<p>DS, I think you might enjoy the following presentation. It does show a part of the PA survey for universities and how UC-Davis responds. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.sariweb.ucdavis.edu/codvc/FullDocument.pdf[/url]”>http://www.sariweb.ucdavis.edu/codvc/FullDocument.pdf</a></p>
<p>Xiggi, thanks for all the info and I’ll check out the link later today.</p>
<p>If UC Davis thinks it’s catching Illinois anytime soon, that’s when I will stop reading US News.</p>
<p>Barron: Hear, Hear! I’ve commented and shown alternative data on other threads that any ranking method that has UC SB, Davis, Irvine over UT, UF, Tulane, and GWU is laughable. This gives all the more credence to those who advocate boycotting USNWR. Six UCs in the top 50…ridiculous. Spread the word, ignore 'em.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t understand why you think it’s so ridiculous. </p>
<p>Care to explain your ideal methodology?</p>
<p>^It is tough to believe with the huge budget deficits in California that the 5th and 6th best public universities still outrank the state flagship schools like Penn State, Texas, and UF. It’s also a little tough to see UCSD ahead of Wisconsin, UW, and UofI. Granted, there is probably not a whole lot differentiating these schools in the rankings. However, it’s probably the large population in California that is driving up the selectivity and SAT scores while other factors in judging a college (national/international name recognition, research opportunities, faculty, etc) would have schools like Wisconsin, Penn State, and the others I mentioned ahead of UCSD and the other UCs. If you talk to people outside of the West Coast, most will put Penn State over UC Davis without much thought.</p>
<p>It may be “tough” to believe, but numbers don’t lie… US News does use a methodology after all.</p>
<p>In terms of research opportunities? The UC’s have some of the best research opportunities available to undergrads in the world. There is a program at my school (UCI) called UROP (undergraduate research opportunities program), in which any undergrad can pair with any faculty member, receive grant money for research, and then present their research at the end of the quarter at a symposium as well as have their work published.</p>
<p>in terms of faculty? I could easily list countless people at my school who are the authority in their field, or who are very famous in the academia in general.</p>
<p>I think a lot of you on here who want to discredit the UC’s have a very unrealistic perception of them.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I did enjoy reading the UC Davis link.</p>
<p>Thanks for posting it.</p>
<p>Re UC stats: the one USNews stat that UC does create is ‘Top 10% of HS’. Officially, class rank is NOT an admission criteria. Moreover, (I read in the LA Times a couple of years ago that) over half of the Calif pubics do not rank, thus UC doesn’t have the info even if they wanted to use it.</p>
<p>In essence, the reported Top 10% number is “estimated” as UC administrator will readily agree. The 99% is probably only slightly high for Cal and UCLA, but I really question the validity of the 96% number reported by Irvine.</p>
<p>
How do they figure out if a student is [Eligible</a> in the Local Context?](<a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/paths_to_adm/freshman/local_eligibility.html?]Eligible”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/undergrad_adm/paths_to_adm/freshman/local_eligibility.html?)</p>
<p>ELC requires participation from high schools and parents; some families who are top 4% decline to complete the paperwork; ELC can be affected by college courses, which may or may not be on a HS transcript (for ranking purposes); some high schools screw it up. But, the UC app only reports ELC (or not), it does not report any other class rank. Thus app readers can know if top 4%, but not necessarily top 10% (which is USNews cutoff).</p>
<p>Sndebrosse: Numbers dont lie, but the UC schools do, as Bluebayou alluded to. </p>
