High School Guide: Admissions, reviews, and advice

stormymarlin22 said:Maybe they were tougher, but there were fewer subjects to worry about. Like at MIT, for example—you just had to nail math and physics (and sometimes, honestly, math was enough)

It feels like we're looking at yet another believer in the widely held misconception that you can be a brilliant, illiterate mathematician or a linguistic genius who can't solve a basic linear equation with integers.

In my experience, reality works quite differently; if someone lacks intellect or drive, those deficits will show up whether they're studying linguistics, calculus, or geography, much like how a fundamental lack of discipline in one area tends to bleed into every other pursuit. If a person is sharp and hardworking, that clarity and work ethic tend to carry them through math, languages, and social sciences alike.

Besides, it’s not like modern college admissions look at more than two subjects from your high school exams anyway; you basically just need to clear the mandatory hurdles and then your score is calculated based solely on the specific electives required for that major.

Betty Wood54 said:I find it almost funny when the crowd that dreads the entrance exams is the same group that found the high school finals to be a total nightmare. In my experience, those college placement tests have consistently been way more intense than anything covered in high school, at least when you're looking at math and physics.

Exactly, I couldn't agree more! 👍

wanderingbadger44 said:It feels like we're looking at yet another believer in the widely held misconception that you can be a brilliant, illiterate mathematician or a linguistic genius who can't solve a basic linear equation with integers.

In my experience, reality works quite differently; if someone lacks intellect or drive, those deficits will show up whether they're studying linguistics, calculus, or geography, much like how a fundamental lack of discipline in one area tends to bleed into every other pursuit. If a person is sharp and hardworking, that clarity and work ethic tend to carry them through math, languages, and social sciences alike.

Besides, it’s not like modern college admissions look at more than two subjects from your high school exams anyway; you basically just need to clear the mandatory hurdles and then your score is calculated based solely on the specific electives required for that major.

Exactly, I couldn't agree more! 👍

Think about it: does someone who only manages to pass 25% of their math exams or 33% of their English exams actually deserve a high school diploma? Regardless of what they plan to do next?

The passing threshold is set so low that someone coming out of a two-year vocational program could probably hit it with just a little extra tutoring. So, what's the point of a four-year high school? What's the value of a prep school or an academy if practically anyone can breeze through it?

The thing is, nowadays you have to nail your math exams just to get into the Juilliard School, or pass an English essay to get into MIT, whereas back when they only looked at entrance exams, it wasn't like that 🤷 It’s not even about being smart or dumb, really; it’s more about what you specifically had to prep for college admissions. Like, for MIT, you didn't even need to know physics if you crushed the math portion of the entrance test. I didn't actually take my high school finals myself, but from what I remember people saying, they weren't exactly a huge deal back then.

Honestly, looking at the weight of things, the old high school exit exams sat somewhere right between these two levels. They were definitely tougher than Level B. American English was mandatory for everyone on the finals; general tracks could pick between math or a first foreign language, while the math track had required math, plus an elective for their third subject. On top of the written part, all three subjects included an oral exam, which I guess was an extra stress factor for some people. No offense intended, but if someone can't scrape together a 50% on a Level B math, English, or history exam after four years of school, then they really don't deserve that high school diploma—especially if they had grades higher than a C in those classes for all four years.

And you couldn't really coast through entrance exams by just mastering one single subject, since the tasks were usually split fifty-fifty. Some entrance exams even covered more ground. For example, pre-law exams might have included English, US history, sociology, and logical reasoning, maybe even philosophy. I know it varied quite a bit, but that was a long time ago. We shouldn't forget that back then, all related majors held their entrance exams at the same time, so people often combined them as alternatives for two different fields of study.

