<p>Of the top 25 universities in the country ranked by USNEWS, I ranked them by old SAT ranges from the college board. I added up the four scores in the range to get a number.</p>
<p>Example:
Brown U
Verbal: 650 - 760
Math: 660 - 760
=2830</p>
<p>Here they are:
1. California Institute of Technology 3020
2. Harvard College 2980
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2970
4. Yale University 2960
5. Princeton University 2930
6. Stanford University 2920
7. Dartmouth University 2910
8. Rice University 2870
8. Washington University in Saint Louis 2870
10. Duke University 2860
10. University of Chicago 2860
12. Columbia College 2840
13. Brown University 2830
13. University of Pennsylvania 2830
15. Northwestern University 2820
16. Johns Hopkins University 2790
17. Cornell University 2780
18. Carnegie Mellon University 2770
19. Emory University 2760
20. Georgetown University 2750
20. University of Notre Dame 2750
22. Vanderbilt University 2710
23. University of Virginia 2660
24. University of California - Berkeley 2650
25. University of Michigan 2610</p>
<p>Keep in mind that public universities are low because they have a responsibility to admit in-state students.</p>
<p>Pretty accurate list. I actually think that SAT scores are among the best, if not the best, measures of a school, easily better than other malleable academic stats like GPA and % at top of class.
Seems like CMU's school of computer science really boosts the school up.</p>
<p>Mix in LACs with that list and you got a nice ranking there.</p>
<p>I love how people say how SATs dont mean anything, then you look at schools, and schools with the highest SAT percentiles just "happen" to have the smartest kids.</p>
<p>yea, SAT scores is a strong measurement. more so in rankings. (meaning SAT scores are less important to an individual applying than they are for analyzing the university)</p>
<p>um, I got into Rice, Chicago, Cornell, Duke, Northwestern, and I chose Cornell. Cornell is as strong or stronger than these other schools that I turned down. Anyone who tells u otherwise is ignorant.</p>
<p>Well USNews uses SAT scores in its ranking overtly, and juggles the weights to match thier notions of quality, which are largely influenced by SAT scores. So it is hardly a surprise that the top 25 by a list that give substantial weights to SAT would have high SAT's.</p>
<p>Of course this ranking penalizes any school whose 75%ile is 800 (MIT, Caltech). If the scale went that high, their student bodies might have math SAT 75%ile of 900.</p>
<p>"Of course this ranking penalizes any school whose 75%ile is 800 (MIT, Caltech). If the scale went that high, their student bodies might have math SAT 75%ile of 900."
How? I think MIT and Caltech benefit, because their 25th percentile math is always going to be high, because they demand high math SAT scores of just about all their students. Additionally, they are not much less picky about the verbal score. That results in a high 25-75 math and a verbal comparable or slightly inferior to its peers like HYP.</p>
<p>Stambliark, I really find it hard to believe that any school, like Brown according to you, with high 75th percentile does not weigh SATs that heavily. Colleges like to say that just so that more people apply, yielding more rejects and a higher acceptance rate.</p>
<p>It penalizes them because the top score a school can get is 800 for 75%, even if that is really 50%ile at that school. So the relatively low truncation of math SAT scores underestimates the math talents of the students at the top tech schools.</p>
<p>misterme....good thread. Here's the addition of LACS per comment by ashernm. Also added specialty schools. I don't know where you got your SAT stats.....the ones below are slightly different & from the 2005 US News. I've included all those >2700, which cuts off most of the public schools, except William & Mary. Those Claremont colleges look pretty darn good. 41 total made the cut:</p>
<pre><code>SCHOOL / Combined 25% + 75% SAT
</code></pre>
<p>UVA is higher because many students from Thomas Jefferson High School attend/are admitted to UVA. The average SAT for the HS is 1482 so that really brings up the 75 percentile.</p>