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Most Likely to Succeed Essay

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Three major traits that college admissions look for is a student’s GPA, ACT score, and class rank. These are also three common requirements for scholarships. These three qualifications are what have cost me from being eligible for many full tuition scholarships. How is it possible for a college to know whether or not I am good enough for full tuition only based on these three traits? This is probably close to the same question Chase Daniel was asking himself when Dan Shonka was observing him. This is the storyline for Malcolm Gladwell’s short story, “Most Likely to Succeed.” Chase Daniel is a talented college quarterback and Shonka is a NFL recruiter who has to decide whether Daniel’s is qualified for the pros. The main point behind the …show more content…

Some students, such as me, are not good test takers.
The ACT is not an accurate depiction of my education, and I should not be penalized because of this. I believe the GPA is the only truthful portrayal a college can get about an incoming student. The GPA reflects the student’s progress throughout the entire high school career. It also reflects only how they did. In some cases, it is not fair to rate a student based on where he or she stands with the rest of the class. In a class of 1,000 the top 5% is 50 students; in a class of 60—like LeRoy—the top 5% is 3 students. Although the ratios are equal, the actual intelligence of the students may not be. In our school, we have a very competitive class; during our freshman year, we had a nine-way tie for first rank in our class. At bigger schools, there is a chance for a large amount of intelligent students, like at LeRoy, but there is also the chance for the opposite. With the opportunity for 50 students to be the top 5%, there is a possibility for some of those students to get that spot out of luck. Colleges that don’t know much about their incoming students can compare to a business not knowing about their incoming employees.
Malcolm Gladwell’s story compares to college admissions because in both cases, no one knows how the person will work out in that particular position. There are some differences, obviously, but the main point is that it is impossible to tell

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