Wow. That’s not conducive with preparation for UChicago as the leadership at the latter is very clear that students will be exposed to ideas they may find very uncomfortable or even offensive. The university is a strong proponent of freedom of academic expression and inquiry.
Surprised they don’t include NU in there as an Ivy+?
Stanford does average lower test scores than some of the most selective colleges, but to say it has a lower mean SAT score than any elite is an exaggeration. Perhaps you meant within your HS rather than across the full student body, which you mentioned has a high rate of hooked kids. ACT stats for the 2019-20 year are below, which is the most recent year in IPEDS.
Based on selectivity, one would expect Stanford to fall in to the 33/35 group, which contains 6 of the 8 Ivies. Instead Stanford’s 25th percentile score was 1 point lower, putting it in a group with 2/8 Ivies, Notre Dame, Pomona, and Williams. Recruited athletes contributes to this, but I think a greater contributing factor is Stanford has historically placed less emphasis on scores than many other “elite” colleges.
Aside from football, the lowest scoring students I am aware of at Stanford are generally not athletes. An example is the CollegeConfidential poster MrTubbs who was a first gen, lower income URM and was admitted to Stanford with a 24/25 math/science ACT several years ago. And was rejected from HYP, Penn, Duke, and WUSTL. He went on to win the highest award given to Stanford students (Dinklespiel), get a White House internship, and became the youngest ever elected official of his home town during his graduation year.
2019-20 25/75 Percentile ACT Scores
Caltech – 35/36
MIT – 34/36
Olin – 34/35
Most Ivies, Chicago, CMU, Duke, Mudd, JHU, Northwestern, Rice, Vandy, WUSTL – 33/35
Stanford, Cornell, Dartmouth, Notre Dame, Pomona, Williams – 32/35
Haverford, Middlebury – 32/34
Berkeley, Georgetown, Swarthmore – 31/35
Barnard, CMC, Michigan, Emory, USC – 31/34
Amherst – 30/34
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Not sure what you mean about “topics on this thread,” but is a mistake to confuse what is actually happening at HW to what is being discussed here. In large part, the posters here have little or no idea what is actually happening at the school.
There are better ways to understand what is actually happening at HW than relying on an anonymously sourced article by a culture war provocateur. Or by relying on UChicago parents who (uncritically, IMO) took the provocateur’s bait, hook, line, and sinker.
As for your application experience, if your informational session focused on “the wondrous-by-[your]-estimation math flow chart” that is probably because the plethora math tracks are much harder to understand for prospective parents than is the school’s well-documented mission to strive for diversity and inclusion.
And while it is unfortunate that you felt you were in the dark during the application process, the claim that any potential parents were somehow duped or mislead rings hollow to me. The school is open about its mission and how it is trying to bring it about. Prospective parents who want to be fully informed read the school’s literature and website, watch the head of school’s state of the school addresses, consider the widely disseminated Mission Statement, speak with a variety of HW parents and students, checked out the terrific school newspapers and publications, looked at the speakers and events sponsored by the school, etc. If a prospective parent chooses to dismiss some or all of it as “some discussion of goals of improving the somewhat meager diversity” then isn’t that on more on the prospective parent than the school?
Totally misleading POC%? The HW fact sheet indicates that around 55% of students self-identify as students of color. The breakdown (which took about 2 minutes to find) is as follows:
- White 44%
- Asian 31.6%
- African American 10.7%
- Hispanic 8.4%
- Unknown 2.8%
- Multiracial 2%
- Native American 0.4%
So what is “totally misleading?” Is HW using the phrase differently than everyone else? Is there a particular group that you feel shouldn’t count as POC?
With regard to HW, there are plenty of metrics which would indicate otherwise. Many top colleges and universities don’t seem to agree either. For example, 14 HW students will matriculate to Chicago next year.
Do you think that maybe a school could be academically rigorous with “top notch academics” yet still strive provide a comfortable, respectful, supportive, and inclusive learning environment? If not, then HW probably isn’t the best place for your family. I am left wondering why would your family would apply to a school (for middle school then again for high school) that has as its Mission Statement: “Harvard-Westlake strives to be a diverse and inclusive community united by the joyful pursuit of educational excellence, living and learning with integrity, and purpose beyond ourselves.”.
There is no significant “bump” at Georgetown compared to admissions to other comparable schools from HW.
The top California schools are extremely competitive for in-state students, in many cases much more competitive than for out of state students.
Respectfully, it isn’t, though maybe it depends on how “elite” is defined. Also, average is not necessarily as descriptive as the 25/75 range, how it is usually reported.
I am getting these from the Scoir college search function, which gives general stats/info for the colleges, not for the applicants from my son’s school.
Stanford’s average SAT is 1465.
Those with lower or tied:
Duke 1460.
