> [WS:] So test scores do not matter in college admission?
>
> Wojtek
>
>
That's a ridiculous question. They only matter within the context of the
boundaries of a school's niche. I'm know you know there's a highly
stratified system of public and private schools, each with their own
distribution of scores. At the same time, if you think about the huge
number of students going to the large number of schools with numbers like
Central Michigan University's (~520 on SAT sections, ~19 on sections of the
ACT) - and how many of the students attending schools like CMU were also
accepted at UofM or MSU or Grand Valley or their analogs in other states
(all of which have higher averages) - then it is obvious that test scores
aren't all that important for the vast majority of those attending four year
schools. I can assure you this is the case because the vast majority of my
students put very litte effort into HS, and only ever so little into SAT/ACT
prep.
BTW: CMU's not a bad school at all but nevertheless only 20% graduate in four years, less than 60% in six years. It is possible, even probable, that the majority who finish in four years are those with higher standardized test scores upon entry, but the four and six year graduation rates - in my experience - have at least as much to do with the number of students who have to hold down 30+ hr/wk jobs and/or don't know how to manage their own time (independent of HS GPAs and test scores).