USNWR 2009: Looking at the Data XVIII (Student Body Depth via CR scores)

College Search & Selection
1

<p>The publication of the 2009 USNWR College Rankings provides an opportunity to compare schools based on a wide variety of data points. In this and in other threads, I urge the reader to think less about the absolute rankings and more about the nature and value-added of the data point being discussed.</p>

<p>IMO, this is the single most effective measure for comparing student body depth. We can all argue about whether 10 or 30 or 50 points makes for a material difference in comparing SAT scores, but the delineation by a certain standard, eg, 700 score, 600 score, etc, gives a benchmark against which an entire student body can evaluated and contrasted vs other colleges. The weakness, of course, is that it does not differentiate between a 700 and a 790, but achieving a level of 700 is considered by most observers as sufficient to get one into the conversation for acceptance into even America's most competitive colleges. </p>

<p>Here is the full listing for colleges that are ranked in the USNWR Top 50 national universities and Top 25 LACs:</p>

<p>% of students scoring 700+ on SAT CR , % of students scoring 600+ on SAT CR , National University</p>

<p>80% , 97% , Caltech</p>

<p>77% , 98% , Yale
73% , 97% , Princeton</p>

<p>65% , 95% , Columbia
65% , 91% , Dartmouth
64% , 92% , U Chicago
64% , 97% , Wash U
61% , 92% , Stanford
61% , 94% , Northwestern
61% , 90% , Brown
60% , 92% , Duke
60% , 95% , Tufts</p>

<p>59% , 94% , MIT
57% , 90% , Georgetown
55% , 94% , U Penn
53% , 87% , Rice
51% , 88% , Notre Dame</p>

<p>48% , 91% , Emory
46% , 91% , Vanderbilt
45% , 85% , W&M
42% , 87% , Cornell
42% , 88% , Johns Hopkins
42% , 86% , Brandeis</p>

<p>35% , 86% , USC
33% , 82% , Carnegie Mellon
33% , 80% , Tulane
32% , 73% , UC Berkeley
32% , 85% , NYU
31% , 82% , Boston Coll</p>

<p>29% , 74% , U Virginia
27% , 75% , U North Carolina
26% , 83% , Wake Forest
25% , 75% , U Rochester
25% , 70% , Case Western
24% , 77% , Rensselaer
23% , 73% , U Michigan
22% , 68% , UCLA
21% , 73% , Georgia Tech</p>

<p>18% , 76% , Lehigh
17% , 59% , U Wisconsin
17% , 55% , U Texas
17% , 54% , Yeshiva
16% , 58% , U Illinois
16% , 61% , U Florida
14% , 54% , UCSD
12% , 48% , U Washington
11% , 51% , UC Santa Barbara</p>

<p>8% , 38% , UC Irvine
7% , 38% , UC Davis
7% , 43% , Penn State</p>

<p>na , na , Harvard</p>

<p>% of students scoring 700+ on SAT CR , % of students scoring 600+ on SAT CR , LAC</p>

<p>74% , 96% , Pomona
74% , 99% , Harvey Mudd
71% , 93% , Swarthmore</p>

<p>66% , 95% , Amherst
66% , 94% , Williams</p>

<p>58% , 96% , Vassar
57% , 94% , Carleton
57% , 90% , Oberlin
56% , 87% , Middlebury
56% , 89% , Wesleyan
55% , 92% , Haverford
55% , 96% , W&L
54% , 92% , Wellesley
52% , 90% , Claremont McK</p>

<p>49% , 89% , Bowdoin
49% , 87% , Hamilton
47% , 87% , Macalester
46% , 81% , Grinnell
45% , 91% , Colby
42% , 85% , Bryn Mawr
41% , 87% , Davidson</p>

<p>38% , 85% , Colgate
32% , 75% , Smith
32% , 90% , Bates</p>

<p>14% , 61% , US Naval Acad</p>

<p>na , na , US Military Acad</p>

2

<p>SAT scores are not indicative of the quality of the student body, only of how selective the university in question is. It makes sense that the most selective colleges have higher percentages of students who made over a 700 or a 600 on the SAT, because that's what they are looking for -- obviously.</p>

<p>Can we qualitatively say that Pomona is a better college than the U.S. Naval Academy because they have more students with over a 600 on the sections of the SAT? No, because Pomona and USNA have completely different missions and student bodies. While the USNA wants high achievers, they are looking for a holistic student (including physically) and so their student body averages are going to be different.</p>

<p>That's not to say that SAT scores don't mean anything -- of course they do, as colleges wouldn't use them if they were not somewhat indicative of a student's potential. But they say less about the quality of the student body overall than a fuller picture would, and I don't know why anyone would think that this measure was the "best" measure of student body depth.</p>

