The SAT (2000+/1400+) and ACT (30+) Clubs

College Search & Selection
1

<p>As a complement to the thread on the Top 25% of SAT score levels at a variety of colleges, I thought it might be helpful to see which colleges (including BOTH national universities and liberal arts colleges) belong to the Clubs for top standardized tests scores. </p>

<p>The measurement point is the mid-point of the 25/75 range for the SAT and for the ACT and I have included the SAT information based on the 2400 scale (for those colleges that provide it) and the 1400 scale. </p>

<p>34 Colleges are in the SAT 2000 Club (although several likely did not make the cut because they didn't provide the writing score, eg, U Chicago, Wash U, Cornell, Georgetown, Brandeis, Davidson, Grinnell, Colgate).</p>

<p>24 Colleges are in the SAT 1400 Club (admittedly a little tougher than 2000 Club, but a commonly used measurement point by college applicants). </p>

<p>37 Colleges are in the ACT 30 Club although 3 that scored highly on the SAT tests (Caltech, Harvey Mudd, and Haverford) do not report an ACT score. </p>

<p>Here are the full results:</p>

<p>SAT 2000 Rank , SAT Mid-point , College</p>

<p>1 , 2240 , Yale
2 , 2235 , Harvard
2 , 2235 , Cal Tech
4 , 2230 , Harvey Mudd
5 , 2220 , Princeton
6 , 2175 , MIT
7 , 2170 , Duke
7 , 2170 , Swarthmore
7 , 2170 , Pomona
10 , 2155 , Stanford
10 , 2155 , Dartmouth
12 , 2145 , Amherst
13 , 2140 , Brown
13 , 2140 , Northwestern
13 , 2140 , Williams
16 , 2130 , U Penn
17 , 2120 , Tufts
18 , 2105 , Rice
19 , 2100 , Columbia
20 , 2090 , Carleton
21 , 2090 , Wesleyan
22 , 2085 , Wellesley
22 , 2085 , Middlebury
22 , 2085 , Haverford
25 , 2080 , Notre Dame
26 , 2075 , Emory
26 , 2075 , Vanderbilt
26 , 2075 , Carnegie Mellon
26 , 2075 , Bowdoin
26 , 2075 , Vassar
31 , 2065 , J Hopkins
32 , 2045 , USC
33 , 2015 , W & M
34 , 2000 , NYU</p>

<p>SAT 1400 Rank , SAT Mid-point , College</p>

<p>1 , 1520 , Cal Tech
2 , 1505 , Harvey Mudd
3 , 1495 , Yale
3 , 1495 , Harvard
5 , 1485 , Princeton
6 , 1470 , MIT
7 , 1455 , Pomona
8 , 1450 , Swarthmore
8 , 1450 , Wash U StL
10 , 1445 , Stanford
11 , 1440 , Duke
12 , 1440 , Dartmouth
12 , 1435 , Northwestern
14 , 1430 , Amherst
14 , 1430 , Brown
14 , 1430 , Williams
14 , 1430 , U Chicago
18 , 1425 , U Penn
19 , 1420 , Rice
19 , 1420 , Columbia
21 , 1415 , Tufts
22 , 1410 , Carnegie Mellon
23 , 1405 , Notre Dame
24 , 1400 , Carleton</p>

<p>ACT 30 Rank , ACT Mid-point , College</p>

<p>1 , 33.0 , Harvard
2 , 32.5 , MIT
2 , 32.5 , Notre Dame
4 , 32.0 , Princeton
4 , 32.0 , Yale
4 , 32.0 , Northwestern
7 , 31.5 , Amherst
7 , 31.5 , Pomona
7 , 31.5 , Duke
7 , 31.5 , Dartmouth
7 , 31.5 , Wash U StL
7 , 31.5 , Rice
7 , 31.5 , Vanderbilt
14 , 31.0 , Williams
14 , 31.0 , Carleton
14 , 31.0 , Middlebury
14 , 31.0 , Bowdoin
14 , 31.0 , Grinnell
14 , 31.0 , Stanford
14 , 31.0 , U Penn
14 , 31.0 , Emory
14 , 31.0 , Carnegie Mellon
14 , 31.0 , Georgetown
24 , 30.5 , Wellesley
24 , 30.5 , Vassar
24 , 30.5 , Colgate
24 , 30.5 , Columbia
24 , 30.5 , U Chicago
24 , 30.5 , Brown
24 , 30.5 , Tufts
31 , 30.0 , Swarthmore
31 , 30.0 , Davidson
31 , 30.0 , Cornell
31 , 30.0 , J Hopkins
31 , 30.0 , USC
31 , 30.0 , Brandeis
31 , 30.0 , Boston College</p>

