For one, let’s keep in mind that the data is quite old - much moved, even in a few years.
But, yes, Barnard’s priority has not been on chasing the “looks” of SAT/ACT averages.
Another factor could be that they put higher emphasis on “holistic” admission, and possibly also earlier, than her sister colleges at the university.
I don’t think a 20% admit rate college (in 2015) having a lower SAT range than a 6.6% admit range college is a big mystery that needs a special explanation. Barnard has a reasonably similar SAT range to colleges with similar admit rate.
Using more recent stats from 2019 (via IPEDS). The list is as follows. I used concordance to convert ACT to SAT, weighted by portion taking SAT vs ACT. “Average” is average of reported 25th and 75th percentile.
2019 Average SAT/ACT
- Caltech – 1552 SAT, 6% Admit Rate
- MIT – 1542 SAT, 7% Admit Rate
- Harvey Mudd – 1518 SAT, 14% Admit Rate
- Chicago – 1518 SAT, 6% Admit Rate
- Olin – 1514 SAT, 16% Admit Rate
- Rice – 1513 SAT, 9% Admit Rate
- Duke – 1512 SAT, 8% Admit Rate
- Harvard – 1509 SAT, 5% Admit Rate
- Princeton – 1509 SAT, 6% Admit Rate
- Yale – 1509 SAT, 6% Admit Rate
- WUSTL – 1507 SAT, 14% Admit Rate
- CMU – 1507 SAT, 15% Admit Rate
- Johns Hopkins – 1506 SAT, 11% Admit Rate
- Vanderbilt-- 1505 SAT, 9% Admit Rate
- Penn - 1503 SAT, 8% Admit Rate
- Columbia-- 1503 SAT, 5% Admit Rate
- Brown-- 1503 SAT, 7% Admit Rate
- Northwestern – 1497 SAT, 9% Admit Rate
- Stanford – 1496 SAT, 4% Admit Rate
- Dartmouth – 1494 SAT, 8% Admit Rate
- Williams – 1482 SAT, 13% Admit Rate
- Cornell – 1482 SAT, 11% Admit Rate
- Notre Dame – 1481 SAT, 16% Admit Rate
- Pomona – 1474 SAT, 7% Admit Rate
- Northeastern – 1473 SAT, 18% Admit Rate (% submitting SAT + ACT = 86%)
- Georgetown – 1467 SAT, 14% Admit Rate
- Tufts – 1465 SAT, 15% Admit Rate
- Swarthmore – 1464 SAT, 9% Admit Rate
- Haverford – 1462 SAT, 16% Admit Rate
- Webb – 1462 SAT, 20% Admit Rate
- Hamilton – 1455 SAT, 16% Admit Rate (% submitting SAT + ACT = 81%)
- Middlebury – 1453 SAT, 15% Admit Rate
- Carleton – 1450 SAT, 19% Admit Rate
- Colby – 1450 SAT, 10% Admit Rate
- Grinnell – 1450 SAT, 23% Admit Rate
- Emory – 1447 SAT, 16% Admit Rate
- USC – 1447 SAT, 11% Admit Rate
- Wellesley – 1447 SAT, 22% Admit Rate
- Vassar – 1447 SAT, 24% Admit Rate
- Washington & Lee – 1446 SAT, 19% Admit Rate
- UC Berkeley – 1444 SAT, 16% Admit Rate
- CMC – 1442 SAT, 10% Admit Rate
- U Michigan – 1442 SAT, 23% Admit Rate
- Barnard – 1439 SAT, 12% Admit Rate
- NYU – 1438 SAT, 16% Admit Rate
- Bowdoin – 1436 SAT, 10% Admit Rate
- Tulane – 1433 SAT, 13% Admit Rate
- Boston College – 1432 SAT, 27% Admit Rate
- U Virginia – 1432 SAT, 24% Admit Rate
- Colgate – 1430 SAT, 23% Admit Rate
Among colleges with a +/-1% admit rate from Barnard, the SAT averages were as follows. If you exclude the military schools, Barnard’s 1439 was the approximate median score among colleges with similar admit rate. However, if you include military schools, West Point does seem to be a major outlier, which probably relates to both an applicant pool with a different SAT profile and emphasizing criteria that is not well correlated with score.