3

<p>Hawkette, research has shown that a combination of SAT scores and high school grades, perhaps in the form of class rankings, is the best indicator of academic success. I would love to see a chart that weighs each of the two criteria equally to form a "ranking". I believe that chart would be the best measure of a student body's academic depth. </p>

<p>Just a suggestion for your next list.</p>

4

<p>I should qualify my comments above to standardized test scores are the single best, publicly-available measurement that we have to judge student strength. I completely agree with you and with the National Association of College Admissions Counselors that standardized test scores are best considered in combination with other factors, most prominently performance in college preparatory classes and overall strength of curriculum. Here is how NACAC ranks the various criteria that adcomms traditionally utilize:</p>

<p>Considerable Weight , Moderate Weight , Limited or No Weight </p>

<p>75.9% , 17.4% , 6.7% , Grades in college prep courses
61.5% , 25.3% , 13.2% , Strength of curriculum
60.4% , 27.9% , 11.7% , Standardized Test scores (SAT, ACT)
51.2% , 36.4% , 12.5% , Grades in all courses
27.9% , 30.6% , 41.5% , Essay and/or writing sample
23.1% , 38.6% , 38.3% , Class rank
21.2% , 40.7% , 38.0% , Counselor recommendation
20.8% , 31.2% , 48.1% , Student's demonstrated interest
19.5% , 41.1% , 39.3% , Teacher recommendation
10.4% , 23.1% , 66.5% , Interview
7.6% , 37.0% , 55.4% , Extra-curricular activities
7.6% , 23.5% , 68.8% , Subject test scores (AP, IB)
6.3% , 13.4% , 80.4% , State graduation exam scores
5.2% , 8.5% , 86.3% , SAT II scores
2.9% , 21.5% , 75.5% , Work</p>

<p>If anyone has a reliable index of data with GPA calculations that are standardized, I might be willing to use that, but I think that this also has grave problems due to the great fluctuations in grading patterns from school district to school district.</p>

5

<p>Hawkette's data sorted by raw number of undergraduate students scoring 700+ on SAT CR:</p>

<p>UC Berkeley 7,884</p>

<p>NYU 6,709
U Texas 6,269</p>

<p>U Michigan 5,999
U Florida 5,822
USC 5,734
Cornell 5,674
UCLA 5,595
U Penn 5,590
Northwestern 5,053</p>

<p>U Illinois 4,943
U Wisconsin 4,930
U North Carolina 4,760
Columbia 4,500
Notre Dame 4,260
Stanford 4,123
Yale 4,093</p>

<p>U Virginia 3,981
Wash U 3,919
Georgetown 3,906
Duke 3,746
U Washington 3,695
Princeton 3,590
Brown 3,551
Emory 3,190
U Chicago 3,137
Tufts 3,010
Vanderbilt 3,005</p>

<p>UCSD 2,992
Boston Coll 2,815
Georgia Tech 2,723
Dartmouth 2,707
W&M 2,580
Penn State 2,577
MIT 2,461
Tulane 2,227</p>

<p>UC Santa Barbara 1,950
Carnegie Mellon 1,900
Johns Hopkins 1,881
UC Irvine 1,748
UC Davis 1,642
Rice 1,617
Brandeis 1,351
Rensselaer 1,240
U Rochester 1,152
Wake Forest 1,147
Case Western 1,047</p>

<p>Lehigh 850
Caltech 691
Yeshiva 513</p>

6

<p>That's the key to me UCBChemEGrad of the importance of these stats. It's proof that the larger state schools have as many highly qualified students, and in many cases even more of them, than many of the best private schools.</p>

7

<p>ucb,
To be accurate, I think you will need to use the data for enrolled freshmen rather than the student body as the data that I took from USNWR was for first-time, first-year freshmen. </p>

<p>As for the usefulness of your sort, I'm sure you'll understand if I think that this is useless for judging the depth of the student body which is the claim that I made above. I don't think anyone, including me, has ever denied that there are many talented students at schools that might have weaker overall scores.</p>

8

<p>Wow! I always knew there were a lot of really smart people at places like Berkeley, NYU, Texas, and Michigan, but I never stopped to calculate just how many. Thanks, UCBChemEGrad. This is really helpful.</p>

9

<p>Is the denominator the # of students who submit the SAT, or the entire class?</p>

10

<p>^ Yeah, I obtained my numbers by assuming the denominator is number of undergrads. I agree that there are flaws to my numbers, one being that it includes transfer students who may or may not have taken the SAT.</p>

11

<p>
[quote]
Hawkette's data sorted by raw number of undergraduate students scoring 700+ on SAT CR:

