@collegehelp Thanks so much for your work. To focus on the top school, Cal Tech, a school few where I live in NC have heard of. Yet every year it has the top or almost the top SAT ranges. Why? Because it has the clearest and fairest admission policy of all. They simply want the best students: legacies, race, income, sports, geography don’t matter. A coalition of Asian-American groups have a lawsuit against Harvard. Seems Harvard has a ceiling of about 20% for Asian-Americans. Use of ‘holistic’ admissions keeps that % lower than at Cal Tech and UCB. Are we to believe that Asian-Americans are less well-rounded or have inferior ECs?
@ColdinMinny But the athletes ARE students. If their scores are lower, they are hurting the college’s academic rep.
And regarding test optional colleges, I am fine with them. Despite my rant abut Cal Tech, I believe that holistic admissions are fine, except when they are gamed to move up in ratings. Test op schools should be more upfront regarding the % of students who don’t submit scores. Or rather, I’d like to see these stats in Princeton Review Guide or US News, so I don’t have to dig into each school’s CDS.
No, “holistic” means that admissions is not based on a point system for each section of the application (x points for academic stats, y points of extracurriculars, z points for recommendations, etc.). It means that an application is scored or rated as a whole by the admissions readers.
In practice, it is most used by the most selective colleges where the academic stats of applicants with realistic chances of admission are compressed at the top of the scale, where small differences in academic stats are not significant, magnifying the effect of subjectively graded criteria like extracurriculars, recommendations, essays, etc…
Non-holistic admissions schools that are selective are more likely to be found among the moderately selective schools. For example, all of the CSUs in California use non-holistic admissions, and all but one rely purely on a formula of (recalculated) HS GPA and (superscored) SAT or ACT score, once the applicant meets the high school course requirements for admission (for transfers, it is based on prior college GPA after meeting the course requirements for admission). Of course, many schools like open admission community colleges are not selective at all, so admissions are not holistic at those schools.
The correlation between SAT midpoint (CR and math) and ACT composite midpoint is pretty high +.61.
Here is a list sorted by ACT. Sorted then by SAT midpoint within levels of ACT.
34.5 1550 California Institute of Technology
34 1495 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
34 1494 Harvey Mudd College
33.5 1517.5 University of Chicago
33.5 1505 Harvard University
33 1505 Vanderbilt University
33 1505 Yale University
33 1500 Princeton University
33 1495 Washington University in St Louis
33 1430 University of Notre Dame
32.5 1480 Columbia University in the City of New York
32.5 1475 Northwestern University
32.5 1475 Stanford University
32.5 1470 Rice University
32.5 1460 Duke University
32.5 1460 Pomona College
32.5 1455 University of Pennsylvania
32.5 1455 Williams College
32.5 1435 Johns Hopkins University
32.5 1410 Haverford College
32 1455 Dartmouth College
32 1449 Amherst College
32 1440 Brown University
32 1440 Carnegie Mellon University
32 1420 Cornell University
32 1420 Northeastern University
32 1375 Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
31.5 1450 Swarthmore College
31.5 1440 Tufts University
31.5 1435 Claremont McKenna College
31.5 1420 Georgetown University
31.5 1415 Carleton College
31.5 1405 Vassar College
31.5 1400 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
31.5 1395 Grinnell College
31.5 1390 Hamilton College
31.5 1390 Washington and Lee University
31.5 1385 Wellesley College
31.5 1370 University of California-Berkeley
31.5 1365 Boston College
31.5 1365 Middlebury College
31 1385 Reed College
31 1380 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
31 1380 University of Southern California
31 1370 Case Western Reserve University
31 1370 College of William and Mary
31 1365 Brandeis University
30.5 1375 Colgate University
30.5 1370 Emory University
30.5 1360 Scripps College
30.5 1355 University of Virginia-Main Campus
30.5 1340 Stevens Institute of Technology
30.5 1325 University of Richmond
30.5 1320 Tulane University of Louisiana
30 1367.5 Macalester College
30 1355 Oberlin College
30 1345 Barnard College
30 1345 New York University
30 1335 Davidson College
