The schools rarely provide that information. Even if they do, the range is rather big that it is not too helpful. Nevertheless, there are some websites that collect the self reported stat for each school. Although the sample sizes are small, it does show the trend in relative terms. Some people think that after certain score it does not make difference at certain school. The reality is that it still matter as reflected by the admission ratio.
Again, my intent with this thread was not to argue over whether Cornell or Hamilton have equivalent student bodies. B-) Believe me, I am not in the “Ivy League Rules, NESCAC Drools” camp. But regardless of why Cornell has a noticeably lower acceptance rate than Hamilton (i.e., almost half), or whether it should, the fact remains that it does.
Most people have accepted the fact that applying to Ivy League schools (HYPMS, or whatever other sub-15% acceptance rate school like Harvey Mudd or Pomona or any other school that I swear I am not trying to slight) is a reach whatever the student’s score. What I perceive to be far less accepted is that moderately/fairly selective schools like Hamilton – schools with acceptances in the 20%, 25%, 30%, 35% range – accept far fewer of the top scorers than is probably recognized. I certainly didn’t expect a school with a 26% acceptance rate and a 1480 M+CR old SAT 75th percentile for accepted students to accept only 53% of all students with scores above 1500.
I’ve always totally understood that test scores/GPAs don’t make the application – there are so many other factors that go into the decision at selective schools. But I think tables like Hamilton’s make it clear in a way that just reading “safety school = 75th percentile + 60% (50%, 75%) admitted” doesn’t.
Please keep dropping links in as you see them. My initial search via Google search terms turned up very little.
@4junior, absolutely agree about fit being very important at the highly selective LAC’s. In our case, our DD’s have found the Hamilton students to be almost universally BOTH very smart and caring - the adcoms spend a lot of time sifting through the applications to achieve this goal.
Remember that number of applicants is one of the driving forces of the subsequent admit rates. LACS generally attract fewer applicants than bigger universities. Most LACs would have less than 10k apps per year, while Ivies and bigger schools can have triple that
I absolutely agree with @wisteria100 that name recognition and the resultant number of applicants is a huge driver of acceptance rates - once you get to the schools that all have the highest student academic profiles its just math…
Historically, many, including most international applicants, only wanted to apply to a name brand university; I think that is changing as it relates to the top LACs - that said, lesser known LAC’s may have a tough journey based on their value proposition as compared to a state flagship.
Applicants are often self selected and the school would have their criteria in the holistic admission process. For a school that I know that has doubled the applicant pool in recent years and slashed the admission rate by half, the mid 50 only increased moderately.
As someone who is new to the college search process I was (am) baffled at the lack of correlation to the scores of attending students, the admit rate and the general publics “ranking” of schools.
I think comparison of Cornell (ivy prestige, international reputation) and Hamilton (had never heard of it till 9 months ago) is apples and oranges, so my focus has been small NE LAC’s.
Middlebury: (2016-2017 CDS) http://www.middlebury.edu/system/files/media/CDS_2017-2018%20for%20print_3.pdf
SAT Critical Reading 660 750
SAT Math 660 760
ACT Composite 30 34
admit rate 17%
yield 42%
Hamilton (2016-2017 CDS) - https://www.hamilton.edu/documents/CDS_2016-2017.pdf
SAT Critical Reading 650 740
SAT Math 650 740
ACT Composite 31 33
admit rate 26%
yield 35%
Wesleyan (2016-2017 CDS) - https://www.wesleyan.edu/ir/data-sets/cds2016-17.pdf
SAT Critical Reading 620 740
SAT Math 630 740
ACT Composite 30 33
admit rate 15.4%
yield 33%
I think many people would be surprised by both how similar the score band are and how, if anything, the admit rate does not correlate.
I also found the info below interesting, personally, as I thing these 2 schools are considered similar in selectivity and academics to Hamilton by many people.
Bates (2016-2017 CDS) - http://www.bates.edu/research/files/2010/03/cds1617.pdf
SAT Critical Reading 570 690
SAT Math 580 700
ACT Composite 27 32
admit rate 22.6%
yield 38%
Colby (2015-2016 CDS) - http://www.colby.edu/administration_cs/ir/upload/Final-15-16-CDS.pdf
SAT Critical Reading 630 720
SAT Math 640 740
ACT Composite 29 32
admit rate 17.5%
yield 33%
I am not bringing this up to rank schools or advocate for Hamilton (where D ed2’d). I feel that the search process is deeply flawed and that it takes an awful lot of digging to find any useful metrics to compare schools academically. Prestige and the most publicized metrics don’t really reflect the nuances. Schools can game the system by removing the essay, not charging an app fee, etc. People look at admit rate and yield before matriculated student scores to gauge how ‘prestigious’ a school is. Colby just a few years ago had an admit rate of 28% and I think not having an essay or charging an app fee (a system Bates recently moved to) helped their perception immensely. And I think this becomes a looping thing, schools with higher perceived prestige (lower admit rates) then get higher yields…
While applicants can have favorites, there’s definitely a good reason to have “8 first choices” as an applicant as the book by that title says, because there are definitely schools whose actual educational value (setting aside valid differences between different campuses) is much closer than prestige would imply, are there places where an pplicant can find “value” in that it’s easier (though not easy) to get in. Prestige is probably a lagging indicator, and as Hamilton’s admit rate declines, its prestige will probably increase, for reasons having to do nothing with any change in its educational value, which was always high.
