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

College Search & Selection
41

<p>I sorted about 35 colleges based on SAT rank (among themselves) in 1976, 1988, 1998. 2008. The 1976 SATs were from an old college guide. Overall, not much change, but with a few exceptions. I wonder whether Cornell included the NYS statutory colleges in their 1976 and 1988 data. Carnegie Mellon had a blip in 1988. Not sure what that's about. Washington U showed a big jump in the last 10 years. </p>

<p>Caltech 1 1 1 1
Harvard 9 6 2 2
Yale 3 4 6 3
Princeton 2 7 4 4
MIT N/A 5 3 5
Dartmouth 5 10 8 6
Wash U 25 26 26 7
Duke 13 11 9 8
Stanford 10 13 5 9
Brown 12 9 10 10
Rice 7 8 7 11
Columbia 6 15 12 12
U Penn 16 14 13 13
U Chicago 8 16 16 14
Northwestern 15 19 14 15
Tufts 19 18 20 16
Carnegie Mellon 14 2 15 17
Notre Dame 22 21 21 18
Johns Hopkins 11 12 11 19
Georgetown 18 17 19 20
Emory 21 25 17 21
Cornell 4 3 18 22
Vanderbilt 27 27 28 23
USC 33 35 35 24
Coll Wm and Mary 20 22 25 25
UC Berkeley 29 29 23 26
U Virginia 17 20 24 27
Wake Forest 24 30 27 28
U Michigan 26 28 29 29
UCLA 32 32 30 30
U North Carolina 30 23 31 31
UNC Chapel Hill 31 24 32 32
U Wisconsin Madison 28 33 34 33
U Texas Austin 34 34 36 34
U Illinois Urbana Champaign 23 31 33 35</p>

42

<p>I am curious if you could use that information and relate it to sat percentiles</p>

43

<p>Score # total, Percentile, Male total, Percentile, Female Total, Percentile</p>

<p>1600 1,206 99+ 726 99+ 480 99+
1590 534 99+ 323 99+ 211 99+
1580 583 99+ 348 99+ 235 99+
1570 1,028 99+ 641 99+ 387 99+
1560 1,001 99+ 582 99+ 419 99+
1550 1,380 99+ 876 99 504 99+
1540 1,829 99 1,083 99 746 99+
1530 1,219 99 729 99 490 99+
1520 2,114 99 1,210 99 904 99
1510 2,296 99 1,332 99 963 99
1500 2,668 99 1,537 99 1,130 99
1490 2,862 99 1,632 98 1,230 99
1480 3,099 99 1,771 98 1,327 99
1470 3,371 98 1,954 98 1,417 99
1460 3,723 98 2,141 98 1,582 98
1450 4,163 98 2,359 97 1,804 98
1440 4,542 97 2,621 97 1,920 98
1430 4,935 97 2,732 96 2,201 98
1420 5,300 97 2,950 96 2,350 97
1410 5,650 96 3,151 96 2,498 97
1400 6,227 96 3,496 95 2,730 97
1390 6,656 96 3,700 95 2,954 96
1380 6,994 95 3,742 94 3,251 96
1370 7,537 95 4,213 93 3,320 96
1360 8,419 94 4,647 93 3,770 95
1350 8,739 93 4,749 92 3,988 95
1340 9,557 93 5,187 91 4,365 94
1330 10,254 92 5,533 90 4,716 93
1320 10,454 91 5,622 90 4,828 93
1310 11,352 91 6,024 89 5,324 92
1300 12,154 90 6,570 88 5,580 92
1290 12,510 89 6,650 87 5,852 91
1280 13,367 88 6,954 86 6,407 90
1270 13,599 87 7,192 85 6,400 89
1260 14,183 86 7,397 84 6,779 88
1250 15,486 85 8,182 83 7,289 87
1240 15,774 84 8,376 81 7,388 86
1230 16,930 83 8,690 80 8,231 85
1220 17,414 82 8,823 79 8,573 84
1210 17,966 81 9,262 77 8,695 83
1200 18,570 79 9,440 76 9,122 82
1190 19,293</p>

44

<p>

"I would prefer not to." :D</p>

<p>Andale is correct. In fact, I'd be surprised if they didn't reject more than that. Duke rejected 41% a couple years ago, and MIT rejects ~50%. HYP reject 70-80%. For verification, see the graphs of SAT scores and acceptance rates in the Revealed Preferences Ranking. </p>