30 1330 Colby College
30 1325 Kenyon College
30 1325 University of California-Los Angeles
30 1320 Lehigh University
30 1320 University of Miami
30 1320 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
30 1315 Colorado School of Mines
30 1315 Whitman College
30 1305 Bucknell University
30 1300 United States Air Force Academy
29.5 1395 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
29.5 1325 St John’s College
29.5 1310 Southern Methodist University
29.5 1310 University of California-San Diego
29.5 1310 Villanova University
29.5 1300 Santa Clara University
29.5 1300 Wheaton College
29 1385 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
29 1320 Bryn Mawr College
29 1300 Boston University
29 1300 Lafayette College
29 1300 Occidental College
29 1295 George Washington University
29 1290 Rhodes College
29 1290 The University of Texas at Austin
29 1275 Ohio State University-Main Campus
29 1270 University of Tulsa
29 1265 Trinity University
29 1260 Brigham Young University-Provo
29 1260 St Olaf College
28.5 1290 SUNY at Binghamton
28.5 1290 University of Wisconsin-Madison
28.5 1275 United States Military Academy
28.5 1270 University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus
28.5 1265 University of Florida
28.5 1255 Missouri University of Science and Technology
28.5 1245 Clemson University
28.5 1235 University of California-Santa Barbara
28.5 1225 Centre College
28.5 1215 Rochester Institute of Technology
28 1310 University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
28 1280 New College of Florida
28 1270 Illinois Institute of Technology
28 1255 The University of Texas at Dallas
28 1255 United States Coast Guard Academy
28 1250 Fordham University
28 1250 Stony Brook University
28 1245 American University
28 1245 North Carolina State University at Raleigh
28 1240 Bentley University
28 1240 University of Connecticut
28 1235 Emerson College
28 1235 University of Georgia
28 1230 University of Washington-Seattle Campus
28 1225 University of San Diego
28 1205 University of California-Davis
28 1200 Hendrix College
28 1185 DigiPen Institute of Technology
27.5 1265 Illinois Wesleyan University
27.5 1265 Thomas Aquinas College
27.5 1240 Skidmore College
27.5 1226.5 Michigan Technological University
27.5 1225 California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
27.5 1225 Miami University-Oxford
27.5 1225 Pepperdine University
27.5 1224 Kalamazoo College
27.5 1220 University of Puget Sound
27.5 1210 The College of Wooster
27.5 1205 Florida State University
27.5 1205 Saint Louis University
27.5 1205 University of Denver
27.5 1200 Loyola Marymount University
27.5 1195 Milwaukee School of Engineering
27.5 1185 Drake University
27.5 1170 Transylvania University
27 1239 Truman State University
27 1230 Baylor University
27 1225 Elon University
27 1220 SUNY College at Geneseo
27 1215 University of Massachusetts-Amherst
27 1210 Kettering University
27 1210 University of Maryland-Baltimore County
27 1210 University of South Carolina-Columbia
27 1205 Purdue University-Main Campus
27 1200 Chapman University
27 1200 University of Dallas
27 1200 Willamette University
27 1195 DePauw University
27 1195 Gonzaga University
27 1195 Marquette University
27 1195 Texas A & M University-College Station
27 1190 Mercer University
27 1190 Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus
27 1185 University of Alabama in Huntsville
27 1180 Texas Christian University
27 1175 Indiana University-Bloomington
27 1175 University of Colorado Boulder
27 1170 Butler University
27 1165 Wofford College
27 1162.5 Auburn University
27 1155 Loyola University Chicago
27 1125 Taylor University
26.5 1230 Soka University of America
26.5 1215 The College of New Jersey
26.5 1202 Grove City College
26.5 1190 Clarkson University
26.5 1190 University of Delaware
26.5 1185 Cornell College
26.5 1185 SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
26.5 1185 University of Vermont
26.5 1182.5 Creighton University
26.5 1175.5 University of the Pacific
26.5 1175 Syracuse University
26.5 1170 Seattle University
26.5 1160 Berry College
26.5 1160 The University of Tennessee-Knoxville
26.5 1155 Florida Institute of Technology
26.5 1150 University at Buffalo
26.5 1145 University of Dayton
26.5 1120 Birmingham Southern College
26.5 1120 The University of Alabama
26 1240 Yeshiva University
26 1215 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
26 1200 University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus
26 1195 University of North Carolina at Asheville
26 1190 Cedarville University
