2008 vs 1999: What’s changed in the USNWR data? Who’s hot and who’s not?

[friedokra]

<p>Its a darn shame more of these 1500 + scorers dont spread their wealth of knowledge at more schools. But it also has a silver lining for kids who scored below 1500 (many of whom are just as bright if not brighter than the kids who are outstanding standardized test takers) and that is deciding if they even want to attend a college with a high percentage of students with 1500+ scores, and instead picking a college that is not "so popular" so to speak and very likely a much better fit for them.</p>

<p>No, my D didnt score a 1500. If you did, good for you.</p>

[friedokra]

<p>I know this much. There are plenty of people at my D's school who scored above 1450. Her boyfriend is one of them! LOL. And he told her the other day he thought she was smarter than he was and to ignore the SAT. (She did fine, just not above 1450 cr and math or 2150 total.)</p>

<p>If I were an admissions officer at Harvard, Princeton or Yale what would I do? I don't honestly know. Its a tough job to be sure. You have to be sanguine about it all. What I am harping upon is that schools openly disclose the facts and tell people up front what the score is. Teachers and counselors and parents would do their children a great service by advising them that their gpa and sat score should not limit them in their college search, either for the elites or for the fourth tier of schools, wherever they fall on the spectrum. Fit is more than an SAT score. True, its one factor that must be considered. Someone with a low average SAT score 1100 lets say, should not likely apply to Harvard, because even if they get in, they will likely not be happy and will likely struggle and feel overwhelmed. Nobody wins that game. Though, if Harvard has statistics to show that kids they have admitted in the past with low average scores have actually done just fine, I would love to see those stats?</p>

<p>Hawkette: THERE is a stat I would be VERY curious to see. For schools who are considered elite (top 25 and top LAC's), what percentage of them admitted students with low average SAT's and how many kids did they admit with scores like that and if they followed them through college, how did they do? Did they blow out, or did they excel, or did they do okay B-C avg?</p>

[hawkette]

<p>friedokra,
To my knowledge, there is no publicly-available data on the performance or graduation rate of those students who had lower standardized test scores. I'm sure that the colleges track this for their institutions for a number of reasons, including to help them evaluate the efficacy of that information in the admissions process and its predictive power for its student's gpa and rate of graduation. </p>

<p>I understand the frustration that you express about the attention that is placed on standardized test scores, but as I have expressed repeatedly here and elsewhere, this is partly due to the fact that they are our sole, standardized data point and have been known to be highly correlated with other parts of a student's application. Hence, they use a proxy (albeit not an absolute one IMO). </p>

<p>Re the outcome information that you seek, one modest way to look at this is to consider how many "weaker" students are admitted and compare this to graduation rates. I summed the percentage of students at the USNWR Top 30 national universities that scored below 600 on the SAT Critical Reading OR the SAT Math sections. I then added the 6-year and 4-year graduation rates for the college to see if there is a pattern. My impression is that there is a modest, though certainly not universal, relationship, but it is very hard to say how much and there are many, many other factors that could be driving this other than the student's prepardedness when they arrived at college. Here is the full listing:</p>

<p>6-Year Graduation Rate , 4-Year Graduation Rate Combined % of students who scored below 600 CR or 600 M , College</p>

<p>98% 87% 8% Harvard</p>

<p>96% , 90% 8% , Princeton
96% , 90% 6% , Yale
96% , 88% 24% , Notre Dame</p>

<p>95% , 76% 16% , Stanford</p>

<p>94% , 87% 12% , U Penn
94% , 87% 12% , Duke
94% , 92% 14% , Columbia
94% , 84% 14% , Dartmouth
94% , 83% 16% , Brown
94% , 88% 24% , Georgetown</p>

<p>93% , 82% 10% , MIT
93% , 85% 16% , Northwestern
93% , 81% 24% , Johns Hopkins
93% , 76% 18% , Rice</p>

<p>92% , 84% 32% , Cornell
92% , 84% 42% , U Virginia
92% , 84% 10% , Tufts</p>

<p>91% , 82% 4% , Wash U</p>

<p>90% , 85% 18% , U Chicago</p>

<p>89% , 83% 12% , Caltech
89% , 83% 22% , Vanderbilt
89% , 58% 56% , UC Berkeley
89% , 57% 68% , UCLA</p>

<p>88% , 78% 30% , Wake Forest</p>

<p>87% , 84% 26% , Emory
87% , 67% 60% , U Michigan</p>

<p>86% , 67% 38% , Carnegie Mellon</p>

<p>84% , 61% 22% , USC
84% , 65% 54% , U North Carolina</p>

[barrons]

<p>More exact numbers on UM Endowment growth. In 1984 they had only $161 Million!! They first hit $1 Billion in 1994. You also have to remember that around 5% is spent each year so their returns and fundraising have to exceed that first to get positive.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Eurecord/9495/Sep26_94/2.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/9495/Sep26_94/2.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

[tokenadult]

