<p>I'll settle for an asterisk next to the stats of any school that is reporting on apples when other schools are reporting on oranges.</p>
<p>Better yet, if I care about the 25-50 percentile score statistic, I will cross off my list any school that fails to report numbers based on a comperable base (almost the entire class). The 25-75 spread for a self-selected portion of the class is worse than worthless.</p>
<p>* Would you share with us the factors that you think influenced your daughter's admission to her current school?*
Her school ( Reed college) is well known for quirkiness.
While she had things that could have been liabilities( needing a lot of finaid,learning differences, first generation college) I expect that her strong characteristics were then given even more weight-three strong essays and recommendations I didn't see them so I assume, SAT writing 790,and probably her strong background in community service. She not only had over 2000 volunteer hours since middle school, but she took a year off to volunteer with CityYear in the public schools. Taking a year off was , I would guess to be the single most factor that got her seriously considered. Reed is a school that expects a lot of independence and responsibilty from its students and her CityYear program gave her an opportunity to take more responsibilty than she had before.</p>
<p>this is from the director of admissions at Reed
<a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/05/25/marthers%5B/url%5D">http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/05/25/marthers</a></p>
<p>Bowdoin does not require that students submit scores as part of their application process but (from their website) "Because standardized test results are used for academic counseling and placement, all entering first-year student must submit scores over the summer prior to enrolling. "</p>
<p>So Bowdoin, at least, has this data. Not sure about the other colleges.</p>
<p>Another issue I have never gotten straight in my head has to do with TOEFL scores - if you accept the TOEFL, does it mean that the SAT verbal components (presumably lower) are not reported for these students?</p>
<p>"The 25-75 spread for a self-selected portion of the class is worse than worthless."</p>
<p>I disagree. If you see that the 25th percentile of those who submit scores is 1370, and you get a similar score, then you know that you fall in the bottom quartile of all applicants who submit scores. Although 1370 is quite respectable, I would choose not to submit that score, assuming that the other parts of my application (GPA, rank, ECs, etc.) are strong. In other words, it gives applicants an idea of what scores are worth submitting to be competitive.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I will cross off my list any school that fails to report numbers based on a comperable base
[/quote]
Interesting approach to college search and selection. Funny, we focused on what size school DS would like, strength in his fields of interest, type of location he liked, whether its atmosphere fit his preferences (not too Greek etc.).... SAT scores were simply something we checked to take a guess as to how competitive he was, and whether to consider the school reach/match/safety. Not a basis for screening out schools.</p>
<p>I found that an odd approach to school selection also. Til, would you care to enlighten us as to why such a fact would be sufficient cause to remove a school from consideration?</p>
<p>And just curious: is it your list, or a child's list?</p>
<p>I think that's a curious standard, as it means that you'd immediately cross off schools that accept the ACT and have some number of students who submit those alone. Goodbye Northwestern (around 85% submit the SAT). Forget Macalaster (77%). Don't know if 90% is good enough, but if not Berkeley is outta there. Goodbye Michigan. Grinnell, too. </p>
<p>My point is, colleges can be completely honest in their reporting, and comply to the letter with the CDS standard (which asks colleges to calculate percentiles on those students who reported scores, as well as to report what % of students this includes). Yet this is somehow being misleading, or dishonest, or "failing" somehow. I don't understand the rationale behind your standard.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt received over 12,000 applicants. 4% increase.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon University
2005: 15,000+
2006: 18,000+</p>
<p>20% increase.</p>
<p>CMU is a pretty large increase considering they hiked tuition 8 %
Interesting that they raise tuition for incoming but not for current students- how many schools have a two tier system?</p>
<p>I think they hiked tuition because of the perceived increase. They did raise tuition for us by 4.4 % I think.</p>
<p>Why would a top ranked school extend
their application dateline by 2 months?</p>
<p>Well, off the top of my head, it could be because they didn't get as many apps as they wanted from key populatons. Maybe they got some materials out later than usual. It could be because they heard from various admissions counselors that their counselees had a lot of ED disappointments or bad financial aid news, and were late getting a list of alternate schools put together. Maybe they saw a bigger-than-usual surge in the week before the deadline and thought this year's HS seniors had a plethora of desirable-but procrastinating students among them. </p>
<p>Or, it may not be any one thing, but a combination.</p>
<p>True.
All good reasons.</p>