<p>1 , The UC SB, Davis and Irvine reporting of estimates of percentages of students in top 10 percent of high school classes is a joke. Davis reports 95 percent, SB 96, and Irvine 96. By comparison Harvard reports 95 percent, Stanford 91 and Vanderbilt 80. These UC schools should be excluded from future USNWR lists for this deception. Clearly, the UC schools are “gaming” the USNWR system.</p>
<p>2 , You asked for my previously posted method, which is really Hawkettes, see below. When comparing SAT an ACT achievement, the lower UC schools score miserably. This 1) shows the fallacy of the reported top ten percent of high school graduate numbers and 2) calls into question exactly what high schools are graduating students, purportedly at the top of their class, with such low SAT/ACT achievement. As I said earlier, ridiculous. </p>
<p>My earlier post: </p>
<p>Top 100 rankings using Hawkette method and 2008 data </p>
<hr>
<p>Using the very wise Hawkettes method of examining the most consistent hard data available, SAT and ACT scores, I thought it would be interesting to see how the current USNWR top 100 list would shake out using 2008 (the latest) SAT and ACT admissions data. Hawkette describes her/his method as thus:</p>
<p>One way that I have measured this is to compare the achievement levels of each school’s student body on the SAT and the ACT exams. I looked at absolute barriers (700 on the CR and Math SAT and 30 on the ACT) and asked what percentage of the student body achieved at these levels. As the data attests, the usual suspects top the list and IMO, the order is a reasonable listing of student body quality at these colleges. </p>
<p>Rank , Total Score , School , Critical Reading SAT (25% weight) , Math SAT (25% weight) , ACT (50% weight) </p>
<p>(Back to me) A few observations:</p>
<p>1 , Eight schools rose into the top 50 : Tulane climbing the highest to 27, along with Miami of Fl to 38, Worchester Poly to 42, Tulsa to 43, American U to 45, Colorado Sch. of Mines to 46, Pepperdine to 48, and Pitt to 50. Of the schools cracking the top 50, Tulsa had the largest leap, rising 40 places from 83.</p>
<p>2 , The California public UC schools did not fare well under this system. One has to wonder what it is about the USNWR criteria that is protecting those currently tied for 44th S. Barbara, Davis, Irvine – with their top 50 status. SB fell to 70, Davis to 84, and Irvine to 96. And Berkeley, UCLA, and San Diego, while certainly remaining in the top 50, all had significant drops.</p>
<p>3 , Another mystery is the low showing (92) of Penn State, a current USNWR top 50 school. When measured against other schools SAT and ACT achievement, PSU did not perform well.</p>
<p>4 , BYU had the largest overall leap in rankings, from 113 to 55.</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard does not list admissions data on Petersons, so it did not make my list. </li>
</ol>
<p>6 , Thoughts…???</p>
<ul>
<li>(USNWR current rank)</li>
</ul>
<p>Rank; Total; School; SATR 25%; SATM25%; ACT50%
1 , 93.5% , Caltech , 76, 100 ,99 *(6)
2 , 81.5% , Wash U 64,77,92 (12)
3 , 80% , Princeton 73,77,85 (2)
4 , 77.8% , MIT 58,85,84 (14)
5 , 76.5% , Yale 77,77,76 (3)
6 , 70% , Notre Dame 50,64,83 (18)
7 , 69.8% , Northwestern 61,66,76 (12)
8 , 69.5% , Dartmouth 65,67,73 (11)
9 , 69.3% , Stanford 57,66,77 (4)
10 , 69% , Columbia 64,66,73 (8)
10 , 69% , Vanderbilt 47,66,82 (18)
12, 68% , Duke 60,68,72 (8)
12 , 68% , U Penn 52,70,75 (6)
14 , 64.8% , Rice 53,64,71 (17)
15 , 64.5% , U Chicago 62,60,68 (8)
16 , 64% , Emory 45,61,75 (18)
17 , 63.5% , Tufts 62,62,65 (28)
18 , 63% , Brown 57,63,66 (16)
19 , 60.8% , Cornell 41,64,69 (14)
20 , 59.3% , Carnegie Mellon 37,66,67 (22)
21 , 57.8% , Johns Hopkins 42,59,65 (15)
22 , 55% , Georgetown 54,56,55 (23)
23 , 52.3% , USC 35,50,63 (27)
24 , 50.8% , Brandeis 38,43,61 (31)
25 , 48.8% , Boston Coll 29,42,62 (34)
26 , 48% , W&M 41,35,58, (32)
27 , 43.8% , Tulane 43,24,54 (51)
28 , 40.3% , Case Western 24,41,48 (41)