<p>
[quote]
Re the outcome information that you seek, one modest way to look at this is to consider how many "weaker" students are admitted and compare this to graduation rates.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>The Washington Monthly rankings </p>

<p><a href="http://www2.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0709.rankings.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www2.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0709.rankings.html&lt;/a> </p>

<p>look at how well POOR (low-income) students do at different colleges, and I think that is a sensible issue to look at.</p>

[xiggi]

<p>ProudDad, having been here for a long time, on this forum and on the prior ones, I happen to think that discussions about statistics, albeit often debated on this particular sub-forum, are dwarfed by discussions on best fit. Is it an accident that MANY posters object to the abundance of posts extolling the merits of a LAC education? I know that I discovered those rather unheralded "beasts" after joining this site in 2003. One of my very first post was an attempt to explain why I considered attending a Honors program at a VERY large state university was the best opportunity for me. </p>

<p>Different sub-forums have different tendencies. This one seems to focus a lot more on prestige, name recognition, and the omni-present "reputation" than any other forum, except for the questionable but popular WAMC. It also happens to be mostly complimentary of the mega-schools, thanks to no spared and mostly repetitive efforts by a small army of posters who have a profound affinity towards a well-defined type of school and Saturday afternoon football</p>

[friedokra]

<p>Thanks Hawkette. </p>

<p>I did not say that SAT should be abolished completely though I support schools that make it optional in applications. It is "standardized", but as you know the preparedness for it is not. Meaning, many kids of wealthy parents and/or private schools have SAT tudors and indeed have curriculum that teaches towards a high SAT score. The administrators in my school district are disdainful of such practices and we regularly send kids to some of the country's finest schools.....a broad spectrum of fine schools I might add.</p>

<p>I do note that even with the schools you listed which had more than 20% of applicants with CR and Math scores below 600, still have a very high graduation rate in the high 80's in either 4 or 6 years and that is often a measure at large state schools of whether they can get the classes they need completed before their fourth year of school. I am not saying Harvard should admit 20% with SAT's of 1100 or 1150. What I am saying is that kids with SAT scores of 1200 and up can perform at optimum levels, and those with scores of 1300 and up, particularly as they approach the magical 1400 figure which many schools use as a cutoff for admission (whether they admit it or not) perform as well as and in some cases superior to kids with 1500+ SAT scores. The SAT does not measure motivation, maturity and circumstance. Its a blunt instrument at best. And that is why people, in my purview who insist that SAT scores are a proper measure of determining a schools ranking and impliedly its superiority over others are incorrect and do a grave disservice to prospective applicants and their families. If that were so, then the graduates of these higher SAT score schools would most certainly only want to work at the top 25 schools. In fact, a very high percentage of them end up working at much lower ranking schools and will tell you directly that school rankings are a fool's errand and are fiercely supportive and defensive of the schools where they now teach.</p>

<p>Pitting schools against each other, particularly with flawed statistics even if they are standardized, is inappropriate. Rankings are very controversial and most college administrators disdain them. Many colleges are working together now to refrain from providing USNWR and others the information and withdrawing from consideration completely.</p>

<p>Instead of perpetuating the problem, I have chosen to argue from the other side of the fence. I think I have done so in a civilized manner without intent to demean or insult anyone in particular, though I am quick to give a loud raspberry to the efforts of some who wish to use statistical evidence to push their school up the ladder of rankings and make others feel less worthy.</p>

<p>That is not to say that I dont admire many of the schools who enjoy lofty ratings. I know someone who got into an Ivy with a 1380 SAT and now acts like they are one of the gifted few in the 1500+ class. Its very unfortunate. I would much preferred if the individual had been humble and stated, "I am the luckiest person alive....I got into an Ivy League School. Please wish me luck." With that I would have gladly said, "I will give you all the positive support you need, my friend." </p>

<p>Some kids just do better on standardized scores. Some have advantages of tutoring and special classes at their schools. I prefer to root for the underdogs.</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

[tokenadult]

<p>Hi, everyone, </p>

<p>There have been some interesting examples of topic drift in this long thread, as there usually are in long threads, but I wanted to turn back to the issue that interested me in the thread, and invite anyone else who desires to participate in a calm, civil discussion to discuss that issue. I believe (but please correct me if I am mistaken) that the OP is looking at ways to go beyond the college rankings published by U.S. News and World Report magazine since the 1980s to find colleges that might be good matches for us (if we are students) or our children (if we are parents). </p>

<p>The U.S. News and World Report annual issues have never particularly set my agenda for looking for colleges. My oldest son is in high school, and in the next two years should refine his college application list, but I never refer him to U.S. News to find names of colleges nor do I particularly care how each college he thinks is interesting is ranked. He is beginning to develop a college list, still subject to a lot of change, that may skip over quite a few highly ranked colleges in the U.S. News rankings in favor of colleges that have characteristics he particularly desires. That's fine by me. </p>

