Now, I understand that Rice is hard to get into like other colleges. However, I’m wondering if Rice puts a large emphasis on test scores. I know people say that Rice is special and is one of those schools that cares about the entirety of a person’s application and wants students who will contribute to the school. However, I think that the scores are too high if compared to other schools.
Cornell
1390 / 1560
31 / 34
Stanford
1390 / 1540
32 / 35
Vanderbilt
1400 / 1550
32 / 35
Princeton
1380 / 1540
31/ 35
Duke
1430 / 1570
31 / 35
These are just some examples, and of course there are some schools like Harvard, Yale, MIT, UChicago that have higher middle SAT avaerges, but they all have half the accaptance rate of Rice. I’m just wondering why Rice’s 25% percentile scores are so high, compared to schools like Standford or Princeton. Even there ACT scores are so high. Is it true that Rice is like an MIT that puts a high emphasis on scores?
I’ve also noticed this. You know, I’m not sure why. Rice is a school that like to keep things discrete and really doesn’t like to discuss things like test scores and GPa’s. Only they know what they are looking for.
No it’s not, nor is that how Rice is reporting the data. It’s:
EBRW: 710/770
Math: 730/790
You cannot just add the 2 sections together to get 25th/75th out of 1600.
Anyway, if you want to look apples to apples, you would need to compare colleges that admit similar number of students. Princeton and Stanford admit about 2000-2100 students compared to 2800-2900 for Rice. It could be that athletic recruits, whose stats may be on the lower end of the range, have a higher penetration at smaller schools. Same with other hooked applicants.
Backing out hooked applicants (which you can’t, since the number and stats are not public,) any difference in scores is likely to be statistically insignificant. All schools listed practice holistic admissions. So, any analysis is really going to be little more than a parlor game to pass the time.
@skieurope I understand what you are saying. I just added them because assuming you are in the 25% percntile for EBRW and in the 25% percentile for Math, your combined SAT would have to be at least a 1440 where you get a 710 and 730 to fall in the middle 50% in both sections. Regarding application, well because Rice admits more students than Princeton and Stanford, you would assume that the students are more diverse in terms of testing scores. If you think about it, despite accepting less students, Princeton and Stanford both have more students who are accepted who are on the lower end than Rice. This either indicates that these schools put a larger emphasis on recruited athletes, legacies, hook who may have weaker test scores or Rice has a greater emphasis on tests and therefore accepts better qualified students.
@BryanCarabajo You must also be looking at old sat scores because my son got a 1500 and that was equivalent to a 33 ACT since the new test was easier. It is true we do not know how low they really go. Though I will say the classes are very challenging at Rice and my son had a perfect score on the ACT and was 2nd in his class. So I would think it would be very challenging to keep up if you didn’t have some high scores in GPA and test scores. So from that perspective it is good to make it hard to get in. If you got in and could not do the work you would more likely transfer out. It does seem like Rice has a pretty high retention rate for freshman.
@BryanCarabajo : They probably did go to that model as other schools (except maybe Emory and Georgetown) in that tier have, but they did theirs more recently (the score emphasis) than Vanderbilt and WUSTL. Appears, NU, ND, and JHU got on board recently as well. Apparently this can be done at the drop of a pen in many admissions offices who want to keep a competitive position in the rankings (or improve it). The selectivity score doesn’t count worth much itself, but keep in mind that metrics in USNWR likely interact. I read an article (old, they were talking about this stuff back in 2006 or so) discussing rankings from this publication at my alma mater (Emory) and a faculty investigated what correlates with the peer and counselor assessment scores (which account for the largest single chunk I believe), basically asking how can admins and faculty at other schools evaluate their peer institutions. She basically had some evidence that led to the speculation that they were essentially using selectivity and its momentum as a proxy substantially more than any characteristics that could be associated with other metrics in USNWR.
So when fools say: “They aren’t just doing that for the ranking because selectivity/scores counts so little anyway”, they are likely not being truthful or do not understand how different metrics can interact. Either way, I hope you applied to Rice. I would not let it scare you. And definitely please avoid subscription to the notion above that: “A very high score is needed to keep up at these sorts of schools.” A good score, maybe. But a good score is nothing near perfect. If you have a good academic background knowledge for your areas of interest as well as a great work ethic, you can do as well as anyone else even if you are in the bottom 25% at many of these scores. The work ethics and backgrounds of students entering different disciplines is actually all over the place at many of these elite schools. Outside of those with tons of natural talent (not as common as you may think), those with good work ethic and strong background are ready to succeed. These score ranges are being emphasized at some of these places simply because they can do that and it may help in the rankings. It is not because the coursework is “too challenging”. Keep in mind that the course work and academic challenge of these schools are likely to have not increased (in fact in some cases, some pedagogical reforms may have actually led to a decrease in rigor by some instructors) over time and yet before scores skyrocketed to these insane ranges, students were still doing very well. I feel only that easier courses see a substantial difference in performance when this happens (because they tend to give exams with multiple choice and other super close ended items like true/false, and fill-in-the-blank). One STEM faculty at one elite school that became scores centric, when discussing if students “seemed” smarter actually admitted that they gave the same exams or levels of exam and the means remained the same over the years. I find this believable if the exams were somewhat challenging for a university setting.