re: #707 sattv4u2

I was thinking about something we were discussing yesterday re: education

You stated (and I 100% beleive you) that the students you now have in college are woefully lacking in grade level math, science and language art skills. I have seen the same in elementary and secondary schools for years

So the question is what criteria does your college use for entrance acceptance? Is there an entrance exam? Is there a minimum SAT score thats used?

My son will be taking the PSAT’s soon, and it’s been decades since I or my wife has applied to or been in college. Fortunatly (thanks to my wife, mostkly) my son is an honors student taking advanced AP classes, but I’m just curious

OK, it goes like this, and I am honestly not on the admissions committees, but much depends on where your child is applying.

If you are shooting for the Ivys or near Ivys (Stanford, Johns Hopkins, MIT etc..)

Getting in to any specific one is a crap shoot assuming that your son is well positioned. These schools have dozens of qualified applicants for a given slot. It really does come down to asking how well the committee thinks that he will fit in there for reasons that are completely out of your control and frankly capricious. Say Your son plays Tuba, if Cornell say, needs a tuba player, or if Princeton needs a fencer, it could be a deciding factor.

The more your kid does extra-curricular, well, the more it will help.

But this is all for even reaching that point. Doing well in advanced topics (AP or taking college credit courses while still in HS, helps a lot). Don’t bother applying to such a school if you are below the 90th percentile on your test scores - or unless you have some amazing story. If your kid spent three years learning Inuit and living with the Eskimos or designed his own nuclear reactor in the fifth grade, then the test scores matter less. However, in general, back in my day when the SAT was out of 1600, if you were below a 1450, places like I am talking about would not even look at you. This is again because they have 30,000 applicants and need some first filter.

If you go to one of the better state schools, they all have honors programs, and many have outstanding depts.

I would put Urbana Champaign or Berkely, or UCLA, or Madison or even UMD (for physics or mathematics, I talk about that, because I know these fields and who is where) up against many of the Ivys or near Ivys any day.

Getting into a flagship state school if you have good SAT scores and good AP grades is a given - and it is, if you live in a state with one of the more powerful state schools, certainly apply there as a safety.

The PSAT, does not really make a difference except for becoming eligible scholar ships.

So from my own experience in the late eighties, and this is not to brag, this is to give a reference,

I had a 1560 on the SAT, fives on AP US history, Calculus BC, European History, Biology, Physics and Physics 2 and Chemistry. I also had college credits for Vector Calculus and Linear Algebra from a local, but accredited school. I was a champion fencer and I had been on a competitive model united nations trip to the Hague. I also knew french, Hebrew and LAtin and had many, many hours of community service under my belt through local charities.

I applied to Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Cornell, U. Chicago, Johns Hopkins and Cal Tech, Yale and U of P

I got into Princeton, Johns Hopkins and Cornell.

MIT has the rudest rejection letter in history…

I did not apply to Penn State, but they offered my a full scholarship anyway.

I hope that helps.