It's kind of hard for me to believe that our kids are so accomplished. Living in a college town, I am constantly surprised by the college students working who cannot make change without a computer or even seem to be able to concept the basic idea of customer service. Is it possible we have them spending so much time on their college prep that we totally forget to teach them how to do basic things like add and subtract or balance your checkbook? The kids I meet seem to be ignorant on the most basic issues, and this is a college town. It scares me, but then I read things like this and wonder. Is it just me?

Look on the bright side, Teddy Roosevelt was taking trig at Harvard when he went there. He would be the homo erectus to your Neanderthal.

I applied to college fewer than 10 years ago, and I feel like I'd fare significantly worse today. I wasn't applying to Harvard/Yale/Stanford, but instead some top public schools and top 20 or so privates. And from what I've read about today's applicant pool, I'm not sure how well I would have competed. I had excellent standardized test scores, lackluster grades and mediocre extracurriculars -- and there's now a surfeit of kids that score off the charts on all three.

Boomers may be ruling the world, but we're not ruling it terribly well (or we're ruling it, well, terribly). The persistence of the "war on drugs" all these years later is a damning indictment of our collective political cowardice. There are many others.

Mind you, we still need to keep our big ol'demographic boot planted firmly on the collective necks of these young whippersnappers for as long as we can.

Also, don't forget Kevin, but the SAT recently went to a 2400 scale. So the equivalence of your score is somewhat more nebulous.

Grrrr. I've never seen that chart before. I got a 730/780 in 1989. In 1995 that would have been a freaking 1600...okay, the worst possible 1600, but a 1600 none-the-less. I would have got into Princeton! Well, sure, I'm really glad I didn't get into Princeton, as I'm positive it wouldn't have been a good a fit for me as RPI was. But I would have got in, and I would have gotten a 1600, and...

Boy does this crap not matter. I'd rather my kids spent their teenage years playing video games, goofing off with friends, and mailing in the occasional term paper, than stressing about which university in the top 10% they are going to be able to go to. And if they are doing humanitarian work on the weekends, it better be because they are trying to get laid.

I agree that top candidates to today's top schools are stunningly accomplished and often charismatic too. (I'm an interviewer for Columbia, and I still remember one telling me, with captivating confidence, that he wanted to change the world--he just wasn't sure how. Yet.) But it's so insanely competitive that many excellent students don't have a real chance, in my experience, and that's not an easy thing to see.

I certainly do believe that the best kids today would crush the best of years ago.. not so sure about the average/median though.

It's not hard to explain why the typical student applying to the top schools seems smarter and/or more accomplished than those 30 years ago or more, while the average young person you may know seems less so. There are simply more people in competition for the same number of available positions. Stanford hasn't gotten any bigger.

meh - show me any of them who can do derivatives in their head after a pitcher of margaritas.

and then still manage to convince a RD that they haven't been drinking.

for a fun and informing time, be sure to go to one of the regional science fairs. I sometimes help judge the San Diego Regional Science Fair for the local chapter of the American Statistical Association, and I meet plenty of smart and accomplished high school students. I knew a science fair winner from 1965, and he would fit right in: musician, high SATs, science fair prize. there were things that I had studied in high school that he hadn't; and there were things I studied in high school that my children didn't; they contributed to my having a higher verbal than mathematical SAT. I don't think there is a difference in talent or accomplishment overall, but a difference in highlights. My sons had more calculus and some linear algebra; I had trig and solid geometry and matrix algebra. Generally, the higher you go up the SAT scale, the more remarkable the highlights are.

My nephews, who attend an expensive private school, are taking the same math classes I took when I was their age. However, I skipped 2 grades (so I took first and second semester calculus when I was 15). I recall that third semester calculus has been available at the top high schools in Europe and Asia, and the top US schools may offer it now also. OTOH, in Phoenix's horrible public school system, some seniors take only 2 hours of classes a day; then they worked as receptionists in our office. Guess what their job will be 10 years from now!
Consider this also- in the 70's, the US population was about 200 million, and now it is 300 million. However, the # of Ivy league schools and other prestigious schools have remained about the same, and they have not increased their class sizes. No wonder competition has gotten more intense.

They might know a lot; but can they do anything useful?

Are the kids getting smarter, or is Harvard looking at a smaller and smaller slice of the applicant pool? The population is larger now than when I applied to colleges in the early '80s. It wouldn't surprise me if more kids go to college (or want to go to college) and if more foreign students are applying to top U.S. colleges. But the size of Harvard's freshman class probably hasn't changed much during that time. So Harvard can be even more selective than they used to be. They're taking the cream of the cream of the cream, instead of just the cream of the cream.

I'll bet you couldn't get into Regent U.

My sons had more calculus and some linear algebra; I had trig and solid geometry and matrix algebra. Generally, the higher you go up the SAT scale, the more remarkable the highlights are.

Posted by: MatthewRmarler on April 30, 2007 at 8:10 PM | PERMALINK

Awesome. That should help them when they need to call in airstrike coordinates when they go to Iraq. They are going to Iraq, aren't they? I mean, from a guy who regularly cheerleads the war here, I would expect nothing less. When exactly do they graduate / ship out? Is there someplace we can send a care package?

I work at a small, fairly selective liberal arts school in Waltham MA (not to name names). The same thing appears to be true now that was true when I was an undergrad 20+ years ago: the A kids might be hard working and really smart or their folks might have done the work for them (or paid a tutor to learn it for them). But the straight-C kids all got the grades by the sweat of their brows, and they usually are better prospects in the classroom and as research assistants. When push comes to shove, give me the "dumb" kids any day.

I don't doubt that there are lots and lots of very accomplished kids, but it's also true that increased competition has forced parents to put their kids in programs designed with no other purpose than to create the appearance of the perfect candidate, regardless of whether or not their student really learns or contributes anything to any of their 15 superficially amazing extracurriculars. Not to mention the ever-increasing number of SAT tutors that teach mediocre students how to take tests. So there are a lot more inflated credentials out there, too.

Fuck boomers.

