<p><a href="calmom%20wrote:">quote</a>you are assuming that the score itself raises chances for admission, when it is very likely that highly competitive students for the Ivies are usually equally strong on other factors that are far more influential in terms of the decision.
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<p>The data analysis appears to have gone over your head (see post #176). Please stop mumbling about correlation until you get a grip on basic arithmetic.</p>
<p>The Brown data show clearly that SAT is more influential than class rank, and has a large effect separate from class rank, whatever the level of correlation. The admission rate is the same for people who attain 750-800 on verbal SAT, or 750-800 in math, or class rank 1-2, but the first two groups are more than twice as large. Thus, we know that the high-SAT group is mostly composed of people from class rank groups with lower admissions rates (15-20 percent or less), but that the overall admission rate in this group still equals that of the valedictorians.</p>
<p>This means is that if one divides the top classrank and SAT applicants into 4 categories according to whether or not they are classrank 1-2 and whether or not they are SAT 750-800, one is forced to have a large and distinguishable effect of SAT on the admissions chances of valedictorians. Valedictorians with 750+ SATs are admitted at a much higher rate than valedictorians with 700-740 SAT's.</p>
<p>As I mentioned in post #176, this analysis can be carried out under whatever correlation assumptions you want --- assume the greatest possible measures of correlation and try to get the weakest possible SAT effect consistent with the data. Under any such model the SAT effect is substantial and quite separate from class rank.</p>
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For example, if you look at reported class rank, you will see that valedictorians fare better than any other group
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<p>Valedictorians fare indistinguishably from people with an 800 on math <em>or</em> 800 on verbal, as the web page indicates. This already indicates that perfect scorers are admitted at better than the valedictorian admit rate.</p>
<p>In fact, Harvard admits about 40 percent of SAT perfect scorers and valedictorians at closer to 20 percent, so we know that Brown admits at least 40 percent of top SAT scorers, and this is (of course) not explainable by SAT-classrank correlation. Probably among valedictorians the admit rate doubles given near-perfect SAT's.</p>