On: “I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”

[akhilcacharya]

Honestly, there are bunches of people with really impressive EC's that also have top GPAs and 99th+ percentile SAT's.

[mgkimsal → akhilcacharya]

There can't be THAT many. Unless my math is wrong, they can only be at most 1% of the folks taking the SATs, right?

[zardeh → mgkimsal]

1,700,000 SAT takers -> 17,000 people in the top 1%.

Selecting the top 10% of those gets you 1700 students, which is quite close to the size of Harvard's acceptance statistic (of 2000)

[Godel_unicode → zardeh]

Your implicit assumption is that anyone with a top 1% SAT score would also have good ECs and 4.0+. This is untrue.

[mgkimsal → Godel_unicode]

That was sort of my point, and I didn't finish it, although the OP just said "bunches", which could be any number.

The person you're replying to indicates that 10% is 1700, and that 10% may be more representative of the high-EC and 4.0 level.

I'm not sure a few thousand folks from around the country qualifies as 'bunches'. Thinking back to my high school days, we had only a handful of people who were both academically advanced and active in many EC - sports, music, theater, etc. Partially there's just not enough time in most people's days to get 'good' at multiple things, even if there's aptitude. Secondly, not everyone can actually afford to get involves in a lot of ECs (despite aptitude/talent).

I can't think of anyone I know from my school (class of over 600, IIRC) who was all 4.0 GPA who also did multiple EC work. We had people in both camps. And I had a pretty lousy GPA, but did much better on ACT than some of the high GPA kids.

[zardeh → Godel_unicode]

No, my assumption is that there are perhaps 10% of people with high GPAs, and those with a top 1% sat score are no exception.

[brianwawok → Godel_unicode]

I bet more than half do. Tend to be the over achiever life.