<p>We had very comprehensive discussions on Quality of Student regarding % in the top 10% of their high school class, % of acceptance rate, and standard tests e.g., LSAT, SATs and ACTs. Even though there is no perfect method in Quality of Student assessment, we still can learn something from the imperfect data. The following are my observations and comments:</p>
<p>(1) % in the top 10% of their high school class (or class rank) </p>
<p>The result of students four-year overall academic performance is supposed to be the most comprehensive one, but it isnt the case because the quality of education varies school by school. There are thousands upon thousands of high schools in the country, and everyone has a version of top 10%. For examples, a top 10% student of a local high school may not be as competitive as an average student of Thomas Jefferson High School (TJHSST). </p>
<p>Realizing that high schools are not created equal, how can one get a fair evaluation? No need to worry. We dont underestimate the brain power of these elite universities admission officers. They know your District as much as your local real estate agents since they keep track of the alumnis performance of your district years in and years out. And they know which Districts number 1s and/or top 10% are very good and which are not so good? Thats why ECs, ACT, SAT, SATII, IBs, etc
come into play besides GPAs and class rank. </p>
<p>Lastly, I would like to direct your attentions on acceptance and matriculation results of valedictorians and salutatorians for Rices Class of 2011. As discussed in the ccs Rice discussion group, 50% of 850 high school valedictorians and salutatorians were admitted. The matriculation rates of these #1s, #2s, and 6-10% were as low as 25.7%, 34.8%, and 51% (see Table 1). They have more choices of schools after March 31. </p>
<p>Table 1
Rank %Acceptance %Matriculation</p>
<h1>1 51.4% 25.7%</h1>
<h1>2 51.8% 34.8%</h1>
<p>6-10% 21.0% 51.0%
11-20% 14.0% 64.1%
21-30% 12.0% 77.8%
31-40% 9.5% 90.9%
41-50% 7.5% 66.7%
Unranked 20.1% 25.4%</p>
<p>Besides, many high schools do not rank their students. If a university has greater than 50% of applicants who do not have class rank information, how could she justifies any number (%) greater than 50, let alone reporting 90ish % in the top 10%?</p>
<p>(2) % of acceptance rate </p>
<p>Another difference between the big name public universities (BNPU) and non-HYP ivies is the way they treat in-state (IS) and out-of-state (OOS) applicants. For BNPU, OOS applicants are more difficult to be accepted than IS, but such difference is not significant for the non-HYP ivies. For BNPU, OOS/IS ratio is a useful index of diversity of student body: The higher the ratio is; the more diversified and selective (competitive) the student body would be. UVA, Michigan, and W&M are typical schools of this kind, each recorded with about 1:2 OOS/IS ratio, and therefore the dynamic of out-of-staters have greater impacts culturally, financially and academically. This post, I focus only on the last part, academic impacts. Let me take UVAs admission stats of Class 2014 as an example (see Table 2).</p>
<p>Table 2 UVAs admission stats of Class 2014 </p>
<p>Total applications received: 22,520</p>
<p>Virginia applications: 7,864 (35 percent)</p>
<p>Out-of-state applications: 14,656 (65 percent)</p>
<p>Total offers made by UVA: 6,907 (31 percent)</p>
<p>Virginia offers: 3,380 (43 percent of Virginia applications)</p>
<p>Out-of-state offers: 3,527 (24 percent of out-of-state applications)</p>
<p>Summary of observations:</p>
<p>Fact1: The majority of UVA applicants are from OOS and OOS applicants (14,656) are twice as many as IS applicants (7,864).</p>
<p>Comments1: As an OOS applicant, you belong to the majority like the other private institutions that you apply to.</p>
<p>Fact2: UVA offered about equal number of offers to OOS (3,527) and IS (3380) applicants, which makes their OOS (24 % accepted) twice as selective as IS (43 % accepted)</p>
<p>Comments2: As an OOS applicant, UVA offers you equal number of spots as those reserved for IS but in so doing, % of acceptance rate for OOS is lowered to 24%, which put them among the elite group of schools e.g., Chicago (18%), Williams (18%), Cornell (18%), Washington (20%), Johns Hopkins (20%), Berkeley (21%), Northwestern (23%), Rice (23%), Notre Dame (27%), and Emory (29%).</p>
<p>(3) SAT scores</p>
<p>SAT is administered by one well-respected testing organization (ETS). Through the years, ETS strives to develop the SAT tests that adequately (quantitatively and statistically) reflect what a high school student should learn in reading, math, and writing; and almost every university requires its applicants to submit SAT. Therefore, I believe SAT scores would be good tools in cross-universities Quality of Student evaluations.</p>
<p>Alex and xiggi, even though there is no way of determining how superscoring affects reported SAT ranges and averages, yet I assume that every school does super-score SAT scores unless it declares otherwise. </p>
<p>As a starting point, Table 3 presents the ranking of some of the most popular national universities based on the summation of first two SAT scores (reading and writing) by the order of 50% SAT. One can retrieve those do not super-score SAT scores to create a new table for them.</p>
<p>Lesdiablesbleus,</p>
<p>Your post as follows: Yeah, the top 5% of Michigan, UVA and Berkeley students are HYP material while the next 20% are probably Ivy/Stanford/Duke/<em>insert top private school</em> material. However, the middle 50% of these schools compare favorably to schools like BC, Rochester, Tulane and Lehigh instead. Finally, the bottom 25% of these universities actually belong in a community college or a low-tier state school and only got admitted to UM/UVA/UCB due to athletics/geographical quotas/belonging to a specialty vocational school like Nursing.</p>
<p>Regardless what you intent to express your viewpoints about Michigan, UVA and Berkeley students, still your breakdowns, though not quantitatively (supported by data), brought something worthy for brainstorming and discussions.</p>
<p>Observation:</p>
<p>Based on 50% SAT data in Table 3 (for now), top 5 schools are HYPWashingtonColumbia instead of HYPSM.</p>
<p>As an example, Berkeleys 75% was 1460, which was as good as number 4 ranked Dartmouths 50% and number 1 ranked Yales 40%. Such results indicated that the top 25% (instead of 5%) of Berkeleys students are HYP material while the next 25% are probably Ivy/Stanford/Duke/<em>insert top private school</em> material. </p>
<p>Table 3 SAT scores (reading and math) for Class 2013
University 25% 50% 75%
1 Yale 1400 1490 1580
2 Princeton 1390 1485 1580
3 Harvard 1380 1475 1570
4 Washington University 1380 1460 1540
5 Columbia 1360 1455 1550
6 Dartmouth 1330 1440 1550
6 U Penn 1350 1440 1530
6 Duke 1340 1440 1540
9 Northwestern 1350 1435 1520
9 Stanford 1330 1435 1540
11 Brown 1320 1425 1530
11 Rice 1320 1425 1530
13 University of Chicago 1310 1420 1530
14 Vanderbilt 1330 1415 1500
15 Notre Dame 1320 1410 1500
16 Cornell 1290 1395 1500
16 Carnegie Mellon 1290 1395 1500
18 Emory 1300 1385 1470
18 Johns Hopkins 1280 1385 1490
20 Georgetown 1250 1355 1460
21 College of William and Mary 1240 1345 1450
22 Georgia Tech 1250 1335 1420
22 University of Virginia 1230 1335 1440
24 UC Berkeley 1200 1330 1460
24 University of Michigan 1230 1330 1430
26 University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign 1200 1315 1430
27 UNC Chapel Hill 1210 1300 1390
28 University of Wisconsin 1170 1285 1400
29 UCLA 1150 1275 1400
30 UC San Diego 1140 1255 1370</p>