I didn't actually take the SATs back in my day, but from everything I've heard from those who did, it wasn't some insurmountable mountain to climb. Nobody really felt the need to sign up for specialized prep courses back then.
Even the college entrance exams weren't particularly brutal, though the competition was definitely tighter than what students face today. Nowadays, there are fewer high schoolers in the mix, yet there's a much wider variety of universities to choose from, so people tend to focus their prep efforts on college admissions rather than standardized testing.
I’m fairly certain that if a student today manages to pull a solid grade on both the SAT Math section and a physics exam, they’d breeze through the old entrance requirements for a top-tier school like MIT or Caltech without breaking a sweat.

I honestly don't get why people are pushing to turn the SAT into some basic pass/fail thing where you just need a 50% to move on. That would basically make the whole exam useless—if everyone is hitting the same mediocre score, you can't actually rank anyone for those top-tier universities because the scoring range would be way too narrow.

Look, I'm all for having an easier section that proves you've hit the bare minimum requirements to even stay in the running.
But at the same time, you need that brutal, high-level section—the kind where it’s nearly impossible to finish everything perfectly within the time limit. That's the only way to actually separate the geniuses from the rest of the pack.

I’m honestly not sure where you read that anyone actually wants to turn the high school diploma into just some "ordinary exam."
The real goal should be to first transform the diploma into a standard, reliable, and objective assessment—one where the passing threshold doesn't just default to 20% regardless of how difficult the material is or how poorly students performed that year. I mean, it feels completely nonsensical when someone gets a passing grade despite scoring less than 50% on the test.
And as long as things stay this way, this whole system of external grading is pretty much useless.☕

Betty Williams29 said:I honestly don't get why people are pushing to turn the SAT into some basic pass/fail thing where you just need a 50% to move on. That would basically make the whole exam useless—if everyone is hitting the same mediocre score, you can't actually rank anyone for those top-tier universities because the scoring range would be way too narrow.

Look, I'm all for having an easier section that proves you've hit the bare minimum requirements to even stay in the running.
But at the same time, you need that brutal, high-level section—the kind where it’s nearly impossible to finish everything perfectly within the time limit. That's the only way to actually separate the geniuses from the rest of the pack.

I honestly find myself envying you right now for how beautifully and articulately you put that all together. 👍

The outcry against lowering these standards really just boils down to people wanting to make the SATs easier, which is a mistake if you ask me. We need someone, an actual institution, to finally look out for those true high achievers whose discernment actually matters in the real world. It would be such a relief to see our brightest minds stop getting drowned out by this massive wave of students who have been coasting on easy grades since middle school.

I think what Renaissance is getting at is that if we push for higher pass rates, the exam questions will inevitably get easier just to satisfy public demand. That would completely undermine the ability to actually select top talent for those highly competitive majors.
Aren't we seeing plenty of vocal students and parents complaining about how hard these standardized tests are? These people—the loud ones, anyway—don't view the SAT as a chance to demonstrate the knowledge they gained throughout high school, because they never actually acquired it. A significant portion of them had fewer instructional hours in certain subjects and didn't do anything to make up the gap. And now, they’ve all recently gained the right to vote. We really need to stop letting politics bleed into education.

Personally, I find it baffling that you need to take the advanced math track just to get into a state university like UT Austin. About 60% of the problems on that level are basically middle school math. Last year, you could have gotten by by solving barely 25% of the test—and that wasn't even covering the full curriculum!
In almost every county, you see dozens of students enrolling in these programs every single year, only to drop out eventually. As for finding jobs in the public sector? Aside from a few rare exceptions, I honestly don't know if those roles even exist anymore.

It’s pretty straightforward, really: we need to scale back enrollment quotas and raise the bar for admissions. For decades now, our education system has been churning out highly degreed individuals that the labor market simply doesn't have a demand for, while failing to produce the specific skill sets we actually need.

urbantinker8 said:I’m honestly not sure where you read that anyone actually wants to turn the high school diploma into just some "ordinary exam."
The real goal should be to first transform the diploma into a standard, reliable, and objective assessment—one where the passing threshold doesn't just default to 20% regardless of how difficult the material is or how poorly students performed that year. I mean, it feels completely nonsensical when someone gets a passing grade despite scoring less than 50% on the test.
And as long as things stay this way, this whole system of external grading is pretty much useless.☕

Let me try explaining one more time why having a 50% pass rate for the SAT is bad news for everyone involved.

