@Much2learn Understood. Rigor and grades are most important for sure.
Thanks to the OP for the original concept for the thread and the responses providing info about admission rates by SAT/ACT band. OP, I agree with you that “it’s useful because beyond the 25-75 range and GPA scores, it helps show just how… difficult it can be to get into those schools even if a student has a score between that range.” The answers to the SAT/ACT range question asked by the OP not only lend helpful granularity (for schools that release the info) to the ubiquitous “middle 50%” measures, but also provide some solace as suggested by the OP when a kid is rejected despite stats that are competitive or better for a given school. It’s intuitive that lots of other similar stat kids are in the same rejection boat, but seeing it more thoroughly quantified is strangely reassuring.
[Waves hello as OP – that’s me – returns to thread after not being on CC for 20 hours and finding it’s gone from 2 pages to 7.]
:-h
I agree w/ @JMS111 that seeing this data is reassuring – when you know that half (in the case of Hamilton) or close to 90% (in the case of MIT) of people with a score of 1500 on the SAT are getting rejected, you (as the student) might not feel as bad when the rejection comes.
Despite that this is a stat-based approach to looking at universities, it actually makes the point much more strongly that it’s not just enough to PWN the SAT, and that the elite institutions (Top 10, top 30, top 50 at least) have way more qualified applicants than they have spaces. Hamilton is rejecting half of the applicants who score at least 1500 – I can’t think of a better argument that Hamilton is looking holistically at their candidates.
Having said that, to a student with an SAT (or ACT) score of X, I think this view helps. If SAT didn’t matter at all, the admission rates by band would be random or equal. They’re not. The higher the SAT score, the higher the admission rate. There are obvious reasons for that, of course – those who score higher on the SAT are likely to have better writing skills (thereby filling out applications more appropriately) and may or may not be able to process large amounts of information, suggesting they may be able to go deeper into some topics. (I honestly have no idea what the current research says about SAT scores and high school or college GPAs and don’t want to get into that in this thread.)
So a student with an SAT score of X can look at these breakouts and realistically assess their chances. Yes, these colleges look holistically – if the student who scored 1600 responds to a question about the last book they read for fun as something by Princeton Review, then they’re probably not getting in. Yes, there are always exceptions – there have to be for those bands in which the institution accepts 1 or 2% of applicants. And, yes, I plan on letting my D19 apply to 1 or 2 colleges where the objective information suggests she has maybe 10% (or less) of a chance of getting in.
But, if I were a student, I would think finding out that the university accepts, say, 50% of students with your score would make me realize just how much more attention I need to pay to those schools where the 25-75 percentile might lead you to think it’s a sure thing.
More links as people find 'em, please!
Here’s one. The attachment below from Amherst for the class of 2020 (current sophomores) has detailed score ranges for applied/accepted/enrolled on page 2.
Yield may also be factoring into the equation. Schools do want high stats kids, but they also want to accept high stats kids they think will enroll. So they may wl an applicant with very high scores, if they think they may not enroll. Schools mine a lot of data on which kids will ultimately attend and this likely factors into the decisions.
Comparing Brown to Amherst
51% of the students accepted with a 700-800 math score enroll at Brown
33% of the students accepted with a 700-800 math score enroll at Amherst
Comparing Amherst to Hamilton
32% of the students accepted with a 34-36 ACT score enroll at Amherst
18% of the students accepted with a 34-36 ACT score enroll at Hamilton
@wisteria100 I’m sure yield tells part of the story. The question is- how can one avoid being waitlisted if they aren’t applying anywhere ED but are truly considering the school? I wonder how much demonstrated interest gets you at different schools. I know which schools track interest by looking at CDSs but I’m not sure visiting and interviewing is enough to keep kids off waitlists. Such a bummer for kids who want to compare al offers yet have strong apps.
@homerdog - that is a quandary, especially since some schools don’t track or care about interest. I can’t recall where I read it (may have been in the book The Gatekeepers) but schools do make assumptions based on past matriculation data ie; don’t think this kid will come because we don’t have good yield from this part of the country or let’s wl this kid instead of accepting because he is a legacy at XX and will likely get in there.
At some high schools, the gc can weigh in at a few schools on your behalf and communicate high interest.
As for the interviews, I have heard that if it is an alumni interviewer, their comments can’t get you in, but they can keep you out. I once heard the admissions director at my D’s school, talk about an applicant, who had the right stats for the school, but was flagged as ‘arrogant’ - so he didn’t get in.
This could be true. However, it’s not particularly supported by the associated data posted which focuses on yield. The higher the statistical profile of a student, the greater her/his chances are of acceptance, at least at the schools that provide that information. To strongly support the suggestion in reply #104, one would need to see a statistical inversion in acceptance rates (i.e., higher scores resulting in diminished chances).
Older discussion: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1626043-ways-to-show-a-high-level-of-applicants-interest.html
@merc81 Another reason and probably true in a lot of cases, is that a high scoring applicant, may not have the accompanying high gpa, the course rigor or stand-out recs and essays. But since that type of data is not published, we all tend to focus on standardized test scores. We just freak out and say -oh no - he didn’t get in and had a 1550!
@wisteria100 I think that’s a great idea for the GC to help. Many of the schools on our list have reps come to the high school. In addition to S19 meeting with them, it could very well help if his GC goes to bat for him in person as well. Thanks for that idea.
Hamilton must have posted their CDS today:
https://www.hamilton.edu/documents/CDS_2017-2018%20Hamilton.pdf
(Yes, I have a series of colleges I check for CDS updates weekly if not more often. That’s not weird, is it?)
