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Regurgitating facts isn't what the SATs are seeking to measure...
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<p>I concur. One does not need to memorize or regurgitate facts for the SAT. It measures the speed and accuracy with which one can analyze and interpret information, and solve simple problems.</p>
<p>The list of schools that was provided isn't a ranking, but merely a helpful and comprehensive list.</p>
<p>Nocousin: Do you propose no standardized testing? GPA is not a great measure either, as High Schools vary dramatically and many kids in the top HSs are privately tutored on a regular basis. What is a fair measure of academic ability?</p>
<p>The list I posted is a valid ranking. The abilities measured by the SAT are important for most college majors. Majors in art fields base admissions on other things besides SATs like portfolios or audition tapes, as they should.</p>
<p>^^^^ Hamilton, Bard, Saint Lawrence University, and Hobart and William Smith, may all be SAT-optional. I agree you can't tell what the SAT scores mean at SAT-optional schools. But the OP was asking about good schools in New York, not SAT scores. From everything I know about Hamilton, Bard, Saint Lawrence University, and Hobart and William Smith, these are all very good schools, among in the best in New York State. And that's so whether they're SAT-optional or not.</p>
<p>^^^I think the schools you named are good schools. It is more difficult to know HOW good when they are SAT-optional. They may be having difficulty competing for good students, hence the move to optional SATs. Don't know for sure, but why would a school NOT want SAT information? What harm could it do?</p>
<p>^ I think you give far too much credence to SAT scores. There are several reasons a school might not want SAT scores as part of its admissions process, some good, some not so good. The worst is the one you're hinting at: some schools appear to be dropping the SAT requirement precisely because they want to "game" rankings (like yours and US News') that treat SAT scores as a proxy for academic quality. A far better reason is that many schools have found, through their own research and through independent, peer-reviewed studies, that SAT scores are in fact a weak predictor of even freshman grades, much less performance through all of college; and that they are an especially weak predictor of success in college for, among others, URMs, women, students who are not native speakers of English, older students, and first-generation college students. From that perspective, reliance on SAT scores may be seen as pernicious because it may systematically disadvantage individuals who despite weaker SAT scores would perform well in college if given the chance. For similar reasons, using SAT scores as a proxy for academic quality is troubling.</p>
<p>Can anyone help me out please?</p>
<p>I'm looking for the name of a college in New York, I forgot its name... I remember it being a small LAC in a hilly part of New York. It didn't have the best academics but it was known for its good travel abroad program. Also for some reason I remember it having two separate names. And if it helps, I know it has a board on this website... Thanks very much for the help...</p>
<p>Could you be thinking of Sarah Lawrence?</p>
<p>Sarah</a> Lawrence College. A distinctive coeducational college of the liberal arts and sciences.</p>
<p>bclintonk-
SATs are the best proxy for academic quality. They are highly correlated with student grades and graduation rates at the university/college level. The correlation between SAT scores and graduation rates is about .8-.9 which is very high. SAT scores are good predictors of success for URMs. International students have trouble with the CR section of the SAT because they are not native speakers of English. So what? The math section is a good predictor for them. </p>
<p>I don't want to sound elitist, but social scientists are not very good scientists. When they fail to find relationships between SAT scores and student success it is because of their incompetence. They don't control for factors other than SAT. They don't address the difference between predicting success for individuals versus predicting success for groups. They don't take into account the student's major. Students with higher SAT scores go into more difficult majors. If you transplanted the engineering students into the communications department, they would get straight As.</p>
<p>For example, I just downloaded a file from IPEDS of 211 schools with engineering programs. I used excel to calculate the correlation between graduation rate and SAT midpoint. The correlation was +.79 which is very high. It took me 10 minutes. Why is this so difficult?</p>
<p>SAT ranges also do give you some idea of the type of students at the college which can be valuable info. I can tell you that my son applied to schools at both ends of the spectrum for good reasons, and it did not make him pause at some schools that the range was low. For schools that teach engineering that was a positive sign as he did not want to go somewhere that the maths and engineering were taught to those at a very high level. </p>
<p>Also, I am leery about some of those schools dropping that SAT requirement. It is only helpful to those whose SATs are low but their other qualifications are sterling,and many of those kids do not have abysmally low SATs anyways. I know of several kids who went that route, and their test scores were well within range of their schools, they were top students and they did not submit SATs because they felt that they were inconsistent with the transcript. They got into their schools that required the SATs as well, and ironically did not in a few cases get into the schools that did not require, and they did not provide the SAT, making me suspicious as to what really is happening here.</p>
<p>Another example, when I limit my group of schools with engineering programs to private schools only, the correlation between SAT and graduation rate jumps to +.86. SAT scores are 92% of the explanation for graduation rates among private schools with engineering programs. And, this is just a very crude way of looking at the issue.</p>
<p>tma2290, I believe the college that you're asking about is Hartwick. It's located very close to SUNY Oneonta.</p>
<p>tma2290, I believe you might be asking about Hobart and William Smith College, in upstate NY wine region, on a beautiful lake.</p>
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<p>Well, I'd like to see your data. I'm skeptical. Not even College Board makes this extravagant a claim. They only claim that SAT scores are a moderately good predictor of first-year grades, though not as good a predictor as HS GPA. They go on to say that SAT scores can be helpful in admissions when when used in conjunction with HS GPA--a pretty modest claim about their own product. Many colleges that have done their own research have found that there's little value added by throwing SAT scores into the mix. I'm not in a position to say whether they're right or wrong, but I think clearly the trend is away from the SAT as more schools go SAT optional and the ACT continues to gain market share at SAT's expense.</p>
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Students with higher SAT scores go into more difficult majors.
