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Re: [Phys-l] failure is always an option


On May 10, 2008, at 2:34 AM, Michael Edmiston wrote:


When we evaluate applicants for admission and scholarships we look at four
things... [1] ACT/SAT score, [2] HS GPA, [3] HS class rank, [4] letters of
recommendation. Which of these is the best predictor of success in college?
Think about that for a second or two before reading the next paragraph.

The admissions folks at Bluffton and neighboring universities and colleges
agree that, although we have no crystal ball, the HS class rank is the best
predictor of success in college, followed by the ACT/SAT score. The HS GPA
and the letters of recommendation are almost not worth looking at. I don't think it is difficult to understand
why GPA and recommendations are not very useful, but why does class rank
give a better indication of success than standardized exam scores?
Why is class rank high on your list but HS GPA is low down along with SAT? The highest ranking student in the high school graduating class will likely have the highest GPA also, so they are closely if not 100% related. In some of the better high schools around here they are getting rid of class rank altogether and just releasing GPA to the colleges. I can see where SAT might not be a predictor of future college success, but it is still an indicator of a district's overall academics; I have seen students who ranked very high with poor SAT's relative to students from other districts where the academics had a reputation as being much better.


It is believed that class rank is a measure of motivation. The student who
rose to the top of his class is motivated. If a student was motivated to
rise to the top of her class, she will most likely have the motivation to
rise to the top of her college class. To the extent the ACT/SAT score is a
measure of ability (shall we say IQ?) it is also very important, but to some
extent the ACT/SAT score also measures the degree of academic exposure, and
that hints at the academic quality and the academic environment of the high
school. There also have been claims that the standardized exams also show
some racial or ethnic bias. In the end, a high-ranked student from a
mediocre high school can have a lower ACT/SAT score than a lower- ranked
student from a better high school.
This is debatable. There are districts where the highest ranking student achieves a low SAT, is motivated to attend college, but is in the end poorly prepared for the rigors of college, while a middle ranking student from a rigorous high school often is better prepared for college and the reason for his or her middling ranking is because the higher ranked students are true geniuses and your MIT or Harvard students. In this case, the middle ranked student might have a better SAT score than the top student from the poor high school.
The high school where my son attended was so highly academically ranked (and I must add, the universities automatically know this high school and give this some consideration in the admissions process... this I know for a fact having talked to admissions officers from nearby colleges) that in most cases any student entering college found his or her college freshman year a mere review of the senior year in high school. My son was not in the top ten percent of his class of over 400, had average SAT's, yet went to a top tier university and did a chemistry BS with a 3.2 GPA in the minimum four years. Over 80% of the graduates from this school go to college and local reports are that most graduate in 4 or 5 years.

If this is the case, our admissions
people claim the higher-class-rank but lower ACT/SAT student is more likely
to have success in college. The academic climate at the "better school"
allowed the lower-ranked (less motivated) student to achieve a higher
ACT/SAT score without trying all that hard.

That is not always the case (that the middle ranked student didn't try very hard). Again, in the top schools around here the middle ranked student would be the top student hands down in the poor high school that might be only a mile away but a century apart.

The poor academic climate at
the "lesser school" hindered the higher-ranked (more motivated) student from
achieving a high ACT/SAT score. When these two students get to college and
face tough courses, the more-motivated student will rise to the challenge
more readily than the less-motivated student even though the less- motivated
student might be smarter and/or better prepared.

There are great social pressures on the student from a poor inner city high school that do not exist for the student from the middle class suburbs. That inner city student can make it, and often does, but often with a struggle to achieve passing grades at first due to the pressures of just plain living a different life style than he or she is accustomed to. In too many cases the colleges take them in to reach some sort of social/racial goal, and fail to realize that to pluck a kids from a rat infested row house to a leafy suburban campus can be a shock that can be difficult or impossible to overcome. Even going to a great city school like Penn or Columbia is a culture shock to most inner city kids, even those who grew up less than a mle from those universities. A minority school like Spellman can still be daunting when you consider they will admit the inner city school but expect the kids to behave themselves on campus. We had several who were admitted to such fine historically Black schools, but then were asked to leave because they brought their city ways to the campus.
I always tell a story of a prestigious college in Maine who came to our city to recruit Hispanic students. They brought along nice pictures of friendly students skiing and sitting on green lawns studying. What they didn't talk about were the brutal winters in Maine and that skiiing is not in the curriculum and it costs money to ski, money that these city kids didn't have. They even took the kids all expenses paid to the campus on a nice spring day. Of course, they all loved it. Three of the kids took them up on their scholarship offer and started there. By end of first semester they were all back home applying to Rutgers or Rowan.
The inner city student often takes the extra years to graduate college, sometimes by taking a year or two off to raise a family or see to child care, etc., and sometimes has to give up because of financial difficulties. In spite of high motivation these difficulties and social pressures weigh hard on such a student. We always had many such kids who really wanted to succeed but because of where they came from knew little of what it was going to take to do so. I personally mentored many of these kids over the years... high achievers in their city high school who were mentored by those of us who took them into our homes at times, introduced them to college programs (some teachers paid for the programs themselves because the families couldn't afford it), and did everything above and beyond (my suburban teacher friends marveled at what we went through with these kids and what they achieved) and still many times when the students came back to visit they were sad to report that they had to drop out of college due to money or family problems. I think the ratio of success stories to disappointments was close to 50:50.
That is not to say that we had surprises... some poor students in the inner city who we didn't think would make it did graduate in 5 or 6 years, but many who we believed in were back in the city after two years having given up because of the aforementioned pressures.
One successful student wrote me two years later after transferring twice and finally reaching his *niche* school: :"I used to fight with you when you told me I should be a student first and stop trying to be a star athlete. You were right. I am now in Rutgers and finally learning what I have to do to stay here. I stopped trying to play football and have to study hard now to graduate. It might take more years than I thought but I will make it. Thanks for keeping on my back in school and in physics class."
(In spite of being retired for 10 years I still remember this e-mail that I got way back in 1999 from this student. He was in the middle ranking of the inner city school I taught in (class of '97 I believe), and eventually graduated from Rutgers. It took a long five or six years, but I think he is an accountant now and got out of the city for good.)
There are many stories of good kids gone bad, bad kids turned around, and the average kid doing average but getting out on the 6 year plan. Some still write occasionally and are in their thirties having done fairly well with their lives.


Marty