USC 1445.
Pomona 1465 (tie).
Haverford 1460.
NYU 1440.
Colby 1450.
Hamilton 1445.
Those with higher:
Cornell 1480
Penn 1505
Columbia 1490.
Princeton 1500
UofChicago 1530
Northwestern 1495
Williams 1480
Yale 1515
Amherst 1480
Harvard 1515
Vandy 1510
Rice 1520
Hopkins 1510
CMU 1495
mudd 1520
MIT 1530
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I assume you mean it isn’t an exaggeration to say Stanford has a lower mean SAT score than any elite college. The first college you listed was Duke, for which you listed a lower mean SAT score than Stanford. Does this mean Duke does not qualify as “elite”?
How are the listed mean SAT scores determined? The 25th/75th information in CDS would suggest very different scores for some colleges, although I realize mean score may differ significantly from mean of 25/75th if there are outlier lower scores.
I wish they would disclose acceptance rates and application numbers by round. Applicants could then make a more informed judgement on whether to apply binding early decision. Currently they know it helps but there is no reason the University cannot quantify since almost all (Stanford excepted) do.
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Of course not. But in the rankings, for what they are worth, none put Duke over Stanford. I started with the handful of lower scores. The second set are those that are higher - all of the Ivy+.
Eta: I do think it is interesting when the 25/75 is misaligned with the average. Always thought it would make more sense to give both.
It’s called the UofC “echo chamber.”
Don’t say anything untoward about the UofC. And then eventually, the thread will probably steer toward Chicago’s “core curriculum” and moderation will always take place. Also, somehow MIT and Cal Tech are typically thrown into the discussion.
Last time, it was Stanford’s turn in the UChicago CC “blender.”
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This the first time I have seen a selective college disclose donor preference numbers. It would be nice to know the number of applicants who had a donor notation added to their admission file who were rejected or waitlisted,
The list based on 25/75 ACT scores is repeated below. Do any of the colleges with similar or lower 25/75 ACT scores qualify as “elite”? If so what are the mean score for those colleges? I’d check myself, but I am not aware of any federal reporting that lists mean score. What is the source for the mean scores listed above?
Stanford, Cornell, Dartmouth, Notre Dame, Pomona, Williams – 32/35
Haverford, Middlebury – 32/34
Berkeley, Georgetown, Swarthmore – 31/35
Barnard, CMC, Michigan, Emory, USC – 31/34
Amherst – 30/34
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
You seem to have lost track of the fact that I initially agreed with your assessment regarding Harvard and a few other stop schools, but balked at applying the same analysis to a broader grouping of top schools. Nothing in your latest post explains how your Harvard analysis applies to HW acceptances at MIT, Caltech, Chicago, or a host of other schools one might consider Ivy+. So I am still of the opinion that a few top schools, especially those rich in HW legacies, won’t follow the same pattern as those further down the list, and I think the HW stats bear this out.
With regard to Harvard, this analysis is causing me to question my initial agreement with your conclusion about Harvard. You are basing your conclusions on more faulty assumptions than I initially thought. Among other things:
- While you may dismiss an almost 30% difference (7% to 5%) in admissions odds as being negligible, I don’t. Using your 5% figure for unhooked students, the unhooked HW applicants have fared pretty well.
- Your attempt to lump an inordinate number unhooked HW applicants REA is purely speculative, unsupported, and counterintuitive. Unhooked HW students know that most students who get into Harvard from HW early are hooked or absolutely extraordinary, and there are plenty of other early options to great schools where their early odds are better.
- It is unreasonable to assume that applicants from HW (or any highly competitive school, public or private) starting at a 3.8 unweighted grade point average and a 33 on the SATs will receive a “Magna potential” rating. (Some of these students aren’t even Cum laude (top 20%) at HW.)
- Even if many of the students in the top 25 percent did receive a 2 or 2- academic score from the reviewer, the next level of analysis includes consideration of the scores relative to the applicant’s high school, demographics, and other factors that don’t fit within the ALCS or URM categories. In the context of HW (or any highly competitive school, public or private, with similar demographics) a 3.8 gpa and a 33 ACT is pretty mediocre, and it will be treated as such by Harvard admissions.
- Kids from HW also have to compete with their peers regarding other non-academic factors. For example, only one HW kid can be editor in chief of the school newspaper.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture. We know where the other stands on these issues, and I appreciate the discussion.
Believe me, the irony has not been lost on me.
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I got it from the Scoir college search engine, but I also recall verifying it against another mainstream source. Could have been Fiske, Princeton Review, College Transitions, or Niche, as those are the main places I look. I don’t know where Scoir got it from.
I did the list a few months ago, but I can add in the additional ones you are asking for. Have to wait until I get home from work. The big state schools are lower, but those schools also do admissions so differently and have less competitive areas of admissions it is apples to oranges.
