Report to Secondary Schools (detailed CDS of a sort)

[OHMomof2]

I just came across this for Amherst College: https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/facts/secondary_school_reportsv

2014 class: https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/SSR%2520Class%2520of%25202018_0.pdf

It’s interesting because it shows admitted % of apps in various test score ranges in detail (for example, 41% of apps with ACT 34-36 were accepted vs overall accept rate of around 13%). I’d not seen that before, or for any other college.

Do other schools do this? A quick google didn’t give me anything.

[OHMomof2]

• 2014 entering class, that is.

[Parentof2014grad]

Helpful info for gauging chances, but take a second look. That data point says 44% of accepted students had ACT 34-36, not that those students had a 44%acceptance rate. Looks like acceptance rate for those students was around 27%.

[OHMomof2]

Hmm. I read it as 25% of all applicants were in that score range and of those, 44% were accepted…is that not right?

[OHMomof2]

Oh wait, you’re right. 761 had that score range and 211 of those were accepted. That’s 27%.

[skieurope]

I read it as 25% of all applicants were in that score range

correct

of those, 44% were accepted

No. 34-36 comprised 44% of the admitted applicants…

[JHS]

Brown also has pretty detailed information: https://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/explore/admission-facts

Two things I learned from these reports:

1. They report that 84% of their students were in the top tenth of their high school class . . . but significantly less than half the students come from high schools that rank their graduates.
2. Amherst's reported 75-25 score range is 770-680 for SAT Math and 34-30 for ACT composite. But that's the enrolled class. Its yield -- the percentage of students offered admission who actually enroll -- is lowest for the highest-scoring students, so it admits a lot more of them than show up in the fall. You can't quite tell because of the wide bands they use, but it looks like if you calculated the 75-25 split on the group of accepted students, it would be 10-20 SAT points higher at both ends, and 1-2 points for the ACT. A 34 ACT supposedly puts you at the 75th percentile of enrolled students . . . but it's also barely above average for admitted students.

[OHMomof2]

Interesting. Brown turns away 82% of valedictorians who apply, and near 75% of perfect 36 ACT scorers.

Puts some things into perspective doesn’t it?

[menloparkmom]

College Common Data set information provides the same information.

[OHMomof2]

@meloparkmom I’ve never seen the admissions breakdown within the test scores as to applied vs admitted on a college’s CDS, only the % breakdown of attending students. Can you show me an example of a CDS with that breakdown?

[menloparkmom]

http://about.usc.edu/facts/

scroll down and click on the pdf file titled
Freshman Profile and Admission Information 2014-15

Stanford also has the same info on their applicant student profile
http://admission.stanford.edu/basics/selection/profile.html

[OHMomof2]

Interesting, thank you menlo.

[Data10]

Do other schools do this? A quick google didn’t give me anything.

Many colleges provide such stats. Some additional examples are below. There are many others.

MIT – http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats
Cornell – http://irp.dpb.cornell.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Profile2014-Freshmen.pdf
UCLA – http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/Prospect/Adm_fr/Frosh_Prof14.htm
Berkeley – http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/campuses/files/freshman-profiles/freshman_profile_berkeley.pdf
Princeton – https://admission.princeton.edu/applyingforadmission/admission-statistics
CUNY: Hunter – http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/institutional-research/factbook-2013/table-9a.-sat-distribution-and-average-sat-for-applied-admitted-and-enrolled-freshmen

MIT has a good warning about interpreting these numbers at http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/the-difficulty-with-data

Now, I and others are on the record as saying that we admit people, not test scores, and that in any case there is really not a difference in our process between someone who scores, say, a 740 on the SAT math, and someone who scores an 800 on the SAT math. So why, as the commentor asks, is there such a difference in the admit rate? Aha! Clearly we DO prefer higher SAT scores!

Well no, we don’t. What we prefer are things which may coincide with higher SAT scores. For example, a student who receives a gold medal at the IMO is probably more likely to score an 800 on the math SAT than a 740. But if we take an IMO medalist (with an 800) over random applicant X (with a 740), does that mean we preferred an 800 to a 740? No. It means we preferred the IMO medalist, who also happened to get an 800!

The same goes for people who are highly ranked in their graduating class. Almost half of the class of 2015 were valedictorians of their high school. Aha! MIT must highly value class rank in our application! No, we don’t. Then why does this happen? Because we do highly value certain academic accomplishments, and if you are doing well enough academically to achieve these things, then you are probably doing pretty well in high school. Additionally, we highly value strong letters of recommendation, and often teachers strongly support students who really blow them away academically.

So we select for these other traits and end up, as a side effect, with a disproportionate number of valedictorians. But it’s not because they’re valedictorians that we select them, but rather that because of the things for which we select they are valedictorians. Or, to paraphrase a line from Llewellyn: being a valedictorian isn’t the reason for the decision; it’s the result of factors which were reason for the decision.