<p>Good point. That could explain why the SAT & class rank rankings don’t seem to match up. In addition the contract colleges draw heavily from NY state where most schools use class rank.</p>
<p>There’s also that whole “holistic admissions” thing. Admissions officers are actually reading applications, essays, recommendations and selecting people, not merely the highest set of test scores and grades period. There is certainly an obvious correlation among these factors, but in a truly selective college practicing holistic admisssions it is not absolutely necessary that certain statistics will move in absolute lockstep. </p>
<p>That does usually happen. But not necessarily, since other factors may actually be weighted as or more heavily than these couple of externally reported statistics, but do not themselves boil down to an externally reported statistic that people outside the admissions process see.</p>
<p>This comment is not necessarily targeted at Cornell’s colleges specifically, just generally.</p>
<p>@malan:that only works if this is a normal distribution we’re working with.
it’s likely to be skewed.</p>