or ACT scores does not necessarily fairly demonstrate the intelligence of one student compared to the other. There are varying types/degrees of intelligence that can be difficult to effectively measure. I also get the point that kids that did nothing but study & get good grades in high school don't necessarily make great college students. I went to a pretty good, small private high school in Richmond. We had somewhat of a valedictorian curse where for several years it seemed our most accomplished graduate went on to fail dramatically and burn out in college. In most cases, it was due to the fact that they didn't know how to handle the social aspects of college life without the structure their parents had created in high school.

The worst example was a couple years before me... girl gets accepted to MIT but ends up at VT due to cost, proximity to home, etc... First year she flames out after partying too hard and getting knocked up. The Valedictorian from my class went to W&M and had a nervous breakdown, skipped all of his exams first semester and left school.

Both of those individuals were very smart if you measured only GPA and SAT scores but neither were what I could classify as smart from a practical sense. The thing is, I'm not sure how much these new metrics really establish that either. Independent of any other criteria, they would be worthless statistics but coupled with existing metrics and better understanding of what the student accomplished, both in and out of school, is not a bad thing.

I'd almost be willing to bet that as a percentage, more kids from affluent families end up flunking out than kids that have nothing to fall back on. I could be way off base on that...