Picture a test with 10 questions and 10 total points:
5.6 points = C
7 points = B
8 points = A-
9 or 10 points = A+

What did we actually achieve with this setup?
- Half the test has to be super easy just so kids all over the US taking the SAT can pass and get their high school diploma.
- Every student spends half the test solving basic stuff, wasting about half the time without actually gaining anything useful for college rankings.
- All the top-tier candidates end up clumped together in a tiny point range, making it impossible to tell who's actually better than whom.

Now, if you have a test with 20 questions and 20 total points, where those first 5 questions are basically the same as before:
5-8 points = C
9-12 points = B
13-15 points = A-
16-20 points = A+

How does this compare to the first one?
- You still need the same knowledge to pass with a C, except now it's only 25% of the test instead of 50%.
- The amount of time wasted on basic questions is cut down, leaving the rest of the test to actually differentiate between students.
- On a national level, there’s a massive difference between the kids aiming for As and Bs versus those hitting the top marks. A range of 13-20 separates them way better than an 8-10 range ever could.

If the SAT doesn't provide a wide enough scoring range to sort out those getting As and Bs, it becomes useless for college admissions. And once it's useless for colleges, the whole project is dead in the water.

First off, a test doesn't need to be designed so that everyone passes. You should structure it so that 50% of the points come from tasks covering the core material someone at that level is expected to know. Even in high school, 50% is basically the threshold for a C. Why drop that to 20 or 30%? Especially for lower levels that already have a ton of middle school material to cover. Besides, those lower levels aren't even used for college admissions; you just need to pass them. So, the whole idea of using them for differentiation during enrollment doesn't really work. The goal for the lower levels is just to see if the student has enough knowledge to actually graduate high school and get their diploma. If they can't hit 50% at the lower level, then they obviously don't have what it takes to finish high school. If they fail, they fail. There's always a summer or fall retake period to get ready for next time.

The advanced level is where the scoring for admissions happens. That's where you can actually differentiate. For example, you could have tasks worth 50% that anyone aiming for a solid C should be able to handle. Then maybe 61-75% for a B student, and 76-90% for an A student. You differentiate them through that final 10%. An A student from high school would hit that 76-90 range because those tasks match what's expected for an A in high school, and on the Disney Music exam, that's enough for a B. To get an A on the Disney Music exam, you'd need competition-level questions. That's how you tell the difference between the honor students and those who just went the extra mile.

This is just an example. You can't build a perfect system. You just need to make one that's good enough and set a baseline that you won't go below. If you just want to graduate high school? Just hit the minimum 50% on the three lower levels.

Furthermore, since various levels are used for college admissions scoring, there really needs to be some level of differentiation. As it stands, most of these subjects don't even offer high and low tier options.
If we're saying 25% of the points cover the entire curriculum, then 25% is more than enough to handle two different difficulty levels. Honestly, just looking at percentages without actually understanding the structure and complexity of the problems is a completely useless metric.

You’ve got a point there. I was looking into some of those top-tier universities, and most of them don't even factor lower grades into their admissions process. Even if they do, it’s honestly embarrassing when the passing threshold sits below 50%. Is it really such a huge ask to demand a basic level of knowledge? I mean, you can fail a test with a 25% score in middle school, high school, or even college. The only place where a 25% score actually gets you through is clearly Disney Music. It's just ridiculous.

