<p>Does anyone understand how a university with a high acceptance rate
could have 1st year students with high SAT/ACT scores?</p>
<p>For example:
This one school that I looked at has a 65% acceptance rate.
Its mid 50% of first year students for the
SAT: CR (610-710) M (610-680) W (590-690)
ACT: 27-30. </p>
<p>Futhermore, what determines the selectivity of a school? The acceptance rate or the average test scores/ GPA etc.?</p>
<p>^This often happens at engineering schools. It’s a self-selecting crowd that applies. Back in 2007 RPI’s stats were even higher than that and I think it’s acceptance rate may have been higher too. That year it made Newsweek’s “25 New Ivies” list and they got many more applications. I think the acceptance rate plummeted to 40%. The school didn’t get better, but a lot more people became aware of its existence.</p>
<p>^ yup to engineering schools … or for similar reasons, self-selection, all women’s schools or schools with a religious tilt.</p>
<p>One other thought … there are only about 50 schools with very tough admission rates … once you get past about the first 25 universities and first 25 LACS there are a ton of very good schools at which admission rates are not that bad.</p>
<p>There may be some excellent schools with a relatively low yield (i.e., perhaps they are located in a remote location, used as a second or third choice by a lot of top applicants), and they may need to accept a lot of applicants to fill the class–but they are still only accepting applicants with good stats.</p>
<p>An example that we came across in our search was Case Western Reserve in Cleveland - tends to have a self-selected applicant base and a high acceptance rate, but they weren’t dummies there, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>There are a lot of very good schools that are simply not ‘big names’ in common usage, but whose graduates are well-respected by those who actually know. How good a school is has not very much to do with the acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Those are mostly the schools my d applied to. Except for our alma mater (both parents) which is very selective, she applied to schools that accepted between 45-75% of applicants. Only her first safety had students with lower ACT scores. ALl the other schools are either in that range or slightly lower (26-29) AND I think one was (25-28). THe only other exception she had was a large state school with lower overall stats but an honors program that is only for 28+ scorers. </p>
<p>Not only could I find 8 schools like this for d to apply to, there were probably forty more at least in similar grouping. What they were is non NE schools, non CA schools, mostly small to medium size LACS or small universities. THere really are very few schools that are very selective. I think the figures are probably about 75 or less. There are probably at least 75 not as selective schools. Now even those has rejection rates of anywhere from 50% to 25%. But for good students with good scores, these are not difficult schools to get into.</p>