If I’m reading things accurately, 583 students scored 2400 in the 2014 college bound seniors report.
Of those, 56% were male, although males made up 47% of the test-takers.
Reading more deeply, there were a total of 1,922 1600’s (Math and Critical Reading) , which imo is probably still the way the schools look at it.
Here’s a link to the source contents for 2014
http://research.collegeboard.org/content/sat-data-tables
I’m not sure those assumptions are warranted anymore. This year Stanford got 42,497 applications. Harvard got 37,305 applications. That’s about 14% more applicants to Stanford than to Harvard. I’m not sure why the applicant pool at Stanford would skew lower on SAT scores than Harvard’s applicant pool.
As for geographic considerations, the US Census Bureau says the mean center of U.S. population is now 5.5 miles southwest of Plato, Missouri, which is approximately 1,340 miles from Cambridge, MA and 1,954 miles from Palo Alto, CA. So, yes, more people live closer to Harvard than to Stanford, but not 3/4 of them.
Stanford superscores and requires submitting all tests, so their stats probably mean 800 on any of the SAT tests they have taken during HS. In contrast the College Board stats do not superscore and only include the most recent test. So if a Stanford applicant takes the SAT 3x and gets a 720, 800, and 750; the Stanford stats report his score as an 800, and the College Board stats report his score as a 750. Another issue is 18% of Stanford applicants who took the SAT received an 800, not 18% of the total applicants. According to the CDS, 86% of the entering class submitted SAT and 39% submitted ACT (some submitted both). That said, a large portion of the high stats kids are no doubt applying to Stanford, just not as high as the numbers in the earlier post suggest.
Each year the Princeton review makes a list of “dream list” colleges by surveying parents and students on what college they would most like to attend if cost and acceptance were not an issue. In each of the past 3 years, Stanford has topped this list. In the same period, Stanford also received more applicants than Harvard and had a lower acceptance rate than Harvard. However, being on the top of a “dream list” doesn’t mean one has significantly higher scoring applicants than the other. Students who have less than perfect stats can also apply to “dream list” schools. If I had to guess, I’d expect the scores of applicants as a whole are similar. Stanford might have an edge on the math due to what I’d expect to be the greater number of tech-focused applicants, and Harvard might have an edge on the CR.
Sports. The only people from our high school who were accepted to Stanford when my son applied had SAT scores in the 1200s (out of 1600 - this was in 2007 and writing had just been introduced). No one with a 1300+ had ever been accepted. My son added to those rejection numbers with a 1570 and so did a number of other academic superstar kids that year. Now that Stanford has gotten more popular their numbers may have gone up, but they still need a football team.
Superscoring didn’t improve either of my kids scores more than 10 or 20 points btw and my math kid did better in CR every time.
Superscoring is ridiculous, especially to claim a 2400 on the SAT. All a student needs to do is concentrate on one area and not worry about the others. The truly top students can perform well on ALL areas at the same time. There is a reason some schools do not accept superscoring. btw- my son got the 2400 in one session, meant nothing except bragging rights.
“Superscoring is ridiculous, especially to claim a 2400 on the SAT.
…
btw- my son got the 2400 in one session, meant nothing except bragging rights.”
Hehe.
Note that the quote was in reference to the applicant pool, not who was accepted. You mentioned your high scoring son and other academic superstar kids were a part of the applicant pool even if they were not accepted, so it’s not suggestive that high scoring applicants are primarily applying to Harvard instead of Stanford, or vice versa. Naviance for the HS I attended shows both Harvard and Stanford applicants had a median score of ~2200. Harvard had the wider score range, with lowest scoring applicants having SAT scores of ~1600, while Stanford started at ~1800; which likely relates to being located in an area of the Northeast, where Harvard is more popular.
Regarding sports, Harvard also does well in some Div I sports, and I expect accepts some Low-Low band stat athlete admits, as permitted under Ivy League conference rules. Their Men’s basketball team has done well enough to participate in the NCAA tournament in each of the past 4 years, sometimes making it to the 3rd round of 32. Looking at the percentage of entering class with scores in the 500s or lower SATs, Stanford averages ~4% per section and Harvard averages ~2.5% per section, so there is a difference, but neither one has a huge portion of the admitted class with low scores. Stanford and Harvard athletes have an identical GSR grad rate of 98%, which does not suggest one group is notably more academically qualified than the other. While Stanford may admit more 500 or less scoring athletes, I wouldn’t assume that all of those scores are athletes. My CR score of 500 was one of the ~6 lowest in my class at Stanford, yet I didn’t play any sports in HS. The lowest scoring admits I’ve heard of are often exceptional persons in non athletic fields. A good example is the poster Mr. Tubbs (won highest award given to Stanford students and was youngest ever elected official of home town during graduation year) who had the ACT equivalent of 500s on his math/science scores. I expect Stanford generally places less emphasis on scores in their admissions decisions than Harvard, so we see Stanford’s class having a bit lower scores than Harvard in all score ranges, including top scores.
