<p>For those of you who like debate which schools have moved up and down, here is a list of schools in order of average SATs for the class entering in 1966. Some familiar schools are not included because they stated ranges rather than averages. It's from The American Counsel on Education's "American Colleges and Universities (10th ed.)</p>
<p>Cal Tech 1429
MIT 1428
Harvard 1389
Yale 1380
Rice 1368
Bryn Mawr 1363
Wellesley 1361
Weslyan 1356
Pomona 1345
Smith 1345
Columbia 1344
Brandeis 1337
Brown 1330
Reed 1330
Chicago 1329
Williams 1323
Dartmouth 1323
Carleton 1323
Princeton 1321
Oberlin 1320
Cornell 1313
Penn 1309
Barnard 1305
Hamilton 1304
Middlebury 1299
Trinity 1299
JHU 1291
Davidson 1279
Vassar 1276
Tufts 1276
Bowdoin 1260
Duke 1257
Georgetown 1255
Grinnell 1255
BC 1254
Colgate 1253
Vanderbilt 1252
Kenyon 1250
Bates 1244
Conn. Col. 1240
UVA 1239
Colby 1236
W&L 1228
Wells 1224
Emory 1223
Wash U Stl. 1222
Macalester 1217
Northwestern 1207
Notre Dame 1196</p>
<p>Comparing that to today, I'd say the schools that have risen the most (relative to the other schools) would be, in no particular order, Princeton, WashU, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Duke, Bowdoin and W&L.</p>
<p>The schools that have appreciably fallen would be, in no particular order, Rice, Reed, Bryn Mawr, Weslyan, Oberlin, Brandeis, Smith, Pomona and Wells.</p>
<p>As an aside, from the non-average stats for other schools, it would appear that Amherst would be in the gainers list and Mt. Holyoke in the losers.</p>
<p>There was a pretty detailed assessment of grad depts done in the early 60's and known as the Carter Report. Another was done in 1970 by Roose-Anderson. I'd love to find the results.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure that it has become easier to score higher on the SAT. Regardless, whether one's SAT scores rise or drop a little doesn't make a difference. Of interest to me are these:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Bryn Mawr 1363
Wellesley 1361
Weslyan 1356
Pomona 1345
Smith 1345
[/quote]
</p>
<p>which all were higher than the likes of Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Chicago, etc.</p>
<p>Also, I believe the SAT scores were re-scaled/centered in the 90s (someone correct me) and it was much more difficult to get a perfect score before then. (again, correct me)</p>
<p>The average SAT scores at nearly all of these schools have risen since then. I'm not sure what that means. Either more students are scoring higher, or as one poster says, the SAT scores were re-scaled.</p>
<p>"The test scoring was initially scaled to make 500 the mean score on each section with a standard deviation of 100. As the test grew more popular and more students from less rigorous schools began taking the test, the average dropped to about 428 Verbal and 478 Math. The SAT was "recentered" in 1995, and the average "new" score became again close to 500. Scores awarded after 1994 and before October 2001 are officially reported with an "R" (e.g. 1260R) to reflect this change. Old scores may be recentered to compare to 1995 to present scores by using official College Board tables, which in the middle ranges add about 70 points to Verbal and 20 or 30 points to Math. In other words, current students have a 70 and 30 point advantage over their parents."</p>
<p>The list is a snapshot of which colleges mattered most to the Eastern Seaboard Establishment in 1966. I think the consensus of opinion is that as airplane fares became deregulated and college admissions became "globalized" to an extent, larger universities tended to shove aside the traditional LACs (the USNews poll actually abetted this by creating separate surveys for each but annually seeding the research universities "first"), single-sex was "out" and suddenly places like Stanford and Duke were in play.</p>
<p>It probably did not average its SATs, but, submitted the mid-50% range that we are more familiar with today. The ironic thing is that scarcely any schools still average their SAT scores, making it difficult to make a comparison today.</p>
<p>Yes, the SAT was recentered in the 1990s. There's even a chart somewhere for converting scores from the years before the recentering into "new" scores. </p>
<p>When I took the SATs, back in the late 1970s, it was much harder to get an 800 in one area and next to impossible to get a perfect 1600.</p>
<p>The Cartter report came out in 1964 and Roose & Andersen's "Rating of Graduate Programs" came out in 1970, as you noted.</p>
<p>For other "old rankings," there was one that came out in 1925 (!!) by Hughes ("A Study of Graduate Schools in America") and another (presumably an update) in 1934. </p>
<p>Another interesting old ranking was part of Ladd & Lipset's major faculty survey done in 1977. Faculty in each field were asked to name the top five departments nationally in their field, and then rank them.</p>
<p>The Committee on an Assessment of Quality-Related Characteristics of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States came out with a five-volume ranking in 1982--although I don't think they did an overall ranking, but rather showed how departments/schools scored on a vast variety of measures.</p>
<p>There used to also be periodic rankings that would come from the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils.</p>
<p>barrons will be interested to know that Hughes' measures seem to have placed Wisconsin at #5 in 1925, beaten only by Chicago, Harvard, Columbia, and Yale. Wisconsin actually fares extremely well in all these rankings.</p>