29 , 40% , UC Berkeley 29,51,40 (21)
30 , 39.8% , NYU 32,37,45 (33)
31 , 39.0% , U Michigan 22,46,44 (26)
32 , 37.3% , U Rochester 22,41,43 (35)
33 , 36% , U Virginia 32,40,36 (23)
34 , 35.5% , Georgia Tech 19,47,38 (35)
34 , 35.5% , Wake Forest (28)
36 , 34.5% UCLA 20,40,39 (25)
37 , 33.8% , U Illinois 16,47,36 (40)
38 , 32.8% , U North Carolina 25,30,38 (30)
38 , 32.8 , U of Miami (FL) 20,27,42 (51)
40 , 31.5% , U Wisconsin 14,40,35 (35)
41 , 30.3% , Rensselaer 23,52,23 (41)
42 , 30% Worchester Poly 13,37,35 (71)
43 , 29% U Tulsa 27,23,33 (83)
44 , 28.8% , Lehigh 17,40,29 (35)
45 , 27% American University 25,17,33 (83)
46 , 26% Colorado School of Mines 12,28,32 (80)
47 , 25.5% , U Florida 17,25,30 (49)
48. 25.3 ; Pepperdine 16,19,33 (56)
49 , 24.5% , UCSD 11,29,29 (35)
50 , 24.3% U of Pittsburgh 20,21,28 (58)
51 , 24% Northeastern 12,24,30 (96)
52 , 23.8% , U Texas 16,25,27 (47)
53 , 23.5% U Maryland 17,30, 23.5 (53)
53 , 23.5% Illinois Inst. Tech 9,27,29 (102)
55 , 23% BYU 16,18,29 (113)
56 , 22.8% Boston U 17,22,26 (60)
57 , 22.5% George Washington 19,21,25 (53)
58 , 22% UMinn Twin Cities 28,18,21 (61)
58 , 22% SMU 13,19,28 (66)
60 , 21% SUNY Binghamton 12,24,24 (77)
61 , 20.5% Stevens Inst. Tech 16,31,20.5 (83)
62 , 20% Clemson 9,17,27 (61)
62 , 20% U Oklahoma 12,12,28 (108)
63 , 19% , Ohio State 11,19,23 (56)
64 , 18% St. Louis University 10,12,25 (80)
65 , 17.5% , U Washington 12,16,21 (41)
66 , 16.8% U Nebraska 15,18,17 (89)
67 , 16.3% U Georgia 11,14,20 (58)
68 , 16% Texas A&M 9,15,20 (64)
69 , 15.8% Fordham 14,11,19 (61)
70 , 15% U Denver 8,12,20 (89)
70 , 15.% , UC Santa Barbara 11,13,18 (44)
72 , 14.8% U Iowa 14,19,13 (66)
72 , 14.8% Purdue 5,14,20 (66)
72 , 14.8 Iowa State 14,21,12 (89)
75 , 14.5% Auburn 7,11,20 (96)
75 , 14.5 Clark 15,9,17 (80)
75 , 14.5% Marquette 9,9,20 (77)
78 , 14.3% Miami of Ohio 8,11,19 (66)
79 , 14% U Delaware 11,13,16 (71)
80 , 13.8% Mizzou 13,10,15 (96)
81 , 13.3% Baylor 12,15, 13 (76)
81 , 13.3% U Tennessee 7,8,19 (108)
83 , 12.75 U Colorado 7,10,17 (77)
84 , 12.5% , UC Davis 8,16,13 (44)
84 , 12.5% U South Carolina 7,9,17 (108)
84 , 12.5% Indiana U 7,9,17 (71)
87 , 12.3% U Dayton 7,10,16 (108)
88 , 12% U Pacific 6,18,12 (102)
89 , 11.5% U Conn 7,13,13 (66)
89 , 11.5% U Vermont 9,7,15
91 , 11.3% Michigan State 8,13,12 (71)
92 , 11% , Penn State 15,7,11 (47)
93 , 10.5% VA Tech 7,14,10.5 (71)
93 , 10.5% U Alabama 7,7,14 (83)
95 , 9.8% NC State 5,12,11 (83)
96 , 9.5% , UC Irvine 8,18,6 (44)
97 , 8.5% SUNY Stony Brook 4,13,8.5 (96)
97 , 8.5% FL State 7,7,10 (102)
99 , 8.3% UC Santa Cruz 7,8,9 ( 96)
100 , 7.5% UMASS 6,8,8</p>
<p>Based of the analysis I did of PA, math SATs are the single best predictor of PA. I have long thought that math SATs are the single best index of college quality. For one thing, schools with large numbers of international students may have a depressed SAT CR. Schools with engineering programs generally have lots of international students.</p>
<p>I have also long wondered why the UC schools have such a high percent in the top 10% of their class. Anybody know why?</p>
<p>Here is a ranking by math SATs. I separated Cornell Engineering to make it comparable to the tech schools. I separated Cornell Arts & Sciences and Engineering to make it comparable to most other universities. (Cornell has several unique colleges with special programs.)</p>
<p>I included the LACs for comparison.</p>
<p>rank, math SAT 25th percentile, math SAT 75th percentile, school</p>
<p>1 770 800 California Institute of Technology
2 740 800 Harvey Mudd College
3 720 800 Cornell Engineering
4 720 800 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5 700 790 Princeton University
6 700 790 Yale University
7 700 780 Harvard University
8 700 780 Washington University in St Louis
9 690 785 Cornell A&S and Engineering
10 690 780 Pomona College
11 680 790 Duke University
12 680 780 Stanford University
13 680 780 University of Pennsylvania
14 680 770 Northwestern University
15 680 760 Vanderbilt University
