If admissions were just based on SATs....

Applying to College
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<p>What if admissions were just based on SATs? Students with the highest SATs would go the top school on US News, students with scores below their's would go to the second highest school on US News. And so on... </p>

<p>Well, using last years SAT and US News data, I decided to figure out what SAT a student would need to get into what schools, if admissions were just based on SATs. </p>

<p>Top 5: 2270
Top 10: 2230
Top 20: 2140
Top 40: 1970</p>

<p>2360-2400 Princeton
2330-2350 Harvard
2310-2320 Yale
2290-2300 Stanford
2270-2280 Penn
2260 MIT, Caltech
2250 Duke
2240 Columbia
2230 Chicago
2220 Dartmouth
2210 Washington University
2200 Cornell
2190 Brown
2180 Northwestern
2170 Hopkins
2160 Rice, Emory
2150 Vanderbilt
2140 Notre Dame
2120-2130 Berkeley
2110 Carnegie Mellon, University of Virginia
2090-2100, University of California Los Angeles
2080 University of Michigan
2070 USC
2060 University of North Carolina
2050 Tufts, Wake Forest, LeHigh
2040 Brandeis, William and Mary
2030 New York University
2020 University of Rochester, Georgia Tech
2010 Boston College
2000 University of Wisconsin Madison
1990 University of California San Diego
1980 University of Illinois Urbana
1970 Case Western, University of Washington</p>

<p>I think it's kind of interesting to put SATs into context like that. On this forum scores below a 2300 are considered normal, but in reality the top 3 schools in the country could fit all of the 2300 scorers into their freshman classes.</p>

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<p>I wish admissions were only SAT based, I could get into my entire list</p>

<p>Keep in mind that all the schools listed above would comprise of only the top 5% of SAT scorers by the way</p>

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<p>I’d rather they be based on ACT scores… then I could get into any school :D</p>

<p>My SAT kinda blew :(</p>

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<p>in reality i have a 2370 and will probably be rejected by dartmouth anyway because i dont do a bunch of inane bs ec’s :(</p>

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<p>Actually, the top 8% to be precise. </p>

<p>On a slightly unrelated note, I remember reading an article that said that having an IQ of 100 means that a regular high school curriculum pushes you to your limits academically. And an IQ of 115 is more or less necessary to really get a solid undergraduate degree, which corresponds to an 1850 on the SATs.</p>

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<p>NOT AT ALL likely, especially based on international comparisons of middle school and high school curricula. Most United States schools serve up lessons that are ridiculously easy for learners of most ability levels. But of course that reduces opportunities for intellectual growth during the teen years, so some of the courses near the end of high school do look hard to a lot of students, because they aren’t well prepared. Think what would happen to a soccer team if it never did any distance running or never played another team with a winning record–it wouldn’t improve very fast, and eventually playing a normal level of soccer for that age group WOULD seem hard to that team.</p>

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<p>My source on the IQ of 100 claim is Charles Murray:</p>

<p>[Extra</a> - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009535]Extra”>http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009535)</p>

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<p>I’m skeptical about people’s claims that the US has easier High School curricula than other countries. </p>

<p>[NationMaster</a> - Universities > Top 500 (per capita) (most recent) by country](<a href=“http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_uni_top_500_percap-universities-top-500-per-capita]NationMaster”>http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_uni_top_500_percap-universities-top-500-per-capita)</p>

<p>The US is pretty average in # top 500 colleges per capita, and the kids who go to top colleges clearly went to US high schools. </p>

<p>Granted, there are internationals at US colleges, but they’re the minority. If US high schools were really so inferior to other country’s high schools, then US colleges would be vastly inferior to overseas schools because most of their students went to US high schools. This isn’t the case. </p>

<p>And the figure I just linked to probably underestimates the United States since many of our top students go to liberal arts colleges and not big research universities.</p>

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<p>based on SAT scores and this conversion chart i have a 149.28 or 99.949% IQ.</p>

<p>[SAT</a> I to IQ Estimator](<a href=“http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/SATIQ.aspx]SAT”>SAT I to IQ Estimator)</p>

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<p>That SAT/IQ conversion chart doesn’t take into account SAT Prep vs. taking it cold for the first time. An moderately above average HS student who takes an expensive SAT prep course could probably manage to get a 2100 on their third try with access to the best recourses.
It might be somewhat accurate for people who take it once without prep, but keep in mind IQ measures intelligence, and SAT measures the ability to succeed in college, i.e. math skills and vocabulary rather than logic. The two are definitely correlated, but that chart is not exactly reliable.</p>

