I was looking at average sat for top schools. For example, Yale’s average SAT is 1515 while Princeton’s is only 1505. Does that mean Yale emphasizes more SAT compared to Princeton?
This difference is like a literal 2-5 question swing on the exam and is absolutely meaningless in the context of admissions.
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1505 vs 1515 is statistically insignificant, rendering your question moot.
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No, it means that, for that pool, they happened to choose kids who happened to be among higher scorers. AND, who had everything else the college looks for. Averages are not conclusive.
If your gpa is in the tank, don’t count on a tippy top ignoring that, no matter what std scores you have.
What about Vanderbilt and Cornell? Vanderbilt’s average is 1505 while Cornell’s is 1480. That’s a 25 point difference
A 25 point difference is still not that significant. Regardless, you should just try your best on the exam no matter what; if you have already taken the exam and are trying to pick colleges based on that, there are resources for that. As for differences in SAT scores among schools, that is just a product of their selection, not necessarily “emphasis” on SAT or GPA. The only school that does have an objective bias towards high test scores is Caltech, and maybe UChicago.
Not now. Caltech no longer considers SAT subject test scores, and will not be considering SAT or ACT for the next two years.
https://www.admissions.caltech.edu/apply/first-year-freshman-applicants/standardized-tests
To hell with exams I guess! Thanks for correcting me…
With respect to the original question, maybe.
For example, it was probably the case for USC versus UCLA, where their frosh profiles indicated that USC frosh had higher SAT/ACT scores, while UCLA frosh had higher HS GPAs, and various other indications also suggested that (general UC policy de-emphasizing SAT/ACT relative to HS GPA, and USC’s historical chasing of high test scores to climb the rankings over a few decades).
But it may not necessarily be the case for other college comparisons, especially if you have only SAT/ACT scores and not HS GPA to compare between the colleges.
I heard Vanderbilt is trying to climb rankings
These are really nominal differences. Look at the underlying statistics if you are really interested. Is the score 97%, 98%, 99%. They are mostly the same except for a couple of questions on a standardized test.
I have seen that a few schools have a disconnect. Looking for higher SAT’s than seems to be warranted for the GPA/acceptance rate. Maybe that’s how they climb in the ratings scores?
Based on their apparent student profiles, It seems plausible that schools such as Vanderbilt, Notre Dame and Boston College may emphasize standardized scoring as a selection criterion to a greater degree than comparably ranked colleges.
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I don’t know about UChicago, but I’m familiar with Caltech. Caltech students have always had the highest SAT scores by a significant margin for as long as I can remember (i.e. decades), long before USNews started to rank colleges. It has the highest scores for two reasons:
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The school has the most self-selected group of applicants among all colleges. The majority, and perhaps most, of its applicants have near-perfect test scores or better; and
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Because of the nearly unmatched rigor of its program and its small size (fewer than 1k undergrads), the school places greater emphasis on its students’ ability to successfully finish its program. It does this by scrutinizing its applicants for their academic prowess more than its peers (often with the involvement of its faculty).
The higher test scores are just the result of its process, not the other around. As @ucbalumnus mentioned, it’s doing away with the test scores completely (becoming test-blind) for the next two application seasons. It may be in a unique position to be able to pull that off.
Caltech is not unique in ignoring SAT/ACT and SAT subject test scores for admission. The 23 campus California State University system is also ignoring all test scores for admission.
Of course, Caltech’s reason may differ from that of other test-blind colleges. As mentioned, anyone with a reasonable chance of admission there using other academic measures probably has or would have gotten top-end SAT/ACT and/or SAT subject test scores, so such scores do little or nothing to help Caltech admissions distinguish between applicants.
How are you computing the average? Princeton’s and Yale’s 2019-20 CDS reports both report exactly the same 25th/75th percentiles for SAT composite of 1470 and 1560.
Answering your question more generally, a large difference in SAT scores between similarly selective (not the same as similar “prestige”) colleges can suggest that one may prioritize SAT more than the other. However, there are also many other contributing factors, so the conclusion is not as straightforward as it may appear. And 10 points is certainly not a large difference in scores.
For example, Caltech was mentioned. I suspect that Caltech has a unique applicant pool that has a higher concentration of high test score students than most colleges with a similar admit rate. Caltech’s higher test scores may have more to do with he applicant pool than it does Caltech prioritizing scores.
Or the higher test scores may relate to Caltech prioritizing something else that is correlated with scores, rather than the scores themselves. For example, MIT’s website writes the following. They imply that they do not focus on scores and instead have very high scores because they care about things that are correlated with scores, like their IMO medalist example. Along the same lines, I’d expect that Caltech will still have higher median scores than HYPS even though they are now test blind (if test scores were reported).
" Now, I and others are on the record as saying that we admit people, not test scores, and that in any case there is really not a difference in our process between someone who scores, say, a 740 on the SAT math, and someone who scores an 800 on the SAT math. So why, as the commentor asks, is there such a difference in the admit rate? Aha! Clearly we DO prefer higher SAT scores!
Well no, we don’t. What we prefer are things which may coincide with higher SAT scores. For example, a student who receives a gold medal at the IMO is probably more likely to score an 800 on the math SAT than a 740. But if we take an IMO medalist (with an 800) over random applicant X (with a 740), does that mean we preferred an 800 to a 740? No. It means we preferred the IMO medalist, who also happened to get an 800!"
Some clues that a college may prioritize scores can sometimes be found in Naviance type scattergrams, if you have enough samples. For example, scattergrams for Vanderbuilt used to (I haven’t checked recently) show a wall of acceptances at their 75th SAT score. The acceptances rate was extremely high for applicants above 75th percentile, but quite a bit lower below 75th percentile.
Another clue is a larger number of NMSs that one would expect based on selectivity, including sponsored ones. For example, the number of NMS by school in 2018-19 report (didn’t find more recent one online) is below. Vanderbilt had more NMSs than HYPS, which is another clue that Vanderbuilt may prioritize scores.
Vanderbuilt – 222
Harvard – 207
Yale – 140
Stanford – 124
Princeton – 114
I went to a website called prepskola to find average SAT, I cannot spell the name right because the forums won’t let me.
The site appears to be using 2018-19 and defines average composite SAT as (25th math + 25th EBRW + 75th math + 75th EBRW) / 2. The CDS is generally more reliable for such information than 3rd party websites.