took the test, roughly
I always tell students that if they really want to put forth the best application possible, make every effort to win the Nobel Prize in Economics while you are still in high school. Pair that with a knock-out personal essay and you can pick your spot.
1 Like
FYI, this is also great practice fot hte new SAT spreadsheet section.
I was including her extracurriculars as a plus, not neutral or negative. A half dozen or more of my classmates of mine had lower SAT scores and worse extracurriculars and got into Ivies and Stanford in 2005.
Do you work in a related field or am I remembering wrong? If you do, obviously you know better. It just goes against my experience.
I know 2005 was way different from 1985 admissions, but I didn’t think there was that much more room to get that much crazier in the next 20 years, considering how crazy everyone acted like it was in 2005.
Maybe the 99th percentile score is higher now and that’s part of it
I wonder how much of it is these schools just using the state of residence as a proxy for privilege, and completely ignoring how exceptional my high school was, and how each one of these classmates of mine they admitted had their entire life focused from birth on college admissions by engineer/doctor-type parents who spent tons of money and time on it all 18 years
Devils Advocate: Would she be better off right now if she put all that effort into coding/technology instead of SAT practice, piano, volleyball and the accounting club?
Back in my day like 10 people in the whole country got 1600s (the scoring was a lot tougher then). Kids these days and their damn participation trophies.
Yeah but there were only like 50,000 people in the country, grandpa
1 Like
Yeah you’re in the donut hole.
The best friend of the kid I had in my life somehow got her heart set on Michigan and got accepted. Her parents are in the donut hole too, and told her no way we’re paying Michigan out of state tuition.
But she got good grades, did crew (which is ridiculously time-demanding) and basically did everything right. So what are you going to do, break your daughter’s heart? They gave in.
When I was in HS USC was a borderline safety school. That rejection was pretty shocking, though I suspect it would be a horrible fit for this student.
1 Like
Some of my students are truly blown away at what people pay for college in America. Public universities are free in the Czech Republic though they are not easy to get in.
I’m equally blown away by a few students of mine planning to go to college in America. Families got some serious money.
Honestly if I was an American parent, I’d be looking up how to get a student visa for my kids. The way we get universities to lower tuition is if they study at a university in a foreign country.
Yes? Or tell her to pay for it herself but make it clear how stupid that would be.