The impact of athletic recruiting on SAT scores and other academic indicators at Stanford is an interesting question. If I recall correctly athletic recruits are around 13% of each Stanford class so it’s a fairly sizeable group.
I believe one of William Bowen’s studies found that the average gap between athletic recruits and students as a whole on academics is higher at Stanford than elsewhere, which makes sense as most of its sports teams are among the best in the country and therefore the pool of potential recruits is not that large.
One thing I believe is the case is that Stanford can do whatever it wants in terms of academic screening for athletes, as it is not limited in any significant way by Pac 12 conference rules. Some other schools in the conference only require NCAA minimum academics for recruits.
Of course Stanford won’t go that low, but my point is it is not limited by conference rules. I believe the same is true for schools like Duke and Northwestern. Whereas Ivies are limited by conference rules on Academic Index so it’s not just up to the discretion of each school’s admissions office.
Whatever Stanford’s recruiting polices are, they seem to be working well from an academic success standpoint. Stanford athletes have the highest FR grad among all div I colleges for which this figure is reported, by a good margin. Stanford athletes are among the top on GSR grad rate as well, meeting or exceeding the grad rate at all ivies except Dartmouth. Two of the four most popular majors among Stanford athletes are in engineering, and a notable portion of athletes later attend med school. I expect that Stanford athletic recruits are restricted to students who Stanford expects can handle the coursework and succeed academically, as determined by a variety of criteria within their application, rather than just test score, GPA, or other stats.
In sports where athletes have little chance or professionally playing the sport after college, a good portion of the top ranked HS athletes usually meet this criteria, and such student athletes are often interested in attending schools like Stanford. However, recruiting for sports like football poses more of a challenge. Even if you do have some top football recruits who are stellar students, they often favor colleges that they believe will give them the best chance of making it to the NFL, rather than top USNWR type colleges.
That’s an interesting point about football. There certainly does seem to be a lot of variability in Stanford football results, from one win in 2006 to 12 wins in a couple of recent seasons (and it looks like now regressing toward its mean of 6-8 wins if last year is any guide). Duke, Northwestern, Rice etc. have likewise had a lot of variability in football results.
Maybe the common thread is some years they can get enough of the best recruits to have strong teams (and every once in a blue moon get someone like Andrew Luck or Toby Gerhart), and some years they can’t.
LOTS of tippy-top kids don’t apply to Harvard et al because Harvard doesn’t give merit money.
And some, like my son, wouldn’t even visit the campus when in Boston to visit MIT. Son, globally gifted, did major In STEM fields but also took plenty of electives in other areas in college, including a semester philosophy course on Nietzsche (after 2 other phil. courses, not at MIT). Harvard just wasn’t on his radar.
Mine has a super scored perfect ACT score. I didn’t want him to re-take originally but on his first test his lowest score was on the grammar subscore and it is the one area that you really can easily study for and he felt like it could make a difference for a few schools or scholarships. He did improve on the re-take and it took less than an hour of studying so I think it was probably worth it.
@dcplanner, I’ve been told that, for some obscure reason (ie, one I can’t remember 
), the ACT cannot be superscored.
Not so. Historically most colleges didn’t superscore the ACT, both because the people who run the ACT discourage it and because it places a greater financial burden on applicants submitting the ACT. You can submit a single SAT score report that includes scores from any or all SAT test dates for a single fee, which is the same no matter how many test dates you include. The ACT charges a separate fee for each test date reported, so it can add up pretty quickly.
But more recently some colleges have said that they will superscore the ACT. Among others: Amherst, Boston College, Caltech, Chicago, Claremont McKenna, Colby, Davidson, Grinnell, Hamilton, Haverford, Johns Hopkins, Middlebury, Pomona, Tufts, UNC Chapel Hill, Vassar, Williams, WUSTL. A few others, including MIT, Virginia, and Illinois don’t say that they superscore, but they do consider the highest section subscores from multiple ACT sittings—which seems to be functionally the same thing.
We asked on every college visit and those who didn’t use the word super scored still said they would use the highest section subscores if you sent them all. The only one that used a totally different scoring system was GA Tech where they said they convert ACT scores to SAT scores and then superscore? He visited that one early so perhaps that one changed this year as that seems totally weird.