<p>Someone recently posted a suggested numerical way to figure out which schools are "Reach, match & safety," by positioning your child's SAT or ACT score against the 25-75 statistics published by the school. I have searched for this posting to no avail, so I ask that it be written again. It was something like (I think), if your child's score matches the 50th percentile then....something. I am sorry to bring up something that has already been addressed, and thanks for the help.</p>
<p>good question MissouriGal....I too have found little written on this subject, but here's what I have done....</p>
<p>For SAT's only!:
- Safety: student's SATs are > than 75%
- Match: student's SATs are between 50% - 75%
- Reach: student's SATs are between 25% - 50%
- Real Reach: student's SATs are <25% </p>
<p>Using this approach for instance, doesn't get one's hopes up too much on the Ivies, as common sense would dictate.</p>
<p>Of course there is MUCH more to the story than standardized test scores, and other (sometimes more important) factors may sway the categorization to another bucket.</p>
<p>I took all my S's candidate schools, threw them into a spreadsheet with percentiles & color coded along the 4 categories....just one way to look at it.....at least its a good communication tool w/ S.</p>
<p>If you have access to your child's school's scattergrams, with real data for that school's admissions results, I can also share my approach to estimating the "reach-match-safety" categorization using those data....much more applicable to a specific student's situation I think.</p>
<p>Many of us have used the 75th percentile to indicate safeties and the 25th percentile to indicate reaches.</p>
<p>This crude guide can yield some unfortunate results. The guide probably works reasonably well for schools which are not highly selective, provided your kid has comparable statistics for gpa and class rank and EC's and recs are also comparable. It is best to view all highly selective schools - especially the Ivies - as reaches.</p>
<p>yes, on the highly selective schools as edad mentioned, SATs alone can be misleading. Its much clearer on scattergrams, where it usually sums up to a reach under virtually every student's scenario, and at best, a match (with low admissions probability) for the absolute best academic students.</p>
<p>I concur with the last few posts. No highly selective school is a safety or a match unless you are a recruited athlete who the school itself is going after.</p>
<p>Although this is an arbitrary rule of thumb, I view a "safety" as a college to which the applicant's chances of admission are 90%+.</p>
<p>I would also caution anyone looking at the very selective schools into taking those ranges as a fair representation of the school's true standards in the testing category. Don't forget that those stats include kids with all kinds of hooks, whether its an athletic recruit, a huge talent, those with geographic or socioeconomic hooks, URM, legacy, big donors, etc. From what I have read, the 75% and up level is closer to where you want to be <em>if</em> you have none of the above going for you. I would disclaim what I just said as being extremely simplistic, as obviously SAT score is just one factor of the many considered!</p>
<p>And if you have a "brilliant underachiever" like my junior S, whose SAT scores are well above most 75% marks for the schools he's looking at (which do <em>not</em> include The Most Selective) but who hasn't quite gotten it together to turn in homework often enough to reach a 3.0 GPA, all bets are off. The SAT ranges are a good start, but only if a school's Common Data Set shows they rank standardized test scores as "Very Important".</p>
<p>interesting sidebar to backup roshke's point on non-hooks better aim for >75% at the highly selective.......via on online student resume service, I was recently looking thru this year's graduates from a highly selective LAC..virtually everyone not only included there GPA on the resume as has been the norm, but SATs also. It stacking up the athletes against everyone else, almost 100% of the non-athletes w/ reported SATs had scores above the school's 75%.......athletes were 50% and less for the most part. Stating the obvious perhaps, but I saw it first hand with this one small sample set, perhaps 20-30 resumes.</p>
<p>another thing to bear in mind when looking at the 25-75 numbers. remember these are the stats of the kids accepted. it tells you nothing about the kids rejected. at top schools, a high percentage, even a large majority, of applicants with those top scores may have been rejected. unfortunately, alot of schools do not provide the stats that help you see this bigger picture (ie what percentage of applicants scoring at the 75 percentile were accepted, etc.)</p>
<p>obviously, the better your child's stats compare within the range, the better you can assume his or her chances are -- just don't fall into the trap of assuming that this tells the whole story.</p>
<p>When you look at the published 25%-75% stats for a college, also remember that the school's range of SAT scores is often achieved by adding the ranges of the two individual tests, math and verbal. But this is not the same number that would be achieved by giving the range of the sum for the 25%-75% of the applicants...the scores will skew. So what is reported is usually a bit higher than would be reported if all of the scores of the actual accepted pool of kids were used. It's a little trick the colleges have to look better in the US News rankings, in my opinion.</p>
<p>I would echo that when looking at the most selective schools, that even if your SATs are at the higher range for that school, you can't go by that in determining reach, match, safety. For those schools, they are a reach for anyone. When determining Reach, Match, Safety, I use a combination of not just the SAT score range but also factor in the acceptance rates. Therefore, a school with an acceptance rate of 15%, even with SATs at the 75%tile range, is still a reach. My kids looked at the admit rate along with the SAT ranges and GPA and rank and stats of that sort to determine whether it was a reach, match, or safety for them.</p>