It seems like there's an arms race going on in the big, upper middle class mostly suburban high schools that act as feeders to the Ivy League-- places like Palo Alto, the upscale New York and Boston suburbs, west L.A., etc. But given that the universities are inundated with applications from those fairly narrow regions and demographics, my sense is that they go a little easier on you if you're from an area from where they don't get a lot of applicants-- the rural west, for example. But really, you can get a great education from any of the big top tier state schools at a fraction of the cost. I guess what they're all competing for is the prestige factor as well as the social networking that goes on at the super-elite schools. But if Harvard is so damned great, why can't Matt Yglesias spell to save his life?

Not sure how to put this in a short comment, but is this emphasis on being "smarter" in what seems a technological sense really good?
It seems that larger issues of how this emphasis affect society are being ignored. A society where the rulers are pretty much logical technocrats who feel they're a privileged class isn't a recipe for a society I want.

They are going to Iraq, aren't they? I mean, from a guy who regularly cheerleads the war here, I would expect nothing less. When exactly do they graduate / ship out? Is there someplace we can send a care package?

My point was that there is less change in curriculum and talent than is perceived. I suspect that the answers to your questions are matters of public record.

My daughter, who is about 10 years younger than Kevin, had a similar record to his. We'll never know if she would have been accepted at Harvard. She got into Swarthmore on an early decision basis.

What bothers me is that mediocre (or worse) students like George Bush, Al Gore, John Kerry, and John McCain wind up as our national leaders, rather than top students like Kevin and my daughter.

I'm hoping that Bobby Jindal becomes a Republican Presidential candidate after he serves as Governor of Louisiana....

This proves the success of the No Child Left Behind legislaion. The students accepted at top-flight universities like Sanford, Bob Jones and Regents already have the equivalent of a degree from 30 years ago.

FWIW, I don't think the answer to this question is that there are more high school grads applying for the same number of slots. Seems like I read something just a few days ago showing that the number of slots at top universities had actually increased at a slightly higher rate than the number of high school grads. So that part of the equation, anyway, is about the same as it's always been.

Aw. Had I taken the SATs a few years later, I would have had double 800s, instead of just one. Damn you, test makers!

How many of the uber-qualified rejected by Harvard are Asian?

One of the things I noticed when I worked in the med school scholarship business was that med schools kept out more Asians as part of demographic management than they admitted Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans.

And if more seats were lost by Asians than gained by other "people of color" this means "Whites" were still getting seats they didn't deserve b/c of demographic management.

I strongly suspect that these almost perfect applicants who get rejected by Hahvahd are disproportionately Asian-American.

Maybe when they grow up these prodigies can figure out a way to come up with better leaders than chimpus caligulus.

I agree with the notion that we are seeing an ever more stratified level of accomplishment among our younger generations, with an incredibly accomplished uppermost crust sitting atop a mass of comparative dullards.

One other thing that strikes me about the Harvard-wannabe kid in the anecdote - he obviously didn't have to hold down a part time job flipping burgers for pocket money. Somebody paid for the instruments and the lessons to get into those three orchestras, and had the pull to get him in with the cancer research facility he was at despite having no medical background, and he lived a life where cooking esoteric fine dishes was something he could absorb. In short, this was a child of no small affluence. How many kids making the ever more discerning cut for Harvard these days come from a less privileged background?

For what it's worth, I'd think grad school admissions are ultimately more important than undergrad.

I dunno. In 1968, having been turned down by elite colleges where my SATs would have been at least average (albeit getting two alumni interviews and an invite to an alumni club event), I decided that the SATs were overrated and I should've paid attention to athletics, or at least arranged to go to a high school that wasn't on an Air Force base, or got my dad transferred to Minot AFB. Then again, it seems I shouldn't have assumed Penn State would allow me to start on the main campus, fall term. My freshman roomate is a distinguished neurologist, after all.

Then three years later, I find out that GREs matter enough to get a nice graduate fellowship, even if my maths score was 'way lower than a weirdly high verbal. Must be all those words you have to learn as a biology major.

Lately, the University of Florida got rid of its special scholarships to keep the "best" Florida undergrad applicants from defecting to places like Harvard. Makes me wonder how many normal kids get admitted there.

Kevin, when you and I were kids you were only supposed to take the SAT once. Now, I believe you can take it multiple times and take the best score from each section. Given that, how could you not get a perfect score?
Otherwise, the comparison across time for students is just as nebulous as the same comparison for athletes. Are runners faster today than 30 years ago? Yes, because of advances in training methods, science, diet. Would a faster runner from 30 years ago excel today? The answer is unknowable - maybe the 1977 champ wouldn't adapt well to training methods. Maybe he would adapt exceptionally well and blow the doors off everyone.

Students applying to college today certainly have better looking resumes. But that doesn't mean that they are neceaarily smarter. They've just focused like a laser beam on getting into a top college and also been lucky enough to have had parents who can afford to support all their extracurricular activities.

I'm guessing that today's super-acheivers are much more stressed out than their counterparts from thirty years ago and therefore much more likely to have mental health problems as adults (or even as teenagers, for that matter).

College is overrated. Both my brother and sister have degrees they spent a lot of money to get, and never used.

I'm a college dropout. I was considered an "underachiever" because I was smart and didn't do academics like I was supposed to.

I found it ironic and amusing that a recent issue of the University of California alumni magazine honored me and three other guys who never did college in an article called "25 Brilliant California Ideas that are Shaping the Future."

Here's the link. We're #3, Xtreme cyclist.

At Yale, the administration is using the increasing population argument to motivate the construction of two new dorm complexes and a 10% increase in undergrad enrollment.

Students at elite institutions have better resumes, but they are not necessarily better students. I know because I teach them. They are terrified of making mistakes, and therefore avoid courses where A grades seem less likely. Their curiosity is crowded out by their ambition. In Kevin's day in the 1970s, the Ivy League schools were opening their admissions to bright kids from the suburbs (including women, let us not forget), and accepting a lower proportion of legacy candidates like George W Bush. A smaller proportion of those new Ivy admits had been programmed since birth for their college apps, because no one could have planned for the Great Levelling of the 1960s. In my senior year my parents convinced me to apply to three Ivy schools on a lark, I got into two and attended one of them. Very few of my classmates had the high-stress grade anxiety that I see in today's elite undergrads.

I dont think its particularly good for their education.

- show me any of them who can do derivatives in their head after a pitcher of margaritas.

Hah! As my high school calc teacher said, "an orangutan can do derivatives."