But students really need to do that deep digging, and even the CDS doesn’t help as much as it could.
@BorgityBorg Agree in concept re 8 first choices as the best strategy, absolutely. But as CC’s are pushing pushing ED1 then ED2 and then conversion to ED2 second deadline then First Choice letters I think thats a hard tack for many looking to gain admittance for top schools. Less that 2% of students in D’s school did not apply ED and that was because of FA package comparison needs. I think kids (and their parents) need a ranked list but to keep an open mind to several possibilities. Perhaps thats what you mean by favorites, but I think you need to be able to concretely rank you faves and know if you feel comfortable pulling a commitment trigger on any of them at rather short notice.
@Chembiodad My S also used the HS GPA/ACT of the students that actually graduated–not just admitted or accepted. Interesting trends about the “type” of student who actually makes it at a given university.
@4junior I do think that looking at test scores without gpa/rigor doesn’t tell the whole story. But of course that is what schools release, so that is what we look at. Some schools may chase scores, while others weigh gpa as more important. We all know kids who pull a 34, but don’t have a gpa equivalent. So it is hard to really draw conclusions from just the test score profile.
@4junior I thought your D ended up picking Vassar for ED2. But know I see it is Hamilton. Did she change her mind, or am I remembering incorrectly? Both great picks!
Wouldn’t these results (if available) be non-surprising? Those with stronger high school academic credentials have a higher chance of graduating college (or graduating college in 8 semesters) than those with weaker high school academic credentials. Of course, that may only be visible at less selective colleges, since the most selective colleges compress the students’ high school academic credentials into a small range at the top of the scale.
@4junior, yes gaming the USNWR rankings is clearly in motion at many top LAC’s. One has had a 200% increase in applications over the last 5 years by eliminating application fees and the essay, and as a result achieved a sub-15% acceptance rate - impressive, idk…
We found GPA difficult to use as a gauge of the quality of the applicant/admitted student pool as some very prestigious high schools don’t offer AP courses, others don’t weight, etc…and we also found that class rank was impossible as we learned that less than 50% of high schools rank anymore.
So while I know that many colleges are successfully using a holistic approach to find top students, as we aren’t in the weeds with the adcoms we had to use test score profiles as the best measurement of a comparable student pool to our DD’s.
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RE gpa and rank:
@chembiodad I agree wholeheartly, it’s an impossible measure to use broadly. At D’s school the median gpa for students admitted to Stanford or Yale is 3.68. Interestingly some colleges seem to ‘get’ this more than others, which shows up pretty clearly on Naviance.
@wisteria100 I am not clear on which thread comment your comment refers to?
@4junior, agree that a 34/99+ percentile is a high score, but its not one that can gamed despite what testing companies will claim.
That said while many students that achieve a 34 don’t apply themselves in class and as a result aren’t in the pool of accepted students at a highly ranked LAC - top schools run from a 34 with a 3.5 GPA, there are others that score a 31/32 with 4.0 GPA that are accepted.
@4junior I could be confusing your D with someone else. I thought I had seen a post a while back saying your D was doing ED2 at Vassar. But then I saw on this thread that she applied ED2 to Hamilton.
@wisteria100 And yes, D applied ED2 to Hamilton! Complicated reasons and a long process, but in the end she picked the school she felt would make her happiest and I am glad that she did. Fingers crossed for Feb 9!
@Chembiodad While I really hate the gaming the rankings thing unfortunately it plays a part in how kids choose schools. One of D’s reasons for considering Vassar for ED2 was that it had a higher ranking and prestige factor and was more worth using her ED2 chip for. Of course there was a tremendous amount of aspects she liked about it too, but the perception of it being a harder school to gain admittance to was on her radar screen.
@4junior
Regarding the CDS data you posted, I believe more current data from Colby show higher test scores. Not sure why the later CDS are not published, but their class profiles do show higher test scores.
As for Bates, do they publish all scores, even those that weren’t submitted during the test optional app process? If so, that could be the reason their scores look lower. But Bates, more so than at a lot of schools, really seems to try and give kids who may not have a lot of opportunities a chance, and take a risk on them. Something to be said about that for sure.