The importance of SATs?

[sbrothy]

I may have gotten the wrong impression from bad shows but it seems to me that, in the US, SATs are stupidly important for highschoolers to continue on college. In Denmark the only equivalent we have it admission to journalist academy. I mean if all I had to to was to score good on those ridiculous SAT tests I would have been on my way to becoming an MD. And I'm not even a native speaker.

I know a guy who tried to get into the French Foreign Legion but he was stopped in his tracks by a math test! Admittedly in French. He could cut a guys throat in the middle of the night without a sound but he couldn't solve a second degree eqaution for using a mortar (a parable) .... it was pretty funny. Although if I was presented with a math problem in French I'd probably be pretty clueless too. But I would at least have known that "famas" means machine pistol and other basic French words before I tried my luck.

I mean come on!



EDIT: Yeah " bullpup assault rifle", but you know what I mean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAMAS

 

[.Scott]

It's up to the college, but generally speaking, the SATs are important in the US.
But a word of caution, I took mine half a century ago - so I won't be your most current source of info.
As I understand it, the SATs are staging a bit of a comeback.

 

[Muu9]

In the US, the most competitive universities practice holistic admissions, so a score beyond the 99th percentile doesn't benefit you much vs a score around the 99th percentile. What differentiates the large number of students within the 99th percentile is their extracurricular activities.

 

[Hornbein]

In the US, the most competitive universities practice holistic admissions, so a score beyond the 99th percentile doesn't benefit you much vs a score around the 99th percentile. What differentiates the large number of students within the 99th percentile is their extracurricular activities.

I got into Harvard because they needed a bass guitarist for student theater.

 

[sbrothy]

I got into Harvard because they needed a bass guitarist for student theater.

Serendipitous or fortuitous indeed.

 

[Hornbein]

Harvard stopped requiring SATs for a few years but evidently got poor results as now they are back. I'm not surprised -- letters of recommendation and essays are a joke and grades are so inflated they aren't much use either. I don't see how they can stop students from lying about extracurricular activities. There was a student I knew who definitely did that. I recall Samantha Power boasting of lying on her resume. Well, it's not my problem.

Some years back the SATs were recalibrated to give higher scores.

 

[CrysPhys]

I got into Harvard because they needed a bass guitarist for student theater.

Years ago when I took my daughter on her round of college visits, we stopped by Yale. The admissions director gave an overview to prospective students. He said, "We have only one harpist left in our orchestra, and she's a graduating senior this year. So if you're a harpist, I strongly encourage you to apply."

 

[CrysPhys]

I may have gotten the wrong impression from bad shows but it seems to me that, in the US, SATs are stupidly important for highschoolers to continue on college.

I don't know anything about the high schools in Denmark. But in the US, even within the same city, there is a wide variation in rigor among different high schools. So GPA and class placement by themselves are insufficient indicators. Some sort of standardized tests is necessary. Standardized tests though have their own flaws. So it's up to each college to assign weights to the various inputs and come up with a melded score.

 

[sbrothy]

I realize that over here we (read: I) don't have half the story. All the stuff I've seen on TV has muddled the knowledge I think I have to the point of confusion. Even though I think I can use reason to discern bunk from sense I must sadly admit that I sometimes loose track of where the things I think I know come from. Most things are obvious but there are some subtle gaps...