{"id":37411,"date":"2017-12-07T19:54:38","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T00:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=37411"},"modified":"2017-12-07T19:55:44","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T00:55:44","slug":"the-ever-so-slightly-endangered-byu-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2017\/12\/the-ever-so-slightly-endangered-byu-man\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ever-So-Slightly Endangered BYU Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A recent leak<\/a> revealed what appears to be an old scale for evaluating potential BYU students. Basically, you take 10*GPA + ACT and then add points for stuff, like being from outside the West or taking AP classes. The most one could possibly get is 100 points, but this would require being\u2026 rather unique. There was some excitement because, although this no longer is true, at the time BYU gave 1 point for being male, presumably to try and bring the gender balance closer to equality. If you haven\u2019t been paying attention for a couple decades, it turns out women do better at college admissions, at BYU and most other places. We\u2019ll come back to that in a minute.<\/p>\n

Another interesting feature was the seminary point system. You get 0.75 for each year completed. This seems kind of small compared to 100 possible points, much like the point for males, but it is important to keep in mind a few details. 1 point is like an extra point on the ACT or a .1 GPA bump (on a 4-point scale).\u00a0 Which is not nothing. Four years seminary attendance plus a strong letter from the seminary teacher gives one a 3.75 boost. But that should not be considered in isolation, because those seminary attending kids are also more likely to get strong letters from the Stake President and Bishop, which combine for another 4.5 points. So a student with a strong package of recommendations and seminary attendance gets a boost of 8.25.<\/p>\n

This is more than enough to move many marginal kids one way or another. For example, a student with a 3.4 GPA and a 26 ACT who had that boost would look like one with a 3.82 and a 30 ACT who did not have those things. I don\u2019t know what the odds of getting in with a 3.4 GPA and 26 ACT are, but I would guess they are vastly worse than having a 3.82 and a 30 ACT score. 8.25 points is really a very large swing through the set of scores that could plausibly get you admitted.[1]<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to that 1 point for males (or Easterners, for that matter). If 8.25 is huge, 1 point is an eighth of huge. There are lots of interesting things to argue about, but let me just make one factor from a fairly utilitarian point of view. As a potential student, I care both about (1) the probability of admission and (2) the quality of my experience while I am there.\u00a0 Making it easier for men to get in is bad for women because it lowers (1), but at some point a gender imbalance in students is bad for women in (2). Thus there are two effects going in potentially opposite directions. At a roughly equal gender mix, I expect the decrease in the probability of admission, (1), is the most important for a woman, especially one who is close to the edge of acceptance. At some point of high inequality, though, (2) might be the stronger concern for most. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to think of why.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0Of course, the scale may not be the full story, as other filters may be applied before or after this scale is used. \u00a0It may be that students who get a no from the Bishop and Stake President are summarily removed from consideration. \u00a0Or not; I certainly don’t know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent leak revealed what appears to be an old scale for evaluating potential BYU students. Basically, you take 10*GPA + ACT and then add points for stuff, like being from outside the West or taking AP classes. The most one could possibly get is 100 points, but this would require being\u2026 rather unique. There was some excitement because, although this no longer is true, at the time BYU gave 1 point for being male, presumably to try and bring the gender balance closer to equality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":37414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mormon-life","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/byu_helmet_logo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37411"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37422,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37411\/revisions\/37422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}