Top National Unis and Top LACs compared by standardized test scores

College Search & Selection
1

<p>From data drawn almost exclusively from collegeboard.com, I created the following rankings for the schools ranked 1-50 by USNWR in their national university rankings and 1-20 in their LAC rankings. In some cases, a school did not include a writing score and thus was not ranked in the 2400 category. Also, some schools do not report an ACT score and thus they were not ranked in the ACT listing.</p>

<pre><code> SORTED BY 2400 SCORE

</code></pre>

<p>Rank Score 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
15 , 2140 , Williams
16 , 2130 , U Penn
17 , 2120 , Tufts
18 , 2105 , Rice
19 , 2100 , Columbia
20 , 2090 , Carleton
20 , 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
35 , 1995 , Boston College
36 , 1975 , UC Berkeley
37 , 1965 , U Virginia
38 , 1960 , Rensselaer
39 , 1955 , U Michigan
39 , 1955 , Georgia Tech
41 , 1940 , UCLA
42 , 1935 , Case Western
43 , 1925 , U North Carolina
43 , 1925 , Tulane
45 , 1910 , Smith
46 , 1895 , U Wisconsin
47 , 1865 , UCSD
48 , 1840 , U Texas
49 , 1780 , U Washington
49 , 1780 , UC S Barbara
51 , 1760 , UC Irvine
52 , 1720 , UC Davis</p>

<pre><code> DATA NOT AVAILABLE
</code></pre>

<p>na , na , Brandeis
na , na , CMC
na , na , Colgate
na , na , Cornell
na , na , Davidson
na , na , Georgetown
na , na , Grinnell
na , na , Hamilton
na , na , Lehigh
na , na , Oberlin
na , na , Penn State
na , na , Syracuse
na , na , U Chicago
na , na , U Florida
na , na , U Illinois UC
na , na , U Rochester
na , na , W&L
na , na , Wake Forest
na , na , Wash U StL</p>

<pre><code> SORTED BY 1600 SCORE

</code></pre>

<p>Rank Score 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
25 , 1395 , Wesleyan
25 , 1395 , Middlebury
25 , 1395 , Cornell
25 , 1395 , Georgetown
29 , 1390 , Wellesley
29 , 1390 , Haverford
29 , 1390 , Vanderbilt
29 , 1390 , J Hopkins
33 , 1385 , Emory
33 , 1385 , Bowdoin
33 , 1385 , CMC
33 , 1385 , W&L
37 , 1380 , Vassar
38 , 1370 , Brandeis
38 , 1370 , Hamilton
40 , 1365 , USC
40 , 1365 , Oberlin
42 , 1360 , Grinnell
43 , 1355 , Davidson
44 , 1350 , W & M
45 , 1340 , Wake Forest
45 , 1340 , Colgate
47 , 1335 , NYU
47 , 1335 , Rensselaer
49 , 1330 , Boston College
49 , 1330 , Georgia Tech
51 , 1325 , UC Berkeley
51 , 1325 , U Rochester
53 , 1320 , U Michigan
54 , 1315 , Lehigh
55 , 1310 , U Virginia
56 , 1305 , Case Western
57 , 1295 , UCLA
57 , 1295 , U North Carolina
59 , 1290 , U Illinois UC
60 , 1280 , Tulane
60 , 1280 , U Wisconsin
62 , 1265 , Smith
63 , 1250 , UCSD
63 , 1250 , U Florida
65 , 1240 , U Texas
66 , 1220 , Syracuse
67 , 1205 , U Washington
68 , 1190 , UC S Barbara
69 , 1185 , UC Irvine
70 , 1180 , Penn State
71 , 1155 , UC Davis</p>