26 1185 Hope College
26 1185 University of Central Florida
26 1180 Franciscan University of Steubenville
26 1175 Calvin College
26 1170 LeTourneau University
26 1170 Westmont College
26 1165 Covenant College
26 1165 New Jersey Institute of Technology
26 1165 Simmons College
26 1160 Allegheny College
26 1160 Belmont University
26 1160 Ohio Northern University
26 1160 University of California-Irvine
26 1155 Gordon College
26 1150 Millsaps College
26 1146.5 University of Jamestown
26 1144 Lipscomb University
26 1140 Champlain College
26 1140 James Madison University
26 1135 Mills College
26 1130 University of California-Santa Cruz
26 1125 Eckerd College
26 1122.5 Samford University
26 1120 College of Saint Benedict
26 1115 North Greenville University
26 1113 Oklahoma Baptist University
26 1110 Valparaiso University
Holistic is about what competitive colleges look FOR, not just what they look AT. So great, a kid could look at your list and say, “Wow, lookeeme! I’ve got a 1500, I can apply to Chi, HYP and Vandy! And they must be good colleges because they have high grad rates!” Really? And, “Wow, Cornell and Brown can be my matches, cuz I beat their scores.”
But if he misses what they look FOR, how he truly matches- and presents that in his app/supp- those stats do him nothing to reach the goal. And holistic match can be rather different at different colleges.
It would be really interesting to see what the numbers would look like at Amherst and Williams if you took all the recruited athletes out.
Athletes affect most of the schools but it’s really magnified at places few like A and W, where 30%+ if the student s are athletes. Its such a significant number that overall stats may be highly misleading for a non athlete applicant.
@8bagels That would be useful info for students without hooks who are applying. But do the schools really want to reveal any differences given to athletes? And you are smart to note that these selective LACs have such a large % of athletes; this can have a much larger effect on non-athlete admissions than with huge state universities.
I think a good measure of how “holistic” a school’s admissions are would be the ratio of the ACT scores of admitted students to the ACT scores of those rejected. The lower the number, the more holistic (i.e. arbitrary) the process.
Here is an important correction to post #46. After I eliminated all of the schools with missing SAT and ACT data, I was left with 1046 schools that had complete data. The correlation between SAT CR+Math midpoint and ACT composite midpoint was +.96, not +.61. SAT and ACT measure practically the same thing. If you know one, you can predict the other with great accuracy. I sincerely apologize for my error.
Next set of schools by SAT…total of about 300 schools sorted by selectivity so far. With graduation rates…SATs are a measure of school selectivity and input quality, grad rate is a measure of output quality.
1190 86 Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus
1190 81 University of Delaware
1190 71 Clarkson University
1190 71 University of North Carolina Wilmington
1190 70 Cedarville University
1190 63 Mercer University
1188 47 University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras
1185 80 Hope College
1185 76 University of Vermont
1185 74 Drake University
1185 73 Agnes Scott College
1185 70 University of Central Florida
1185 67 SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
1185 67 University of Minnesota-Morris
1185 66 Cornell College
1185 54 DigiPen Institute of Technology
1185 51 University of Missouri-Kansas City
1185 46 University of Alabama in Huntsville
1183 73 Creighton University
1180 80 Fairfield University
1180 75 Franciscan University of Steubenville
1180 75 Texas Christian University
1180 69 University of Missouri-Columbia
1180 63 College of the Ozarks
1180 63 University of Northwestern-St Paul
1180 48 Belhaven University
1176 67 University of the Pacific
1175 86 Providence College
1175 80 Syracuse University
1175 78 Indiana University-Bloomington
1175 74 Calvin College
1175 70 University of Colorado Boulder
1170 82 Stonehill College
1170 78 Butler University
1170 78 Seattle University
1170 78 Westmont College
1170 78 Ithaca College
1170 71 Rollins College
1170 70 Transylvania University
1170 51 LeTourneau University
1165 78 Wofford College
1165 78 Clark University
1165 74 Bethel University
1165 65 Simmons College
1165 65 University of Cincinnati-Main Campus
1165 59 New Jersey Institute of Technology
1165 59 Oklahoma City University
1165 57 Covenant College
