Test perfection isn’t enough
Highest marks on SAT, ACT may excite college-bound students’ families, but likely won’t be sufficient for entry to elite schools
CUPERTINO >> Vishruth Iyer’s parents gathered close as their 15-yearold son opened an email with the thrilling news: The Monta Vista High sophomore earned the rare distinction of scoring a perfect 36 on his ACT college entrance exam.
“I almost fell out of my chair,” his father, Anand, said. “It was a big congratulations. I didn’t even know what to say to him.”
But as much as he and his wife, Sucharita, hope that Vishruth’s success could catapult him into the college of his choice by the time he’s a senior, they can’t help but be skeptical. As they are learning — along with many high school seniors now receiving their final acceptance and rejection letters from some of the top-ranked schools in the country — perfection doesn’t guarantee a spot at Stanford, Princeton or even Berkeley.
“Not now, no,” said Margaret Routhe, an independent college counselor in famously competi-
tive Palo Alto. “If you have a 36 on your ACT and think you’re going to walk into Harvard, it’s not the case.”
As recently as five years ago, Stanford was rejecting about 69 percent of applicants with perfect SAT scores. And those scores don’t come easily. Only a fraction of 1 percent of students who take the SAT scored a perfect 1600 or, on the ACT, a composite 36 on the four subject areas. The College Board that runs the SAT didn’t provide specific numbers on perfect scores but reported that only 5 percent of test takers score above 1400.
For the ACT, only onetenth of one percent of test takers across the country scored a 36 this year, and California is home to 421 of them. The fact that Vishruth is only a sophomore makes his achievement all the more rare. Four Bay Area high schools can claim at least a dozen top-scoring students on the ACT this year: Gunn in Palo Alto with 18, Lynbrook in San Jose with 13 and, with 12 each, Mission San Jose in Fremont and Harker School in San Jose.
Although top scores on either test are certainly special, admissions officers at elite universities
are looking for something <ahem> more special. Stanford calls its admissions screening “holistic” and is searching for “intellectual vitality” and extraordinary achievements among the piles of applicants. On Friday, the university announced it accepted 4.3 percent of its undergraduate applicants this year.
There are at least a couple thousand kids with perfect ACTs or SATs all competing for slots in the same top 10 schools listed on U.S. News and World Report, said Irena Smith, who also runs an independent college-counseling business in Palo Alto. “They’re getting eclipsed with someone who is an Olympic hopeful, someone with multiple patents, published authors,” she said, “and even a lot of those kids aren’t getting in.”
Just ask David Hogg, who survived the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High to become one of the most recognizable leaders of the studentled gun control movement.
Despite a 4.2 GPA, the Florida student was rejected by UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego and UC Irvine. Perhaps TMZ put it best with this headline: “Parkland leader David Hogg — I’m Changing the World … BUT UC SCHOOLS STILL REJECTED ME.”
College Confidential, the
website dedicated to students making college plans, has become a forum for the forlorn in the past week. Ben Shumaker, an 18-yearold senior from Holland, Mich., who was denied by every Ivy League school he applied to as well as USC and Case Western, started a discussion group this week titled, “I’m Baffled At Rejection From Some Great Schools.”
He earned a 4.43 weighted GPA, he said, a 1550 out of 1600 on his SAT and 34 on his ACT. He took 22 semesters of Advanced Placement coursework and was ranked No. 1 in his class of 536 students. He even had what he thought was an unusual, extraordinary achievement: being the youngest player, by far, on a pro tour of the strategic trading card game “Magic the Gathering.” He was admitted to the University of Michigan, but it’s not his top choice. As he’s coming to terms with his rejections, he’s come up with his own explanation, one shared by many college admissions experts for the top schools.
“I sort of felt like in academics, the courses you take and the grades you earn, there is a level where it stops mattering,” Shumaker said. “If you get perfect grades and near-perfect scores, it just puts you in the pool.”
Divining the “secret
sauce” of top-tier schools is what sends many parents to hire outside college counselors, who repeatedly stress to deaf ears that there are hundreds of great universities to choose from, not just the Top 10 — a list created in the 1980s by U.S. News and World Report that is considered by many as largely responsible for the crush of applications to Ivy League schools and the towering hopes of students and parents.
As an antidote to those expectations, required reading at some high schools has become Frank Bruni’s “Where You Go is not Who You‘ll Be,” filled with success stories of people who didn’t go to namebrand universities.
For Vishruth Iyer’s immigrant parents, who are now U.S. citizens and earned advanced degrees at California universities, it’s difficult to lower their expectations for Vishruth and his twin brother, Pratyush, who is a straight-A student and competitive swimmer. They moved from San Jose to Cupertino for the quality schools. They sent the boys to prep classes at $90 a session, and they’re both focusing next on the SAT.
But the first thing the counselor told them was that their sons have three strikes against them, especially at private universities: They are Indian, they
“It’s a common profile. How do you differentiate yourself when my kids are naturally inclined to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)? I am totally frustrated with the whole system, basically.”
— Anand Iyer
are male and they want to pursue computer science or engineering.
“It’s a common profile,” Anand Iyer said. “How do you differentiate yourself when my kids are naturally inclined to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)? I am totally frustrated with the whole system, basically.”
A trial is expected this summer in a federal civil rights case against Harvard, alleging it discriminated against Asian Americans by unfairly capping the number it admits, despite their qualifications. The nonprofit filing the lawsuit cites a 2009 Princeton study showing that Asian Americans need to score 140 points higher than whites on the SAT to have the same chances to land a spot at elite colleges.
The Iyer boys likely will have better luck at a UC school, which banned affirmative action in admissions in the 1990s, than at a private Ivy League school, said Barbara Austin, who counsels Bay Area high school students. She also encourages students to widen their choices.
“There aren’t just 25 schools, there are 400 schools that are marvelous,” said Austin, who is based in Oakland.
Even with two years to go before applications are due, Vishruth’s parents are anxious — and exploring options for the sophomore to build his college portfolio by possibly doing research with a university professor this summer. At the same time, Vishruth is taking a mellower approach — something teachers and counselors have tried to impose.
“I don’t think it will change my future that much whether I go to a top-tier school or just under that,” he said. “I’m confident I’ll be fine for the future. But my parents are always saying, ‘Don’t play video games, study for the subject SAT test for math.’ I kind of tell my parents to relax and mind their own business. I’ve got it covered, you know?”