<pre><code> SORTED BY ACT SCORE

</code></pre>

<p>Rank Score College</p>

<p>1 , 33.0 , Harvard
2 , 32.5 , MIT
2 , 32.5 , Notre Dame
4 , 32.0 , Yale
4 , 32.0 , Princeton
4 , 32.0 , Northwestern
7 , 31.5 , Duke
7 , 31.5 , Pomona
7 , 31.5 , Dartmouth
7 , 31.5 , Amherst
7 , 31.5 , Rice
7 , 31.5 , Vanderbilt
7 , 31.5 , Wash U StL
14 , 31.0 , Stanford
14 , 31.0 , Williams
14 , 31.0 , U Penn
14 , 31.0 , Carleton
14 , 31.0 , Middlebury
14 , 31.0 , Emory
14 , 31.0 , Carnegie Mellon
14 , 31.0 , Bowdoin
14 , 31.0 , Georgetown
14 , 31.0 , Grinnell
24 , 30.5 , Brown
24 , 30.5 , Tufts
24 , 30.5 , Columbia
24 , 30.5 , Wellesley
24 , 30.5 , Vassar
24 , 30.5 , U Chicago
24 , 30.5 , Colgate
31 , 30.0 , Swarthmore
31 , 30.0 , J Hopkins
31 , 30.0 , USC
31 , 30.0 , Boston College
31 , 30.0 , Cornell
31 , 30.0 , Brandeis
31 , 30.0 , Davidson
38 , 29.5 , Wesleyan
38 , 29.5 , W & M
38 , 29.5 , NYU
38 , 29.5 , W&L
42 , 29.0 , U Michigan
42 , 29.0 , Georgia Tech
42 , 29.0 , Tulane
42 , 29.0 , U Rochester
42 , 29.0 , Oberlin
47 , 28.5 , Case Western
48 , 28.5 , U Illinois UC
49 , 28.0 , U Wisconsin
50 , 27.5 , U North Carolina
51 , 27.5 , Smith
52 , 27.0 , Rensselaer
52 , 27.0 , UCLA
52 , 27.0 , U Florida
55 , 26.5 , Syracuse
56 , 26.0 , UCSD
56 , 26.0 , U Texas
56 , 26.0 , U Washington
56 , 26.0 , UC S Barbara</p>

<pre><code> DATA NOT AVAILABLE
</code></pre>

<p>na , na , Cal Tech
na , na , CMC
na , na , Hamilton
na , na , Harvey Mudd
na , na , Haverford
na , na , Lehigh
na , na , Penn State
na , na , U Virginia
na , na , UC Berkeley
na , na , UC Davis
na , na , UC Irvine
na , na , Wake Forest</p>

2

<p>Maybe I'm missing something, but... why?</p>

3

<p>
[quote]
why?

[/quote]

^ Hawkette loves standardized test scores.</p>

4

<p>hawkette:</p>

<p>you might want to flag the test opional schools since there numbers are likely inflated.</p>

<p>And, btw, thanks for the data. It IS valuable info as one data point for families. As an author of one of the 'How To' college guides wrote: 'tis always better to be above the median test score', which I think is a good ROT. Of course, test scores won't get anyone in, but they can keep a lot of people out.</p>

5

<p>quare,
Many people (students, families, high school counselors, college adcomms, etc) will frequently refer to standardized test data as a broad proxy for evaluating a college. In the case of high school students, their families and their counselors, knowing the standardized test strength at these schools can be an essential piece of information for helping to create lists of reach/match/safety schools. For others, they will look at the standardized test scores as a broad representation of the overall student body and comparisons can be made vs other colleges. </p>

<p>It should be noted that college admissions counselors rate standardized test scores as one of their top three admissions criteria along with grades in college prep courses and strength of curriculum, but there is not broadly-available data in these areas and so standardized test data becomes the best single piece of data for measuring a school's student population. </p>

<p>Typically, I would not include both national universities and LACs in the same listing, but this has been requested in prior threads and I thought that I would try it this way. Please let me know if you would prefer to see them broken out by National Universities and LACs.</p>

<p>bluebayou,
The sources that I am using don't flag this information. If you or anyone else wants to post this for a particular college or colleges, then please do so.</p>

6

<p>hey Hawkette, I know you are really into this stuff, so I challenge you to do a 10 year comparison of SAT scores, compare 2007 vs. 1997 freshman class SAT averages, and see who has the most increase, that'd be interesting to see.</p>

7

<p>keefer,
It's a good question. I did this last fall after the 2008 USNWR issue came out and compared the current rankings with 1999. Here is that thread and the subset of data related to SAT scores:</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/401109-2008-vs-1999-what-s-changed-usnwr-data-who-s-hot-who-s-not.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/401109-2008-vs-1999-what-s-changed-usnwr-data-who-s-hot-who-s-not.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>AVERAGE SAT SCORES (no adjustments made for any re-centering effect) </p>