Now, doing integration while drunk-- that's a challenge.

A lot of these stories hyping how difficult it is to get into Ivy League schools take the general form of 1) describe high school kid(s) you know and their ridiculous accomplishments, 2) express astonishment that they didn't get into a particular school, and 3) openly wonder what it takes to get in. The assumption seems to be that there's some single yardstick of greatness or magic formula that college admissions committees use to measure applicants. This simply isn't how admissions at these schools work. Harvard (and similar schools) have enough qualified applicants that they can pick their freshmen from a bunch of odd and not necessarily fair criteria and still have a pretty good shot of filling a new class with reasonably well-qualified students. Sure, you might have a 2400 on your SATs, perfect grades, varsity letters in basketball and football, and play tenor sax, but Harvard could be looking to fill the squash team (or, in my case, the lightweight crew) and the tuba section this year. There really is no way to guess exactly how the admissions committee is going to handle someone. This is why a lot of people who have been through this process refer to it as a "crap shoot," and it's not at all uncommon to meet Harvard students who have been rejected from other colleges, even less selective ones. The students that you do see getting into Harvard (all 2000 or so of them each year) are smart and accomplished, but not superhuman.

One other thought: I wouldn't be surprised if the Ivies have ways of ferreting out the differences between accomplished kids and kids with very ambitious parents and high-school guidance counselors. I had a few classmates at Harvard who came in with stellar high school records and lost interest in pretty much everything once they didn't have mom and dad pushing them in the right direction on everything.

Students applying to college today certainly have better looking resumes. But that doesn't mean that they are neceaarily smarter. They've just focused like a laser beam on getting into a top college

The ability to focus like a laser beam on something is a talent that does not get enough attention. Smart people are about as rare as dirt. It takes a special talent to take all the energy swirling in your head and focus it into something manageable so you can accomplish something.

No one gets stressed when talented athletes are sent to summer camp to develop their talents and recruited by colleges. Given how intellectual talent is probably more comment than athletic talent, I don't see why we shouldn't spend a lot of time getting kids to develop that as fully as they can, given the opportunity.

My daughter is a HS senior & just went through the college application grind. She's in an International Baccalaureate (IB) program in a very highly regarded HS (it's a public school, but shows up very high on those lists of "best high schools in the country" (as measured by AP & IB participation)), gets good grades (A-, unweighted), SAT scores in the mid-1400s (not counting the new reading section, which nobody knows how to weigh yet), has already taken (and scored well on) 6 AP and 2 IB exams, and will take 4 more IB exams and 6 more APs this May. She's on 3 varsity teams, team captain on 2 (field hockey and basketball), team MVP in field hockey and All-County Lacrosse second team as a junior (we don't know about this year -- the season is not over). She's travelled, studied in Mexico, volunteered at the National Zoo, and coached a team of younger HS basketball players (girls). She's done a lot of the other minor school-related activities (student government, volunteering for various causes, etc.).

She applied to 12 colleges (only 1 Ivy -- well, Stanford too), and got rejected by 6. She's going to attend a fine local public college. At every college that rejected her, her SAT scores were near or above the 50th percentile score of accepted applicants. At one, her scores were well above the 75th percentile. For every college that accepted her, her SAT scores were well above the 75th percentile score of accepted applicants.

Those of you who think that little has changed over the past few decades are absolutely nuts. There is no comparison to the college application situation that I faced in 1973-1974.

Kevin,

See exhibit A: The "Helicopter Parent"

That is the cause of the phenomenon you've noticed.

I mean, what normal parent sees well-rounded as meaning able to do everything? Waiting reception area while your child interviews for his first post-graduate job? The only way a kid can have all those skills competently honed, is to have been started really early down that road. Tiger Woods was hitting golf balls while in his walker. Don't you think some boomers' kids have been prepared for Ivy League acceptance since they came out of the womb?

Kevin: "In 1975, I applied to Stanford, Caltech, and UC San Diego and was accepted by all three."

Impressive achievement.

I was accepted by both San Jose and Washington, and chose the latter. I had a 1280 SAT score, but I think it also helped that I was a good baseball player in high school.

I Really liked living in Seattle, initially because it was so different from my hometown of Pasadena and later because it's a truly wonderful city in its own right. Had I not been offered a great job in Hawaii 20 years ago, I probably would have remained up there.

As it is, still visit my friends there at least once a year each spring or summer. In fact, I'll be up there over Memorial Day weekend, before heading back down the coast to see my mother.

"On the other hand, we boomers still rule the world."
Doomed to listen to your music, pay your social security, read your demographically targeted magazine pablum, for the rest of my life. Sure... but don't rub our noses in it.

(Born in 1965.)

ex-liberal: What bothers me is that mediocre (or worse) students like George Bush, Al Gore, John Kerry, and John McCain wind up as our national leaders, rather than top students like Kevin and my daughter.

It's an interesting comment.

Political skill might be something that is neither taught nor testable. FDR had poor grades, but Nixon had excellent grades, at Whittier and at Duke, but FDR was clearly the better president. LBJ also had poor grades, but he was an excellent Senate Majority Leader.

Kevin, your 1420 translates to a 1490 today, after the 1995 "recentering of scores," as you mention. Then, if you were 17 now and taking the SAT today, you would probably have hired a tutor, so figure that would add, say, 40 points. And you would probably have taken the test at least one more time, and the colleges like to report the highest verbal and highest math scores from any taking of the SAT, so that might add, say, 30 points. Now you are up to 1560! Pretty amazing!

And you would now have taken a lot of AP classes, where an A is a 5.0 instead of a 4.0, so your GPA would be, say, 0.5 higher. And your parents would have sent you to even more summer programs.

So, color me unimpressed with the latest generation. It's mostly smoke and mirrors.

Al: "The students accepted at top-flight universities like Sanford, Bob Jones and Regents already have the equivalent of a degree from 30 years ago."

Been hittin' the malt liquor again, I see.

Repack Rider: Congratulations on your success. Your comment, though, suggests you might have benefitted from a college-level statistics class.

MatthewRmahler: "Political skill might be something that is neither taught nor testable. FDR had poor grades, but Nixon had excellent grades ..."

I think the fact that FDR wasn't a paranoid borderline sociopath might have had a little something to do with his being the better president.