16 670 780 Brown University
17 670 780 Carnegie Mellon University
18 670 780 Columbia University in the City of New York
19 670 780 Dartmouth College
20 670 780 Rice University
21 670 770 Cornell University
22 670 760 Swarthmore College
23 670 760 University of Notre Dame
24 670 750 Tufts University
25 660 770 Johns Hopkins University
26 660 760 Amherst College
27 660 760 Williams College
28 660 740 Emory University
29 660 740 Washington and Lee University
30 650 760 University of Chicago
31 650 750 Bowdoin College
32 650 750 Claremont McKenna College
33 650 750 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
34 650 750 University of Southern California
35 650 740 Brandeis University
36 650 740 Carleton College
37 650 740 Haverford College
38 650 740 Middlebury College
39 650 740 Wesleyan University
40 650 730 Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
41 650 730 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
42 650 720 Hamilton College
43 650 700 Colorado School of Mines
44 640 780 Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
45 640 740 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
46 640 730 Boston College
47 640 730 Colgate University
48 640 728 Davidson College
49 640 720 Lehigh University
50 640 710 Colby College
51 640 710 Vassar College
52 630 730 Georgetown University
53 630 725 Wellesley College
54 630 720 New York University
55 630 720 University of Rochester
56 630 710 Bucknell University
57 630 710 Macalester College
58 630 710 Reed College
59 630 710 Wake Forest University
60 630 700 Franklin and Marshall College
61 630 700 Tulane University of Louisiana
62 630 650 Ohio Northern University
63 620 750 University of California-Berkeley
64 620 730 University of Virginia-Main Campus
65 620 720 Case Western Reserve University
66 620 710 College of William and Mary
67 620 710 Grinnell College
68 620 710 Oberlin College
69 620 710 Scripps College
70 620 710 Villanova University
71 620 700 Stevens Institute of Technology
72 620 700 United States Air Force Academy
73 620 690 SUNY at Geneseo
74 610 710 University of Wisconsin-Madison
75 610 700 Barnard College
76 610 700 Colorado College
77 610 700 Illinois Institute of Technology
78 610 700 Kenyon College
79 610 700 Lafayette College
80 610 700 University of Miami
81 610 700 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
82 610 690 Connecticut College
83 610 690 Gettysburg College
84 610 690 Northeastern University
85 610 690 SUNY at Binghamton
86 610 690 Trinity University
87 610 690 Wheaton College
88 610 690 Whitman College
89 610 680 Bentley University
90 610 680 United States Coast Guard Academy
91 600 730 University of California-Los Angeles
92 600 700 Trinity College
93 600 700 United States Naval Academy
94 600 700 University of Maryland-College Park
95 600 690 George Washington University
96 600 680 College of the Holy Cross
97 590 710 Illinois Wesleyan University
98 590 700 St. Olaf College
99 590 700 The University of Texas at Dallas
100 590 700 University of California-San Diego
101 590 700 University of Florida
102 590 690 Boston University
103 590 690 Dickinson College
104 590 690 Furman University
105 590 690 Michigan Technological University
106 590 690 The College of New Jersey
107 590 680 Lewis & Clark College
108 590 680 Occidental College
109 590 680 Ohio State University-Main Campus
110 590 680 Southern Methodist University
111 590 680 United States Military Academy
112 590 680 University of Richmond
113 590 670 New College of Florida
114 590 670 Skidmore College
115 585 680 Milwaukee School of Engineering
116 580 710 University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
117 580 690 Gustavus Adolphus College
118 580 687 Grove City College
119 580 680 Bryn Mawr College
120 580 680 Clemson University
121 580 680 Sewanee: The University of the South
122 580 670 Rhodes College
123 580 670 University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus
124 570 690 The University of Texas at Austin
125 570 690 Truman State University
