[quote=flu]My personal opinion. I think these scores are over emphasized. Does it really matter if a school is scoring 900 versus 950 versus 999.. I doubt it. There’s a margin of error, that that margin is your kids ability…If one’s kid is an idiot anyway , does it matter really how well the rest of the school scores? Probably not…On the other side, if your kid is smart, sending them to a dumbed-down school probably makes the kid feel great, and probably would give him/her more confidence anyway since everyone else would be a relative moron….I think more importantly, just make sure you don’t send your kids to a school with exposure to seedy characters. If your kid’s school has a lot of gangsters or teens that are pregnant, it’s probably an indication to look elsewhere…
However, if your kid is asian (or have an asian last name), you’re screwed wherever you send your kid to anyway, since I’m sure when it comes to admissions, your ranked and filed with the other folks that marked the “ethnicity=asian” checkbox on the application. As a backup strategy, prior to entering high school, change your kid’s last name to something like generic “Smith” or “Walker” and make sure they decline to answer the ethnicity question…This especially applies to families for which the Ms. married Mr. that is asian with but who’s kids otherwise don’t look asian. Trust me…Don’t use your hubby’s last name on the college applications for your kids…especially, if the kid is applying to engineering or pre-med. ( I’m debating whether I’m going to attempt this nice social experiment wrto college admissions process, and get some airtime on 20/20 or dateline…)[/quote]
I totally with this. Although it’s better now without affirmative action, it’s still not perfect. Lucky I have a non-asian looking last name.
I’ve seen kids graduating from MMHS going to ivy league schools and I also know a daughter of a CEO who went to TPHS who can’t even get into UCSD. She end up having to go to CSU San Marcos. I guess SDSU rejected her too. So school test scores should have a big YMMV after it.