<p>Okay reasonabledad, help me interpret this: my d has very high math scores, but only slightly above average verbal scores. As a result, for her chosen schools, she often is above the 75% range in math but near or sometimes below the 25% range for verbal. She's a 3.9 uwGPA. How do you compare her chances with those stats?</p>
<p>Okay, a few clarifying points:</p>
<ol>
<li> I believe The 25%-75% numbers found in the usual places (US News, PR) are for enrolled students -- as on the Common Data Set reports.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>2.</p>
<p>daaaaad ~ I think your situation is far from rare. Is your D headed to the math/sciences/engineering side? If so, she may not be hurt much, except, I think, at the very top schools (Yale, MIT, etc) where they can fill every class with top kids without thinking about overlooking a low verbal score. If you want to list some of your Ds schools, and give her numbers, I think a lot of parents could give you an opinion. If you list more info, tell us if she is a URM too, since SATs don't tell the whole story...</p>
<p>Ugh, I accidentally hit the quick post button. Sheesh. To continue:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>SATs for accepted students are ordinarily a touch higher than for enrolled.</p></li>
<li><p>On the common data sets, most schools report the 25%-75% for Critical Reading and for Math separately, and most do not provide an actual combined 25%-75% range. What US News/PR do is just add up the 25% figure for CR and M and the 75% figure for CR and M, to give a combined range.</p></li>
<li><p>The effect is to skew the combined figure slightly: in reality, the real 25% combined figure would be slightly higher than what US New/PR report and the real 75% figure slightly lower. </p>
<p>This makes sense if you think about it. The kid with, say, a 650 Math, which is the 25% figure at School X, is unlikely also to have a 660 CR, which is the 25% figure at School X. More likely the kid with 650 M will have a somewhat higher CR score -- which makes him more attractive. </p>
<p>Some actual data bear this out. Rice Class of 2008 is 660-760 CR and 670-780M; in US Newspeak that is reported as 1330-1540. But Rice itself posts the actual combined 25%-75% figures: 1350-1510.
Similary, Washintgon and Lee for 2009: CR 660-739, M 660-720; 1320-1450 in US News terms. Actual combined figure for W&L: 1340-1430.</p>
<p>Not a major difference, but there it is. </p></li>
<li><p>Daaaad: Yeah, the lopsided kid is hard to gauge. My D was lopsided the other way: CR above 75% at any school you name; but M more than 100 points lower, putting her around 25% figure (or just above or below) at the better schools that were on her list. (Fairly similar GPA to your D.) She was accepted ED at Wesleyan, where her Math score was just above the 25% figure -- and her combined score put her comfortably above the Wes median, but below the combined 75% (probably about 65% I'd guess). Wes was a Match/Reach for her according to her GC (and we agreed).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>At many competitive schools, I suspect that almost all of the admits below their 25% number and most of those below 50% are recruited athletes, URM's, development potentials, and perhaps some other special talents. For other applicants, there is little comfort in being much below the 75% number. That is the bottom half of the relevant range</p>
<p>carolyn has posted beautifully on this exact subject, but I am not sure I can find it among her many posts. We'll hope she chimes in here. In addition to what others have said here, I do remember her factoring in the schools' acceptance rates in determining reach/match/safety. EG, to be a safety, a school has to accept at least x% of applicants (I don't remember her cut-off; 50%?). Any school which accepts in the near single digits (10%, 12%...) should be treated as a reach no matter your SAT's. Remember that schools such as Stanford reject 50% of 800/800 SAT scores. Those are actually good odds, but not safe odds.</p>
<p>I generally agree with PapaChicken, but it varies case by case and on the schools to which you are applying. For example, I have a 34 on the ACT (converts to 1520 2-score) but my GPA is on the low side (3.6). Using his method, and Northwestern's 25-75% range of 1320-1500, Northwestern would be a safety for me! (I wish!!). But it isn't only faulty in terms of the hardest schools to get in to. Go a step down, to UCLA. Score range is 1180-1410, so I'm far above the 75%. But, I could tell that this would not be even close to a safety because the percent of freshmen in the top 10% of their class is 97%. This means they obviously care a lot about GPA, which would put me at a disadvantage. On the other hand, looking at Carnegie Mellon (where I will be attending :)) the score range is 1290-1480, so I am above the 75%, but not by that much. But, the % in top 10% is 69%-very low- showing that they are more concerned with scores than grades. </p>
<p>Also, make sure to have one big safety where your son's SATs are significantly above the 75th percentile, GPA is above their average, and that has a high acceptance rate. (This is often a state school). Also, if your school has a program called TCCI Naviance it graphs the GPA and SAT of other students that applied to different colleges from your school. Look at where your son falls...if everyone got in its a safety, most its a safe match, half its a good match, less than half it's a reach. If you don't have naviance, search for it on this message board and there are links to other school's programs.</p>
<p>Mootmom,
The thing in your son's favor is his gender. I have seen boys with the same 1300(old) SAT, GPA hovering at 3.0 weighted (using the one or two honors classes!) get in at places with >60% women and reported entering freshman GPA of 3.5, SAT under 1200.</p>