<p>This may seem a rather doltish prompt, but what exactly is "Middle 50%"? What does this middle fifty entail about SAT/ACT score ranges?</p>
<p>Middle 50% is the range of scores where the middle 50% of a sample fit. In other words, it the range between the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile. If you are at the bottom of the "middle 50%," you are at the 25th percentile, and higher than 25% of others in the sample (whether it be applicants or enrolled students). If you are at the top of the middle 50%, that would be the 75th percentile, where your score would be higher than 3/4 of the sample. Unless I'm misreading what you're asking, in which I apologize for an unnecessary response :).</p>
<p>No, your response was perfect, although I must now ask what this "sample" contains. Are these scores belonging to applicants who have applied and were accepted, or applicants who have applied to that particular university or college in general?</p>
<p>I think it's usually the ones who actually enrolled; which could be quite different from the ones who accepted.</p>
<p>I believe they are talking about those who enrolled, and I don't think it's a sample...</p>
<p>If one is talking about 25-75% on rankings such as USNWR, those are enrolled students. Traditional "second choice" schools like Johns Hopkins, Colgate, etc., will have much higher scores in their accepted group, but the upper end will attend another school, thus lowering the range for those who actually attend. </p>
<p>Importantly, this range does not reveal the strength of the groups above or below. For example, a 25-75% range of 1900-2200 would be indicative of high scores clustered in a small range above, but a 1600-1900 range would not tell you if the higher group was primarily in the 1900-2000 range or scattered upward into the 2300's.</p>
<p>Similarly, and part of the reason this formulation it is used rather than a mean average, the scatter in the bottom 25% could be quite close to the lower number in the range, or widely dispersed.</p>
<p>Applicants sometimes think that if they are above the range, and therefore would be in the top 25% of SAT scores of those enrolled, that their admission is almost assured. This is certainly not so at the more competitive colleges. Also, those applicants below the third quartile will often have strong hooks and if one does not have such a hook, admission is quite unlikely.</p>