<p>I was reading this Admissions Book by Princeton Review and in it they said that most colleges lie about there average SAT scores by including people who they admitted, but ended up going to better schools or by not including minorities or athletes, etc. Is this true? they claim that since the colleges are the ones who report their averages, they purposely alter them so that the college looks more selective</p>
<p>Most schools report the middle 50% scores of the students they admitted so the low (as well as the high) end of the spectrum isn't revealed. I don't regard this as dishonest though. It's not like they hide the fact. I would prefer to know what numbers helped students get accepted (rather the scores of attendees) because it gives me a ballpark idea of what it takes to get admitted. I think that SAT scores listed in admissions data are usually superscored which might bump the numbers a little higher too. I don't see this as "lying." It may be worthwhile for a student to apply to a school that seems slightly above his score range. If the application is otherwise strong it may lead to an acceptance. </p>
<p>Some athletes and minorities do just fine on the SATs by the way.</p>
<p>^^^I think the dishonesty being discussed in the OP refers to the fact that, by commonly agreed upon convention, the data in the Common Data Set is supposed to include only students who actually matriculated at a school. It is not supposed to include all who were accepted but did not enroll. The distinction may be important if a potential student is trying to gauge the academic strength of a school's student body. (The strongest students, SAT-wise, may well have chosen to enroll elsewhere.)</p>
<p>Other schools have been known not to report SAT scores for students who also submitted ACT scores, or not report the verbal SAT scores of international students; both of those actions are also in violation of agreed-upon rules.</p>
<p>There have been documented cases (and many other stories circulate in the admissions community) of schools reporting their SAT data in various creative ways, including: not counting certain categories of "special" students, such as athletes, minorities, non-native speakers; reporting all accepted students rather than matriculating students; creative reporting of who withheld scores in SAT-optional contexts; rounding anything over .00 upward in 10-point increments, et al. There are also schools that don't accept the SAT to meet their standardized testing requirement, but still reports their SAT scores to USNews (that really inflates the figures.) While we know that such practices go on, no one really knows how widespread they are.</p>
<p>Some of these creative reporting habits were unearthed when enterprising reporters compared the data from reports to bond rating agencies (where there's a legal penalty for lying) to figures submitted to USNews and the Common Data Sets.</p>
<p>Like all data, it is subject to many whims - the quality of the database, the person picking the data, the interpretation of the request, etc. You're right to be a skeptic, but really, only the ranges matter much anyway.</p>
<p>ya your all right, if someone gets accepted but ends up going to a better school, how does the college replace him/her? Does it call someone who got rejected and tell them they were accepted now? how many people usually get on waiting lists? sry for all the questions.</p>
<p>what about GPA- you see these schools with AVERAGE GPAs that are almost perfect, which on its surface is just not believable- wonder if they manipulate that data is a similar way</p>
<p>aznsens: </p>
<p>For starters, schools accept way more kids than they plan to enroll, because they know some will choose other schools. </p>
<p>Many schools also have wait lists. Some schools, when they realize they might end up under-enrolled, will select kids off the wait list. Other schools will rarely take anyone off the wait list.</p>
<p>(And don't assume that all kids who turn down a college are headed to a "better" school. Lots are just heading to better scholarship offers or schools they simply like better.)</p>
<p>Does that answer your questions?</p>
<p>yes it does, thanks, but one more question: what is the difference between a matriculant and an admit? im just trying to understand the freshman profiles better.</p>
<p>admit is someone who was admitted, and matriculant is someone who actually registers and goes there (the second group is smaller and is the yield group)- how many admitted who actually go</p>
<p>ok thanks, and i agree with you on the gpa, maybe they are altered in a similar way or weighted some way.</p>
<p>what does percent yield mean when they are talking about matriculants? does it mean the percentage of people who were accepted who actually attended the school? thanks</p>
<p>You've had some good replies already, especially the one that pointed out that there are legal penalties to colleges that lie in certain ways about SAT score ranges of their students. </p>
<p>The most common way that colleges lie about their SAT ranges is by reporting ranges for their ADMITTED class, usually in a press release soon after offers of admission go out, and certainly by the beginning of the next school year, which for all but the top four or five colleges will be a higher range than the score range for the ENROLLED class (what replies above referred to as matriculants). A student with a strong set of scores will be admitted to more than one college, very likely, and will enroll at the college that student thinks is best. Other colleges that admitted that student will only enroll students with weaker scores, so the score ranges of their ENROLLED students will be lower than the score ranges of their ADMITTED students.</p>
<p>I've found that knowing the SAT scores for admitted students and for enrolled students are equally helpful. To see who you are competing against to gain admission, look at admitted scores. To see who you'll actually be sitting next to in class, look at enrolled scores. The Common Data Set for each school should report enrolled scores.</p>
<p>For example, for Pomona College:</p>
<p>Admitted SAT scores: 750CR, 740M, 740W.
[url=<a href="https://wfs.pomona.edu/jlr04747/www/FactSheet%2007-08.pdf?uniq=5krmx7student%5DEnrolled%5B/url">https://wfs.pomona.edu/jlr04747/www/FactSheet%2007-08.pdf?uniq=5krmx7student]Enrolled[/url</a>] SAT scores: 726CR, 717M, 710W.</p>
<p>Percent yield = # enrolled/#accepted</p>
<p>o wow, that means that only 35 percent of the accepted students get into USC, thats the college i was looking at</p>
<p>"For example, for Pomona College:</p>
<p>Admitted SAT scores: 750CR, 740M, 740W.
Enrolled SAT scores: 726CR, 717M, 710W."</p>
<p>Actually, the problem with this example is that it is comparing different things: median scores for admitted; mean scores for enrolled.</p>
<p>Try this for Amherst: <a href="https://cms.amherst.edu/media/view/7761/original/amherstcollege_ssr2010.pd%5B/url%5D">https://cms.amherst.edu/media/view/7761/original/amherstcollege_ssr2010.pd</a></p>
<p>Class of 2010</p>
<p>Accepted Mean SAT 723CR 714M 715WR
Enrolled Mean SAT 711CR 706M 705WR</p>
<p>Accepted Mid-50% SAT 680-790CR 670-780M 670-770WR
Enrolled Mid-50% SAT 670-770CR 660-760M 660-760WR</p>
<p>Um, I think the Pomona numbers represent the mean in both cases. The reference to the accepted students' SAT scores mentions "average" SAT scores twice - usually this is the arithmetic mean. It gives the ACT as the median, however.</p>
<p>"Um, I think the Pomona numbers represent the mean in both cases. The reference to the accepted students' SAT scores mentions "average" SAT scores twice"</p>
<p>Well. </p>
<p>Sure, "average" is properly used to represent "mean."</p>
<p>But what is more likely: that the term "average" was misused in the cited article, or that the mean for all three components of the SAT turned out to be nice round numbers (750, 740, 740). Compare: 726, 717, 710, 723, 714, 715, 711, 706, 705.</p>