Northwestern?!

Joan the Vampire Slayer

Joan the Vampire Slayer

Carpe Spuffy!
Joined
Jun 5, 2008
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Anyone wonder how in the hell Buffy got into Northwestern??!!
I mean, as far as I know, her grades were terrible...and it's not like she had any extracurriculars...(in school, I mean)
Anyone else wonder about this?
 
Her SAT scores were impressively high, everyone, including Buffy herself, was surprised by them. In my experience, final exam results are more important than GPA's.
 
Private liberal arts college institutions do tend to really take note of your GPA when deciding whether to accept you along with many other things but a majority of universities just look at your exam results as basically you pass excellent at high school, odds are you're going to make the university look good as well when you ace their exams.

But in Buffy's case I think with scores so sky high that they were practicality full marks, I don't think any college could have cared less about how she did the rest of the year, haha.
 
if i remember right buffy scored a 1430 on her sat's and it's out of 1600. that is an impressively high score and willow even points out that its higher than what she got and willow is a freaking genius. if schools see a number that impressive it won't matter about gpa.
 
I think it was a bit unbelievable...SAT scores are important, of course, but they're not everything. They're becoming less and less important to universities as the years go on.
But anyway, the viewers were supposed to believe that because of Buffy's high SAT scores, that's how she got accepted to Northwestern. Whether or not that's actually how it'd work in real life is another question.
 
R
Relic
Back when you could take the ACT or SAT those scores where very high. You say they are becoming less important, maybe your missing something viewed through the prism of time? 99 and 94 (when I grad.) aren't to far apart time and attitude wise.
Just to clear things up further for my karma comment for Fly on The Walls post....it's been nearly ten years since Buffy graduated. I graduated in 94 and back then placement tests where just that, and you could retake them.

A good GPA and a poor ACT or SAT would equal no college for you...back then they did not care about GPA's or the quality/difficulty of your high school classes. Otherwise a guy struggling with advanced math courses and challenging himself might be looked over in favor of a guy who skated by with high marks on easy courses like shop and auto mech vocation. (I should know I was that guy. 🙂 ) when college applications came a calling.

Harvard wasn't knocking down my door despite my senior years GPA almost making up for all my prior slacking.
 
Relic said:
Just to clear things up further for my karma comment for Fly on The Walls post....it's been nearly ten years since Buffy graduated. I graduated in 94 and back then placement tests where just that, and you could retake them.

A good GPA and a poor ACT or SAT would equal no college for you...back then they did not care about GPA's or the quality/difficulty of your high school classes. Otherwise a guy struggling with advanced math courses and challenging himself might be looked over in favor of a guy who skated by with high marks on easy courses like shop and auto mech vocation. (I should know I was that guy. 🙂 ) when college applications came a calling.

Harvard wasn't knocking down my door despite my senior years GPA almost making up for all my prior slacking.
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Well, I got into both my choice schools witn not-so-great grades. And, I never even took the SATs...I don't believe in standardized testing.
I had so much volunteer work and extracurriculars during high school I guess that made up for it...
 
R
Relic
You did take some standardized testing though, the military "aptitude" test. Things like extracurriculars do play a part I think. I did well with my vocational studies and had a few tech schools trying to get their mits into me.
You graduated six years ago? (going off of your age.) I was thrown into the mix pre affirmitive action, environment considerations (I think?) I could voulanteer up a storm and I don't think it would have made much difference unless I sought out letters of rec. from the parties involved. granted that was nearly 15 years ago.

I'm curious if this was simple writers oversight as far as college selection goes, or if things did change that drastically from 99 to 2000 and on up. For that matter I'm curious as to how my experience measures up to others who graduted in the mid to early 90's.

I grew up in a hick town in the mid west (and loved it) not the west coast. I do think I'm a razorback at heart though. 🙂

As far as I know, Buffy had no outside vocations to speak for her, just crazy high test scores. So agin, I wonder if the writers were off or if some of them had kids in school doing the app process or researched it and somehow could relate. (they did know about scoring at the very least.)

Just idle curiosity on my part. Anyone want to humor me? Come on fellow geezers, I know your out there! 😉
 
Relic said:
You graduated six years ago? (going off of your age.) I was thrown into the mix pre affirmitive action, environment considerations (I think?) I could voulanteer up a storm and I don't think it would have made much difference unless I sought out letters of rec. from the parties involved. granted that was nearly 15 years ago.

I'm curious if this was simple writers oversight as far as college selection goes, or if things did change that drastically from 99 to 2000 and on up. For that matter I'm curious as to how my experience measures up to others who graduted in the mid to early 90's.

I grew up in a hick town in the mid west (and loved it) not the west coast. I do think I'm a razorback at heart though. 🙂

As far as I know, Buffy had no outside vocations to speak for her, just crazy high test scores. So agin, I wonder if the writers were off or if some of them had kids in school doing the app process or researched it and somehow could relate. (they did know about scoring at the very least.)

Just idle curiosity on my part. Anyone want to humor me? Come on fellow geezers, I know your out there! 😉
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Well, I did have quite a few glowing rec letters 🙂 I guess that helped. It also helped that the two schools I applied too were Catholic and private, and I said I was Catholic, and like, everyone in my family is Catholic as well. I probobly could have gotten into Northwestern even lol My father and my aunt went there 🙂
 
Hmm. Well, granted, a LOT of factors come into play when a college is deciding on accepting you or not.
I was never the best student. I was pretty average, actually. I could have done better but I didn't. I scored fairly well on my SATs (1890/2300, I think) with my writing score making up for my lackluster math one. 😛 My GPA was a 2.3...2.9 after my honors' English classes were added in. My recommendation letters were pretty good. I had NO extracurriculars, except two clubs I joined for a day my senior year just so I could put them on my college ap. I applied to all out-of-state colleges and all three accepted me...colleges these days love diversity. They were all fairly good schools, too.

So I'm guessing something similar happened with Buffy. I don't think Buffy did horribly in school...I always kind of felt like she was a C-ish student. Capable of A's or B's, but so preoccupied with other things, grades weren't a priority. So let's assume she fell in the B/C range, and had a high SAT score, and had the benefit of being an out-of-stater...I still don't know if it'd be enough to get her into Northwestern, to be honest I don't know very much about that school, but there's a chance it could have.
 
I think Buffy's a tv show...and the writers were just trying to get the plot moving....
In both episodes where she excels academically (Lover's Walk & Choices), they bring up the question of Buffy's future...when she may not even have one. It provides good conflict rather than a realistic account.
 
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