<p>Something tells me Rice is more lax on admissions than they are implying. They seem to be trying to discourage people with lower scores from applying. Private schools play tricks like this all of the time. Yield and rank protection. I mean, it’s not like the other top colleges (which have lots of students with scores like that) don’t have high retention rates. Normally the students that transfer (as opposed to dropping out) out tend to go to lesser ranked schools.
Would be nice if they straight up displayed their transfer admit rate or straight up confess that they really don’t want to accommodate transfers. I mean lots of schools do it.</p>
<p>Rice has more grade inflation than us and many of our peers (even Duke which has higher SAT scores). A student with lower scores can do well at Rice (and then it’s small, so doing well is made even easier), so they are BSing if they are seriously trying to care that much about SATs for transfers. I notice how Emory only says “good” SAT scores. that doesn’t mean high relative to students here, it probably only means “good” as in workable. I have a friend who transferred with a lower than average ACT (like 26) and has a high GPA his first semester and throughout his summer classes. And I’m pretty sure he beat that b-school curve and got A-grades. Point is, many of these transfers are more motivated than the students already there and for good reason.</p>