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<p>also doesn’t take into account people who are brilliant or extremely talented in one specific area but not SATs. to use a somewhat overused example, I bet Einstein wouldn’t have done well on his SATs</p>

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<p>That SAT to IQ estimator is based on the old SAT, which had a different standard deviation, so new SAT results are going to be different.</p>

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<p>Kids who received at least part of their primary or secondary education overseas before coming to the United States often fare very well when applying to United States colleges. The way to compare curriculums is to compare them directly. (I have observed schools in another country, and own textbooks from several countries.) Most international studies of education </p>

<p>[Trends</a> in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) - Overview](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/timss/]Trends”>TIMSS - TIMSS) </p>

<p>[TIMSS</a> & PIRLS International Study Center](<a href=“http://timss.bc.edu/]TIMSS”>http://timss.bc.edu/) </p>

<p>don’t show the United States doing as well as it could, especially for the bottom half of the students. Charles Murray isn’t capable in the languages of the most interesting countries in this regard to fully grasp what is possible. He was overseas for a time in his younger years, and that does help him have some interesting perspective on programs to alleviate poverty, but he underestimates how much is still possible in curriculum improvement in the United States.</p>

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<p>I think those stats are pre-1994.
No way is 1200 above the 90th percentile now!</p>

<p>According to that list, I should be at Penn, lol!</p>

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<p>sorry, but there is no way my IQ is 140, I’m no super genius</p>

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<p>The problem with that method is that you could very well have a biased sample. The US doesn’t weed anyone out at the middle or high school level, so it’s very well possible that the US simply appears to be academically weaker because we educate a larger sample of the population. </p>

<p>At my school, a lot of the brightest and most hard working students are from China, but the average Chinese person isn’t more capable or better educated than the average American, it’s just that only an exceptional Chinese student can go to a private school in the US. But an above average American can go to a US private school. There’s a sampling bias. </p>

<p>A better method would be to do something like take the top 1% in the US and compare it to the top 1% in another country.</p>

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<p>The difference is schools in other countries focus a lot more on pure academics. Our schools focus on a liberal arts education and put a huge emphasis on things outside the classroom. When I visited my family in Albania, I was amazed at what my cousin was learning (and he said he was a very below average student). The required classes at his high school included 4 years of physics, at least math up to pre-calc for even the lowest level students, and even electrical engineering type classes. The only things they had non math/science related was Albanian history, Albanian language, and English. Granted he went to a “technical” school where the focus was math/science but he said that’s how schools are there. You basically specialize in purely academic fields starting in high school and there’s no focus on this “well-rounded” student idea we have in America. </p>

<p>More proof of that is the college admissions in most European countries. They only look on academics and you take entrance exams based on what you studied in high school/plan on continuing in college while anything outside of the classroom is disregarded. I know Oxford and Cambridge specifically say that they don’t care about your EC’s. </p>

<p>So I guess its not that high schools are <em>better</em> outside the US but the focus is different. Here we care about well rounded students and we leave college for specialization so as far as the purely academic part of high school goes, yes our high schools are generally weaker but our high schools aren’t necessarily worse.</p>

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<p>For an ACT equivalent: </p>

<p>36 - Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT
35 - CalTech, U Penn, Columbia, U Chicago, Duke
34 - Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, JHU, Berkeley, Northwestern, Rice, Emory, WUSTL
33 - Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, UVA, U Mich, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, USC, UNC, Tufts
32 - Georgia Tech, NYU, BC, U Rochester, William & Mary
31 - UIUC, UCSD, UW Madison, Wake Forest, Brandeis, Lehigh, U Washington, UT Austin, Case Western, RPI, UC Davis, UCSB, UCI
30 - U Florida, Penn State, U Maryland, GWU, Boston U, U Miami, Syracuse U, Pepperdine, Tulane, Ohio State</p>

<p>And so on</p>

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<p>Do all Albanian kids go to those schools? Is it mandatory? What about the kids who can’t handle the courseload? Do they just drop those kids, or do they go to different schools? </p>

<p>The reason why US schools are more well rounded is probably because EVERYONE, literally everyone, goes all the way through the public education system. Kids who aren’t going to go to college need to get a liberal arts education that allows them to be an effective citizen and part of society, not a super-intense academic courseload that prepares them to go to college. </p>

<p>Thanks for ACT list, myDixieWrecked.</p>

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<p>No prob but my list isn’t official or anything it’s just an approximation of what I think it would be.</p>

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<p>Haha. I could get in anywhere… but I’d choose one of the schools in the 2170-2190 range. Which would bump THOSE kids down… lol. This system could get complicated.</p>