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<p>Go do something worthwhile with your time.</p>

3

<p>Oooh, I actually think this is really helpful. Thanks!</p>

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<p>this is helpful and a good self-esteem booster lol</p>

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<p>damn notre dame pwns the ACT</p>

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<p>what the heck 2150 correpsonds to 32 on act, but the sat average for harvard is way hiher.</p>

<p>Why?</p>

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<p>Maybe it’s easier to get into Harvard if you’re from Idaho and take the ACT instead of being another Los Angeles kid taking the SAT.</p>

<p>SAT = more popular on west/east coast
ACT = more popular everywhere else</p>

<p>that’s what my counselor told me.</p>

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<p>Notice how no state schools appear on any of these lists. Also, the difference in the strength of the student bodies of HYP and other elite privates schools doesn’t appear to be that significant.</p>

9

<p>You are missing some schools. For one, Olin College of Engineering (aka Franklin W Olin College) in Needham, MA has very high scores and would be near the top of this list.</p>

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<p>Berkeley average is > 2000. Where is it on the list.</p>

<p>I believe it was 2034/2400 for the entire student body.</p>

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<p>middsmith,
The data is drawn from collegeboard.com. UC Berkeley’s numbers are:</p>

<p>CR 590-710 = 650 mid-point
Ma 620-750 = 685 mid-point
Wr 590-710 = 650 mid-point</p>

<p>Total = 1985</p>

<p>They reported no ACT score.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>That’s because state schools have to take so many in-state students, which drives the scores down.</p>

<p>Anyway, yes there is a state school on one of the lists. William and Mary.</p>

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<p>It shows that there are about 40 top schools that attract the top students. Arguing between them should be based on size, setting, weather, culture not based on us news rankings.</p>

<p>Speaking of which, this shows that there is a bias toward large grad programs as reflected in the peer assesment scores. Several large research schools are not on the above lists but they score very highly on peer ass.; unfairly if I may add. esp since the mag is marketed to high school kids and families who shouldnt care about the grad programs at all.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Some high school kids need to care about graduate programs a LOT, because they will be pursuing graduate degrees. And some kids applying to some colleges have already, through dual enrollment, </p>

<p>[Dual</a> Enrollment of High School Students at Postsecondary Institutions: 2002-03](<a href=“Resource Library Search | IES”>Dual Enrollment of High School Students at Postsecondary Institutions: 2002-03 | IES) </p>

<p>completed much of an undergraduate degree sequence in their favorite subject before graduating from high school. (I know such young people personally in my town.) So for some kids in some families, the level of graduate courses and the amount of leading-edge research at an undergraduate college matters a lot, and is one of the most important selection factors. </p>

<p>My general comment about lists of colleges by SAT score ranges is that CC participants who are savvy know the difference between a college that gets high-scoring students, because that college wants to stay high in numerical rankings, and a college that gets high-scoring students because that college gets students who have it all. The most conspicuous difference between the top three to five colleges in the United States (I’m not committing myself to listing them here) and the next half dozen to one dozen colleges in the United States is NOT test scores, as all those colleges have high test score ranges, but rather deep extracurricular involvements. At the very most selective colleges, the admitted students not only post high test scores, but also gain national recognition in a tough, academic extracurricular before leaving high school.</p>

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<p>Here is the SAT 2000 list based on IPEDS data</p>

<p>California Institute of Technology 2250
Harvard University 2240
Yale University 2225
Princeton University 2220
Harvey Mudd College 2215
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2175
Pomona College 2170
Dartmouth College 2170
Swarthmore College 2170
Stanford University 2155
Amherst College 2145
Columbia University in the City of New York 2140
Duke University 2140
Brown University 2140
University of Pennsylvania 2130
Tufts University 2120
Rice University 2105
Carleton College 2090
Haverford College 2090
Wellesley College 2085
University of Notre Dame 2080
Reed College 2080
Vanderbilt University 2075
Bowdoin College 2075
Washington and Lee University 2075
Claremont McKenna College 2070
Cornell University 2070
Wesleyan University 2070
Vassar College 2070
Johns Hopkins University 2065
Middlebury College 2060
Carnegie Mellon University 2045
University of Southern California 2045
Barnard College 2040
Oberlin College 2035
Colby College 2030
College of William and Mary 2015
Macalester College 2015
Colgate University 2010
Boston College 2000
New York University 2000
Kenyon College 2000</p>