<p>There are, depending on how you count them, more than 3,000 or perhaps more than 4,000 colleges in the United States, and plenty more in other English-speaking countries that would be glad to have American students. Several hundred of those colleges have explicit open-admission policies, so getting in is not a problem. I have, for personal reasons developed years before College Confidential existed, occasionally tried to figure out what subset of a few hundred colleges might be a starting list for parents shopping for colleges. My latest attempt at such a list is found in the thread "168</a> Noteworthy Colleges" and I take care to note that </p>

<p>1) my list is not at all based on the U.S. News rankings, </p>

<p>2) I acknowledge any such list, including mine, is debatable, </p>

<p>and </p>

<p>3) no such list could possibly exhaustively list all colleges that might be suitable for your kid. </p>

<p>But it's a start. This thread too is a start to look at what a subset of colleges might be that may or may not have a high U.S. News ranking, but might offer really good learning opportunities for your child or mine. I'd like to discuss here with all of you how you shop for colleges, and what characteristics you look for as you decide which of the thousands of available colleges to pass up entirely.</p>

[jyber209]

<p>Well, tokenadult, we did not use U.S. News * **rankings* either (do have it, I admit, and subscribe to the premium service purely for the easy access to all kinds of data -- including sometimes such factors as % of students who have cars at school -- it provides).</p>

<p>We perused many guidebooks (found Fiske very helpful), and school websites. My kids both wanted small liberal arts schools within a certain geographic range. At least that limited things to some extent. We did lots of college trips merged with vacations. (I always say I like shopping for schools the way some people like shopping at the mall!) I can recally visiting one school which my D did not care for at all but thinking it would be a great match for a friend of hers. </p>

<p>D did want to be at a challenging school where she would be somewhere in the middle of the student body academically. She wanted to be someplace where the other students would inspire her, yet where she would not be struggling to keep up. That did lead us to focus on some more selective schools but we looked at several that were less selective as well. </p>

<p>Son wants an engineering program at a liberal arts school with small classes so that limits his options. He does not want a Tech school, but one where people major in all kinds of things. </p>

<p>Neither of my kids wanted a heavy frat or drinking scene. They both wanted diversity. They both wanted to be someplace with lots of faculty interaction/support. </p>

<p>D found a great match for her. Still working on it for S and his search has been more of a challenge. Some of the liberal arts schools with engineering for which he may be in the running do have frats and little diversity. He may have to choose his own compromise. </p>

<p>Naturally, CC has been a great resource!</p>

[Momwaitingfornew]

<p>We did not look at the USNWR rankings, either, although we had an idea of the type of school my D 1. liked 2. could get into. In the end, the small liberal arts colleges made her most comfortable. As for judging teaching, she attended classes at each of her "finalists" to determine which learning environment best served her. She discounted one (highly respected) school because she felt the classes weren't challenging enough.</p>

<p>It wasn't a perfect approach, but I felt as though we did as much research as we could have. Fortunately for my D (and for us!), her ultimate choice still seems like a perfect match.</p>

[Proud_Dad_1]

<p>It's been explained quite often that those asked to rank all schools for PA may have only a passing familiarity with a handful of schools they rank. They end up ranking by reputation—the same as John Doe from Podunk knows HYP are good schools. There is nothing that guaranties the person filling out the PA forms for school X has any pertinent knowledge of schools A-through-Z other than X and X's similar schools. The PA is usually done by prestige just as John Doe would do it. In other words, it ain't worth much. Certainly not worth basing your or your child's future on unless you're only interested in which schools have the most prestige attached to their names (many are). That's why I like fit rather than rankings. </p>

<p>And even Token's list doesn't compare in some ways to my kids' real-life experiences, though I understand anomalies. They both go to schools without asterisks (their first choices), though they each got in to at least five schools with the two-asterisk designation, and for both the no-asterisk school was the only "not-selective" school on their list. The beauty of great LAC is that you just can't paint with such a broad brush and self-selection plays such a great role you can't go just on stats, either. One kid was accepted at five two-asterisk schools (top 25 U's, top 10 LACs) but waiting-listed at the non-asterisk school on the list and had to transfer there a year later, since it was her first choice. Nothing is certain except possibly that statistics "lie". ;)</p>

[Alexandre]

<p>Proud Dad, those asked to rate peer insitutions are also asked to only rate those they are familiar with. If they aren't familiar with a peer institution, they are asked to give a "don't know" mark. </p>

<p>That said, some raters will rate peer schools they aren't qualified to rate and others will overrate or underrate peer institutions based on personal bias. However, that is not the intent of the PA and I am fairly confident that such occurances aren't very common. Besides, the USNWR discards outliers, so oddities are likely to be spotted and rejected.</p>

<p>However, I agree with you on two points:</p>

<p>1) Statistics sometimes do lie. One should never rely solely on statistics and universities (or colleges) cannot be compared statistically.</p>

<p>2) "Fit" is one of the most important concepts students should consider when forming their application list.</p>

[Proud_Dad_1]

<p>We agree. And I put my money where my mouth is by paying more for my kids to go to their "fits" than it would have cost to send them to the top-ranked schools where they were also accepted. ;)</p>