[/quote]
</p>

<p>With all due respect, I find this meaningless. Comparing a large group to a small group will usually produce more people in the large group. </p>

<p>To characterize a student body, it makes sense to report the characteristics of the central tendency, or some indication of the distribution. However, the raw numbers are pretty much meaningless when the size of the institutions differs. There are more 6'6" people in the US than there are in Denmark, but Danes are, on average, taller than Americans. </p>

<p>There are far more future college dropouts at UCB than there are at Williams. There are many times more students scoring below 600 on the SAT CR at UCB than there are at Pomona. There are more tall people (and more short people) at UCB than there are at Amherst. </p>

<p>There are more future convicted felons, more future deserters from the armed forces, more child molesters... </p>

<p>There are more PEOPLE at UCB. </p>

<p>So what?</p>

12

<p>^ucbcheme,</p>

<p>having heard stories about my cousin's CC classmates, i bet many of those transfers have sucky SAT average. but since you were toying with raw numbers, i guess it wouldn't hurt to include them if the numbers are available. ;)</p>

13

<p>
[quote]
There are more PEOPLE at UCB. So what?

[/quote]

The sort does not follow the trend of more people, more high SAT scorers.</p>

<p>Look at where Penn State is listed...look at where Northwestern is listed.</p>

14

<p>
[quote]
but since you were toying with raw numbers, i guess it wouldn't hurt to include them if the numbers are available.

[/quote]

I took Hawkette's percentage and multiplied by total number of undergrads. You're an engineer. I'm sure you can easily derive my numbers with the data presented.</p>

15

<p>The sort clearly does follow the size of undergrad enrollment. Compare UCB to Williams, Amherst and Pomona. </p>

<p>There are universities with large enrollments and lower distributions of scores than UCB. But the raw number alone remains meaningless. </p>

<p>More drunk drivers, more tax cheats...</p>

16

<p>
[quote]
Compare UCB to Williams, Amherst and Pomona.

[/quote]

I will not compare UCB to Williams, Amherst and Pomona. They are completely different. Hence that's why I elected to only look at universities.</p>

17

<p>
[quote]
The sort clearly does follow the size of undergrad enrollment.

[/quote]

Yeaah, that's why William and Mary has more high SAT scorers than Penn State...</p>

18

<p>^ Oh, come now. You're surely not suggesting that these numbers are simply a function of the size of the institution? If that were the case, then Arizona State and Ohio State would be right up there at the top by virtue of their larger size---both being considerably larger than Berkeley or Michigan. </p>

<p>I do think the sheer number of smart people concentrated at a large university matters. It's not everything, but it's a lot. People at smaller elite schools like to emphasize the average or median qualifications of their student body. That's fine. Big schools will never compete on that basis, just because of their sheer size; it just stands to reason that they need to dig deeper into the talent pool to fill a class of 5,000 or 6,000 than a Williams does to fill a class of 500. But the fact that there are nearly 8,000 students at Berkeley with SAT CR scores above 700 is pretty darned impressive, too. It means if you're one of those students, there will never be any shortage of other really, really smart people to hang with, to take accelerated classes with, to learn from, to join in just about any kind of activity you can imagine, academic or otherwise. My experience at another large school with lots of really, really smart people (Michigan) was that the brightest students tended to congregate together, were drawn to the same classes, engaged in a lot of the same extracurriculars, and so on. This was especially true in the Honors Program where a select group of the most highly qualified students---roughly as qualified, on average, as the top half of the class at Duke---took small Honors intro courses together as freshmen, small honors classes in their respective majors, and moved directly into small advanced classes in their majors, many at the graduate level, as juniors and seniors. Surely this is not all just a function of size. As a Michigan resident I could have gone to Michigan State, an even larger school, and I would have found some other highly qualified students there. Just not nearly as many of them. So to my mind, the absolute numbers of the most highly qualified students is surely a relevant characteristic in evaluating the relative strengths of large universities.</p>

19

<p>UCB, my question was primarily for hawkette--although it does have implications for your figures too.</p>

20

<p>
[quote]
Big schools will never compete on that basis, just because of their sheer size

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I don't know about that. Harvard (9,859 undergraduates) holds it own against Harvey Mudd (735) just fine. That is more than a 13-fold difference in size, but Harvard does not seem to suffer. Harvard has many more high scoring students than does HMC, many more lower scoring students, but overall a comparably capable student body. Same would hold for the previously mentioned LAC's. </p>

<p>Who says you cannot compare colleges of different sizes?</p>

<p>Look, UCB is one of the world's great universities. Everyone knows that. But why concoct some bizarre statistic to try to prove that point? More left handed halfbacks. More Angolan hat dancers...</p>