I agree with your fundamental claim that there are lots of top tier students going to non-top schools, but I think you focused too much on SAT scores and GPA. Right now, there are so many kids getting top scores (about 5,500 students every year get a 36 on the ACT, and about 4500 students get a at least a 1570 on the SAT), test scores just aren’t enough to determine who gets in. Instead, admissions officers use a “holistic” approach, which seems rather noisy, but does factor in other real accomplishments, like getting to the IMO or starting a million dollar business.
My opinion is that we need harder standardized tests. (Maybe we on LessWrong could create one!) Until that occurs, though, I don’t think SAT scores are enough to decide that “The 25th percentile of students at University of Maryland, College Park are as good as the 75th percentile of students at Harvard”.
I agree with your fundamental claim that there are lots of top tier students going to non-top schools, but I think you focused too much on SAT scores and GPA. Right now, there are so many kids getting top scores (about 5,500 students every year get a 36 on the ACT, and about 4500 students get a at least a 1570 on the SAT), test scores just aren’t enough to determine who gets in. Instead, admissions officers use a “holistic” approach, which seems rather noisy, but does factor in other real accomplishments, like getting to the IMO or starting a million dollar business.
My opinion is that we need harder standardized tests. (Maybe we on LessWrong could create one!) Until that occurs, though, I don’t think SAT scores are enough to decide that “The 25th percentile of students at University of Maryland, College Park are as good as the 75th percentile of students at Harvard”.