His successor, Harry Truman, had only a high school education. Anyone care to compare his tenure in office to that of our current MBA president?

"....What kind of kid doesn't get into Harvard? Well, there was the charming boy I interviewed with 1560 SATs. He did cancer research in the summer; played two instruments in three orchestras; and composed his own music. He redid the computer system for his student paper, loved to cook and was writing his own cookbook. One of his specialties was snapper poached in tea and served with noodle cake."

What a dick.

Over on College Confidential, you occasionally hear from these terribly accomplished, straight A, 2300 plus seniors about how terribly unfair it is that they didn't get accepted by Harvard Yale Princeton Stanford. And you start to get a sense that the only reason they practiced their bassoon pieces until they were perfect or participated in that summer program at NASA or spent their summer in Rwanda reading to orphans was for how it would look on their college applications. I can't think of an emptier reason behind all those accomplishments.

I got a 1200 on the SATs (I forgot that I was scheduled to take them until that morning, did no prep - got a 790 on the verbal and a 410 on the math), I had a 2.5 GPA (mostly due to the fact I was a total slacker in my math classes), only participated in one extracurricular because my mother was agoraphobic and needed me to do the grocery shopping and bill paying, and even in my A classes, I put forth minimal effort.

Still, I got accepted to all the liberal arts colleges I applied to - Sarah Lawrence, Hampshire, Wesleyan. I think it was based almost entirely on my essays and interviews.

It didn't matter, though, because my parents refused to fill out the FAFSA, so I ended up commuting to the state university system and paying the bill myself. I even got a full scholarship for my second and third semesters, but my free ride ended when I had to take a math class and killed my GPA again. But I have 40+ credits in English, Theater and Music, making me possibly the least employable person ever!

I was a well-rounded but more or less normal smart kid from a middle class family of state-college grads. I did sports, theatre, band, and academic extra-curricular clubs, but none of this cancer research kind of stuff.

I got a 1600 on the recentered SAT in 1995, graduated with a 3.98 GPA in 1996, and got into Stanford with good financial aid, but was rejected by Harvard and some other places. (At the time I was upset; in hindsight, thanks East Coast admissions people!)

Since then, many schools - including Stanford - have moved toward the well-rounded student _body_ model - that is, admitting a variety of the highly focused, rather than the well-rounded.

The ability to be highly focused is admirable, but it can also turn you into a brittle freak show. I think we lose something if the Stanfords and Harvards don't admit well-rounded young people like I was.

It's hyper-competition, not numbers.

It reminds of when I was in Florence, Italy, in the mid eighties and I wanted to "exchange conversation" with a local. I went to the British Institute and put my name in a tidy booklet that people could use to call either English or Italian speakers, as needed. It just had names, general location, hours available and phone numbers. But I put in that I taught English in a Canadian college. Oops! That screwed the British Institute's very proper self-regulating system, one that had probably been the same for decades. For it unleashed red blooded American competition. The US academics in Florence weren't going to let my mediocre qualification lie unchallenged. When I looked at the booklet again a month later, it was in tatters, with everyone touting better and better and better qualifications in every area they could write. Unbelievable!

The qualifications were much better than getting into Harvard. And this was just to exchange conversation with some Iti!

His successor, Harry Truman, had only a high school education.

I thought I had already made my point, or I would have added Truman and Lincoln to the list. Truman studied trigonometry in artillery school, and rose to the rank of captain. Yes, he was a better Pres. than G.W.Bush. Gerald Ford ranked in the upper third of his class at Yale Law School, and he wasn't a very good president.

ESD: This is why a lot of people who have been through this process refer to it as a "crap shoot,"

There's an argument for making it, literally, a crap shoot. See

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/AffirmativeAction/LAT.NM.html

and

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/AffirmativeAction/Chron2000.html

It's also the only palatable form of "affirmative action" I've ever seen. No, it's not the usual approach - it's color blind.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Ivies have ways of ferreting out the differences between accomplished kids and kids with very ambitious parents and high-school guidance counselors.

Now you're ascribing superhuman abilities to the admissions people instead of the students. At top schools there are so many good students applying that there is no way to separate signal from noise. The admissions people probably just apply their own silly ideas. And let's face it, if their selection criteria are not optimal, how the hell are they ever going to find out? That would require experiment.

Does the world end if some student doesn't get into Harvard? Does it end for that student?

I know a lot of people who have been pretty darn successful who didn't make it in to one of the elite schools. I know people who have been pretty darn miserable who did.

I have a friend who has two daughters. One went to Smith and the other to some elite little college in California. Both graduated with distinction on the same weekend. It took both of them the better part of a decade to find work. Finally one got married and the other caught on as an artist. College was not necessary for either career.

Anyway 36 years ago when I started law school a Federal judge, who was an alum, told us at orientation that he would never have been admitted to our class. My guess is he would have been admitted.

As to the perfect kid who is example in the set up. Doesn't he seem just a little too good to be true. He does to me. If he is for real, I fear for his long term mental and spirtual health.

There is a story told about Dennis Hopper, the actor. As a young man he visited Thomas Hart Benton and asked him to critique his art. Hopper was uptight and very earnest. His work was technically good. Benton looked at it for a long time, and said somethng like "son sometimes you have to get a little tight before you can paint lose." With that he handed him a bottle of whiskey.

I think that the standards are very clearly changing and very rapidly. I was accepted by a selective liberal arts college in 2002 and graduated in 2006. Over the course of those four years the percentage of admitted students at my school decreased by over 15% (not exaggerating!) and the standards for admission became much higher. I have no doubt that I would not have been accepted to my alma mater if I had applied in 2006 rather than 2002. Meanwhile, I know for a fact that the quality of education at my public high school has not increased in tandem; there are still only a couple of AP classes available, no IB program, same couple of college counselors, etc.

Today's high school seniors are very clearly getting the short end of the stick, just as I probably did compared with those that came before me (like the high school teacher/Harvard grad who thought I could get in to Harvard because my HS record was better than his). But I don't worry about the Harvard applicants at all; I worry about students that are lower on the collegiate food chain and risk being shut out of higher education all together. Students who should have access to their local public universities are increasingly unable to compete. The average accepted GPA of a freshman at UCLA is 4.0. A family friend was rejected from the University of Washington with a 4.0; another found that he could only be accepted to the UW by maintaining a 4.0 in community college for two years and transferring.