126 570 680 Brigham Young University
127 570 680 Denison University
128 570 680 Kalamazoo College
129 570 680 Pepperdine University
130 570 680 Smith College</p>
<p>Collegehelp: 1) “math SATs are the single best index of college quality” – Another excellent alternative (and more accurate) means of ranking schools.</p>
<p>2) “I have also long wondered why the UC schools have such a high percent in the top 10% of their class. Anybody know why?” – See posts above re. UC administrators usage of “estimates.” UC Davis, SB, and Irvine are nowhere to be found on your top 130 (Berkeley lists at 63, UCLA 91, and UCSD 100). Not surprisingly, UT, UF, GWU, Pitt, Pepperdine, OSU, BYU are on the list. Tulane comes in higher than Berkeley.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is a curious statement. I grant the point about international students, but schools with engineering programs also often attract large numbers of kids with lopsided talent–math jocks who may not be very strong in reading, writing, and the humanities. Some may be internationals but most are home-grown. I’m not at all persuaded that this kind of one-dimensionality is what defines a great college or university—or that it’s any better than the other kind of lopsidedness that’s strong on CR but weaker on Math. Nor is it at all clear why a university with an engineering school (attracting high math scores) is better than a school that has no engineering school but is exceptionally strong in the humanities (more likely to attract kids with high CR scores). Finally, high math scores are much more common than high CR scores. Among 2008 college-bound test-takers, more than 40,000 scored in the 750-800 range in Math, compared to just over 24,000 who scores in that range in CR. And the high math scorers are overwhelmingly male. High CR scorers are roughly evenly divided by gender; high math scorers (750 or higher) are heavily male by a 2-to-1 ratio, suggesting that the stereotype of the male math jock who has little interest in or aptitude for the humanities or social sciences is not so far from the statistical truth. </p>
<p>What really distinguishes the best schools, IMO, is that they attract students with both high CR and high Math scores (not only high [CR + M], but high CR and, independently, high M). Indeed, more often than not it’s the high CR scores that separate the wheat from the chaff, as top CR scores occur so much less frequently. </p>
<p>Here’s a ranking of US News’ current top 25 (well, 26) national universities by 25th-75th percentile CR scores (ranked by 75th percentile score, with 25th percentile score as tie-breaker):</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard 700-800</li>
<li>Yale 700-800</li>
<li>Princeton 690-790</li>
<li>Caltech 700-780</li>
<li>Chicago 670-770</li>
<li>Dartmouth 660-770</li>
<li>Columbia 680-760</li>
<li>Stanford 660-760</li>
<li>MIT 660-760</li>
<li>Brown 660-760</li>
<li>WUSTL 680-750</li>
<li>Northwestern 670-750</li>
<li>Duke 660-750</li>
<li>Penn 650-750</li>
<li>Georgetown 650-750</li>
<li>Rice 640-750</li>
<li>Notre Dame 640-750</li>
<li>Vanderbilt 640-740</li>
<li>Emory 640-730</li>
<li>Cornell 630-730</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins 630-730</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon 610-710</li>
<li>UC Berkeley 590-710</li>
<li>UVA 590-700</li>
<li>Michigan 590-690</li>
<li>UCLA 570-690</li>
</ol>
<p>Note the much sharper drop-off in 75th percentile CR scores as you go down this list, reflecting the scarcity of top scores. Harvard and Yale are extremely high in both CR and M scores, but their CR scores are actually marginally higher than their M scores. Since these schools can get pretty much any students they want, it suggests they value high CR scores a great deal. But note that Caltech is also at the top of the charts here. The University of Chicago, extremely strong in the humanities and social sciences, also has somewhat higher CR than M scores, again suggesting CR may be favored as an admissions criterion.</p>
