<p>^ I think these numbers might not be that reliable (although reported that way on Yahoo Education). Most colleges DON'T officially provide this kind of SAT breakdown for matriculating students (the mid-50% range being the standard reporting to, e.g., College Board).</p>
<p>Not true. For schools that has a CDS, this data is clearly displayed there in this format. </p>
<p>700+
600-700
500-600
400-500</p>
<p>Not all schools make their CDS public, but this is a very common way to present and look at the information.</p>
<p>
Is there a link for where these are collected in one place? I haven't seen this info on the individual web sites of, e.g., the Ivies. Maybe I just missed it.</p>
<p>Look at the beginnings of the listing of the threads for College Search & Selection and you will see the thread for links to the various Common Data Sets. Papa Chicken did a superb job amassing this and others have contributed. While not all schools are releasing this information, I think you will find a lot of very good and interesting information.</p>
<p>^Thanks! This data is very hard to find through the regular admissions pages of, e.g., the Ivies' web sites. Unfortunately, Penn (like several other schools) doesn't appear to release the CDS data, which makes me question the reliability of the Penn data on the Yahoo Education site.</p>
<p>Here is the U Penn data which is even more detailed than Yahoo:</p>
<p>^ I'm very familiar with that page, but it doesn't supply the data you listed above from Yahoo, i.e., the percentage of enrolled (or even accepted, for that matter) students who scored above 700 on each SAT.</p>
<p>Hawkette- you left out George Washington University from your list of Non Top 30 Colleges that Score Higher Than some of the top 30. </p>
<p>22 % of GWU students score over 700 on both CR and Math: <a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Eire/fa.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.gwu.edu/~ire/fa.htm</a>.</p>
<p>If having internationally reknowned professors or leading researchers was such a big deal for the quality of undergraduate teaching - then none of the LACs should have a PA of more than 4 (if not 3.5 or even a 3).</p>
<p>Here are the percentages of ACT scores over 30 for 2005.</p>
<p>88% - MIT
81% - WUSTL
69% - Northwestern
66% - Stanford
66% - Penn
64% - UChicago
61% - Duke
59% - JHU
58% - Georgetown
56% - Cornell
55% - Columbia
55% - Brown</p>
<p>66% - Swarthmore
64% - Amherst
62% - Wellesley</p>
<p>n/r - Cal
38% - UoMichigan
36% - UVA
29% - UCLA</p>
<p>n/r - Harvard
n/r - Yale
n/r - Princeton
n/r - CalTech
n/r - Dartmouth</p>
<p>Plus, keep in mind that a USNews ranking based w/o PA scores would be even more impacted by merit aid.</p>
<p>45 Percenter,
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I think that the link is to a page that details the distribution of SAT scores by section in 50-point increments. While not as good as the enrolled data found on Yahoo, it might be helpful as a general (albeit high) guide. However, given the 65% yield at U Penn, these numbers are probably stickier than what you'd find at many schools.</p>
<p>researchmaven,
Your name says it all. You are right and thanks for correcting me. The flaw is that I did the analysis on the schools ranked 1-50 by USNWR. GW ranks 52nd and so I did not have it included in my work. It belongs on the list of schools that performs better than some Top 30 schools on SAT scores.</p>
<p>Here is the data for the average of the % of SAT scorers on Critical Reading and Math who scored above 700:</p>
<p>1 Cal Tech 87%
2 MIT 80%
3 Yale 78%
4 Princeton 74%
4 Harvard 74%
6 Dartmouth 68%
6 Wash U StL 68%
8 Duke 66%
9 Brown 65%
10 Columbia 64%
11 Stanford 63%
12 U Penn 62%
13 Rice 60%
14 U Chicago 59%
15 Northwestern 58%
15 Tufts 58%
17 Notre Dame 52%
17 Carnegie Mellon 52%
17 Georgetown 52%
20 J Hopkins 50%
21 Cornell 49%
22 Vanderbilt 47%
23 USC 43%
24 Brandeis 42%
25 W & M 40%
26 Emory 39%
26 UC Berkeley 39%
28 U Virginia 36%
29 Case Western 35%
30 Wake Forest 34%
30 Rensselaer 34%</p>
<p>32 Boston College 33%
32 NYU 33%
34 U Michigan 32%
35 Georgia Tech 31%
35 U Illinois UC 31%
37 UCLA 30%
37 Tulane 30%
39 U Rochester 28%
40 U North Carolina 26%</p>
<p>41 G. Washington 22%
42 U Texas 20%
43 U Florida 18%
44 U Washington 15%
45 UC Irvine 14%
46 UC Davis 13%
46 UC S Barbara 13%
48 Penn State 12%</p>
<p>
You are reading it wrong. The table on that page shows the percentage of applicants in each 50-point bracket who were admitted, and not the percentage of all admitees who were in that bracket. E.g., the table reflects that 27% of the applicants with a Critical Reading score of 750-800 were admitted (and 73% with that score were rejected), and not that 27% of all admitted applicants had that score.</p>
<p>This is why I suspect that some of the numbers used, e.g., on Yahoo Education (and in your post immediately above) may not be accurate, and may reflect comparisons of apples to oranges, or of apples from one year to apples of a different year.</p>
<p>45 Percenter,
Interesting observations that I am trying to digest. If your interpretation is correct this would mean that U Penn received applications from 4730 students who scored at the 750 or better level on the SAT CR section (the 25/75 shows a top end number of 750). This also would mean that U Penn rejected nearly 3500 students who scored at 750 or better on the SAT CR section. This would mean that U Penn received applications from nearly 20% of all students who scored at this level nationally. If that is the correct interpretation, that is a very impressive number.</p>