I have no doubt that there are tons of qualified students who are being rejected from institutions at which they would absolutely thrive. I was the valedictorian of my class last year, maintained a cumulative GPA of 4.0, and graduated with a double major and honors. But I would not have been accepted to the school at which I was so successful if I had applied only four years later. Scary.

In 1982, I applied to Caltech, MIT, Stanford, and Princeton, during my junior year of high school. I had taken the SAT once and honestly don't recall my scores. I had already taken all of the science and math classes my public high school in Houston had to offer and wasn't looking forward to my senior year. I was accepted at Caltech.

My oldest daughter is now a sophomore in high school--Stuyvesant, NYC, so she does OK on standardized tests. Many of her fellow students take extra prep classes after school. I just received a letter notifying me that she will take the SAT-II for chemistry this year and the check for the prep class (4-7 pm on weekdays and a couple of Saturday mornings) is due tomorrow. It's assumed.

My middle daughter is taking a prep class given at her junior high for the exam to get into Stuy, also at extra charge.

I'm not really sure all these preps are necessary. They are all run by for-profits and increasing parental anxiety increases their profits.

However, daughter #1 took the Hunter exam, passed the multiple choice part, and failed the writing sample. I found that odd because she told me the subject was her favorite food, and she wrote about a pomegranate we had recently eaten. She said she described cutting it open to find the seeds, shopping for rose water to dip them in, the mess they made on her baby sister's shirt, and the myth of Persephone. Not good enough for an 11 year old?

I was later told by a teacher at our whole language elementary (whose son made the cut that same year) that Hunter has very specific expectations for the essay's structure, and most successful candidates prepare with tutors if they don't come from a 5 paragraph essay elementary. Oops.

I'm afraid to make that mistake again.

I can't believe that Drum got a 1420 in 1975 -- I got a 1410 in 1974, so that makes him smarter and younger than me... If he's so smart how come he comes up with so many dumb opinions on this blog? Like, is Harry Reid really such a swell leader for the Democrats? Inquiring minds want to know... As for the poached tea snapper boy, I wonder how much pressure his parents put on him to be so charming. I first started worrying about this competitive pressure when I read about mandatory volunteerism at some of the tit-totter's high schools. Orwell pointed out that abuse of language is a good indicator of when things are going off the rails.

I applied to Caltech and Stanford in 1973 and was accepted at both as a transfer student (admission as an incoming junior after graduating from my local community college). As a narrowly-focused grind, I did extremely well in all my classes in high school and junior college, but ... extra-curricular stuff? Not a whit of it. I didn't join a single club or participate in a single activity outside the classroom.

Today I'd be doomed, I fear.

Kevin: I was an A student, scored 1420 on the SAT,
i also was an A student.. two A students.. more A's than A students... lots of students... A's..

attended an NSF math program the summer after my
i attended an NSF program.. two NSF programs.. every program.. i attended a program...

had two varsity letters,
i got letters in varsity... every letter was for my varsity.. my letter was for every varsity... all my varsities..

and was editor of the school paper.
my newspaper had an editor... two editors.. had every editor.. lots of editors..

Not bad!
I'm not bad... i'm..

But as near as I can tell, it would barely get me an interview at a place like Stanford or Harvard these days.
i could barely get an interview everywhere.. everywhere wants to barely interview me.. i could interview barely..

[sorry... just riffing off that self-obsessed character from SNL. Hopefully to immunize us all from battling egos with our dear moderator.]

Why all the insecurity, folks? Its what you do after college that really counts. Hasn't anybody seen animal house?

The really successful people invent their own lives. They follow their passion. Some get rich, but most are really happy.

Students like the kid in our example doing cancer research when he isn't poaching snapper end up as post-docs with some Nobel prize winner stealing their work to help some big Pharmaceutic Company get rich selling a better erection pill.

Part of the explanation for declining acceptance rates, especially at elite colleges, is revealed by TomG's tale of his daughter's experience. She applied to 12 schools! In 1994, I was near the top of my IB class, but only applied to 4 schools. Few of my classmates applied to more than 6 schools. The result is that acceptance is much harder to predict, and kids (or their parents) feel compelled to apply to even more schools.

I worry about students that are lower on the collegiate food chain and risk being shut out of higher education all together. Students who should have access to their local public universities are increasingly unable to compete.

I went to the bookstore of the community college where my son was studying while trying to get into the Navy. Why he had to work to get into the Navy is too tedious to discuss. Anyway, the textbooks for biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics were good college level. I looked at his homework for differential equations, and it was challenging. I know at least one Fellow of the American Statistical Association who began his college career at a local community college. He got his PhD at a well-regarde university.

Your first college is important, but it isn't career-limiting to start low and close to home.

Sounds like a system that creates deep inequality. If you can't draw from the pool of socioeconomically disadvataged to fill these slots, then the schools should be shut down. This isn't even worth a conversation.

Kevin- thanks for the links. It's an interesting concept. I doubt that anything like that lottery system would ever get put into place at an Ivy, even if current system probably produces a similar result. I don't think that the egos of Ivy administrators could take it- they need to feel that they are personally guaranteeing the selection of the best and brightest, or at least the most interesting.

[I]Now you're ascribing superhuman abilities to the admissions people instead of the students.[/I]

Not really. See what I wrote above about the obvious examples of Harvard kids away from their parents not living up to their CVs. However, I do think that those "helicopter parents" occasionally leave a few classic fingerprints on their kids' applications, and admissions officers are smart people who have done their job for a long time and have probably figured out by now how to pick up on a few of those signs.

[i]And let's face it, if their selection criteria are not optimal, how the hell are they ever going to find out? That would require experiment.[/i]

And that would require agreeing on some set of variables that identify what counts as an optimal outcome, and I doubt that even Ivy admissions offices have a coherent idea of what that is.

jimbob-
I doubt that your concern has escaped the attention of Ivy admissions offices. My impression is that some administrators at elite schools see this as a pretty significant issue- Larry Summers flagged economic diversity as an issue a few times, for one. It's not impossible to get into elite schools without rich parents financing a batch of expensive and exotic hobbies, although it might be harder. My app listed boring jobs landscaping and bagging groceries at QFC, among other things. That, and I "wasted" quite a bit of time on slow public transportation getting to the one extracurricular that wound up mattering to Harvard, which I'm sure some of my more affluent high school classmates could have put to use on other expensive resume-building activities.

