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sounds like your son is a smart cookie. ya I think i only scored a 1700 on the SAT, and I think I only got information from schools if I was asking.

It is interesting the schools that your receiving information from. Are these schools sending the information unsolicited or did you as a family look into them?

OU has been touting their Nat'l Merit stats for a while and it seems to be working.

So he was turned off by that stuff at SMU, but OU has moved up his list? He didnt notice something about OU a few months ago that was much worse?

Really sorry that turned him off since I think it is 180 degrees from every experience I have had or heard while at the school and since graduation. If he reacts that way to every piece of negative news that a very small group can create, then he will be disappointed wherever he does go. Hope you are coaching him in this area. Knuckleheads are everywhere - you just hope they are a small group - which I can say with confidence they are at SMU.

smudubs,

I used to recruit NM Scholars for U of Houston. The UH president, [deleted] Van Horn, in 1985-86 started a full ride for NMS and left for OU a few years later. He started the same program at OU and they've taken it even further. The UH head of admissions from that time went to Minnesota and I see that the Gophers offer a very competitive deal as well.

We would buy students' contact info from the testing service/Epsilon and screen for PSAT scores over a certain threshold. If your son showed some interest, he would be recruited hard. Not only by UH but a lot of other schools that place an emphasis on NMSs. Check out this list of schools that give sponsoring scholarships (page. 35+) and you'll see where your son would probably get extra attention.

http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf

Peer schools with high numbers of sponsoring NMs include:
Chicago -- 220
Wash U -- 159
USC -- 189
Vandy -- 175
Northwestern -- 167
Baylor (not peer) -- 72
Tulane -- 37

I'm surprised some of those schools aren't showing more interest. Rice will reject NMs, so will the Ivies of course. As you know, at SMU, the big 'ship to go for is the President's Endowed scholarship. It's very leadership based and gives lots of perks. Good luck!

gostangs wrote:So he was turned off by that stuff at SMU, but OU has moved up his list? He didnt notice something about OU a few months ago that was much worse?

Really sorry that turned him off since I think it is 180 degrees from every experience I have had or heard while at the school and since graduation. If he reacts that way to every piece of negative news that a very small group can create, then he will be disappointed wherever he does go. Hope you are coaching him in this area. Knuckleheads are everywhere - you just hope they are a small group - which I can say with confidence they are at SMU.

It interesting how quickly people move from one outrage to the next. But OU did a good job of finding who to blame and separating themselves. The problem with the SMU is it was an anonymous posting online by anyone at or not at SMU. I have watched on twitter how it went from being an "anonymous posting" to being a "smu sorority girl", yet there isn't anything SMU admin can do, but the post keeps getting repeated throughout twitter as a soundboard for actual or perceived discrimination at SMU, greek life, and higher ed in general. OU probably still has racist frats and sororities but since they kicked out some, so most people feel like "justice" was served. Anything SMU does will seem like lip service, and the party while offensive was canceled and not big enough to kick anyone out, which seems to be what people always want to see.

It was one person pissed off SMU didn't stop the Pike party earlier. Totally made up to look like a SMU sorority

What changed on the SAT regarding scores? Used to be perfect was 1600.


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They added a writing element worth 800 additional points. Scores are usually normalized to 1600 to recognize the change.

NewAgeMustange wrote:sounds like your son is a smart cookie. ya I think i only scored a 1700 on the SAT, and I think I only got information from schools if I was asking.

It is interesting the schools that your receiving information from. Are these schools sending the information unsolicited or did you as a family look into them?

Most of the information we have received has been unsolicited.

gostangs wrote:So he was turned off by that stuff at SMU, but OU has moved up his list? He didnt notice something about OU a few months ago that was much worse?

Really sorry that turned him off since I think it is 180 degrees from every experience I have had or heard while at the school and since graduation. If he reacts that way to every piece of negative news that a very small group can create, then he will be disappointed wherever he does go. Hope you are coaching him in this area. Knuckleheads are everywhere - you just hope they are a small group - which I can say with confidence they are at SMU.