In any case, we can now compare their acceptance bands with their 25-75 ranges.
https://www.hamilton.edu/admission/apply/standardized-testing-distribution-of-scores
It’s not perfect for a variety of reasons – the split between new and old SATs, for example, small sample sizes, the dependence upon SAT test scores to the exclusion of everything else. Also: it’s just one school. So I know this isn’t perfect, or anywhere CLOSE to perfect. But I think it’s helpful.
Given that the EBRW 75th percentile is 750 and the Math 75th percentile is 760, I’m guessing that the combined SAT for any given student is close to but not quite at 1500, but we can probably call the 75th percentile at 1500 for the purposes of this analysis.
Hamilton reported an acceptance rate of 24% for the 2017-2018 freshman class. 52% of applicants reporting a new SAT combined score of 1500+ were accepted, while 63% of applicants with an ACT composite score of 34+ were accepted (25-75 range for the ACT composite was 31-33). So applicants at or above the 75% percentile had ~2.2-2.6x greater chance of acceptance than the class as a whole.
For the median-ish range, the acceptances were, unsurprisingly, less, but not as bad as I might have expected. Those ACT folks in the 31-33 range actually had an acceptance rate of 35% (306/869). And the SAT scores in the 1400-1490 range (which includes the imputed midpoint of the CDS of 1435) also had an acceptance rate of 35% (168/480). That’s actually a 1.5x bump above the 24% acceptance rate. Obviously that’s a pretty big range of scores – I’m sure the folks near the 25% end of the range were not accepted at 35% – but suggests that at least the midpoint might give you something within spitting distance of a 50/50 shot.
It’s the folks below the 25% percentile that are, in Hamilton’s case at least, totally driving down the acceptance rate given the large number of applicants in this score range. (Like the top 2 SAT bands, which probably capture the upper 65% of the SAT score range, only cover 35% of the applications.) New SAT rate for 1399 and below = 6% (80/1336); ACT rate for 30 and below = 13% (99/779). That’s less than half to approaching a quarter of the overall acceptance rate.
So I’m curious to see whether the rough rules of thumb – 75% percentile means 2-2.5x of the overall acceptance rate, 50% percentile might mean 1.25-1.5x, below 25% means 0.25-0.5 – holds for other schools. If true, this does lead a little more credence to the idea that a safety school = 50% acceptance, 75% score.
One final time: I know college admissions is so much more than this and that NOBODY should think that they’re getting in – or NOT getting in – with any score (or GPA or whatever). But I think a lot of kids – though not all – probably have grades and skills that roughly correspond to their SAT/ACT score and something like this might help, especially if they don’t have Naviance to give them more specific guidance.
@BorgityBorg, looks like all the schools posted this weekend. Numbers are impressive across the board!
The two Hamilton stats, as compared to 2016-2017, that jump off the page for me are;
- SAT Critical Reading and Math bottom-25% - both increased from 650 to 680. Also top-25% increased from 740 to 750 and 760, respectively.
- SAT % above 700 - CR increased from 52% to 67% and M increased from 48% to 67%.
Assuming stats are right, Hamilton continues to trend in a tighter band than many of its peers with both the bottom-25% and those above 700 in CR and M higher than Middlebury and Wesleyan.
That said, I just looked at Amherst - OMG!
While those are big jumps for Hamilton, I have comparatively little faith that all universities are reporting their 2016 SAT scores entirely accurately. I have a large spreadsheet that tracks the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 CDS appropriately. Of the 15 selective colleges that have posted their 2017 scores, the average drop from their 2016 scores concorded to new to their 2017 scores is about 30 less (on the 25th, 50th, and 75th). Hamilton’s is less (only 5-10 points), but there’s weirdness going on… I think the jump in the percentages has mostly to do with a jump from a harder old SAT to a slightly less hard new SAT.
These numbers also show that lots of top 25th percentile kids must have applied RD since they didn’t all matriculate!
To complicate matters, I doubt the 2016 concordance tables were accurate, though to some extent, we may never know. The 2017-18 CDS requires that any old scores be concorded to new before being mixed into the pile, so for schools where a significant proportion of applicants had old scores, any inaccuracy in the concordance tables adds some funny business to the reported numbers. I much prefer new and old broken out separately and I am looking forward to seeing scores from the current admissions season, even though not all schools will have made it available by the time D makes her list.
Yes, @evergreen5 – that’s primarily why I think those 2016 to 2017 jumps are so off. I concorded to new SAT scores based on the 2016 scores, and that 30-point gap between what 2017 scores actually were and the higher predicted 2017 scores I’m sure mostly reflects the mis-concordance.
For what it’s worth, about a dozen schools in my list posted before winter break, which was enough to get some basic trends, though nothing that I’m guessing was statistically significant.
@BorgityBorg, you are assuming that the pool of applicants at each college is the same from 2015-2016 to 2016-2017. I don’t and believe that the increase in 2017-2018 applicants, especially ED I, at Hamilton will support the increase in scores as compared to its peers. Time will tell as they have been very transparent with score distribution data in the past. Amherst saw similar jumps.
The tighter banding and the % above 700 at Hamilton, as compared to many of its peers, has been in place for quite some time, so that isn’t a surprise to me.
@evergreen5, at least in the case of Hamilton, for 2016-2017 only 16% of those that submitted the SAT used the Old SAT Test. So, I imagine it was even fewer in 2017-2018.
@homerdog, I need you to explain posting #114 for me as the CDS score data is only for matriculated students.
The second link shows the number accepted and then the number enrolled within each band. Am I missing something? They did not all enroll…