1163 71 Auburn University
1160 86 University of California-Irvine
1160 78 Allegheny College
1160 71 Virginia Military Institute
1160 70 Belmont University
1160 70 University of Iowa
1160 69 The University of Tennessee-Knoxville
1160 67 University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1160 67 University of South Florida-Main Campus
1160 65 Ohio Northern University
1160 62 Berry College
1160 52 CUNY Hunter College
1160 32 University of South Florida-St Petersburg
1155 79 Hobart William Smith Colleges
1155 78 Juniata College
1155 73 Loyola University Chicago
1155 73 Southwestern University
1155 72 Gordon College
1155 68 Christopher Newport University
1155 62 University of Utah
1155 55 Florida Institute of Technology
1155 55 University of North Florida
1155 55 American Jewish University
1155 53 Eureka College
1153 70 Coe College
1153 63 Augsburg College
1150 74 Washington College
1150 72 University at Buffalo
1150 70 Appalachian State University
1150 69 Iowa State University
1150 67 George Mason University
1150 64 Millsaps College
1150 61 John Brown University
1150 48 Wesleyan College
1150 34 University of New Orleans
1147 44 University of Puerto Rico-Cayey
1147 48 University of Jamestown
1145 76 University of Dayton
1145 71 Hood College
1145 70 University of San Francisco
1145 63 Arizona State University-Tempe
1145 54 University of Massachusetts-Lowell
1145 48 University of Houston
1144 62 Lipscomb University
1143 69 Rockhurst University
1143 56 North Dakota State University-Main Campus
1140 85 St Lawrence University
1140 82 James Madison University
1140 76 Nazareth College
1140 68 Ripon College
1140 68 Baldwin Wallace University
1140 65 Colorado State University-Fort Collins
1140 60 Hofstra University
1140 57 Champlain College
1140 37 Southern Polytechnic State University
I can see Vanderbilt is gaming the rankings–accepting only few but high scoring students on the SAT but also accepting many more through it’s transfer admission process. Of course, we all know transfer acceptance rates aren’t factored into USNWR selectivity, allowing Vandy to play this game by appearing more selective than it should.
According to the data I found on IPEDS, Davidson had a very small number of transfers (11).
Here is the percent transfers (relative to total new students) and number of transfers from the fall enrollment data for schools with higher than 550 SAT CR 25th percentile.
65% 719 Union University
46% 2162 The University of Texas at Dallas
44% 1715 University of North Carolina Wilmington
37% 367 University of North Carolina at Asheville
35% 3167 University of California-Los Angeles
33% 2459 University of California-San Diego
33% 2004 University of Maryland-College Park
32% 1435 University of Southern California
31% 1163 SUNY at Binghamton
30% 2357 University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
29% 2187 University of California-Berkeley
28% 112 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
28% 585 Columbia University in the City of New York
28% 2280 Florida State University
27% 1293 Clemson University
26% 200 Milwaukee School of Engineering
24% 1587 University of South Carolina-Columbia
24% 2307 The University of Texas at Austin
24% 355 University of San Diego
24% 1458 University of Massachusetts-Amherst
22% 134 Franciscan University of Steubenville
22% 592 University of Miami
22% 1253 North Carolina State University at Raleigh
21% 102 St Mary’s College of Maryland
21% 1372 University of Georgia
20% 218 Emerson College
20% 314 SUNY College at Geneseo
20% 1648 University of Florida
20% 358 Chapman University
20% 110 University of Northwestern-St Paul
19% 881 University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus
18% 809 University of Connecticut
18% 884 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
17% 492 George Washington University
16% 287 Southern Methodist University
16% 1331 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
16% 268 The College of New Jersey
16% 141 University of Tulsa
15% 120 Pepperdine University
15% 43 New College of Florida
15% 665 University of Virginia-Main Campus
15% 499 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
15% 554 Cornell University
14% 248 Johns Hopkins University
14% 677 Brigham Young University-Provo
14% 287 American University
14% 159 Colorado School of Mines
14% 460 Northeastern University
13% 715 California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
13% 125 University of Richmond
13% 343 Fordham University
13% 880 New York University
13% 13 Thomas Aquinas College