<p>An example at Williams:
Meanwhile, on paper, Jennifer Johnson’s
credentials meet or exceed Arun’s. She scored
a perfect 1600 on the SAT and had another
perfect score on one of her four achievement
tests. But while she won regional honors for
her school’s swim team, her extracurricular
record is otherwise a little thin, and her
essay leaves many of the reviewers cold. Most
important, as the admission team weighs her
application, one member offers this assessment:
Despite her high grades and test scores,
“I can’t discern any real intellectual spark.”
The verdict: wait-list.</p>

45

<p>do you think schools like caltech and harvey mudd are more interested in test scores than other stats? their scores have always been significantly higher than those of other comparable schools.</p>

46

<p>One thing that I'm surprised that no one has pointed out is that most of the Ivy colleges and other highest ranked privates have maintained their position and they have also improved their student profiles over the ten-year period. While schools like USC, Wash U, Tufts, and Vanderbilt have clearly made the greatest strides and are now winning many cross admit battles with some of the historical powers, the Ivies and others were originally far out in front and thus had less room for improvement in the various measurements that I made. They are still doing pretty darn good. </p>

<p>So the point is that the competitive bar for all colleges has been raised. The Ivies and other top privates continue to attract high quality student bodies and post excellent ranks in most categories (especially Graduation & Retention). Of course, the good news is that more colleges legitimately and effectively compete with the Ivies and other top privates and, as a result, top high school students have a wider and more diverse group of top colleges to choose from. </p>

<p>hoedown,
I think that the "hot" college description can mean more than one thing. Certainly, a "hot" college will have more applications than its comparables. But more substantively, I think it matters how a school capitalizes on this increased interest and actually enrolls higher quality student bodies. To me, who matriculates to a college is the truest test of a school's "hotness" and not just its volume of applications.</p>

<p>As to the information that has been presented, my comparative numbers from the different years are a straight recitation of the data supplied by USNWR. I don't have the detail on the underlying weights so there might be some differences, but my guess is that, if that were the case, the differences would be relatively small. </p>

<p>Congrats to your U Michigan on the sharp increase in Top 10% and the increased selectivity as measured by acceptance rate, but do you have any insight into what happened with the Faculty Resources rank and why is U Michigan's trend so different than U Virginia and U North Carolina? Could that be one of the areas where there was a change in methodology and this worked against U Michigan?</p>

47

<p>Statistics on score distributions for class of 2007: </p>

<p>Composite (CR+M+W) Percentile Ranks (.pdf/36K) </p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/composite_CR_M_W_percentile_ranks.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/composite_CR_M_W_percentile_ranks.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>Composite (CR+M) Percentile Ranks (.pdf/31K) </p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_composite_CR_M_percentile_ranks.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_composite_CR_M_percentile_ranks.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>Percentile Ranks for Males, Females, and Total Group: Critical Reading (.pdf/25K) </p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_percentile_ranks_males_females_total_group_critical_reading.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_percentile_ranks_males_females_total_group_critical_reading.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>Percentile Ranks for Males, Females, and Total Group: Mathematics (.pdf/43K) </p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_percentile_ranks_males_females_total_group_mathematics.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_percentile_ranks_males_females_total_group_mathematics.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>Percentile Ranks for Males, Females, and Total Group: Writing (.pdf/27K) </p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_percentile_ranks_males_females_total_group_writing.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_percentile_ranks_males_females_total_group_writing.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>There is a National Association for College Admission Counseling principle of good practice that colleges are not supposed to report median scores or mean scores but rather only interquartile ranges. (Some colleges ignore this NACAC principle.) Most colleges report to the Common Data set the interquartile ranges for their ENROLLED class for each section of the SAT I and for composite scores on the ACT, and some colleges report other details about scores. See the Common Data Set </p>

<p><a href="http://www.commondataset.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.commondataset.org/&lt;/a> </p>

<p>for definitions. The way U.S. News reports "median" scores, is, as correctly pointed out above, not a true median score, but U.S. News explains its (flawed) methodology for calculating that number and that error would only change how colleges rank as against one another if one or more of the colleges has a very unusual distribution of scores--which is possible. </p>