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<p>Is this true? I've never seen any discussion of it before. Is the average SAT for a chemistry or physics major really consistently higher than the average SAT for a history or religion major at a given school or across schools? That would be interesting to see. I'm sure some econ prof in the name of research (even though it doesn't have much to do with economics to me) has done this type of study if the data is available.</p>
<p>I don't know about that. But I know if you are a premed student or planning on going into engineering, you may not want to go to a school where such students have much higher SATs than you do, especially if you have not had AP courses. The level instruction may be such that it can hurt you if you are not used to this. If you decide to go for it, be aware that you are really going to have to work hard. It can be done, but you should be prepared. That actually is the case regardless of SATs, for that matter if you come from a school where the course are not as rigorous as your peers'. If you take engineering courses where most of the class is average in SAT math scores, the presentation may be different than that at an "IT" school with kids that have high math scores, some of them even foreign students extremely advanced in math.</p>
<p>SAT scores are definitely not "highly" correlated with graduation rates -- find me one study that supports that assertion. They're definitely not around r = .80! There aren't any...SAT scores are found to be correlated with FIRST YEAR grades, and the correlation is moderate at best (r = around .50, no higher). SAT scores are DEFINITELY not highly correlated with anything. And they definitely do not explain 92% of the variance in graduation rates at any kind of college. That's laughable.</p>
<p>Collegehelp, I have no doubt that you're doing the calculations wrong. First, Excel is not an ideal program for statistical calculations and there are very few psychometricians who would use it. Besides, correlating the overall school SAT midpoint and graduation rates is a VERY flawed way of doing that. There are scholars who have studied this phenomenon for decades and it has yet to be found that there is a "strong" correlation between SAT scores and anything else.</p>
<p>Social scientists are not very good scientists? First of all, social scientists are the ones studying the SAT phenomenon, and secondly, the NSF and NIH say that you are talking out of your ass, frankly. You don't know what you're talking about, and it is evident. Because:</p>
<p>"They don't control for factors other than SAT. They don't address the difference between predicting success for individuals versus predicting success for groups. They don't take into account the student's major. Students with higher SAT scores go into more difficult majors. If you transplanted the engineering students into the communications department, they would get straight As."</p>
<p>None of this is true.</p>
<p>Have you ever taken a statistics class?</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>CC us not the kind of board where those types of posts are welcome.</p>
<p>Juilliet, I have taken many statistics classes. That was my work once upon a time, and H works with numbers a lot. I have not looked at the stats on SATs and do not argue that they are so ever important in the scheme of things. But they do have their importance and to ignore that truth is just not facing it.</p>
<p>I do know that kids with very high math scores and not as high verbal scores tend to go into the engineering or other math type majors. Those majors are more "difficult" in that getting high gpas in them is rarer than in the social sciences. That is an overall fact. Also you do get many, many more engineering students transplanting into communications and other such deparments than the other way around, and the gpas often improve after such a transfer. The gpa is often the reason for such tranfers. The same goes for other math/science majors. The number of kids starting out as premeds is a lot higher than those ending up with that course of study, rather than the other way around.</p>