<p>I compiled the list, so I'll answer a few questions. Mt. Holyoke wasn't included because it did not state an average but a range. Based on the range it was very similar to Smith. Swarthmore and Amherst also did not state averages.</p>
<p>The purpose of the list was to look at admissions at schools RELATIVE TO other schools, NOT to look at the degree to which admissions at any particular schools have become more competitive. The average SAT scores say NOTHING about the latter, because: (1) the scoring on the SAT has been recalibrated; (2) the nature of the test has changed; and, most importantly, (3) the demographics of the test takers has changed substantially.</p>
<p>Re Princeton. Right around 1965 or 1966, HYP vastly reduced the preference they gave to graduates of the elite boarding schools. I suspect, given the surprisingly lower numbers at Princeton for 1966, that it was a year or two slower in doing this, making its lower standing in 1966 a temporary phenomena.</p>
<p>I think these numbers indicate that the gap between what one might be deemed the very top schools and the close to the top schools has widened over the past 40 years.</p>
<p>A comment on the winners. I think the rise of Georgetown and Notre Dame was simply a function of an explosion of the size of the Catholic upper middle class over the time period in question, so those "Catholic Ivies" probably would have risen without even trying. The two schools that really shot up by there own devices were Duke (in the 70s) and WashU (in the 90s). I'm curious as to how they succeeded in doing what so many schools are trying to do.</p>
<p>Mount Holyoke's entering class that year had the highest SAT scores the college had ever recorded, but I have no idea what the range was. (I was a member of that brilliant class.)</p>
<p>willow - I would include Stanford in that group of largely sunbelt universities that "shot up by their own devices". According to Lawrence Handel's "College Confidential" (heheh) published in 1970, it's <em>average</em> SAT was 1300 (which would have placed it somewhere between Hamilton and Middlebury) well into the late 1960s.</p>
<p>Carnegie Tech (they became CMU in the summer of '67) didn't make the list, apparently. Kind of surprising. I guess that would make them a "big riser" in the intervening three decades.</p>
<p>can you post the schools that only provided ranges, not ordered but just provide them please. I'd still like to see how the ranges of some of these schools looked like compared to one another in 1966.</p>
<p>pennpenn, haven't you ever heard of absolutism?</p>
<p>Also, Pomona, appreciably fallen? Get a fact check, or a head check, either way, do one of them quick before we find any other fallacies in your statements.</p>
<p>Those 1966 average SAT scores are as credible as a three-dollar bill, a political speech, or the legal billings of a notorious Wellesley graduate with presidential ambitions! </p>
<p>The scores must be self-reported and utterly unverifiable. Anyone familiar with the scores reported by the non-coed schools since a modicum of verification is imposed should realize how fantastic the scores of Bryn Mawr (1363) Wellesley (1361) and Smith (1345) are, especially before the recentering. In 1966, the average SAT scores for female students were 467 and 468, for a total of 935. Scores of 650 represented the 98 and 97% percentiles for girls, 700 was the 99% percentile. </p>
<p>Truly fantastic and unbelievable! For good reasons, probably.</p>
<p>What's so unbelievable that supposedly the top two percent of all female college students went to these schools? Where do you think that all the bright women that nowadays attend Princeton or MIT or Columbia went back then? They went to one of the Seven Sisters because all those great elite universities did not admit women at that time.</p>
<p>FWIW, I've previously posted SATs for 1969-1970 on CC, someplace.
Very similar to these.</p>
<p>The reported scores for the women's colleges make sense to me. As do the others.</p>
<p>One important thing to keep in mind, the guidebooks from that era reported separate stats for men and for women, and also reported separate stats for each college within a university (eg separate scores for Cornell Arts & Sciences & Cornell Ag School, etc). At least the ones I used did. I know how I dealt with that issue to come up with my list- Arts & Sciences Colleges only (with a couple exceptions), and appropriately averaging the mens"s & women's scores. I don't know what was done in this 1966 list though.</p>
<p>Though I generally appreciate rankings, I think that ranking colleges with respect to SATs is a flawed procedure. There's bound to be tons of fallacies. Just don't rank them that way.</p>