<p>A lot of colleges try to trick the public by announcing, right after the end of the admission season, the scores for their ADMITTED class. But the most able students who have applied to more than one college will be admitted by more than one college, and thus high-scorers are usually double- or triple- or quadruple-counted in some press releases. Students enroll in one college each by the enrollment deadlines, and what students are actually at a college to be your classmates and raise the level of class discussion and college EC involvement are only the students who enroll. So the Common Data Set Initiative (which is the primary source for most of these test score figures for ALL publishers, including U.S. News) asks for score ranges for the ENROLLED class.</p>

48

<p>
[quote]
One thing that I'm surprised that no one has pointed out is that most of the Ivy colleges and other highest ranked privates have maintained their position and they have also improved their student profiles over the ten-year period.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I was going to point that out :) but meanwhile I had to post about the methods used to compare colleges on the basis of test scores. </p>

<p>Yes, it is slightly less lonely at the top than it used to be, because once a really high-ability student might go anywere near home to go to college, which meant that hundreds of colleges had some draw for top students. That in turn meant that MOST colleges had very small concentrations of top students, and were no competition at all for colleges with truly national draws like the Ivy League colleges. Today, there are a couple hundred or so colleges--I have just been compiling a list--that are noteworthy to students all around the country, and a larger number of top students who have joined the "flight to quality" to apply far out of state for a nationally reputable college. So the top end of "second tier" colleges has improved considerably, while some other colleges that formerly gained at least the top students in their county reliably are no struggling to get any competitive applicants.</p>

49

<p>Stats stats stats......its all a game to see if you pass the prestige game, as if going to a school with so called lower stats means you are a lower person and getting a lower education and turning out to be a lower human being on the ladder of life and less likely to be a financial success....as a lot of the same people who judge others by their stats also judge people by their income and what cars they drive and how big a house they live in etc.</p>

<p>Really, people....this is absurd.</p>

<p>I know kids at NCState THIS SEMESTER working a helluva lot harder than at least 3 people going to some Ivy League Schools. In fact, the ONLY schools I know where kids are attending that make the top 30 and are working their hiney's off are WashU and Tufts.</p>

<p>The kids I know in the Ivy League are only taking three courses, seem to have a lot of free time on their hands, and are really more pampered poodles than overworked college students. Just an observation...perhaps that will change as we get deeper into the semester.</p>

<p>My point is that Judging a "product", that is whether one college is better than another, particularly by stats....and really some very close stats at that (do you know how FEW questions on the total SAT score it takes to get 150 higher/lower points? NOT VERY MANY, frankly. And for a LOT of kids, those few questions were not questions they got wrong, but questions they did not get to because they work a smidge slower...er...think a little longer...or perhaps are more creative in their thought process.</p>

<p>Are we destined to become technocrats and digit heads and have national ID cards with our IQ score, SAT score, class rank, gpa's on them which have to be produced for every job application we have and are considered in every job evaluation we have until the day we die?</p>

<p>I know people with VERY high SAT scores and GPA's who got into some VERY prestigious schools.....but on the whole, I find them less than impressive. (Of course there are lots of people I know with very high scores who indeed imipressed me dramatically). I know kids with very good, but not elite scores, who put in more than 20 hours a week in extra curriculars, or worked a job 25 hours a week, carrying 6 or more AP classes and who are not only very bright and ambitious but kids with a good head on their shoulders, with DEEP and CREATIVE thought processes, who can carry a conversation with you on any topic and make very good points.....who BRING something to the table of higher education. Are they "lesser" human beings because they dont fit into your "hot" list because they didnt score 1450 on the SAT and didnt finish in the 10% of their school because its HYPER competitive where more than a handful of kids are freaking brilliant? Many of whom DONT come from money and privilege? Who DONT have hooks into Stanford or Duke or the Ivy League?</p>

<p>Are the kids at UVa who scored 1325 on their SAT's and got in there because they are instate and had incredible extracurricular activities to be judged lesser human beings for their entire life because of the "Statistic Police" than the kid who scored a 1500 and got into Princeton? PUHLLEEEEZE!</p>