<p>2008 Avg , 1999 Avg , Positive Change, College</p>

<p>1450 , 1300 , 150 Wash U
1370 , 1220 , 150 USC
1375 , 1285 , 90 Vanderbilt
1410 , 1325 , 85 Tufts
1395 , 1320 , 75 Notre Dame
1425 , 1355 , 70 U Chicago
1295 , 1225 , 70 U North Carolina
1430 , 1365 , 65 U Penn
1435 , 1370 , 65 Columbia
1445 , 1390 , 55 Duke
1440 , 1385 , 55 Brown
1390 , 1335 , 55 Georgetown
1485 , 1435 , 50 Yale
1410 , 1360 , 50 Northwestern
1295 , 1250 , 45 UCLA
1315 , 1270 , 45 U Michigan
1480 , 1440 , 40 Princeton
1385 , 1345 , 40 Cornell
1395 , 1355 , 40 Carnegie Mellon
1385 , 1355 , 30 Emory
1520 , 1495 , 25 Caltech
1450 , 1425 , 25 Dartmouth
1325 , 1305 , 20 U Virginia
1320 , 1300 , 20 Wake Forest
1390 , 1375 , 15 Johns Hopkins
1490 , 1485 , 5 Harvard
1435 , 1430 , 5 Rice
1325 , 1320 , 5 UC Berkeley
1440 , 1440 , 0 Stanford
1470 , 1475 , -5 MIT</p>

8

<p>Are the test scores applicants, admits, or enrollees?</p>

<p>Do USC and WUSTL post Common Data Set numbers?</p>

9

<p>The data is for enrollees. </p>

<p>Many highly ranked colleges don't publish their CDS, so don't limit your condemnation to USC and Wash U. They are the most frequent punching bags around CC Land, but I have not been able to find the CDS for top schools like Harvard, Caltech, U Penn, Duke, U Chicago, Columbia, Brown, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Tufts, and Wake Forest.</p>

10

<p>hawkette, why limit your list to the schools USNWR chose (by criteria selection) to be at the top of their list? Omitting schools whose SAT scores are higher than those on your list is not maximizing service to those you want to help. Those who value SAT scores should see the schools with the highest SAT scores. If they agree with USNWR's criteria they can use USNWR's list.</p>

<p>Note that applicants need to be well above the average of enrollees in order to have an "average" chance of admission, because the yield from the top 25% of applicants to a given school is much less than the yield from the bottom 25%. For example, fewer accepted by both Yale and Grinnell will choose Grinnell, but more accepted by Grinnell and a state school (ignoring financial considerations) will choose Grinnell. I did a rough calculation (for one school) that showed an applicant needs to be at the 69 %ile in order to end up at the 50 %ile of enrollees. This is obviously not true for the Ivies.</p>

11

<p>vossron,
I appreciate your comments, but I did not mean to be exhaustive. As we both know, there are literally thousands of colleges out there. My personal interest and what I have seen here on CC is greatest in the USNWR Top 20 national universities. I went beyond that to include the Top 50 national universities and the Top 20 LACs. As for other schools that you would like to include in this thread, I hope that you will add their information. </p>

<p>I remember the discussion you had about how to interpret the standardized test score ranges for purposes of evaluating reach/match/safety status. This would serve as a good topic for another thread and could serve as a tutorial for students as they create their lists. The problem, of course, is that it might incite even greater frenzy and worry, particularly about standardized testing, and that wouldn't be a great result.</p>

12

<p>Sorry, I don't mean to ask for an exhaustive list, just the top 50 and 20, respectively, SAT scores of schools unfiltered by USNWR's selection criteria. Maybe it's not so easy to assemble... :)</p>

13

<p>Hawkette, is your single point data a mean or median or something else?</p>

<p>I put my own sheet together using an equally arbitrary single point -- the midpoint between 25th and 75th percentile scores taken from the Common Data Set. In my method, Caltech is 1520, Harvard is 1490, Mudd is 1485 and Yale/Princeton 1480.</p>

14

<p>Vossron, I do not know where to get schools rank ordered by SAT scoring, but I have my own spreadsheet of colleges that are of interest to me, and the midpoint 25th-75th SAT score is one column of information I have (along with % female, school size, % admitted, and a few other columns. I designed it as a one page printiout of about 100 universities in two columns, with 25 of them being in Socal, our regional interest.</p>