13% 205 University of Denver
12% 929 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
11% 33 College of the Ozarks
11% 207 Vanderbilt University
11% 454 Baylor University
11% 164 Truman State University
11% 771 University of Wisconsin-Madison
11% 479 Boston University
10% 206 Emory University
10% 140 Santa Clara University
10% 36 University of Dallas
9% 157 College of William and Mary
9% 62 Wheaton College
9% 61 Barnard College
9% 229 University of Pennsylvania
9% 148 Georgetown University
8% 121 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
8% 60 University of Puget Sound
8% 19 Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
7% 42 Concordia College at Moorhead
7% 133 Washington University in St Louis
7% 124 Villanova University
7% 24 Claremont McKenna College
7% 40 Occidental College
7% 116 Tulane University of Louisiana
7% 60 Brandeis University
6% 23 Reed College
6% 240 Miami University-Oxford
6% 97 Elon University
6% 142 Boston College
6% 118 University of Notre Dame
5% 40 Stevens Institute of Technology
5% 21 Whitman College
4% 61 Carnegie Mellon University
4% 25 Trinity University
3% 17 Amherst College
3% 55 Brown University
3% 28 Oberlin College
3% 26 St Olaf College
3% 22 Lafayette College
3% 17 Rhodes College
3% 18 Macalester College
3% 19 Wellesley College
3% 30 Bucknell University
3% 30 Rice University
3% 15 Colby College
3% 7 California Institute of Technology
3% 38 Case Western Reserve University
3% 55 Northwestern University
3% 10 Centre College
2% 18 Skidmore College
2% 10 Swarthmore College
2% 11 Kenyon College
2% 32 Tufts University
2% 29 Lehigh University
2% 11 Davidson College
2% 29 Yale University
2% 16 Yeshiva University
2% 9 Hamilton College
2% 14 Colgate University
2% 29 Stanford University
2% 10 Middlebury College
2% 6 Bryn Mawr College
2% 11 Vassar College
2% 16 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1% 5 Haverford College
1% 21 University of Chicago
1% 6 Grinnell College
1% 13 Dartmouth College
1% 5 Pomona College
1% 6 Williams College
1% 2 Harvey Mudd College
1% 13 Duke University
1% 11 Harvard University
0% 2 Washington and Lee University
0% 1 Carleton College
0% Princeton University
0% Scripps College
0% St John’s College
0% United States Air Force Academy
0% United States Coast Guard Academy
0% United States Military Academy
0% United States Naval Academy
Thanks for that data collegehelp. It is interesting to see which universities admit a large amount of transfer students, which yes, those admissions are not counted in the stats they report to US News.
I find it interesting in that on a visit (about 2 years ago) to Northeastern we were told of the low acceptance rate (and going lower) and high GPA and Standardized test scores needed to be admitted. We were also told that because of how competitive their admission process had become, some students who were not admitted for the Fall semester would be offered the opportunity to go abroad and start their freshman year off campus. It was also explained that this was a common situation (for them) and there would be a substantial number of first year students in the same boat. They would be admitted and on campus for 2nd semester.
It was a light-bulb moment for me as a parent. I felt the system was being gamed since the comparison data that is collected is based on Fall, First Time, On Campus students. I became concerned that there may be other areas where the true picture of the university had been shaded. It also made me question what other colleges and universities were willing to do to manipulate the various data points (SAT, ACT GPA, Grad Rate, Acceptance Rate) that are used for comparison for US News and other ratings.
The deferred entry offered to fall applicants does have other motivations besides gaming the rankings. When all students enter in the fall, fall term enrollment is higher than spring terms, since students who graduate early or late typically have extra fall terms compared to spring terms (e.g. a 9 semester graduate usually has 5 fall and 4 spring semesters, and a 7 semester graduate usually has 4 fall and 3 spring semesters). Having some students start in the spring balances the enrollment so that the school can avoid being over-capacity in the fall while wasting unused capacity in the spring.
In terms of gaming the rankings, the ranking should include all of the year’s matriculants from a given admission cycle, whether they start in the fall or some other term. Then the deferred entry would only be used for enrollment balancing.