Adam Diaz67 said:First off, a test doesn't need to be designed so that everyone passes. You should structure it so that 50% of the points come from tasks covering the core material someone at that level is expected to know. Even in high school, 50% is basically the threshold for a C. Why drop that to 20 or 30%? Especially for lower levels that already have a ton of middle school material to cover. Besides, those lower levels aren't even used for college admissions; you just need to pass them. So, the whole idea of using them for differentiation during enrollment doesn't really work. The goal for the lower levels is just to see if the student has enough knowledge to actually graduate high school and get their diploma. If they can't hit 50% at the lower level, then they obviously don't have what it takes to finish high school. If they fail, they fail. There's always a summer or fall retake period to get ready for next time.

The advanced level is where the scoring for admissions happens. That's where you can actually differentiate. For example, you could have tasks worth 50% that anyone aiming for a solid C should be able to handle. Then maybe 61-75% for a B student, and 76-90% for an A student. You differentiate them through that final 10%. An A student from high school would hit that 76-90 range because those tasks match what's expected for an A in high school, and on the Disney Music exam, that's enough for a B. To get an A on the Disney Music exam, you'd need competition-level questions. That's how you tell the difference between the honor students and those who just went the extra mile.

This is just an example. You can't build a perfect system. You just need to make one that's good enough and set a baseline that you won't go below. If you just want to graduate high school? Just hit the minimum 50% on the three lower levels.

What are you even getting at here? You don't want to go below 50% for a D, but on the advanced track, 50% is supposed to be a C. Is it even possible to get a failing grade on the advanced level?

Yeah. Basically, on the higher level, there are just two problems that would count as a 3 in high school. I hope that makes more sense now. You make the exam harder just to differentiate those top-tier candidates. So, someone who had an A in high school could realistically pull a B here, but if you want that A, you actually need to know how to tackle competition-level problems.

And yeah, you need a 50% score on the exam to pass. Anything less than that is just nonsense.

Anyway, check out that video from the previous page. Ford used a 50% passing threshold, and then everything followed a standard bell curve. That’s why you end up in a situation where you need 50 points to pass, but once you hit 52, people are already seeing Bs. When you don't have a set minimum and just go strictly by the Gauss distribution, it's easy to end up with a scenario where 25% is enough for a D, but you might need something like 60% to get an A. Sorry, but that's just statistics, it has nothing to do with how smart anyone is.

Adam Diaz67 said:You’ve got a point there. I was looking into some of those top-tier universities, and most of them don't even factor lower grades into their admissions process. Even if they do, it’s honestly embarrassing when the passing threshold sits below 50%. Is it really such a huge ask to demand a basic level of knowledge? I mean, you can fail a test with a 25% score in middle school, high school, or even college. The only place where a 25% score actually gets you through is clearly Disney Music. It's just ridiculous.

It isn't a joke as long as the structure of the exam remains a mystery.
For instance, if there are four problems per topic ranging in difficulty, then scoring 25% could mean you mastered 100% of the material at the easiest level. Meanwhile, a 100% score would mean you mastered everything, including the hardest stuff.

The other possibility is that someone studies a very specific 25% of the curriculum perfectly and hits a 25% score with 100% accuracy—meaning they tackled all levels of difficulty. But we all know how incredibly difficult that is in math; it’s virtually impossible to solve a complex geometry problem if you haven't mastered working with real numbers and such... so that scenario is almost non-existent.

Generally speaking, mathematical literacy among the general population is pretty dismal, and a 25% score on a B-level exam is actually more than enough to be "functional" for about 80% of the population...

Adam Diaz67 said:Yeah. Basically, on the higher level, there are just two problems that would count as a 3 in high school. I hope that makes more sense now. You make the exam harder just to differentiate those top-tier candidates. So, someone who had an A in high school could realistically pull a B here, but if you want that A, you actually need to know how to tackle competition-level problems.

And yeah, you need a 50% score on the exam to pass. Anything less than that is just nonsense.