<p>anyway.... the only ones that stick out in my list are Top 50 SAT schools nowhere near the top 50 (or 70 by Hawkettes method). these include Bard (37th place Liberal Arts, 35th place top 50 SAT) and Wheaton College (IL) (47th place SAT, 57th place LAC). It is important to note that the U of California does not use superscoring (single sitting only), and any very large university will have its top 1500 or so entering students (or their Honors Program) at a much higher testing level than its bottom 2500, so it is hard to compare top 1500 across school types.</p>

<p>Here is my list pasted here:</p>

<p>College/USNWR rank/midpoint 25th-75th SAT, where s=Liberal Arts, se=Small Engineering, and anything else is a regional ranking.</p>

<pre><code> US Nw SAT Mid
</code></pre>

<p>1 Caltech 5 1520
2 Harvard 2 1490
3 Harvey Mudd se1 1485
4 Yale 3 1480
5 Princeton 1 1480
6 Duke 8 1475
7 MIT 7 1470
8 Dartmouth 11 1450
9 Wash U 12 1450
10 Columbia 9 1445
11 Pomona s7 1445
12 Stanford 4 1440
13 Brown 14 1440
14 Rice 17 1435
15 11 Penn 5 1430
16 Williams s1 1430
17 Amherst s2 1430
18 Swarthmore s3 1425
19 U of Chicago 9 1425
20 31 Tufts 28 1410
21 Northwestern 14 1410
22 Carleton MN s5 1410
23 Haverford s10 1395
24 Carnegie Mellon 22 1395
25 Georgetown 23 1390
26 Bowdoin s7 1390
27 Johns Hopkins 14 1390
28 Wellesley MA s4 1390
29 Cornell 12 1385
30 Wash & Lee s15 1385
31 Wesleyan s11 1385
32 Emory GA 17 1385
33 Middlebury s5 1375
34 Bard s37 1375
35 Vassar s11 1375
36 Vanderbilt TN 19 1375
37 21 Claremont s11 1370
38 USC ^ 27 1370
39 Oberlin OH s20 1365
40 Hamilton NY s17 1360
41 Cooper Union se3 1355
42 Colby s22 1355
43 Grinnell IA s11 1355
44 Notre Dame 19 1345
45 Colgate s17 1345
46 Davidson s9 1345
47 Wheaton IL s59 1340
48 Wilm & Mary 33 1340
49 Scripps College s28 1340
50 Boston College 35 1335
51 UC Berkeley 21 1325
52 Virginia 23 1325
53 Wake Forrest SC 30 1320
54 Michigan 25 1315
55 Georgia Tech 35 1315
56 Bucknell PA s30 1310
57 NYU 34 1310
58 Lehigh PA 31 1305
59 Rose Hul Tech se1 1300
60 UCLA 25 1295
61 N. Carolina 28 1295
62 Pepperdine ^ 54 1290
63 Illinois 38 1285
64 Occidental s36 1285
65 Furman SC s37 1280
66 Grove City s-T3 1280
67 Wisconsin 38 1275
68 Air Force b1 1275
69 Naval Academy s20 1265
70 West Point s22 1265
71 Smith MA s17 1255
72 UC S Diego 38 1250
73 Minnesota 71 1240
74 Pitzer s49 1230
75 UT - Austin 44 1225
76 Santa Clara mw2 1215
77 Rutgers 59 1210
78 UCI 44 1210
79 Westmont s106 1205
80 Washington 42 1190
81 UCSB 44 1190
82 Penn St. 48 1180
83 U of San Diego 107 1180
84 Arizona 96 1175
85 Loy Marymount mw4 1170
86 Redlands mw6 1170
87 Chapman mw12 1165
88 U of Pacific 96 1165
89 UC Davis 42 1155
90 UCSC 79 1145
91 Point Loma Naz. mw23 1130
92 Azusa Pacific t3 1090
93 Cal Lutheran mw20 1085
94 Whittier s-t3 1070
95 La Verne t3 1050
96 UC Riverside 96 1040</p>

15

<p>Thanks for all the hard work DunninLA and Hawkette. I find the data very interesting as DS#2 gets closer to the college admissions rat race.</p>

16

<p>dunnin,
Not all schools will provide a CDS and, for those that do, their release dates will vary. My data is almost all taken from collegeboard.com and I also believe that all of the data is for students entering Fall, 2007. My data is a simple average of the midpoint of each section of the SAT and the composite ACT.</p>

17

<p>Where are the half points coming from in ACT scores?</p>

18

<p>School has a 25/75 of 30-33 so the mid-point is 31.5.</p>