To be clear, I am agnostic about what is elite and what isn’t. People use that label however they want. I am also not one who equates higher stats with a better school. And none of this addresses the competitiveness of a particular department of a school, eg cs. It is just an (pun warning) academic exercise I find fun, but that’s just me and my very rusty stats skills.
Eta: Is there an SAT to ACT conversion table out there? It looks like according to the Scoir scatterplot charts’ vertical axis:
1370 = 30
1400 = 31
1430 = 32
1460 = 33
1500 = 34
1540 = 35
1600 = 36
I have no idea if this is a common understanding. But it could be a rough way to answer your question while I get my act together tonight.
It seems like certain schools (Stanford among them) have been moving away from a heavy reliance on high test scores for a while now. I assume this is because they have come to realize that the test scores aren’t all that great of an indicator of potential for success at the institution.
When colleges went to test-optional this last cycle, I had my doubts that they really meant that the test scores wouldn’t matter, but have seen that some schools accepted around 1/2 of their class from the no-test category.
I read somewhere that in many of the schools the AOs have been chomping at the bit to ditch scores, or at least go test optional. They have been tied to them, because of how the rankings work. The pandemic gave them the opening they needed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many never go back.
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Agreed. My guess is the pandemic has given AO’s the opportunity make other changes as well.
Your comment that stemmed this discussion was " You allude to the Harvard data but haven’t provided any actual Harvard data to back up your claims. " , then stated “Unless I missed it, you haven’t provided the data necessary to support your conclusions” in the post I replied to that only mentions Harvard specifically and no other Ivy Plus schools. And you are surprised that I replied by discussing Harvard and linking to Harvard data, rather than other Ivy Plus schools?
The whole point that has been repeated over and over and emphasized throughout the post you replied to is to among others is to compare similar stat applicants at HW to similar stat students from the full student body. You seem to repeatedly instead do the opposite and compare high stat HW kids to the full applicant pool. This time you are instead comparing the average admit rate among 3.8+ UW kids with presumed excellent test scores to the overall admit rate at Harvard across all score ranges.
Is the problem that you do not accept 3.8-.4.0 UW kids from HW have higher stats than the average Harvard applicant across the full pool? Or that you do not accept that average admit rate goes up as stats go up?
It’s counteritutive to expect that kids from a wealthy private school average a higher REA rate than the overall application pool? Every other source I have seen suggests the opposite. For example, the previously linked docs and older freshman surveys compare REA rate by income. As one would expect wealthier kids are more likely to apply REA – both due to being less likely to need to compare FA offers and being more likely to attend a HS with quality GCs that recommend applying REA.
Regarding HW specifocally, If you look at the linked HW stats, note that it’s only the top GPA kids that have the especially high rate of applicants to Harvard. The next tier down is far more likely to apply to slightly less selective schools like Brown, or Penn than Harvard. The kids who are applying to Harvard are generally the ones with top GPA/rank, and the less “extraordinary” kids are more likely to apply to Brown or Penn, many likely in ED.
The linked documents show that the vast majority of academic rating is explained purely by AI stats in regression analysis, meaning that it closely follows stats. And the stat guidelines for those rates list a 33+ ACT for a 2 rating and 29-32 ACT for a 3 rating. We know the GPA range of the HW applicant group and know that the full student body at HW averages a 33 ACT, so we can also assume the average 3.8+ UW applicant is in the 33+ ACT range.
The post you replied and linked stats show the relative portion of applicants in different stat groupings. And 3.8-4.0 UW + >33 ACT is indeed well above average among the applicant pool. It is by no means an auto admit, but it is within the normal range of admitted students. Most applicants during the lawsuit period were in a lower range, and as such had a lower rate of admits. This relates to why it is not appropriate to compare to the average admit rate for 3.8+ UW kids from HW to the average admit for the full applicant pool, like I’ve said over and over. I used academic rating to keep things simple. You can also compare the scores and other stats themselves in the longer stat document, which is expressed in terms of SDs from mean. It shows the same pattern, with HW kids being well above the average applicant.
I doubt editor of the newspaper has much relevance, but yes attending a school that is full of a pool of high achieving peers like HW can have some potential negative effects due to competition. For example, getting LORs that talk about being the “best in years” or “best in career” (phrasing linked Harvard reader guidelines list for high 1 rating) may be easier to achieve at a less selective HS.
Wow. That’s a lot to glean from the opinion of a former applicant whose children don’t attend the school.
I always figured that taking these things “more seriously” would entail getting the facts straight before drawing all sorts of wild conclusions, And, to this end, actually viewing “testimony” critically, rather than simply latching on to anything that supports one’s current viewpoint.