College Admissions Statistics Class of 2020: Early Decision & Early Action Acceptance Rates

What about cornell?

@sbjdorlo, I have a family friend whose daughter was awarded athletic (gymnastics) scholarship to Stanford. It was full ride as I recalled around $65K.

@4beardolls, very interesting! Maybe I’ll get bold and ask my friend. I know they wouldn’t qualify for need-based aid, so I’m guessing he got some scholarship. I wonder how Stanford determines scholarships. I assumed it was based on revenue, but I’m not thinking that gymnastics brings in that much money. (Though I am biased, and think it’s the best sport there is)

@sbjdorlo, in some sports, the NCAA requires DivI schools to give their scholarship players full-ride scholarships if the school wants to give out scholarships for that sport.

Women’s gymnastics is one of them: http://www.thecollegesolution.com/where-the-full-ride-sports-scholarships-are/

Wow, thanks so much for the education, @PurpleTitan. So then we can assume that the full scholarships at Stanford or any other D1 school are only in those sports. This is very helpful info for me to have as a college consultant. I’ve not worked with recruited athletes before, but it’s good to begin to educate myself just in case. Thanks again.

Brown and MIT have also updated their class profiles and they have a lot of interesting facts disclosed, including waitlist numbers and other stats.

Here’s MIT:

http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats

And here’s Brown.

Brown is especially forthcoming about admissions rates by standardized test scores; it really sheds some light on whether scoring an 800 on the SAT or a 36 on the ACT has any appreciable effect on admissions rates (hint: it does).

https://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/explore/admission-facts

Fascinating statistics, and very insightful. Thank you, @spayurpets.

So now we know that when people say there is little difference between a 36 and a 34 or 35, that probably is not true.

What I find more interesting is that about 75% of applicants with perfect scores are still rejected. And that there are thousands that apply with perfect scores. And the stats would like be even higher for a few other schools.

Wondering how many perfect one setting 36 or 2400 a year?

@Zinhead

I got into an argument on the Harvard thread with people who said that it didn’t make any difference at all to admissions for people who scored 1600 SAT or 36 ACT. The logical fallacy is that even though it is true that a person who scored 1540 or 34 should not keep retaking in order to get a perfect score does not mean that the person who has a 1600 or 36 does not have a significant advantage in admissions (probably double the average admissions rate). The Harvard admissions committee doesn’t want to encourage people to keep retaking a test thinking that they can achieve a score that they are not capable of, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t look more favorably at a student who does achieve that perfect score. Both conditions can be true (and both sets of students can certainly gain admission to the top schools) but the people who say that a 1600 or 36 is not advantageous are kidding themselves.

Your stats were eye opening. I need to rethink the advice I give to students who wonder if they should retake certain scores.

I’ve been saying the same thing about SAT II scores. More people score 800 on the Math 2 than score 800 on English Lit, US History, and European History combined. I don’t think an 800 on every different subject test is seen the same way.

For ACTs, I can see the stats above do indicate a good amount of differences between 36 vs. 34-35. Both for SATs, the stats are on individual sub-scores. So it is not clear whether there are differences between 1600 vs.1550. Did I read this right?

@whataboutcollege yes, you’re reading those data right, the differences seem less for the SAT subscore, especially the advantage for 800 in math is only 2% vs. the next tier down. But of course, its pretty safe to surmise that the advantage for the 1600 or 2400 SAT combined scorers will get wider and likely is similar to the ACT.

Ehhhh.

Causation vs. correlation. I think it’s safe to say that the set who score 36 or 1600 includes a greater percentage of genius-level and/or otherwise eye-popping applicants than the set in the next tier down and that would be reflected in the rest of their app.

So it’s hard to say if a non-eye-popping applicant would actually have a better chance if they bump their ACT score up from 35 to 36.

I’m personally of the view that if you can knock off a bunch of 5’s on AP tests, that would impress adcoms more than a perfect score on a standardized test.

I’m generally with @purpletitan on this one. I think it’s analogous to early action / early decision. It looks superficially like an applicant has an advantage applying early, because the admit rate is much higher than RD, but once you disaggregate all the hooked kids - particularly the recruited athletes - the difference between the EA/ED and RD admit rates is much less than it seems.

As has been discussed elsewhere, probably something like 10-20% of admits at top-20 schools get in because they’re geniuses (as opposed to just really academically strong kids) which I view similarly to a hook. Those people would likely cluster disproportionately in the perfect toll-free zone, which would make you think that you had a better chance being admitted if you had perfect toll-free scores. If you’re not one of those cockeyed geniuses, but happen to have perfect toll-free scores, I doubt your chances are any better than the average applicant with 7-handle scores. You’ve cleared the academic bar; it’s all about the rest of the app at that point.

I don’t understand why schools show such granualar info for SAT, but never show the granular info for the ACT. I’m guessing that if the stats had shown 35 and 36 broken out, the admission stats would be very close for those 2 numbers. My though is that for ACT, 35 and 36 are pretty much equivalent to each other. But what do I know.

A 33 is not the same as a 35, yet they group them in the same range.

On the common data set its even worse- pretty useless because they show 30-36. Isn’t it helpful to know that at Northwestern U 75% of incoming freshman score between a 30 and a 36. Not.

What do you guys think about compare OLD SAT 2400 to NEW SAT 1600. Which one looks more appealling? Since 2017 students have both sets of scores and there are for sure much less 2400 compare to previous years, a single sitting 2400 should stand out right?