Anyway, check out that video from the previous page. Ford used a 50% passing threshold, and then everything followed a standard bell curve. That’s why you end up in a situation where you need 50 points to pass, but once you hit 52, people are already seeing Bs. When you don't have a set minimum and just go strictly by the Gauss distribution, it's easy to end up with a scenario where 25% is enough for a D, but you might need something like 60% to get an A. Sorry, but that's just statistics, it has nothing to do with how smart anyone is.

What's actually nonsense is your suggestion that someone with a C average in high school can't pass the advanced math exam without having B-level knowledge—or that you need to be a mathlete just to graduate with an A.

Adam Diaz67 said:Yeah. Basically, on the higher level, there are just two problems that would count as a 3 in high school. I hope that makes more sense now. You make the exam harder just to differentiate those top-tier candidates. So, someone who had an A in high school could realistically pull a B here, but if you want that A, you actually need to know how to tackle competition-level problems.

And yeah, you need a 50% score on the exam to pass. Anything less than that is just nonsense.

Anyway, check out that video from the previous page. Ford used a 50% passing threshold, and then everything followed a standard bell curve. That’s why you end up in a situation where you need 50 points to pass, but once you hit 52, people are already seeing Bs. When you don't have a set minimum and just go strictly by the Gauss distribution, it's easy to end up with a scenario where 25% is enough for a D, but you might need something like 60% to get an A. Sorry, but that's just statistics, it has nothing to do with how smart anyone is.

On one hand, you've got freshman year at a university where they've already hand-picked the students, and traditionally, a huge chunk of them get weeded out in the first semester anyway. For those students, the whole goal is just survival—just trying to pass. The whole debate about retaking exams is a total rabbit hole.

On the other hand, you've got the national SATs, which everyone in the country takes, where the priority isn't necessarily the specific score, but ranking high enough to get into a decent college.

The demographics, the type of test, and the motivation couldn't be more different.

I suspect most kids who, say, pull a C in math—provided they’ve had access to decent, high-end tutoring—are actually more than capable of passing an AP Calculus exam.
Whether they’re equipped to pursue a major that's heavily math-dependent later on... well, I guess that’s debatable.
But if we're talking about getting into a university where the admissions office demands AP-level proficiency, even if the actual coursework in the major itself is relatively light on math? Sure, why not.

Betty Williams29 said:Let me try explaining one more time why having a 50% pass rate for the SAT is bad news for everyone involved.

Picture a test with 10 questions and 10 total points:
5.6 points = C
7 points = B
8 points = A-
9 or 10 points = A+

What did we actually achieve with this setup?
- Half the test has to be super easy just so kids all over the US taking the SAT can pass and get their high school diploma.
- Every student spends half the test solving basic stuff, wasting about half the time without actually gaining anything useful for college rankings.
- All the top-tier candidates end up clumped together in a tiny point range, making it impossible to tell who's actually better than whom.

Now, if you have a test with 20 questions and 20 total points, where those first 5 questions are basically the same as before:
5-8 points = C
9-12 points = B
13-15 points = A-
16-20 points = A+

How does this compare to the first one?
- You still need the same knowledge to pass with a C, except now it's only 25% of the test instead of 50%.
- The amount of time wasted on basic questions is cut down, leaving the rest of the test to actually differentiate between students.
- On a national level, there’s a massive difference between the kids aiming for As and Bs versus those hitting the top marks. A range of 13-20 separates them way better than an 8-10 range ever could.

If the SAT doesn't provide a wide enough scoring range to sort out those getting As and Bs, it becomes useless for college admissions. And once it's useless for colleges, the whole project is dead in the water.

I don't get this. Why does every single student taking the exam absolutely *have* to pass? I assumed this was meant to be a graded exam from 1 to 5, but it seems like you and plenty of others disagree.

Since we're getting rid of the failing grade entirely, why are we even sticking to a 25% threshold? It feels hypocritical. If every student has to pass the exam anyway, let's just set the bar at 1%. Heck, make it 0%.