<p>25% of the 3617 accepted students, or 904 students, had a SAT CR score over 750. Those 904 accepted students (not all of whom matriculated) were 27% of the total number of applicants with a SAT CR score over 750, or 3348 total applicants (with 2444 of the applicants in that range being rejected). Of course, these numbers are probably off a teensy bit, since in one case we're using the number of applicants who scored OVER 750, and in the other case we're using the number who scored 750-800.</p>
<p>But if you add up the percentages in any of the columns in that SAT table, you'll see that they add up to more than 100%. That, plus the explanation at the bottom of the table, leads to the inescapable conslusion that my interpretation of that table is correct. Additionally, that interpretation parallels the "Rank in Class" table above it (i.e., each entry reflects the percentage of applicants with that rank who were accepted, and not the percentage of all acceptees with that rank).</p>
<p>After going thru the charts again, I think you nailed it. Very confusing presentation that frankly I have never seen another school use. Surprising also because if your interpretation is correct, you could infer that a student with a 550 CR has 1/3 as good a chance of acceptance as a student with a 750. If you had asked me about this ratio before seeing these numbers, I would have guessed 1-10 or 1-20 or higher. </p>
<p>If your interpretation of the data is correct, this is useful as it clearly shows the holistic nature of their admissions process. They could have taken a lot more students with 1500+ scores, but took most of their class at a level below this and sometimes well below. It would be interesting to see the numbers for enrolled students as I wonder if this is where they lost most of their cross admit battles.</p>
<p>Except that we don't know the number of applicants who fell in the 550-590 range (because we only know that 25% of all applicants fell below 640), just that 9% of them were accepted. For example, there might have been only 100 applicants in the 550-590 range, and Penn accepted 9 of them out of a total of 3,617 accepted applicants (for some extraordinary reason, such as unusual accomplishment, rare URM, legacy of big donor, etc.). We do know that the Penn applicant pool is somewhat self-selecting when it comes to SATs, so it's highly unlikely that more than a handful of applicants scored in the 550-590 range.</p>
<p>Of course, all of the top schools take such a holistic approach, rejecting more applicants with 750-800 scores than they accept, and accepting a few with much lower scores. As you indicated, the numbers for enrolled students would really tell the tale. The only Penn numbers I've seen for enrolled students are those on collegeboard.com, which currently shows a middle-50% range of 650-740 on the SAT CR (1330-1510 combined CR and M) for first-year students, compared to a middle-50% range of 640-750 (1320-1530 combined CR and M) for accepted students (assuming that CB's numbers are for the Class of 2010).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we don't know what the distribution is within that middle 50% (i.e., more kids at the higher end, lower end, or in the middle?). We do know that 25% of the kids enrolled in Penn's Class of 2010--or about 600 kids--scored above 740 on the SAT CR (above 1510 combined CR and M).</p>
<p>^ On further reflection, those combined numbers are probably not correct, since applicants' CR scores don't necessarily correlate to their M scores. Instead of those combined numbers, I should have just indicated that for the SAT M, the middle-50% range for enrolled first-year Penn students is 680-770, compared to a middle-50% range on the SAT M of 680-780 for all accepted students. Also, 25% of the kids enrolled in Penn's Class of 2010--or 600 kids--scored above 770 on the SAT M.</p>
<p>Top 25 USNWR LACs ranked by % freshman with Math SAT scores over 700 (from Yahoo Education):</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd 87%
Pomona 69%
Middlebury 64%
Amherst 63%
Williams 62%
Swarthmore 58%
Carleton 55%
Wesleyan 54%
CMC 54%
Bowdoin 51%
Haverford 50%
W&L 48%
Wellesley 45%
Davidson 41%
Colgate 41%
Hamilton 41%
Vassar 39%
Grinnell 39%
Colby 38%
Oberlin 34%
Macalester 32%
Bates 31%
Mt Holyoke 21%
Smith 19%
Bryn Mawr 18%</p>
<p>Top 25 USNWR LACs ranked by % freshman with Critical Reading SAT scores over 700 (from Yahoo Education):</p>
<p>Pomona 72%
Harvey Mudd 65%
Wellesley 62%
Amherst 61%
Williams 61%
Middlebury 59%
Swarthmore 59%
Carleton 57%
Wesleyan 55%
Oberlin 54%
Vassar 52%
Bowdoin 51%
Haverford 50%
W&L 47%
Grinnell 47%
CMC 46%
Macalester 45%
Davidson 42%
Hamilton 42%
Colgate 36%
Bryn Mawr 36%
Colby 34%
Mt Holyoke 34%
Smith 32%
Bates 30%</p>
<p>Top 25 USNWR LACs ranked by average of % freshman with *Math and Critical Reading * SAT scores over 700 (from Yahoo Education):</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd 76%
Pomona 70.5%
Amherst 62%
Middlebury 61.5%
Williams 61.5%
Swarthmore 58.5%
Carleton 56%
Wesleyan 54.5%
Wellesley 53.5%
Bowdoin 51%
CMC 50%
Haverford 50%
W&L 47.5%
Vassar 45.5%
Oberlin 44%
Grinnell 43%
Davidson 41.5%
Hamilton 41.5%
Colgate 38.5%
Macalester 38.5%
Colby 36%
Bates 30.5%
Mt Holyoke 27.5%
Bryn Mawr 27%
Smith 25.5%</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd and Pomona, the only schools over 70% combined, would fall right behind HYPM and Cal Tech on the University ranking above.</p>
<p>Wesleyan is somewhat underrated when judged solely by its USNWR ranking.</p>
<p>or overrated when judged solely by SAT scores? </p>
<p>(as it happens, i agree that wesleyan is underrated by usnews, but rankings always depend on the weight of the categories involved...)</p>