SAT/ACT Average for Colleges with Similar Admit Rate to Barnard
West Point – 1279 SAT, 12% Admit Rate
USAFA – 1360 SAT, 11% Admit Rate
Amherst-- 1424 SAT, 11% Admit Rate
UCLA-- 1426 SAT, 12% Admit Rate
Tulane-- 1433 SAT, 13% Admit Rate
Barnard – 1439 SAT, 12% Admit Rate
USC-- 1447 SAT, 11% Admit Rate
Cornell – 1482 SAT, 11% Admit Rate
Williams – 1482 SAT, 13% Admit Rate
Johns Hopkins – 1506 SAT, 11% Admit Rate
Sorry - if it seemed as if I was challenging your various numeric sortings. I"m sure they are all accurate.
I was just adding perspective to your comparison of the different traditional undergraduate colleges at Columbia University.
The numbers for “CC+SEAS” are always a total of the Columbia College and the Engineering School. So that will likely have an impact on ACT/SAT ranges (certainly for the Math section), therefore skewing the attempted comparison.
The other point was recent data:
CC+SEAS 2021: Admit 3.9%, SAT 1510-1560, ACT 34-35
Barnard 2021: Admit 11%, SAT 1440-1520, ACT 31-32
CC+SEAS 2022: Admit 3.73%, SAT/ACT n/a
Barnard 2022: Admit 8%, SAT 1450-1540, ACT 32-35
CC+SEAS 2023: Admit 3.9%
Barnard 2023: Admit 6.5%
One thing to note is Barnard’s wider range of 90 SAT points. With 92% rejections, it shows that they could have picked higher stats students - but once an academic fit has been established, they seem to give weight to factors other than optics.
The CDS and IPEDS list the following for Barnard in 2021. It’s also relevant that most matriculating students at Barnard did not submit scores in 2021. I find looking at 2019 before most colleges went test optional/blind more easy to interpret.
Barnard 2021: Admit = 11%, SAT = 1445 to 1530, ACT = 32 to 34
Rather than Barnard, some colleges that strike me as anomalies include:
Lower Score Than Expected Based on Selectivity (2019)
- West Point – 1279 SAT, 12% Admit Rate (and other military academies)
- UC Irvine – 1302 SAT, 27% Admit Rate
- Davidson – 1405 SAT, 18% Admit Rate
- Amherst – 1424 SAT, 11% Admit Rate
- Stanford – 1494 SAT, 4% Admit Rate (Lowest admit rate college, only ~20th highest SAT)
Higher Score Than Expected Based on Selectivity (2019)
- Harvey Mudd – 1518 SAT, 14% Admit Rate (tech colleges have self selected pools)
- WUSTL – 1507 SAT, 14% Admit Rate (need aware in 2019, with wealthy student body)
- CMU – 1507 SAT, 15% Admit Rate
- Northeastern – 1473 SAT, 18% Admit Rate
- Reed – 1427 SAT, 39% Admit Rate (self selected applicant pool?)
- Stevens – 1426 SAT, 40% Admit Rate (tech colleges have self selected pools)
Is that because you are proposing an (inverse) relation between acceptance rate and standardized test score? (Not challenging your interpretation of the data, just trying to confirm that in this context, the “anomaly” are any colleges that don’t fit your expected results.)
It seems that those examples were chosen for their degree of variance from a direct relationship, which differs from what might be expected by an inverse relationship.
I am suggesting that as selectivity increases, acceptance rate tends to decrease and stats tend to increase. For example, Stanford was quite selective in 2019. One could make a case that Stanford was the most selective college in the United States. Stanford’s 4% admit rate was the lowest among colleges on IPEDS, which is consistent with Stanford being the most selective or near most selective. However, Stanford’s SAT score is not indicative of this level of selectivity. Instead Stanford had one of the lowest SAT scores among Ivy+ colleges… lower than the rest of HYPSM… . The lower score than expected based on selectivity strikes me as an anomaly. This might be suggestive of Stanford focusing less on score for at least a portion of student body.
In contrast, WUSTL’s 1507 SAT was well above Stanford and nearly identical to HYP. I expect most people would say HYPS are more selective than WUSTL, which is consistent with the acceptance rate. HYPS had a ~5% acceptance rate in 2019, while WUSTL had a much higher 14% acceptance rate. So WUSTL seems to have a higher score than expected based on selectivity, which strikes me as an anomaly. As mentioned this could relate to WUSTL being need aware and having a larger portion of students from wealthy backgrounds than HYPS.