<p>Here’s a ranking of US News’ top LACs (excluding service academies) by CR scores:</p>
<ol>
<li>Swarthmore 680-780</li>
<li>Pomona 690-770</li>
<li>Amherst 670-770</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 690-760</li>
<li>Williams 670-760</li>
<li>Wellesley 660-750</li>
<li>Vassar 660-750</li>
<li>Middlebury 650-750</li>
<li>Carleton 650-750</li>
<li>Haverford 650-750</li>
<li>Claremont-McKenna 650-750</li>
<li>Wesleyan 650-750</li>
<li>Oberlin 650-750</li>
<li>Grinnell 610-750</li>
<li>Washington & Lee 660-740</li>
<li>Bowdoin 650-740</li>
<li>Scripps 650-740</li>
<li>Hamilton 640-740</li>
<li>Barnard 640-740</li>
<li>Mt. Holyoke 640-730</li>
<li>Davidson 630-730</li>
<li>Macalester 630-730</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr 620-730</li>
<li>Colby 640-720</li>
<li>Colgate 620-720</li>
<li>Bates 630-710</li>
<li>Smith 590-510</li>
</ol>
<p>As a group the LACs hold up quite well in comparison to the universities in CR scores.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I did not mean to allude that the UCs were lying. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that their estimates are in fact good-faith estimates. Of course, we’ll never know.</p>
<p>Unlike some colleges (cough, cough, Tulane, USC, Penn, to name a few), at least the UCs publish their common data sets so we can see real numbers, even if a real estimate. (P.s.: both Miami and Tulane superscore the ACT.)</p>
<p>Blue: sorry, my apologies. I said lie–I’m a cynic. Your allusion was to the more charitable “create/estimate.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re making quite an accusation. Do you have any proof of that, besides the fact that you don’t think it is plausible? No, you don’t.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Exactly. What you entirely neglected to consider before accusing the UC system of fraud is that not all students attend high schools with equal levels of competition. I would bet you that many, many high schools have only the top 20% even attending college. And what kind of school is more likely to send a student to Harvard? a school with less competition (keep in mind the UC system has a program called ELC, which guarantees the top 4% of a class to a UC), or a school with an intense amount of competition?</p>
<p>A student may easily be academically wonderful if they aren’t in the top 10%, especially if they attended a great school. This explains the lower percent of top 10% students at the schools you mentioned.</p>
<p>So, yes, absolutely this is a horrible metric by which US News ranks schools. But for you to accuse the UC’s of deception is completely unfounded.</p>
<p>Btw, ranking schools merely by the standardized test scores of the students they admit is even worse the the US News methodology. You really don’t think any other factors need to be considered? UC Berkeley, for example, is one of the best universities in the world in terms of graduate programs and research, yet this is not reflected with your test score methodology.</p>
<p>SAT scores are highly correlated with most of the other indicators of quality. That’s why they work well by themselves.</p>
<p>bclintonk-
There are probably more high math scorers than CR scorers on the SAT because of internationals taking the SATs. They are mostly male perhaps because engineering attracts a lot of international students and most engineers are male.</p>
<p>In terms of colleges, there are just as many colleges with a math SAT 75th percentile over 700 as there are colleges with a SAT CR 75th percentile over 700 (about 70).</p>
<p>Collegehelp: thank you, well said re. SAT/ACT achievement indicators. </p>
<p>sndebrosse: You have made my point. Because UC SB, Davis, Irvine, as you claim, have high top 10 percent of class numbers by virtue of a portion of students coming from sub-standard high schools, along with commensurate sub-standard SAT/ACT achievement; these schools certainly do not belong on any top 50 list.</p>