<p>I was wondering if the admission SAT score for a college makes a college more competitive? For example, 25 Percent of Purdue's undergraduate have a SAT score of 990 while other school like Binghamton has a 1150. Does this make Binghamton more prestigious than Purdue?</p>
<p>The short answer is no.</p>
<p>No, prestige doesn't depend solely on numbers, although sometimes it does. Prestige is this very ephemeral object that shifts and changes depending on context and situation. If you are talking about "those in the know," people who have done research on colleges for years, they would probably think highly of certain liberal arts colleges, whereas other people, "regular people," may have never heard of Williams, or Swarthmore, or Amherst, or Pomona. I live less than an hour away from Pomona, and I hadn't heard of it until I was about 15 or so. Have most Americans heard of the most prestigious French institutions? No, but they are probably harder to get into than MIT. Had I even really heard of MIT before I was in my mid-teens? No, and some people live happy lives without ever hearing about it, even in the US. What I'm saying is "Prestige tends to change based on who you ask and who your audience is." It often depends on where your from, or who told you what as you grew up, or where your family went to school, or the sports teams and how well they do (you know Purdue, perhaps, or Cal or UCLA, because of sports, but probably not Olin college of Engineering or Deep Springs). Purdue has sports teams and is a school i recognize, whereas in my growing up, I have only recently heard of Binghamton, if I've ever heard of it. Competitiveness vs. prestige do not always match up. Sure, there is a trend that the more competitive a school is, the more prestigious it is, but then again, you have to ask "To whom? With regard to what and to whom?" Do most people know what Deep Springs is? Do most people know how hard it is to get into USC film or NYU film? No, they most people do not know that fewer than 1% of applicants are accepted, and the general populace doesn't really care (even though so many of the movies seen come from grads of these schools). Yet the film community looks incredibly highly upon them, so to them, they are presitigious. To some people associated with film departments and those particular schools or are fans of film, those hold high esteem, but to many, they hold as much as any NYU or USC student. The same can be said of engineering, or business, or anything. "To whom? With respect to what?" become big questions. </p>
<p>A probably more important question is "How closely does the prestige given to colleges by people who not a lot about colleges relate to the quality of the education received there?" One must tackle other issues after this, such as "What student are we talking about? What kind of environment do they want?" and things of that nature, but it's a start in the right direction.</p>
<p>I essentially agree with DRab.
SAT scores tell you how selective a college is. Selectivity has to do with the quality of the students a college is able to enroll. Prestige is based partly on selectivity but it is also based on other things such as history, tradition, famous faculty, and so on. Selectivity and prestige depend on one another. SAT scores (25th-75th percentile, for example) are generally the most important criterion for determining the quality of a college. And, it makes sense to pay attention to the quality of a particular program as well as the overall quality of the college.</p>
<p>Prestige has A LOT MORE to do with a university's graduate and professional schools. That's basically what generates all the name-recognition and media attention. There are a couple exceptions, but for the most part, if the university doesn't have strong graduate and/or professional programs, then it is probably not very prestigious.</p>