<p>^^I agree with you in general, JW, but, IMO, Ted has been one of the “good guys” in college admissions. Like the UC’s, tests are not as important to Chicago as they are at say, the Ivies. Unlike some colleges that will give a break to a low gpa-high test score kid, Chicago would do the opposite (assuming great essays). It doesn’t mean that test scores are unimportant, but just that they aren’t #2 right after gpa.</p>
<p>I too trust the statement that U of Chicago really, truly hasn’t looked at test scores as much as many other colleges of similar selectivity. It has its own way of doing things. That’s one reason why this whole thread has heuristic value but is not the final answer on who gets in. </p>
<p>P.S. How would a 3.5 from Exeter compare to a 4.0 (weighted to 5.0) at Podunk High School?</p>
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<p>Trust, but verify. Look at the admission stats for [Chicago</a>, Columbia, Brown and Northwestern](<a href=“College Navigator - Compare Institutions”>College Navigator - Compare Institutions). Columbia and Brown have 14% and 11% admitted, and Chicago and Northwestern, 27% and 28% respectively. There is hardly any difference, however, between the Ivy’s and Chicago/Northwestern’s SAT scores. These stats are not consistent with Chicago ignoring or downplaying SAT scores. If anything, it seems that Columbia and Brown are downplaying the SAT.</p>
<p>^ What you say doesn’t prove anything at all about the practices of the admission offices on deciding submitted applications, especially in the absence of information on who applies to each college. It does suggest that all of those colleges are rather highly desired.</p>
<p>Well when you’re lower then the 20th percentile, you can pretty much kiss college goodbye.</p>
<p>this doesnt prove anything. colleges dont look at this data when making decisions, they only look at your numbers in context of your school. pure waste of time</p>
<p>TokenAdult
What a great thread! Is there something comparable for the ACT?</p>
<p>I could try producing something similar for the ACT, by carrying over some of my scratch work here.</p>
<p>tokenadult is a wise and thoughtful person. So wise and thoughtful that I tend to post the VERY few times when I disagree.
Re: the University of Chicago. All the Naviance charts I have seen show the U of C much MORE driven by SATs and GPA than its peers.
I always thought that this had to do with a lower percentage of the student body at the U of C being URMs, legacies, and recruited athletes than, say, at Brown. But now I’m not so sure. I think that they value SAT scores in particular more than peers.
The most direct evidence is Naviance charts. But common sense also says that with a comparatively low yield, they must be opting for very high SAT scorers to end up with the student body they get. I get the “self selected” argument, but in my experience schools that are labeled “self-selecting” are most distinguished as being self-selecting at the yield stage. Most people who applied and got in choose to go elsewhere. The U of C is typical here.
I am invested in the U of C having a long history of graduate study and I work at the University now. I also think that in many ways the undergraduate education isn’t surpassed by other schools. But I am also pretty amazed at peoples perceptions of undergraduate admissions here, which the U of C admissions office does everything it can to foster.</p>
<p>Hi, danas, </p>
<p>I see you are disagreeing, in your customary friendly way, with my statement </p>
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<p>above. One of the ambiguities of my statement is that I’m not sure myself what colleges I would say are colleges “of similar selectivity” to Chicago. So I do hold this statement a little bit tentatively, as indicated by my formula “I trust” rather than some such formula as “Overwhelming evidence shows” or something like that. </p>
<p>Maybe after the coming admission season I’ll have a better sense of how Chicago compares to various Brand X colleges in one particular admission case of interest to me. But I would definitely defer to you for superior inside knowledge. I continue to find interesting that Chicago expresses NO interest in SAT Subject Test scores, even as other colleges are saying that they like those even better than SAT Reasoning Test scores.</p>
<p>Beautiful charts. </p>
<p>The basic question “what’s the best college that will admit me with…” (WTBCTWAMW…) seems to presume exactly this model: students, based on scores, fill slots in some ordering of schools. The charts are a very direct way to see how the model plays out.</p>
<p>The WTBCTWAMW question disregards hooks like “I am a highly recruited athlete” and “my parent is famous and/or I am famous” and “I am a legacy.”</p>
<p>It would be useful to see a version of the charts that estimate these cumulative <em>unhooked</em> freshman enrolled. </p>
<p>For top schools with 4-year graduation rates near 100%, the total of freshman enrolls would be close to 25% of the reported undergrad enrollment (as opposed to the total enrollment used in the charts). The estimate can be refined based on the actual data for graduation rates. </p>
<p>The percent “unhooked” is evidently 25-40, depending on who is estimating (AA/earlyDecision skew the percentage, too).</p>
<p>The cumulative number of <em>unhooked</em> enrolls from Harvard to NYU (using revealed preferences) is therefore, let’s say, more like 0.25<em>0.25</em>80597 … about 5000, rather than 80597.</p>
<p>Note that “cumulative acceptance” could also be estimated, based on yields.</p>
<p>In the version of the chart below, cumulative enrollment is scaled by 0.25*0.25 = 0.625 to estimate the cumulative unhooked enrollment. </p>
<p>These charts also suggest how colleges are pressured to provide aid. if top-40 schools (ranked by student preference) have enough unhooked slots available for all the SAT 2300+ scorers, then one would expect none of the 2300+ scorers to enroll at any school below rank 40. </p>
<p>Top SAT Scorers Revealed Preference Rank ( 25% Unhooked )</p>
<p>score total unhooked name </p>
<p>2400 0294 0267 Harvard, Caltech, Yale, MIT<br>
2390 0419 0375 Stanford<br>
2380 0681 0628 Princeton, Brown, Columbia<br>
2370 1015 0914 Amherst, Dartmouth, Wellesley, Penn<br>
2360 1397 1249 Notre Dame, Swarthmore, Cornell<br>
2350 1881 1737 Georgetown, Rice, Williams, Duke, UVA<br>
2340 2453 2434 Brigham Young, Wesleyan, NWU, Pomona, GA Tech, Middlebury<br>
2330 3117 3084 UC Berkeley, Chicaco, JHU, S Cal, Furman<br>
2320 3870 3859 UNC Chapel Hill, Barnard, Oberlin, Carleton, Vanderbilt, Davidson, UCLA<br>
2310 4765 4729 UT Austin, U FL<br>
2300 5683 5037 NYU</p>