A few additional comments:

This really needs to be framed as a sort of class issue rather than some generational change in students themselves. There is an enormous chasm between students with access to the sorts of opportunities that facilitate fantastic resumes and students that have to work with what they already have.

To Steve Sailer: I am really surprised with the number of people willingly playing the “today, my scores would be� game. Unless you are a relatively recent high school grad, you simply have no basis to compare. Not only are the tests different, but the educational system itself is fundamentally different. You can’t assume that your GPA would be X.XX higher because of AP tests, because you don’t know if your school even has weighted grades or AP classes! I had no weighted grades in high school and my school only offered two AP classes, both science and both by application only.

To Jim Bartle: You are absolutely right that grad school admissions are “more important� than undergrad. Today, however, there is a relationship between the two. I am a first year graduate student at a major research university and have spent time talking to other members of my cohort about undergrad records. The students who attended super elite private schools (ivys, Stanford, etc.) were accepted with much lower GPAs and GREs than those of us who attended public schools or lesser known private colleges. We concluded, based on what we could tell, that it appeared that some students had to overcompensate for attending a lesser known school.

To Ronn Zealot: It is true that students can take the SAT multiple times, but that doesn’t mean that all do. You need time and money, which not all high school students have. So, there is really only a very small number of students who can realistically earn themselves a perfect SAT score. It should be noted that this small minority is not reflective of young people as a whole.

At least by the mid 80s, it was already ridiculously hard and basically random whether you got into Harvard. The guy who graduated #1 in my high school class was super smart, did all sorts of volunteer work, blew away the SATs, and ended up at Brown. His Harvard obsession didn't end and he went to Harvard Law.

I had two other high school classmates who went to Harvard. Both were a lot less smart than the guy who got rejected (but still very smart). They got in because they were recruited as athletes.

What is with the sudden obsession with college admissions? Boomers rule the world and their kids are applying to college.

I went to Cornell, then to Penn for grad school, and nobody ever made much of it (its not like I went to Harvard) But parents of high school kids swoon when I tell them where I went to school.

Calm down people. Getting your kid into a brand name school doesn't confirm your excellence as a parent. A lot of kids I knew at Cornell turned into drug addicts.

One of his specialties was snapper poached in tea and served with noodle cake.

If, as an interviewer, you think this is charming in a HS boy, rather than a mark of absurd affectation, you've lost all perspective.

Ron Byers: Hasn't anybody seen animal house?

Robert Hoover--- Public Defender in Baltimore
Larry Kroger--- Editor of "National Lampoon"
Greg Marmalade--- ex-Nixon White House aide (raped in prison, 1974)
Eric Stratton--- Gynecologist, Beverly Hills, California
Doug Neidermeyer--- killed in Vietnam by his own troops
Kent Dorfman--- Sensitivity Trainer, group encounter therapist, Cleveland
Daniel Simpson Day--- whereabouts unknown
Barbara Sue Janson--- Tour Guide, Universal Studios, Hollywood
Senator and Mrs. Blutarsky--- Washington D.C.

Your first college is important, but it isn't career-limiting to start low and close to home.

I agree; my boyfriend of five years attended community college and went on to excel at a four year college and now a PhD program. The problem is that I am increasingly hearing stories about intelligent kids who are being rejected from all of the schools to which they applied. In my area, it is even getting harder to attend local community colleges because the waiting lists are so long.

To Jim Bartle: You are absolutely right that grad school admissions are “more important� than undergrad. Today, however, there is a relationship between the two.

Very true. While my GPA was middling, at my undergraduate university, I was able to participate in a lot of research, and this allowed me to get accepted at a top-notch graduate program (and after getting an M.S. I returned to my old undergrad uni for my Ph.D., but that's another story).

If, as an interviewer, you think this is charming in a HS boy, rather than a mark of absurd affectation, you've lost all perspective.

I am highly in favor of absurd affectations in college students. Without them, you get nothing but a bunch of students who are good at being good at the things everyone expects them to be good at. And that's no fun.

where did harvard rank on the monthly's best colleges list? what was it i read in charlie peters' column about parents scheduling their kids to within an inch of their lives so they get all the right qualifications checked off to make it into elite colleges? the parents who complained they blew six figures putting their kid through all the right private schools only to see her enroll willingly in a state university?

ESD: I doubt that anything like that lottery system would ever get put into place at an Ivy ... I don't think that the egos of Ivy administrators could take it

Bingo. That and it would destroy the mystique (which would have the marketing dept. up in arms).

I am highly in favor of absurd affectations in college students.

De gustibus.

While my GPA was middling, at my undergraduate university, I was able to participate in a lot of research, and this allowed me to get accepted at a top-notch graduate program

That really is the flip-side of my experience. I went to a little known liberal arts college in California with limited research resources, but took every opportunity I could find. Even with my perfect record/scores, however, I feel like I was fundamentally limited by the fact that I was not at a research university. The possibility of being an RA didn't even exist; in order to present at a conference, I actually had to produce my own research.

Anyway, I applied to 10 graduate programs, all in the top 20 of my field. While all of the public universities accepted me and offered funding, only one private (Cornell) would go near me with a ten foot pole. I still don't know what it would have taken to get me into Harvard or Stanford (other than having the same record only at a "better" school), but I will say that I am very very happy with the public university that I wound up choosing!

So sick of this bullshit discussion about test scores. A little over 10 years ago, I was in the top 5% of my (competitive) high school class with an above 4.0 average. By the "weighted" standards, I had 1330 SATs. I got into U.C. Berkeley and UCLA and wait-listed at Claremont Pomona. But apparently, anything less than a 1400 means I'm a certified idiot. Never mind that I went on to get an above A- average at Berkeley and was nearly magna cum laude. I went through the same crap again with applying to law schools -- I had above the 75% GPA in most cases, yet because my score wasn't super-high, I got rejected from several schools that likely accepted the students with poorer grades.

Kevin, I was accepted by Cal Tech in 1956. I have no idea what my SAT was because we weren't told in those days. My high school (in Chicago) was asked to send a transcript to USC where I had been offered a scholarship and, not knowing what USC was, they sent it to Cal Berkley. I got a letter from Cal accepting me and asking me to submit an application. I never thought of Harvard. Too cold.

