Most selective colleges based on SATs

College Search & Selection
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<p>Collegehelp, there are several things that one must keep in mind. </p>

<p>1) Some universities (mostly private) report superscored SAT averages whereas others (mostly public) do not. There is a difference between the two, with the clear advantage going to schools that report supuerscored averages.</p>

<p>2) As moneydad aptly points points out, some universities, primarily private ones (public universities must, by law, disclose 100% of their students’ admissions data), conveniently leave out segments of their student populations who’s admissions data would raise the overall acceptance rate too much or drop the SAT/ACT figures too much. </p>

<p>3) A significant portion of students at public universities do not prepare as hard for the SAT as students at private elites because they never intended on applying to schools that valued the SAT greatly as private elites do. </p>

<p>4) Finaly, many universities, especially large publics, have many students enrolled in “non-academic” fields such as Agriculture, Nursing etc… Comparing SAT averages at such schools with schools where virtually 100% of students major in a traditional academic field or Engineering is unfair.</p>

<p>In all four cases, public universities are at a disadvantage. For these reasons, comparing overall SAT averages and ranges between universities is not a very reliable method of rating universities. One cannot compare public universities to private universities under any circumstance. And even between private universities, differences should be drawn. If one compartmentalizes schools with similar approaches to admissions and does not attempt to compare across compartments, then comparing universities by SAT averages and ranges would be more reliable. For example, one can compartmentalize schools such as Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Northwestern and Penn because they all have similar approaches, although Wharton at Penn would distort Penn stats a little. Another compartment would be the large publics elites, such as Cal, Michigan, Texas-Austin, UCLA, UNC, UVa and Wisconsin. Another compartment could be mid-sized privste universities that offer mainly traditional majors as well as Engineering and Business. That would include Brown, Darmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Harvard, Notre Dame, Stanford, Washington University and Yale.</p>

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<p>I certainly would agree with you on this, monydad.</p>

<p>About a little over ten years ago, I applied to several schools in the US (12 to be exact.) Of those 12, only 2 schools rejected me: MIT and UC Berkeley. The schools that accepted me were all ranked higher than Berkeley in the USNews Ranking table. In fact, 3 of which were Ivy League schools. I was also accepted at HMC, one of the highest in terms of SAT scores.</p>

<p>If you’re an International applicant, it won’t be a big surprise that you’ll get into some ivies but not into Berkeley, as Berkeley is quite selective for international students. But looking back, had I applied to a liberal arts program (e.g History or politics), I really think that I would have gotten into Berkeley. I seriously think that one of the biggest reasons that I was rejected at Berkeley was because I applied for computer science, which is an oversubscribed program at Berkeley.</p>

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<p>My dear friend Alexandre, now that you have raised a valid point about the relative lack of validity of the SAT at schools that rely on different metrics for admission, could you please address the other major component of the selectivity index, namely the percentage of students that are ranked in the top 10 percent of their class? </p>

<p>Do you believe that universities such as universities in Texas, California, or Florida that have developed systems of automatic or restrictive admissions that encourage enormous level of in-state admission should be compared to private schools that recruit, admit, and enroll on a national basis? </p>

<p>Do you believe that it’s fair to compare the percentage of “ten percenters” at the University of Texas with private schools that recruit at schools that do not use ranking systems? Do you believe that it is fair to use this metric since a school such as Texas could de facto decide to admit ONLY students that were ranked in the top 10%? </p>

<p>Do you believe that a student “ranked” in the second quartile at Harvard-Westlake or Harker are less “selective” than a student ranked in the first decile at Berkeley High School or Duke Ellington High School? </p>

<p>Do you believe that the admission information of transfers should be merged into freshman admission for … reference? </p>

<p>And, finally, do you believe that the statistics reported by Berkeley or UCLA in this category represent a comparable selectivity than say Michigan or Chicago or Cornell?</p>

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<p>“My dear friend Alexandre, now that you have raised a valid point about the relative lack of validity of the SAT at schools that rely on different metrics for admission, could you please address the other major component of the selectivity index, namely the percentage of students that are ranked in the top 10 percent of their class?” </p>

<p>Like the SAT, I believe that using the top 10% statistic as a measure of student body quality is also flawed and should be approached with a grain of salt. </p>

<p>“Do you believe that universities such as universities in Texas, California, or Florida that have developed systems of automatic or restrictive admissions that encourage enormous level of in-state admission should be compared to private schools that recruit, admit, and enroll on a national basis?”</p>

<p>No, like I said, when comparing admissions selectivity, one should compartmentalize schools that approach admissions in a similar fashion and have similar academic offerings. Otherwise, you would be comparing apples to oranges. </p>

