<p>Bravo clayvessel-- beautifully said.</p>
<p>Assume, for the moment, that you're right--80-100 points above the SAT median puts you in the top 5-10% of your class. Now let's assume you go to such a school--I'll take Minnesota as an example (others will do just as nicely). There are about 10,000 freshmen at Minnesota; that means there will be 500-1000 who are as smart or smarter than you, and probably a like number within 50 points of your score, so of roughly similar intelligence. If you want to just hang around with smart kids, there's more than enough to fill up your entire group of friends and friendly acquaintences. If you want to take challenging, upper level courses only taken by the smarter kids, there's plenty of options there too. You may have a few entry level/large lecture courses where you stand out intelligence wise, but, like in all schools you attend, that changes over time. </p>
<p>Actually, your rule speaks better to attending a small LAC with scores well below yours. If there's only 300 kids in your class, and only 15-50 at your academic level, the risks are multiplied.</p>
<p>You're right--somebody's got to be in the top 5-10% of every class. It's certainly a factor to be considered as to whether you want to be in that group, and it may not be optimal. To make a blanket statement that's it's not though is, I think, an oversimplification.</p>
<p>Collegehelp, whoshowed correlation between SAT scores and college GPA? How strong is it? Who said that the SAT scores determine college GPA? I think you're putting a bit too much stock in this standardized test.</p>
<p>dadtimesthree-
Alright, maybe there are some students who are better off being in the top 5% at a second-tier college...but most are better off in the long run if they challenge themselves at a higher-tier school where they are average or somewhat below average. There is a different culture/climate/expectation at lower-tier schools. I think the academic quality at a large second-tier university is governed more by the AVERAGE student than by the top 5%. And, the top 5% are probably deciding where to transfer.</p>
<p>DRab-
The correlation between SAT scores and GPA is kinda low but it depends on which major you are in. In engineering it is about .3, statistically significant. In humanities and social sciences it is closer to .2, also statistically significant. Some majors place greater demands on verbal and math ability. SATs probably don't measure art ability very well. Furthermore, smarter students go into harder majors and their gpas are lower because of greater difficulty. Put the engineering students in the psychology program and see what happens to the gpas.</p>
<p>The correlation between graduation rate and average SAT is about .8-.9, which is very high. SATs certainly do matter.</p>
<p>Moreover, gpa is not what I am talking about as a measure of academic quality. The gpa is on a relative, sliding scale that varies from college to college. An A at Cornell is not the same as an A at Podunk.</p>
<p>I am talking about academic quality in a more absolute sense...the things that happen inside the cranium.</p>
<p>College is not only about "academic quality"--it's about maturing (academically and socially), learning to live independantly, etc. For that reason, while academic quality is an inportant consideration (and will certainly matter to each of my kids), it's not the only factor. Some kids need the challenge of being in the middle of the pack--others don't need it (they're self-motivated) and might, in fact, react very badly to a situation where they were less than at or near the top of their environment and/or where they didn't do as well as they had come to expect. I agree that there is a different culture at different schools, and that the culture is an important thing to take into account, but there's no hard and fast rule. That's where we disagree--you seem to be trying to create a paradigm for virtually all to follow, and it's not there.</p>
<p>I think the paradigm I suggested for classifying colleges as safety/match/reach is a good rule of thumb for everyone. </p>
<p>Students, of course, are free to apply only to safeties if they wish. As you say, some students should only apply to safeties or are better off at a safety school than at a match or reach. I don't think we disagree on that although I think the majority of students do best at a match or moderate reach.</p>