My kids were accepted to USC in the 80s. Now ? I don't know. One graduated from UCLA and one to go. The medical students I teach are accomplished but lack some breadth, often. Many are from other countries.

I agree with Karlyn's (10:53) take on the incentive to apply to more schools, and its effect on admission rates. Clearly, admission rates are declining in part due to students applying to more colleges.

But that's not really the issue of Kevin's post (as I read it). His bottom line question is:

"Would the Kevin Drum of 1975 be able to get into a top school in 2007? I suppose it's impossible to say. The SAT was renormed in 1995 and my old 1420 would be a 1490 today. I'd have a bunch of AP classes under my belt not because I was any smarter, but because suburban high schools all offer loads of AP classes these days. And I'd probably do outside volunteer work or something on weekends — not because I'm any more altruistic than I was then, but just because everyone knows that's what you need to do if you're trying to get into a top school."

The answer, Kevin (and others), is "no." Sure, you "could have" hired tutors and taken SAT prep courses; you "could have" spent your middle school and HS years developing additional athletic skills to allow you to play more sports (or other skills such as music or art); you "could have" been involved in more activities; you "could have" taken more advanced courses, heck, you "could have" taken courses at the local community college; you "could have" travelled overseas to learn a new language; you "could have" worked yourself much harder than you actually did.

But the fact is you didn't do what you "could have" done; I didn't either, nor have 99% of the readers of this post over age 30. That's the difference -- the kids today are doing things we never would have even thought about.

To repeat my earlier conclusion: those of you who think that the college admissions game hasn't changed (e.g. "smoke and mirrors") are nuts.

So sick of this bullshit discussion about test scores.

Amen!

A little over 10 years ago, I was in the top 5% of my (competitive) high school class with an above 4.0 average. By the "weighted" standards, I had 1330 SATs. I got into U.C. Berkeley and UCLA and wait-listed at Claremont Pomona.

I hope you realize you still had it good! I know any number of 4.0 students with virtually-to-actually perfect SATs that could not get into any of the schools you did.

You should know, though, that there are an increasing number of colleges that do not require SATs anymore. One of the other schools in the Claremont consortium, for example, does not require SAT scores. This is a movement that does not get enough attention!

A couple quick thoughts:

- High school credentials are wildly inflated. Rich kids take SAT tutoring classes to learn how to answer multiple choice questions. High school teachers are enormously pressured to inflate grades--even if a high school teacher wants to, say, give mostly C's, it'd be hard to justify given that a single C can kill a student's chances at harvard and so on. Or at least I assume this is the case--I teach at a writing program at UC San Diego, and one of the common student complaints is that this required class will lower their GPAs which will make it harder to get into medical/graduate/law school. I don't inflate my grades, per se, but I end of feeling guilty any time someone gets below a B- (and that guilt, to be honest, has probably pushed a few borderline students out of the c-range.)

- I was one of those overachiever high school kids in the late 90s who did volunteer work, joined clubs and so on. I don't regret that at all. But I do regret putting tons of work into subjects like chemistry, which never interested me during my sophomore and junior years. During my senior year, I started dating someone seriously and completely blew off my classes in subjects that didn't interest me (physics and statistics, if I recall.) I got B's in those; my GPA was a bit lower; but it was no big deal, even though I did a minimal amount of work--see what I said about grade inflation--and I had a lot more fun and learned a lot more about how to function in the world than I ever would have learned by figuring out how to calculate the velocity of an egg dropped off a high school roof.

- Colleges should want self-directed students, not kids who are going through the motions, and as far as I can tell, that should mean letting in kids with crappy grades who show some obvious engagement with the world. They would be a lot better than the academic overachievers who see college as a steppingstone and nothing more. I've been lucky to have mostly pleasant students, but I've also had some obnoxious students. On an evaluation last quarter, I received the following comment: "I am not a fan of the writing program. Your grade is based on several writing assignments; however, you are forced to attend class and finish readings. This is bothersome." The comment was atypical, but not that atypical. People with those sorts of attitudes really don't belong at a university, but they have to attend one, because they don't want to work at WalMart.

- The real problem, as I've said on other similar comment threads on this blog is that employers are increasingly relying on academic credentials for hiring choices. Harry Truman couldn't get a job as a legislative assistant today unless he first went to college, interned for two summers for free, and so on. As long as employers, potential lovers, and other significant folk see college as the ultimate measure of life achievement, then we'll have disappointed teenagers who don't really care about learning, but don't want to spend the rest of their lives feeling like they would have been able to achieve much, much more if they had just played the cello instead of the flute.
And of course, colleges don't want to admit that while what they do--give young people the opportunity to spend a few years getting smarter--is really cool, it isn't all that important to most people professionally, since that would mean lower attendance rates, fewer professorial jobs and the like. In other words, the system sucks and it will probably get worse in the coming years, producing even more frustrated super-genius kids who couldn't get into harvard, and who have no idea what they want to do with their lives other than to be able to say they went to Harvard.

The real problem, as I've said on other similar comment threads on this blog is that employers are increasingly relying on academic credentials for hiring choices.

And how were you hired to teach your writing program? ;)

I think you are almost spot on; employers shouldn't be dependent on academic records for hiring, unless academic records are actually somewhat pertinent to the position being sought. For some of us (and it sounds like you as well), academia is a chosen profession. The problem is also one of distinguishing between individuals who are/were genuinely committed to their academic work and the kids who just wanted "to be able to say they went to Harvard".

We're starting to sound more and more Asian about all of this. ("Must get into top college! More study! Eek!") If it ever comes down to entrance exams....we're sunk.

I was talking about present day college applications with a friend of mine whose daughter has just gone through the process. My friend couldn't stop commenting "I don't remember ANY of this stuff when we applied!" Get a copy of one's grades, SAT scores, application form, saunter over to the kitchen table and write down "Why I want to go to X" as a one-page essay, list the astronomy club and year abroad on Rotary exchange, then dump it in the mail. No sweat. She went to Cornell and I went to MIT.

Now the kids are frantically working on their essays for months, with high schools having the students bring them in to English classes...sheesh.