<p>I heard a story the other day....a heart happy story.....a poor black kid who got into Belmont Abbey College by the skin of his teeth....but who while there has excelled....taking this incredible opportunity to go to a small but respected private college in North Carolina...now this boy is a senior....and he took the LSAT and got decent but not superb scores...and he wants to go to law school.....and he has the INTEGRITY of Moses....the heart of a lion, the work ethic of sisyphus, the patience of Job....on and on.....and so he will go to law school next year.....so where does HE fit on your list of schools?</p>

<p>Who would YOU hire if he applied for a job with you in a few years? The kid from some prep school who had SAT tutoring for 4 years and got into Princeton with a near perfect score (we know someone like that)? Or this poor black kid who has made something of himself by working hard and still wants more out of life so he is going to law school? He could be the next Thurgood Marshall or Clarence Thomas. (By the way, Justice Clarence Thomas went to Holy Cross. He turned his life around from an angry black teenager to work on Capitol Hill....and then go to Yale Law School on scholarship....)</p>

<p>If I were an English Major.....could I walk away from an offer from Kenyon or Hollins College....both of whom have produced numerous award winning authors?</p>

<p>Or if I was a Chemistry major could I walk away from an offer from UDelaware which has a superb program funded by major Fortune 50 companies?</p>

<p>I am not snarling at kids who get great grades and great SAT scores. To them, I tip my hat, even if they come from privilege and had extensive SAT tutoring and wish them well.</p>

<p>But at the end of the day, my judgment of someone's measure...their character and integrity and work ethic....will come NOT from their stats....particularly their high school gpa and SAT score. It will come from a simple test: how well did they do with the gifts that God gave them and the circumstance of life with all its ups and downs?</p>

<p>Are they "good people" who help one another and their neighbors? Can they get along with coworkers? Are they cardboard cutouts .....one dimensional and cant even talk about last night's ballgame? Or are they amazing and full of life, wonderful anecdotes and great optimism? Are they team players? How do they view less fortunate people? How do they view competitors? How do they view people who went to a lesser ranked school and might be working down the hall from them? IF they become managers and do hiring for the company will they be petty credentialists or will they look a little deeper into someone's eyes (and record) and "recruit" the person with greater leadership skills...a trustworthy person?</p>

<p>A school principal told me two years ago when we were discussing a disturbing set of facts involving a top student (not my D), that historically (statistically???) the biggest cheaters in THAT school have come from the top of the class not the middle or bottom. The kids with the BEST character often came from a lower rank in the class. Isnt that interesting?</p>

<p>I think people who pick colleges based SOLELY on their stats ....well.....they deserve what comes, good or bad. But I sure as hell would not hire someone who walked in my door and said, "well, I went to X school and in the past 10 years we have moved up 3 spots in the USNWR and the avg SAT score is up 50 points and you should hire me because my stats are better than anyone else who is applying for your job!" You know what I mean, Vern?</p>

50

<p>^ How do you type all that before being timed out by this message board?</p>

51

<p>


</p>

<p>How did you get those data for 2008? Do you have any tips for stock market investing? ;)</p>

52

<p>at Northwestern this year--1463 vs 1423. THAT'S A DIFFERENCE OF 40 POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It bugs me when people keep confusing such simple thing over and over on this board. Some even make comparison between schools using admitted stats for one and enrolled stats for another. What an UNFAIR comparison!</p>

<p>Most schools that aren't HYPSM would see such kind of difference as schools lose the top admits to HYPSM.</p>

53

<p>
[quote]
For verification [ of rates of perfect scorers being denied admission ], see the graphs of SAT scores and acceptance rates in the Revealed Preferences Ranking.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I have read the revealed preferences ranking working paper </p>

<p><a href="http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>more than once, and there are no such nationally representative data in the underlying data set, nor is there a report of such an issue (base acceptance rate of PERFECT scorers) in the working paper. There is a very useful chart relating base acceptance rate to SAT score PERCENTILES for students who were in the data set used in the working paper. Some colleges, e.g. Princeton, claim to have changed their admission practices since the working paper data were gathered. </p>

<p>If there is someone who has seen a public statement by any college specifically on the issue of how many PERFECT scorers (2400 on the three-section SAT Reasoning Test, 36 composite on the ACT) are accepted at that college, compared to how many apply, I would be glad to see a citation to that statement. I think several of the statements made about that issue repeatedly in CC threads are demonstrably wrong. Such scores are rare </p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/composite_CR_M_W_percentile_ranks.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/composite_CR_M_W_percentile_ranks.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p><a href="http://www.act.org/news/data/07/pdf/National2007.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.act.org/news/data/07/pdf/National2007.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>(table 2.1) </p>