<p>“Do you believe that it’s fair to compare the percentage of “ten percenters” at the University of Texas with private schools that recruit at schools that do not use ranking systems? Do you believe that it is fair to use this metric since a school such as Texas could de facto decide to admit ONLY students that were ranked in the top 10%?”</p>

<p>Again, it goes back to compartmentalizing schools with similar approaches to admissions. Comparing Texas to Michigan is fine, but comparing either to Dartmouth or WUSTL isn’t. </p>

<p>“And, finally, do you believe that the statistics reported by Berkeley or UCLA in this category represent a comparable selectivity than say Michigan or Chicago or Cornell?”</p>

<p>To Michigan, and to a lesser degree Cornell, yes. To Chicago, no way!</p>

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<p>Out of morbid curiosity, what factors did you use to justify an application to Harvey Mudd? Did you apply for CS at Mudd? </p>

<p>Did you realize at that time that it was a LAC? Did you check the environment in which you’d spend four years? And if you did, how do explain that you know absolutely nothing about the other schools that form the Claremont Consortium?</p>

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<p>Thanks, Alexandre, for a very balanced answer.</p>

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<p>xiggi, i visited Mudd after I got admitted. (Remember that this was a little more than 10 yrs ago.) Sat in a few classes. Talked to some students. The campus was nice, but wasn’t all that impressed overall. But to be fair, I was in UCLA and USC campuses a day before I went to Mudd.</p>

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<p>Re: glomming together multi-college universities and claiming that they can all now be reasonably be compared as aggregates with each other, again I disagree. If you are a budding engineering student you only want to be comparing your stats vs. the stats at each university’s engineering college, by itself and without the confounding contributions of all the other colleges that happen to also be present at each university. Same if you are a budding arts & sciences student. Or a budding student of hotel administration. Or education. Or communications. Or theater. You want to know if you can get into the one college there that has the program of studies that interests you, not some amalgam including other colleges that are physically also present but to which you aren’t applying.</p>

<p>If you are a fledgling apple to be, you want to compare apples to apples. </p>

<p>Multi college universities are not all the same as each other. They do not all have the same component colleges, and the colleges they do have in common may not represent similar proportions of the whole. For example Cornell’s Arts & Sciences college enrolls 1/3 of its undergraduates, whereas IIRC Penn’s is about 1/2. If you are a prospective engineering student it should not matter to you whether Cornell’s ag school students have higher average SATs than Michigan’s education students, or whatever. But at each college all these other students, at other colleges, will be present in different proportions and render comparison of university aggregates virtually pointless, to anyone who is applying to one particular college there. They cannot apply to an aggregate across a university.</p>

<p>This thread is titled “most selective colleges”. At these universities one applies to a college there, and it is the individual colleges at each that select, and are selective to various degrees. Not the aggregate. The aggregate is not selective, it does not select at all, nobody applies to the aggregate.</p>

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<p>I agree. But we can compare public universities against one another, no? Your post does not help support your claim that Michigan is a top two public.</p>

<p>Some of the public schools that have higher SATs than Michigan include: William & Mary, Georgia Tech, Berkeley and New College of Florida. The following publics have SATs which are virtually indistinguishable from that of Michigan: UVa, Illinois, UNC and UCLA. So it seems that one can claim in terms of selectivity (as defined by SAT scores), Michigan is no better than a top ten public.</p>

<p>Michigan is a very good school with strong academics. Let’s leave it at that and not try to oversell or make excuses for its (lack of) selectivity.</p>

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<p>Re: #141, I know of some public universities that have the reputation of taking in a relatively diverse group of freshmen, per their obligation in fulfilling their public purpose, but being absolutely ruthless in flunking out the group that can’t hack it. For schools operating in this mode, the SATs of incoming freshmen may understate the caliber of those who make it to the upperclass years. That’s probably why poster Rogracer reports, in recruiting, finding such a high degree of uniformity of engineering talent graduating from a good number of engineering schools. The entering freshman classes are probably not all identical, but not all of those people make it to the end.</p>

<p>So that would be another difference that might be more prevalent at some state universities, at least,that might merit more nuance to be applied to freshman stats comparisons.</p>

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<p>You state this as a matter of fact, but this is only pure speculation on your part. If this is more than speculation, please provide a source. Considering that a significant portion of prospective students to top publics such as Berkeley and Michigan also aspire to the ivies (and equivalents), this seems to be a far-fetched rationalization at best.</p>

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<p>This suggests that these public universities admit students who are not academically qualified, which is why claims about their “selectivity” are overstated.</p>

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<p>What about all the transfer students from community colleges who don’t even need to submit SATs? They drag down the “selectivity” of public schools but are not counted at all.</p>