I'm pretty convinced the reason I got into MIT was due to having had the interview right after I had finished the summer section of a very intense full-time Japanese language program. I must have come off as very blase, world-weary, and unflappable, where what was actually going through my head was "oh wow, this person is speaking English to me! And I can answer back in English, too!"

And my roommate is convinced the only reason she got in was they kept losing the records of her interview and asking her to repeat it. She's convinced that by the time Round III rolled around they were too embarrassed to do anything but admit her.

Good times, good times....

Ha! Grumpy, you must have been early-mid 70s, right? Ha -- that sounds about right!

But I do regret putting tons of work into subjects like chemistry, which never interested me during my sophomore and junior years

You know, I have to say that one of the nice things about high school is that I was forced to apply myself in subjects I might not have thought "interested me," but I got a lot out of them and realized that they did have a lot to offer me. I thought I was going to major in political science and go to law school. After my friend convinced me that it would be better for college to take Physics my junior year instead of skipping out on science until my senior year, 15 years later I ended up as a computer scientist.

Oh, for the record, in the early 90s, I was one of those obsessive-compulsive high school students obsessed with college. I applied to 13 schools and got accepted to 7.

As long as employers, potential lovers, and other significant folk see college as the ultimate measure of life achievement

On the potential lover thing, I doubt I would have held much interest in someone who hadn't been to college when I was 22. However, now that I'm in my 30s, the pool of people who haven't been to college that I come across is much more interesting. The 20-something pink-collar worker isn't too appealing, but the 30-something small businesswoman is a pretty compelling package.

Also, I wouldn't have minded some "coaching" on my applications. To this day, I really am not very good at the art of the "personal statement."

All of this makes me incredibly happy I didn't take achievement any more seriously. Don't get me wrong, I was widely considered a major overachiever and I busted my ass in a very competitive HS. But apparently I was playing in a very different league. While I was exhausted, my focus was on learning and not on doing things for the sake of doing them. My parents made sure I stayed on track, but they also made sure I didn't go overboard.

When it came time to apply to schools, I researched for *two years*, found internships to verify my career path, visited campuses, even read entire course catalogs, and in the end applied to three very good but not top tier institutions (Syracuse, Purdue, WashU) and was accepted easily. I was tempted to apply to an Ivy just to find out if they'd take me, but the financial disclosure form was so offensive I passed. I picked the cheapest school (Purdue) and while I hated being stuck in Indiana, I got a great education at a respected school, all without incurring debt.

I took it seriously, but I am so glad I didn't get caught up in the insanity.

1) I don't think Stanford does interviews.

2) I don't think tea-poached snapper on kugel has universal appeal. How about a desert?

3) Decade long trends notwithstanding, Harvard alumni have been bragging about the kids they reject since at least 1775.

You know, I have to say that one of the nice things about high school is that I was forced to apply myself in subjects I might not have thought "interested me," but I got a lot out of them and realized that they did have a lot to offer me. I thought I was going to major in political science and go to law school. After my friend convinced me that it would be better for college to take Physics my junior year instead of skipping out on science until my senior year, 15 years later I ended up as a computer scientist.

I agree that high schools should require students to take requirements in different fields and expose them to a variety of subject areas. I just mean that, for me personally, I imagine I would have enjoyed high school more if I had spent more energy on meeting girls and less energy on remembering what a mole was in chemistry class, and I doubt there would have been many reprecussions professionally.

I will say, though, that I don't think elite colleges should ignore students who do somewhat poorly in a subject or two (as long as it's the same field over and over and reflective of a particular disinterest balanced out by a meaningful interest in something else.)

dessert . . . and to think I hand wrote my essays to Stanford and mailed them in four days after the deadline.

This is why you get people like Aleksey Vayner at Yale. An outlier of rampant self-promotion.

(Caveat: I went to Yale for two years back in the Neolithic (1989-91), before I decided that I didn't like it, so I can say this.)

You know, I was admitted to Harvard this year, and my experience wasn't of all this insanity that you guys are describing at all.

I didn't go to a single prep session for any test I took; my school did offer one, but I blew it off. I've taken a grand total of two AP classes. I'm not taking the exam in either. I did a lot of extracurriculars, but I knew people who did more, and I also knew people who did just as much as me while working 25 hours a week.

It's an over-generalization to say that the specter of the Harvard admissions committee is hanging over our heads from birth to age eighteen. Maybe that applies to some of these metropolitan suburbs that are being discussed, but it sure doesn't apply to the middle of Kansas.

I'd already applied to University of Kansas, and was happy with the full ride I'd been offered there. Then I applied to Harvard basically on a whim. The stress lasted for maybe two weeks while I was putting the application together.

Everything I did, I did because I wanted to and because it was fun. Perhaps my experience is atypical, but nothing in the process that I went through has led me to the conclusion that you have to grind at Harvard your entire life to have a chance to get in.

Can we try just a little bit to look at this phenomenon rationally?

How much harder could it be to get into an elite college today than it was in, say, 1975?

Very basic constraining fact (according to Kevin upthread):

The number of openings in elite colleges today is pretty closely proportional to the number of openings in 1975 (i.e., the larger population of today is roughly tracked by a larger number of openings in elite schools).

So are students today at the top of the pyramid actually smarter? Very doubtful. Are they scoring in higher percentiles on tests? Almost by definition, no. Even any Flynn effect would not indicate students were smarter, but rather that they simply test better.

Are their grades better? Perhaps, but that may be simple grade inflation -- the class ranks would have to be essentially the same.

Do top students more regularly go for the very best college they might get into, making it more likely that the best students always end up in elite institutions, and crowding out the less capable ones? Perhaps. This would also imply, of course, that lesser schools would have fewer of the very good students.

As best I can make out only the last explanation for a greater difficulty in getting into elite colleges could hold any water. And I'm certainly not confident it really is operating in a major way.

More interesting than how students are admitted to colleges is how people are hired to serve on college admissions committees. And how their work is evaluated. And how admissions committees come up with rankings of the different ways of cooking snapper.

I sure hope that the best students of 300 million Americans and throngs of foreign applicants are more accomplished than the best students of 200 million Americans (circa late 1960s)!

Or did the elite colleges increase their enrollment class by more than 50%? (Drum didn't have to compete against as many would-be-rival female/poor/minority students of his era, either)