Wouldn’t low acceptance rate be the definition of “selectivity” - no stats required?
E.g., would you be selective if you had 100% acceptance - or, is one truly indiscriminate if you choose only 10%?
All I’m getting out of it is, that some colleges chase the optics of high stats, and other colleges give more weight to other factors, as long as one passed their academic “threshold”. My theory being: a 1600 SAT student is not more likely to succeed than a 1550 SAT student - and I feel colleges know that very well - but not all act it.
Both Stanford and Davidson enroll a large number of Division 1 athletes with scholarships which can depress their scores. Stanford seeks extraordinary athletic abilities, usually far beyond the HYP level
But that would be relative to the applicant pool.
College 1 admits applicants with a 3.9 GPA or higher. 900 applicants with that GPA are admitted, while 100 applicants with lower GPA are rejected.
College 2 admits applicants with a 2.5 GPA or higher. 100 applicants with that GPA are admitted, while 900 applicants with lower GPA are rejected.
Which college is “more selective”?
“But how many times does Yeshiva get mentioned for a family where it’s important to have a sizable Jewish population?”
As with BYU, Yeshiva is a niche school which has enormous appeal for a slice of its demographic, but almost zero appeal beyond that. A kid who grew up in a Jewish home affiliated with either a Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, or no synagogue, is not going to want to attend YU. The academic requirements are pretty much set for a HS graduate who has attended a Jewish Day School, is close to fluent in modern Hebrew, and fluent in both Biblical Hebrew AND Aramaic (the language that many Biblical commentaries are written in-- scholars believe that Jesus spoke Aramaic, an interesting historical oddity…). Stern college (the women’s division) and YU itself have ONLY single sex dorms (and the campuses are miles away from each other).
A family looking for Hillel and a place where their kid can celebrate religious holidays is typically NOT looking for the “product” that YU produces.
This is one reason why rankings are both good and terrible. Good when they get a kid to consider a college not previously on the radar; terrible when they imply that # 30 is by definition a “better” college than #100 (no matter whose rankings you are looking at). There are ALWAYS factors that require “looking under the hood”.
I realize, I digress - but is that Yeshiva University in the Bronx - or a different school? I know nothing about the undergraduate college, but I know they have a number of (non-religious, accredited) graduate programs and the grad school seemed very open to non-Jewish applicants, and the course progression had looked no different than other grad schools.
Just trying to widen my perspective/insight 
None of the affiliated grad schools except for the seminary which trains Orthodox Rabbis are sectarian. Law school, med school, social work… not religious at all, plenty of non-Jewish and non-religious Jewish students. Their curriculum and faculty are completely independent of the religious studies component of the undergrad (and Rabbinic training) programs.
Yeshiva College (in Northern Manhattan) and Stern College (in midtown) are the two undergraduate programs of Yeshiva University.
Hope this helps clarify!
Harvard has a much higher percentage of Division 1 varsity athletes than does Stanford, and while there are no scholarships, athletic recruits receive a large admissions boost as well.
With respect to Davidson, note that it fields about 10 fewer intercollegiate varsity sports teams than a typical NESCAC school.
If the primary reason for the lower SAT scores is athletes, then I’d expect the 25th percentile to be lower than expected based on selectivity, but not the 75th. Davidson didn’t fit that pattern in 2019. Instead both the 25th and 75th percentile are lower than expected based on selectivity. Among <20% admit rate non-military colleges, Davidson had the lowest 75th percentile math + EBRW and tied with Tulane for the lowest 75th percentile ACT composite.
Davidson’s website explains the lower scores in 2019 by stating the following. Admitting 2/3 of the enrolled class via ED may also contribute (not as selective for ED admits as RD admits, vast majority of matriculating students are ED).
- Our standardized test scores are lower than the top 10 schools, in part because we use more reliable indicators of success, such as whether an applicant took the most challenging classes available to them and how they did. Although we will examine this finding more closely, our admission team and leadership has confidence that a holistic approach is the most appropriate way of determining who among applicants is most likely to succeed and benefit from Davidson.
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