I would be willing to bet that the student with the self-discipline necessary to study until he raises his grade by 600 points (a near impossibility) and the student who is bright enough to score a 1400 without studying are both better college prospects than the student that scored an 800, on average.
I agree that too much can be read into tests, but to say they are meaningless is to overstate the case.
I have an undying dislike for standardization, because it's what influenced my application decisions and I'm not very happy where I am. So there's definitely some bias.
That said, I (and a few students in my college who were in the same situation as me) had a very, very low grade point average considering I wanted to apply to snooty upper class schools. (A 3.1 unweighted means you have a hard-as-hell time getting into any of the really elite places.) Beyond that, many colleges wanted SAT 2s, and I bluntly refused to take any more standardized tests senior year. I was sick and fed up with taking tests just to place into schools. I still think it's a terrible system that wastes students' time for the sake of assigning a number. And so I, and many other extremely bright and talented kids, ended up merely going to a good public school, hoping that it would be what we wanted out of college. As it turns out, a lot of us are dissatisfied. And it annoys me that a lot of kids that aren't as comparatively bright as that tiny group got into much more prestigious schools, because while we were doing our own things (one kid went to Colombia senior year to do work with their science labs, another was a multiintrumentalist in a variety of different-genre bands, so on and so forth), other kids were spending every minute of the day studying and looking for ways to peak out their GPA. The kids who were cramped and rebellious and spent their time going their own way as decisively as possible almost all wound up at public schools (the musician went to Rutgers, the scientist went to Penn State, I and a few artist/musicians went to TCNJ), and while the schools we're at aren't bad, they're certainly mediocre compared to what the best schools have to offer. We wound up there because we hated the useless, monotonous system and so our scores were lower and while I think if I could do it again, I'd make sure to do better in school - it would have been worth the tedium - I hate that that's the choice, either play to a really shitty system or get subpar results. So in my mind I imagine a system that focuses exclusively on finding those exceptions to the rules.
I understand your distaste for standardized tests. But I also sympathize with the impossible job of admissions officers sifting through thousands of applications to find the best students for their school. At the end of the day, an extra data point helps, especially if they find that data point is correlated to graduation rates or other student performance metrics in college.
You might be more awesome than your grades indicate, but it's hard for them to know that. I agree that what you do outside of class should count, and count alot! But as far as I know, they already do take that into consideration. Admissions folks are just trying to do the best they can.
Sure, the system sucks, but it is set up to solve a fundamentally hard problem for which there exists no good solution. But I don't think the grass is that much greener on the other side. The public schools you mentioned are very good, and it won't hurt you to go there unless you are trying to become President of the United States. I think you'll turn out okay regardless. It sounds like you and your friends are very bright and capable (It scares me slightly how smart the younger folk are on Hacker News. I blame the internet) . I don't think a top 10 college makes that much of a difference versus a top 20 college for a bright and capable person.
Bucking the system doesn't really help. Nobody in a position of authority knows that you are doing it, and if they did they wouldn't care. It only hurts you. Also, the irrationality of the systems you are involved in will only get worse after school, so you might want to start practicing your patience for stupid systems with power over you. You oughta see the application I had to fill out to get my passport (I think I got randomly flagged by the DHS. I had to provide a photo-copy of my high-school yearbook! And I'm 25! How the hell am I supposed to find a copy of my high school yearbook?!!?! As it turns out: not easily).
You might be more awesome than your grades indicate, but it's hard for them to know that. I agree that what you do outside of class should count, and count alot! But as far as I know, they already do take that into consideration. Admissions folks are just trying to do the best they can.
That's exactly the problem! The system should be designed specifically for those exceptions - they're the people with the most to offer society.
The public schools you mentioned are very good, and it won't hurt you to go there unless you are trying to become President of the United States.
They aren't necessarily bad. They're just unpleasant. Public schools attract a sort of apathetic student that private schools don't, and despite the constantly-made comparisons, the lack of funding shows. I'm about 30 minutes away from Princeton, and every time I visit is a slap in the face.
I don't like standardized rankings for anything. I dislike the SAT as much as I dislike the GPA. As it happens, the SAT doesn't matter much at all for college applications as far as I'm aware. Other factors play a much more important part.
I agree that too much can be read into tests, but to say they are meaningless is to overstate the case.