College Admission: Facts, Opinions, and Myths

Parents Forum
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<p>A lot of factual information gets shared on CC – this is often a great place to get answers to the who, what, and when questions we have all had. There are also many “opinion threads” debating a variety of college and college admissions related topics. I sometimes enjoy reading them and know many of you enjoy debating them. Have at it but I tend to stay away from them in the interests of my long term health :) What I find most interesting are the Myths and Mythology of college admissions. </p>

<p>So here’s today’s Myth to consider: "There’s a hurdle ACT/SAT score for each school, even Selective schools. Once you reach that score, scoring higher doesn’t make a big difference in your chances of acceptance to that school." </p>

<p>This often shows up in the forums in the form of the “I have an X on the ACT, should I retake to try to get a higher score since I am applying to (list of selective Ivy and non-Ivy schools)”. The answer is often, “No, once you reach a certain score it doesn’t matter”. </p>

<p>I always found this answer highly questionable and a bit counter-intuitive. So I looked for data and found that 13 of 83 schools noted as “Most Competitive” by Barron’s published admissions data by either ACT or SAT score. </p>

<p>Here’s what I found:</p>

<p>1) 11 of the 13 showed significantly increased admissions rates for applicants in the top score tier they reported than the second tier. There is almost always a similar significant increase from the third tier to the second tier of scores. </p>

<p>2) Two examples:
- Dartmouth - applicants with a 36 ACT have a 123% increased chance of admission over those with a 32-35, 32-35 scorers have an almost 200% increased acceptance rate than 27-31 scorers.</p>

<ul>
<li>Princeton- applicants with a 35-36 ACT have a 120% increased chance of admission over those with a 32-34, 32-34 scorers have an 83% increased acceptance rate than 29-31 scorers.</li>
</ul>

<p>3) Others with a sharp curve i.e. significant increases – Brown 130%, Emory 187%, Hamilton 56%, MIT 50%, Princeton 120%, Stanford 63%, Cal Berkely 135%, UCLA 167%</p>

<p>4) Two with a more gradual curve – Cornell with a 36% increase of 34-36 scorers vs 32-33, Wellesley 34%</p>

<p>5) And the two with flat to negative curves – Lehigh no increase in admit rates for 34-36 vs 32-33, and Amherst. Amherst applicants with 34-36 ACT scores actually had a 9% lower admit than those scoring 30-33.</p>

<p>6) On average, there was an 84% increase in acceptance rates across these 13 schools for scorers in the highest tier they reported than the second highest tier and a 98% increase from the second highest tier to the third.</p>

<p>Assuming that these schools are a representative sample of the overall group of 83 Most Selective schools, I would call this myth ... BUSTED (Thanks Mythbusters)!</p>

<p>Talk amongst yourselves :)</p>

<p>Any other myths out there? </p>

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<p>Higher scores are often accompanied by higher grades, a more rigorous schedule, better recommendations, stronger EC’s or all of the above. It’s possible that scores still matter at the top, but it’s hard to prove without considering the rest of the students’ files.</p>

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<p>I have never heard that myth, and wouldn’t have believed it if I did. Here is why. Test scores are the one way colleges can compare candidates across high schools AND brag about the prowess of their incoming class in a way that is comparable to other colleges. So colleges genuinely get something they can brag about and that people look at when they snag students with higher scores.</p>

<p>What I have heard (and I believe) is that there is an unweighted GPA cutoff, around 3.7 for the top schools. Because GPA is more “hidden” – yes, they publish the range on the website and in the Common Data Set, but you don’t see it up front in places like Fiske. Once a student gets to that level GPA-wise, assuming they took a robust curriculum, then I think ad coms move on to other stuff (test scores, ECs, recommendations, essays).</p>

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<p>@Sue22 I would certainly expect higher test scores to be highly correlated with high grades, rigor, ECs etc. Not sure that changes what the data shows which is … small increases in test scores within the top 1, 2% of scorers make a significant difference in acceptance rates at these schools.</p>

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<p>The problem is that without more information it’s impossible to know if the difference in acceptance rates is due to higher scores or some other element that happened to be accompanied by the higher scores. IOW, perhaps Intel winners tend to have extremely high scores and also high admit rates, but what the school is looking at when they admit them is the Intel success, not the sky-high scores. Perhaps an Intel winner with a 33 ACT would have essentially the same chance of admission as a 36 ACT Intel winner.</p>

<p>It’s an interesting theory, either way.</p>

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<p>@intparent I have seen it stated quite frequently on these forums. Re: the GPA cutoff, I have heard that too. Might look at that one next. Again, can only go so far as the data available. I wish the CDS included this kind of parsed admissions data. 13 schools were comfortable sharing it. I’m guessing some of the rest think it is part of their “secret sauce” to making admissions decisions.</p>

