<p>afan: You restated my caveats well, thanks. Capturing the variation in preparation among the colleges is the exact purpose. Just as the PhD percentages are one datum, the MCAT, LSAT and GRE to SAT spreads are just additional data points. Given enough data points, we <em>might</em> be able to see evidence of academic quality. You’re right, we’ll never completely eliminate bias, but we can collect and analyze as much data as possible, in order to get closer to an answer. And such an answer is just one datum high school students should consider.</p>