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<p>why would you do a 1400 list and than a 2000----1400 corresponds to 2100.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>This is a bad way to get the average since Berkeley skew towards the 2400 more than the lower 25%. The actual average is higher than your midpoint.<br>
It’s the same way as mean is higher than median.</p>

18

<p>

</p>

<p>Not so at all. The top publics have just as many if not more “top students” as the privates on this list. The difference is that the publics accept a much larger class, forcing them to go much further down the talent pool, and that drives down their median SAT and ACT scores. But in absolute numbers of “top students,” there are more at the top publics than at the top privates.</p>

<p>Look at it this way. Cal-Berkeley has a 75th percentile SAT score of 1450. That means 1/4 of the students at Berkeley are above that level, out of an undergraduate student body of 23,863. That translates to 5,966 students at Berkeley scoring above 1450 on the SAT (assuming, for purposes of argument, that the 75th percentile SAT score remained stable for 4 years).</p>

<p>Stanford has a mid-level SAT score of 1445, close to Berkeley’s 75th percentile SAT score of 1450. That means half the students out of Stanford’s student body of 6,391, or 3,196 students, scored above 1445.</p>

<p>So 5,966 students at Berkeley scored above 1450, while 3,196 students at Stanford scored above 1445. That’s nearly twice as many “top students” at Berkeley as at Stanford. Indeed, there are more students at this level at Berkeley than at, say, Stanford and Dartmouth combined. </p>

<p>By the same logic, there are as many students at Michigan above that school’s 75th percentile ACT score of 31 (6,355, or 25% of an undergrad student body of 25,422) than there are at Stanford, Williams, Carleton, and Bowdoin combined.</p>

<p>So it’s just flatly false to say that all the “top students” are at the top private schools. Very, very many of them are at the top publics, where they are in fact present in larger numbers and larger concentrations than at almost any elite private school. It’s just that the public universities also dip down deeper into the talent pool to take less highly qualified students, while the elite privates don’t.</p>

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<p>Its not just who has the smartest kids, it who has the smartest all around student body. Compare the bottom of the elite privates with Michigan and get back to me. The bottom of a university is usually more reflective of how good it is then the top. Most schools can have a great top, but having a great bottom is challenging.</p>

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</p>

<p>Well, this is pretty much what the whole public-v.-private argument comes down to, isn’t it? I just don’t think the bottom of the class is all that relevant. It never affected me very much as an undergrad at Michigan. I started out in the honors program in all small classes with top students, comparable to the top half or even the top quartile at the best private schools. By the time I moved into my major as an upperclassman I was taking all small, upper-level or graduate-level classes with really sharp students, in many cases grad students, with one of the top philosophy faculties in the world—better than I could have gotten at a Duke or a Stanford. And all my friends were really, really smart people, who are in fact more numerous, in absolute numbers, than at a Duke or Stanford, and not terribly difficult to find if you go looking for them. So in what way did the credentials of the bottom of the class affect me? They didn’t.</p>

<p>I also don’t think it’s all that difficult to get a great “bottom” if you limit class size to the level that most private schools do. Look, if the top quartile at Michigan and Berkeley are equivalent to the top half at Duke and Stanford (and statistically, they are), then all Michigan and Berkeley would need to do to get a “great bottom” equivalent to Duke and Stanford is cut their class size in half. And in point of fact, the student body at both Duke and Stanford is not half as large, but more like 1/4 as large as Michigan and Berkeley, so in a way I don’t think the privates are doing such a bang-up job here. Michigan and Berkeley won’t cut their class size, of course, because as public universities they have a broader educational mission, to serve not only a small number of the very best students, but a larger absolute number of students, some of whom on paper will inevitably be somewhat less impressively credentialed. But bottom line, Michigan and Berkeley are each attracting and serving twice as many “top” students as a Duke or a Stanford (do the math). I’d say the top publics are the ones accomplishing the more difficult and more impressive feat, especially given that they get punished in the USNews rankings by the fact that their educational mission includes serving a large number of students, not just the elite few.</p>