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<p>You are not taking the statistics in context. Consider the fact that there are far fewer students applying with perfect test scores. That’s why the acceptance rate is higher among that pool. It isn’t necessarily easier to get in. It isn’t a myth, nor is it busted. When you get to the top percentiles of scorers. You are talking about a difference of very few questions. At times, maybe even a difference of one or two questions. Two questions isn’t going to be the difference between an acceptance and a rejection.</p>

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<ol>
<li>I believe that it depends on school.</li>
<li>How you tier matters. I believe that in many/most places, if your test score is in the top quartile of admitted applicants, a higher test score likely won’t change things much as at that point, it’s the soft stuff that will differentiate applicants. However, the 75th percentile at the most selective schools is now something like 2300/1550 SAT or 35 ACT, no?</li>
</ol>

<p>So if your SAT is 1400, certainly, retake if you think you can do better. If it’s 1550, I don’t think it’s worth the time and effort that can be devoted to really enhancing those essays (something that I just don’t see people besides myself stressing, oddly enough, yet which many schools deem very important).</p>

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<p>Like everything else- it depends.</p>

<p>I think there’s a difference between a kid scoring 800’s (or 780’s) first time out of the box, single test, vs. a kid who superscores in that region after 5 tries, gradually ratcheting upwards, where eventually the adcom’s begin to wonder what’s wrong with a kid taking a test 5 times. I think there’s a difference between a kid with top scores with a robust application filled with everything else that screams “academic admit” vs. a kid with a lackluster record of intellectual inquiry who happens to have very high scores.</p>

<p>But like anything else- it all gets mushed together under the guise of “top scores don’t matter once you are past a certain threshold”. Sometimes it’s true. Sometimes it’s not. Nobody here likes the ambiguity of the truth- hence all the myths!!!</p>

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<p>@AnnieBeats “You are not taking the statistics in context. Consider the fact that there are far fewer students applying with perfect test scores. That’s why the acceptance rate is higher among that pool. It isn’t necessarily easier to get in.”</p>

<p>Not following you. Brown had 197 applicants with 36 ACT scores. 48 were admitted (24.4%). Brown had 3,608 applicants with a 33-35 score. 450 were accepted (12.5%). Yes the pool of 36 scoring applicants was smaller than the 33-35’s. But … they still were admitted at almost twice the rate as the second tier scorers. Would you rather be part of a pool of 197 where 1 in 4 gets admitted, or a pool of 3600 were 1 in 8 gets admitted? The higher score, in an of itself in this case, puts you in a smaller pool with a much higher acceptance rate. The numbers are what they are.</p>

<p>“Two questions isn’t going to be the difference between an acceptance and a rejection.”</p>

<p>It may seem arbitrary and cruel, but the data suggests that is not the case. I would say this is especially true for the very bright accomplished kid without a hook or the huge standout ECs. Again looking at Brown, one or two questions could mean a smaller pool with a much higher acceptance rate or a much larger pool with 1/2 the acceptance rate.</p>

<p>That’s why I think this absolutely is a myth and I call it “busted”.</p>

<p>That being said, I would hate to think this drives a bunch of kids to run around chasing 35’s and 36’s when they have a 34. I agree they should focus on their essay, etc. and take their shot. I’m just sharing what the data shows.</p>

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<p>OP, again, you are taking the data out of context. Obviously the admissions rate is going to be higher if you have a fewer people applying from that specific pool.</p>

<p>

The people with 36 only appear to have a better shot at getting in when in reality, they don’t really have a better chance than someone with 34. More people are applying with a 34 thus, the acceptance rate goes down. Think about fractions. The bigger the denominator, the smaller the fraction. </p>

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<p>@AnnieBeats OK. one last try :slight_smile: The reason the 36 applicant has fewer people to compete with is that they had a higher score. My exact point. A higher score, even within the very small sliver of the top 1% of scorers makes a big difference. </p>

<p>The data is actually in perfect context. The context is … what % of applicants scoring a 36 were accepted? What % of those scoring a 33, 34 or 35 were accepted? OK, what was the increase in chances of the 36’s than the others. It’s a 130% increase.</p>

<p>If you don’t buy that then I would just ask … why is the acceptance rate higher for the smaller pool? What do they have in common? The context of this data is that what they have in common is a 36 ACT score, not anything else.</p>

<p>Brown had about 1500 applicants with an ACT score of 26-28. The acceptance rate was 7%. Since that was a smaller pool than the 33-35 applicants, wouldn’t your argument suggest they should have had a higher acceptance rate since it was a smaller pool?</p>

<p>I think this is hard because we don’t want it to be true. We want to believe that there’s no difference once a certain bar is cleared and that the rest of the decision comes down to grades, rigor, essays, ECs, etc. And clearly they can make a huge difference. If all that mattered was test scores then the 36’s would all get accepted, and then the 35’s, etc. Not saying you have to have a 36 or 35 or whatever to have a chance. But the data clearly shows that, for this population of schools, a higher score, even within that top 1%, can make a huge difference.</p>

