<p>^ You're entire analysis might be ok for ALL private schools or ALL public schools, but we are talking about the top privates and the top publics here. </p>
<p>We all know that top students tend to take the SAT more often than average students. Your analysis is undershooting for a good private like Northwestern. And the same can be said for a good public like Berkeley. </p>
<p>I am currently setting up a scholarship fund for students at Berkeley. When I do, I am going to get some information about SAT scores at Berkeley direct from the applications. I'll let you know what it turns out to be from actual real life examples for Berkeley. I can pretty much guarantee that my number will be much much more accurate than yours.</p>
<p>
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I can pretty much guarantee that my number will be much much more accurate than yours.
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<p>Possible, but that includes a number of factors, i.e sample size, type of scholarship applicants, etc.</p>
<p>WestSidee,</p>
<p>Back to the old question that you still haven't really answered. </p>
<p>How do you know all privates are using best M + best V anyway? Can you give us sources? </p>
<p>After all, I'd expect a lot of noise if two different methods are used and it results as much as 50 points difference like you suggested. Such "unfairness" should have been investigated already and published in some articles? :)</p>
<p>At the end, there's no point to comapare top privates with Berk's admission. They are very different:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/articles/brief/coadmit_brief.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/articles/brief/coadmit_brief.php</a></p>
<p>Look at this formula that UCs use for its top half of admits:</p>
<p>[1000 x GPA (calculated using no more than eight honors courses and capped at 4.00)] plus [SAT 1 verbal and math (best sitting)] plus [SAT 2 writing and math (best individual sitting)] plus [25 x number of honors, AP and IB courses (capped at 200)] plus [25 x the number of additional "a-f" courses completed over the 30 minimum semester "a-f" requirements (capped at 600) ] </p>
<p>Note there's nothing about ECs! Where's the quality of the high school? I guess it's sorta (but not quite) incorporated with # of AP/IB since better schools tend to offer more of those. Where's the essay??? NU treats essays as important as class rank and test scores whereas Berk almost doesn't care.
For UCs, it seems to me numbers are everything, at least for the top half (top 60% for UCSD) of its class!</p>
<p>Also note how GPA matters A LOT MORE than SAT I for UCs. You can get 1600 with a 3.70 GPA but still are awarded lower points than some guy with 1350 but with a 3.96 GPA!! That's common if you go to a very competitive high school while this other guy goes to an "okay" one. So even if Berkeley does get top 25% closer to 1500 like the top privates do, it does so in quite a different way. For top privates, numbers are far from everything.</p>
<p>Anybody can write an essay for anyone. It's BS</p>
<p>Well, I can't say it doesn't happen. I am not even saying one is better than another. Berkeley's admission reminds me of those top universities in Asia, very much about numbers and grades, and interestingly, Berkeley has Asians as the plurality. ;)</p>
<p>Anybody can take the SAT for someone. Anybody can take a test for someone. Anybody can lie on their application about something. What's your point? ANYTHING is possible. Does it happen very often? Not really.</p>
<p>it's much harder to have someone take the SAT compared to having someone "help" edit and shape an essay.</p>