<p>and it would be important first to look at the actual number of students with such scores who apply to various colleges. I've not found any recent statements by colleges in which perfect scorers across all sections of the SAT Reasoning Test, or perfect composite scorers on the ACT, are even identified as a reporting category. More common are statements about students who scored above 700 (or possibly 750) on one or both of the older sections of SAT I, who are much more numerous. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_percentile_ranks_males_females_total_group_critical_reading.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_percentile_ranks_males_females_total_group_critical_reading.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_percentile_ranks_males_females_total_group_mathematics.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SAT_percentile_ranks_males_females_total_group_mathematics.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

54

<p>
[quote]
Congrats to your U Michigan on the sharp increase in Top 10% and the increased selectivity as measured by acceptance rate, but do you have any insight into what happened with the Faculty Resources rank and why is U Michigan's trend so different than U Virginia and U North Carolina? Could that be one of the areas where there was a change in methodology and this worked against U Michigan?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, thanks on the congratulations, I guess....but I have some real questions about class rank and my office tries to avoid reporting it because of questions about its reliability. U-M reports it where it is expected or required to, but internally it isn't uniformly regarded as a great metric. It's nice that we appear to have gone up, but I don't put a lot of stock in it.</p>

<p>As for Michigan's fall in faculty resources compared to several peers who moved in the opposite direction, I have no idea. I thought that since you had compared 1998 to 2008, you had confirmed that the methodology was the same. </p>

<p>I tried to check on this myself, but I don't have the 1999 ranking issue available, just the 1998. The weightings appear to be the same, but they give less detail as to how they measured "class size" (for 2008 they use two different measures for a combined weight of 40%; for 1998 they mention on measure whose sole weight is 40%) and don't indicate whether they used benefits and COL adjustments in the salary measure (which they did for 2008). What does the 1999 ranking issue say about these items?</p>

55

<p>Okay, friedokra. We all agree that the prestige of the school you attend doesn't = your worth as a human being. You are arguing with whom?
Someone asked about the women's colleges.
Comparing the 1997 and 2008 editions of USN&WR, all but Wellesley have fallen in absolute ranking. Wellesley remains #4, PA score has gone from 3rd to 4th. The middle 50% SAT range went from 1270-1450 to 1310-1470. Admissions rate has gone from 39% to 36%.
Bryn Mawr fell from 10 to 24. PA from 9 to 14. SATs 1210-1420 to 1200-1420. Admissions rate from 58% to 44%.
Smith fell from 12 to 17, tied with Hamilton and Colgate. PA from 9 up to 6. SATs from 1203-1360 to 1140-1370. Admissions rate from 49% to 53%.
Mount Holyoke fell from 19 to 28. PA from 22 to 19. SATs from 1124-1329 to 1210-1390. (Mount Holyoke has stopped requiring SATs. It's possible that SAT scores of the full student body today, like Smith and Bryn Mawr, are much like they were before). Admissions rate from 65% to 53%.
Barnard fell from 23 to 30. PA from 18 to 26. SATs from 1210-1370 to 1280-1450. Admissions rate from 45% to 26%.
The overall impression is that with the exception of Barnard, the top women's colleges have not been able to use the echo boom generation to improve the quality of their student bodies, while others have. Barnard may have been more attractive to applicants because of its location in NYC and its association with Columbia.</p>

56

<p>tokenadult-
LOL...I was referring to the 2008 issue of US News...they number the years in advance.</p>

<p>But, I do have stock market advice. China, Latin America, Canada, Nordic countries for international stocks. Growth small- and mid-cap domestic stocks. Sector funds...well I still like technology, especially biotech, also energy, defense, medical equipment. But, I have a LONG way to go before I retire so I can afford to take risks.</p>

57

<p>danas:</p>

<p>I am arguing with the 'credentialists'. I am against all this ranking stuff. Comparing stats between colleges is silly, in my view.</p>