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<p>OP, they don’t necessarily have a better chance of getting in. They just are competing with less people. It also depends on how you organize your data as well. You can sort it by 35-36, 32-34, and 30-32 and get dramatically different results. It reminds me off a comedy sketch done by Bill Burr. He’s going scuba diving and he is scared and his instructor tells him “95% of shark attacks happen in shallow waters”. He replied by saying “Duh! That’s where all the people are. It’s called the beach.” Just be careful with how you use and interpret statistics. There is no substantial increase in the chances of getting in. There are just less people applying from there so it appears as though you have a better shot at getting in. If 4 people apply to Brown next year with a 36 and 2 get in and 10 people with a 34 apply and 2 get in, is it really reasonable to say that the former has a better shot at getting in? There are just fewer people applying with that top score.</p>

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<p>MIT admissions officers have stated it doesn’t matter if you get above 700, and yet there is a sharp curve in acceptance rates to MIT by test scores. @Sue22’s explanation seems accurate.</p>

<p>You should realize that test scores are not completely precise, and that while people focus on the exact score, CollegeBoard and ACT try to emphasize score ranges. These can be fairly wide - for SAT it’s 30-40 points on either side for each score, and for ACT it’s 2 points on either side for each score. You can’t differentiate between scores as much as your brain want to.</p>

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<p>this is more interesting to me “Brown had 197 applicants with 36 ACT scores. 48 were admitted (24.4%)” so many kids with perfect ACT scores did not get in. So those who think that getting a 36 makes it a shoe-in are wrong!</p>

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<p>Mat maven is correct. Look at any scattergram with scores across the y axis. The better the score the more the acceptances - and this us why scattergrams have a horizontal shape when looking at acceptances.</p>

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<p>However, there’s too much multicollinearity to say that the data supports the assertion that increasing your ACT score from, say, 35 to 36 makes a difference.</p>

<p>In other words, @Sue22‌’s point.</p>

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<p>@PurpleTitan Maybe, but I’m highly skeptical that a 100+% increased admittance of the 36 scorers can be attributed to that pool having dramatically better grades, ECs, or essays than the 33-35 scorers. They would have to be dramatically better to support a doubling of the admittance rate.</p>

<p>The clincher for me is that none of those other attributes can be easily measured and marketed. As @intparent stated up the thread, test scores are easily measured and schools are able to market the quality of their incoming class based, in part, on those scores (as well as positively impacting the ever present rankings). </p>

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<p>AnnieBeats, you seem to be assuming that kids with a 36 are competing ONLY against other kids with a 36, hence if there are fewer applicants, the acceptance rate is necessarily higher. But that isn’t the case - all the kids are in the same pool. The 36s are just getting in at a higher rate. </p>

<p>As for the larger question, I think there is an element of truth to the “threshold” myth, but only an element. Yes, the top schools seem to have a rough score threshold of about 1350/1600, or maybe 1400/1600 if you take out the super-hooked (i.e, highly coveted athletic recruits, development cases, desperately underprivileged students). But what that means, it seems, is that as long as you meet that threshold, your score will not keep you out if the college has another reason for wanting you. So, if you’re a kid from Montana who grew up on a ranch and ran a horseback riding program for children with autism, yeah, that 1410 is probably perfectly fine. </p>

<p>That does not mean that the adcoms generally treat a 1400 as the same as a 1600. Sure, some of the statistical difference in admit rates can be explained by the fact that SAT/ACT score may be a proxy for other qualities, but I think it is too easy to assume that is the whole story. When it gets down to unhooked students, it simply stands to reason that , all other things being fairly equal, schools are going to show some preference for higher scorers, if only to compensate for the hooked 1350 in their published SAT ranges. While I doubt that colleges pay much mind to really tiny differences in scores - the 1550 and the 1580, for instance – both the evidence and common sense contradict the idea that once you hit the magic number, the score doesn’t matter at all. </p>

<p>That is more similar to what happens, at least in some programs, at the graduate level, where it is my understanding that the GRE really is used purely as a first cut, to the point where the professors making the decision may not even be aware of your score during deliberations; that’s been considered by an administrator earlier in the process. For undergrads, the SAT seems rather to be considered with other factors as part of the holistic evaluation, so that the extra-high score remains a plus. </p>

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<p>@apprenticeprof‌: Again, I believe that it depends on the school.</p>

<p>Some of the elites have a reputation for being more score-conscious than average (Vandy and WashU come to mind), while some, like JHU, have a reputation for not giving bonus points for super-high test scores.</p>

<p>Which would explain why Vandy & WashU are 7th and 9th when you rank all colleges by average test scores while JHU isn’t in the top 26: <a href=“Top 100 SAT Scores Ranking: Which Colleges Have The Brightest Kids?”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2014/08/04/top-100-sat-scores-ranking-which-colleges-have-the-brightest-kids/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Yet if you tier colleges by which schools are most Ivy-like in alumni achievements, JHU is at least a near-Ivy while Vandy and WashU are not (WashU is at least close; Vandy isn’t): <a href=“Ivy-equivalents - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>Ivy-equivalents - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;