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<p>D1 & D2 attended high schools in the midwest, fully half the students from their high schools were headed to the state’s two “flagship colleges”, and virtually none of those people prepped for the SAT. For most of them there was no point, another 35 points on the SAT would make no difference in their admissions chances to the state U.</p>

<p>The state was not Michigan or California though, so I defer.</p>

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<p>@ monydad: </p>

<p>All universities admit different sets of students with different sets of interests and abilities, regardless of whether or not they are officially compartmentalized.</p>

<p>Aggregate comparisons, while not flawless, are not nearly as unfair as you make them out to be. Most universities can make valid and legitimate claims about their “uniqueness” and how their comparisons with other universities are moot. </p>

<p>But where do we draw the line?</p>

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<p>"What about all the transfer students from community colleges who don’t even need to submit SATs? They drag down the “selectivity” of public schools but are not counted at all. "</p>

<p>transfers are another confounding factor, you are certainly correct in that regard.
the extent to which they impact slectivity is hard to determine without data though.
But I quite agree that this is another area where mental adjustments are warranted, and another reason why these few published stats do not conclusively determine the selectivity question.</p>

<p>“Aggregate comparisons, while not flawless, are not nearly as unfair as you make them out to be.” </p>

<p>Obviously, where the component colleges of a university have separate admissions processes and applicant pools, I highly disagree with this statement, YMMV.</p>

<p>"But where do we draw the line? "
At the point where they have separate applicant pools and admissions processes. In other words at the college level. Not at the aggregate university level. People do not apply to the university in itself, the university does not select and is not selective, it’s component colleges are. And in this regard their relative selectivity levels may all be different from each other, even at the same university.</p>

<p>When I was applying to colleges, the stats of each college of multi-college universities were routinely broken out separately in the guide books , and university aggregates across colleges weren’t even published so far as I can recall.</p>

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<p>Fair enough. But the author of post #141 is clearly trying to rationalize the relative lack of selectivity with respect to his or her alma mater (Michigan). These rationalizations are utterly specious and unfounded.</p>

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<p>Okay, you can highly disagree with whatever you wish. But then again, you better not cherry-pick the selectivity indices of the more selective colleges (A&S/engineering) @ Cornell University when you try to compare them to those of the other ivies (and equivalents).</p>

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<p>This is a disingenous statement. Sure, people apply to the university “in itself” even though they are interested only in its component colleges. But are you suggesting that prospective engineers don’t apply to Cornell’s engineering school because of its ivy pedigree? If it was the engineering and only the engineering they cared about, why not apply to Illinois or Georgia Tech instead? Presumably, prospective engineering students don’t despite the fact that an engineering education at Illinois or Georgia Tech is as respected and as rigorous as that at Cornell. Clearly, in this situation, prestige comes into play.</p>

<p>You cannot downplay Cornell’s lower prestige relative to the other ivies (when this handicaps the school) and at the same time ignore Cornell’s higher prestige relative to publics (when this plays to its advantage).</p>

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<p>Those are the only two colleges at Cornell that are comparable to the programs at the other ivies, of course they should be cherry-picked. If someone is applying to an Arts & sciences college, why would they care about Cornell’s architecture college, or Penn’s Nursing school? They should compare apples to apples, based on entrance to the college they are actually applying to.</p>

<p>Similarly if someone is looking for a program in Hotel administration they would not want to be assessing their odds based on SATs at the engineering school. Either way, they will be misled.</p>

<p>In all cases, whether up or down, one should assess odds based on the college they are looking to enroll in. Not an aggregate.</p>

<p>This is about accuracy, not self-aggrandizement.</p>

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<p>Baloney. I sincerely doubt that you’d devote this much time and effort to defending Cornell’s honor had you no affiliation with the school. Or if the selectivity stats were more favorable to Cornell.</p>

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<p>nyccard: you are confusing your own notion of prestige with the thread topic of college selectivity.</p>

<p>The selectivity of indiividual colleges at multi-college universities are not all the same, is my point, and someone contemplating their admissions odds would best look to the particular college they are applying to, at each university of interest.</p>

<p>You can look at prestige however you want, this thread is about selectivity and it is my opinion that selectivity is best evaluated by college, since that is the level where selection occurs and all colleges at a particular university are not the same in this regard.</p>

<p>With respect to prestige, I believe that individual colleges at multi-college universities may differ in this respect as well, in a manner that will basically track the other metrics. So for example a Wharton grad and a Penn Nursing grad may not be viewed as identically the same.
However I view that as another discussion.</p>

<p>I use cornell as an example since I am well aware of the defects of aggregation due to my association there. But the same principal undoubtedly applies as well to other universities. None of them should be aggregated.</p>

<p>If you want to take personal shots at me I suggest you review the Terms of Service of this board. My personal motives are not subject of this discussion.</p>