<p>Sorry.</p>

<p>If you have (or your kid has) outstanding stats, then congratulations! And if you want to go to Princeton and got in, congratulations again.</p>

<p>But picking a college based on its ranking and that ranking is based on silly stats of sat scores, gpa's and top ten percentages....really is demeaning in my view.</p>

<p>You should pick a college for FIT...and your stats are but a small measure of fit (though clearly its unwise for someone with lower gpa and sats to apply for an elite..if they are below even the 25th percentile of their admits....as they would likely struggle and be very unhappy.....)</p>

<p>We used the CDS data for colleges as a preliminary measure only for my D in her applications. But rank had little to do with where she looked and where she went.</p>

<p>NO, she was not Ivy qualified in the strict sense of the word....her SAT's were not quite there....she is not a great standardized test taker.....good...well....very good, but not superb....better fit in the next tier down from Ivy....though I am convinced in my heart she would have done very well at ANY school. She has incredible work ethic, a ZEAL for learning....indeed she LOVES school and always has.....class is the highlight of her day, not the bane of her existence. Not a party girl but not a wallflower dud either.</p>

<p>She can hold her own with anyone. And is presently excelling in college.</p>

<p>She will go to grad school or professional school....we just dont know where yet....that is four years away.</p>

<p>If someone picks Pomona over Wellesley or Tufts or Harvard or Duke or whomever....I say, congrats and I hope you have four outstanding years full of life, learning and love (the healthy kind). If someone picks Princeton or Yale over Duke, Chicago, Johns Hopkins or Grinnell, I offer the same best wishes. I just dont want them picking a college based primarily on rankings in USNWR or the petty statistical differences between the schools (as reported). For that matter, if their 4.0 student, with 1500 SAT picked Michigan or Delaware or Hamilton....the same best wishes. </p>

<p>I just dont want any smug credentialists telling anyone they went to a better school based on these statistics or USNWR rankings.</p>

<p>That is all.</p>

<p>My D almost applied to Barnard College, but we had to pair down the list and unfortunately it was one that got cut.</p>

<p>And it had NOTHING to do with ranking, believe me.</p>

58

<p>"An example at Williams:
Meanwhile, on paper, Jennifer Johnson’s
credentials meet or exceed Arun’s. She scored
a perfect 1600 on the SAT and had another
perfect score on one of her four achievement
tests. But while she won regional honors for
her school’s swim team, her extracurricular
record is otherwise a little thin, and her
essay leaves many of the reviewers cold. Most
important, as the admission team weighs her
application, one member offers this assessment:
Despite her high grades and test scores,
“I can’t discern any real intellectual spark.”
The verdict: wait-list."</p>

<p>I am always amused when I see these types of snippets where it is very apparent that the admissions people are making decisions about candidates so intellectually superior to themselves with comments like they don't see any 'intellectual spark'; in comparison to working on a admissions committee, which seems to me to be the epitome of no intellectual spark.</p>

59

<p>friedokra,
I really admire your passion and strong defense of students that come from less heralded schools. For my part, please don't miscontrue the frequent data comparisons as a slight to those at other schools. I add that I know no one who actually picks a college based on the average SAT score. However, many students, families, others will compare the academic strength of various colleges based on many quantitative factors (including the posted data points). But they aren't absolutes and I completely agree that some greatly talented students come from some of the most unlikely places. </p>

<p>I do want to say that your post can give the impression that you think a lot of the students going to the so-called "elites" are a bunch of dilettantes. My experience is that the vast majority of them are not. The ones that I know and have known are quality students and quality people. Most have exceptionally high personal standards and great moral character. Most have a great work ethic and work well with others. Finally, most are smart as heck. And I like smart. As an employer, I like having employees who are highly intelligent, can communicate well, have well-developed critical thinking skills, a good ability to work with others and high personal standards. I would agree with you that such attributes are not universally or exclusively attributable to graduates of any college or group of colleges.</p>

60

<p>"I like having employees who are highly intelligent, can communicate well, have well-developed critical thinking skills, a good ability to work with others and high personal standards. I would agree with you that such attributes are not universally or exclusively attributable to graduates of any college or group of colleges."</p>

<p>Hawkette, but you also believe that you are more likely to find students with the above attributes at the schools where the average SAT scores of the student body are highest, correct? </p>

<p>Where do you draw the line?</p>