I agree that the OU situation was much worse. What turned him off was not necessarily what happened on campus or in the tweet. What turned him and us off were the comments we read on PF, Scout and Rivals. I posted my experiences at SMU on another site, but when I was at SMU and after graduation, I did experience open racism. Some of it was subtle but it wasn't always. As I said in the post, two years ago I was talking to some of my wife's former students and was called the "N" word on the Boulevard by a member of her student's fraternity.

The other difference between the SMU and OU situation involves timing. The fact that this blew up two days before the deadline to apply did not help. That being said, Saturday morning he and I had a long talk about all of this and he said no matter where he goes he will encounter racists people, but he has been around SMU enough to know that the racist individuals are in the minority and he will not really factor that into his decision. My daughter, however, said she will not apply to OU or SMU.

smusic 00 wrote:They added a writing element worth 800 additional points. Scores are usually normalized to 1600 to recognize the change.

actually scores aren't normalized-the writing section just isn't what most schools look at. With regard to the NCAA its completely irrelevant to qualification

tristatecoog wrote:smudubs,

I used to recruit NM Scholars for U of Houston. The UH president, [deleted] Van Horn, in 1985-86 started a full ride for NMS and left for OU a few years later. He started the same program at OU and they've taken it even further. The UH head of admissions from that time went to Minnesota and I see that the Gophers offer a very competitive deal as well.

We would buy students' contact info from the testing service/Epsilon and screen for PSAT scores over a certain threshold. If your son showed some interest, he would be recruited hard. Not only by UH but a lot of other schools that place an emphasis on NMSs. Check out this list of schools that give sponsoring scholarships (page. 35+) and you'll see where your son would probably get extra attention.

http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf

Peer schools with high numbers of sponsoring NMs include:
Chicago -- 220
Wash U -- 159
USC -- 189
Vandy -- 175
Northwestern -- 167
Baylor (not peer) -- 72
Tulane -- 37

I'm surprised some of those schools aren't showing more interest. Rice will reject NMs, so will the Ivies of course. As you know, at SMU, the big 'ship to go for is the President's Endowed scholarship. It's very leadership based and gives lots of perks. Good luck!

Wash U, Vandy, and Baylor are the only schools on that list that he has not heard from. And I failed to mention that he has received a bit of correspondence from UH. It's just that he is not considering any in-state schools except Rice and SMU. But honestly, SMU lags far behind the other schools he is considering. He is applying to MIT (top choice), Chicago, Harvard, Rice, SMU and now OU.

He runs track and MIT has been recruiting him to run track and got a huge head start on everyone who is waiting for his indoor results. Most of the D-1 schools want him to clear 6'8 in high jump in a meet. He's done it in practice several times but never in a meet. As an aside, there were only 10 kids in the entire state last year who cleared higher than 6'6 and seven of those were in our region so he did not qualify for the state meet. I was talking to the parents of the top high jumper in the nation last year--he's now a freshman at Arkansas--and was told that Chris was better than his son at the same point in the high school careers and that he believed Chris would be the top jumper in the nation this year. If that happens he may end up considering other schools but he is more focused on academics than track. He's only focusing on the jumps now and believes he will go 7'0 this year. SMU is the only school he's considering that lacks a men's track program. I mention that only because I think we all agree SMU needs a men's track program and because this is, after all, a sports site.

Two friends of mine have sons that were athletes in high school and academically high performers. They each had a few D1 offers, but each went with their first academic choice. One now plays football at u of Chicago and the other at Cornell, and loving it.

I wonder who the greatest all-time collegiate athlete was with the highest GPA

http://topbet.eu/news/10-athletes-with- ... cores.html
Pro sports

You've got a special kid in a lot of respects. Stanford maybe, when he cracks the 6'8" level? Michigan, Virginia and Duke?

I'd guess he's already good enough for MIT's team since they're DIII but he may be one of their stars vs. a DI place. Obviously where does he feel most comfortable with fellow students? Much to my kids' chagrin, we toured MIT the summer before last. If the prospective student likes the history of unique pranks (Rice-like?) and fabulous internship opportunities (I was amazed by this), it's a cool place to go. I was surprised that they still use chalkboards and don't emphasize grades in freshman year.

OU is lucky to have your son in their consideration list. It's a perfect place for those that don't have as much family income and are just over the NM bar. Your son is well over the NM cutoff and is a recruited athlete.