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Have a look at The Gatekeepers. It is amazing how low the SAT threshold was to put an applicant near the top of the pool at Wesleyan.
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<p>But remember The Gatekeepers was about admission in the late 90's--almost ten years ago, and while the basic ideas are the same (which is why it's a good book to read), the numbers have changed. While Wesleyan (and most LAC's) numbers are still not as high as the Ivy's, they are higher. </p>
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If you apply with topnotch statistics to several LACs, any given one or two might reject, but some other factor would have to be seriously wrong for there not to be a very high chance of acceptance from at least one of them.
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That sounds like match schools to me (which I could buy for MOST LACs for a canidate who has a decent to strong shot at Harvard). The point of a safty is not that you have to apply to multiple of its kind to get into one--it's that you WILL, almost certainly, get into THIS certian school. Matches are the schools where you probably have a good shot at getting into at least a couple, possibly all if you're lucky, but no garentees, but where WHICH ones you get into is up in the air.</p>
<p>The Gatekeepers was about admission into the class of 2004, whose members would have applied in fall 1999, with SAT scores dating probably from spring 1999.</p>
<p>OSU, since I have family in the area and it shouldn't be THAT hard to get into. And maybe some easy-to-get-into (for an international) LAC. And IIT in India (yeah, that's so happening...NOT).</p>
<p>The LACs are very different from the lower Ivies in the incentives they face. Given the pressure on their stats (not just in the US News sense but the reality of the classes they matriculate) they can't perform much strategic rejection of Harvard-level applicants, they need to admit them and hope that enough will show up.</p>
<p>This means that somebody in the upper percentiles of Harvard's statistics should not be surprised by a rejection at Brown or Cornell, but is very likely to get into several LACS (if not disqualified by the other parts of the application), and a lock to get into at least one. Given the larger applicant pool of the Ivies, this might become more difficult if too many Ivy applicants followed such a "safety" strategy. But from the information of the last few years it appears to be correct.</p>
<p>I would strongly question your statement:
"There is no denying that the ability distributions are different for the LAC and Ivy populations, as the statistics indicate. That is no different from the fact that Harvard or MIT students come from a more favorable distribution than Princeton or Brown students."</p>
<p>I think you would be hard pressed to prove that Harvard and MIT students come from a more statistically favorable distribution than Brown. I have not checked the stats firsthand, but I will do so and will report back on whether there is enough separation between the scores and GPAs of Harvard/MIT Students -- you would probably not find there is enough statistical separation to come to that conclusion. </p>
<p>Wait -- here they are:<br>
Princeton middle 50% of accepted students:
SAT Critical Reading: 680 - 800
SAT Math: 690 - 790<br>
SAT Writing: 680 - 770
ACT Composite: 30 - 34 </p>
<p>Harvard:
SAT Critical Reading: 690 - 800<br>
SAT Math: 700 - 790
SAT Writing: 690 - 780<br>
ACT Composite: 31 - 34 </p>
<p>MIT:
SAT Critical Reading: 660 - 760
SAT Math: 720 - 800<br>
SAT Writing: -<br>
ACT Composite: 30 - 34 </p>
<p>Now just where are you seeing the statistical separation?</p>
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I think you would be hard pressed to prove that Harvard and MIT students come from a more statistically favorable distribution than Brown.
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<p>Only to the extent that statistics are unpublished. Where common points of comparison are available, the schools are distinguishable. (I think you meant to write Princeton and I will focus on that school, but the case would be even stronger as it concerns Brown, which is the least strong statistically of the bunch.)</p>
<p>Have a look at the Common Data Sets of MIT and Princeton, for example. While Princeton is a little better, as one would expect, in verbal SAT, it is far worse in math SAT (more than 3 times as many students with math SAT below 700), and is lower in high school GPA and class rank of the entering students. At Princeton, virtually all of the valedictorians have come from the math, science and engineering departments, while at MIT, most of the school is in those fields, which are more IQ-sensitive and tend to get students with stronger incoming stats.</p>
<p>The mid-50 percentile data you posted, though hardly conclusive, already start to indicate that Harvard > Princeton statistically. In each category Harvard exceeds Princeton, which is not the pattern that would be expected if the distributions were indistinguishable. Harvard doesn't publish its Common Data Sets, but its mid-50 percentiles are indistinguishable from Yale's, and the CDS show Yale as statistically stronger than Princeton by every measure. </p>
<p>You can expect Harvard to further its advantage over Princeton now that Early Decision is gone. The National Merit Scholar enrollments indicate (as also claimed, but not documented, in the Revealed Preferences study) that top students prefer Harvard over Princeton. Princeton used to counteract this by locking in an artificially large number of National Merit scholars and other strong applicants in the ED round. That is no longer possible.</p>
<p>While I understand and appreciate what you are saying, I also feel that IMHO, the difference between, say, a 720 and a 680 or 690, isn't truly a separation point. I know that most CCers would feel a 700+ is necessary to be "legit" but I would say that there are many equal students who miss one or two questions more than their peers but aren't weaker candidates. Therefore, within certain bounds (and you would have to make you own call where they lie) the student populations are essentially equal.</p>
<p>At the heart of this discussion is the question of how much weighting to give tostandardized tests vs. other measures. My own view is that within the top 5-10 universities there is very little separation, if any, between the capabilities of the admitted students -- especially since HYP can all be so selective that they <em>could</em> fill their classes with 2300+ SATs or 33+ ACTs.</p>
<p>submit applications to at least one of HYP. It is unknown how many students are both top scorers on the ACT and top scorers on the SAT, but there is likely some overlap in those two groups. So looking at the total number of distinct individuals who scored high on one test or the other, are there enough individuals to fill the classes of all the named colleges? I'd appreciate the help of anyone who cares to go through the work, making reasonable assumptions about the overlap in the ACT and SAT groups, to either confirm or deny the quoted statement. </p>
<p>Of course in the real world not all high scorers on either test even submit an application to HYP. I know quite a few high scorers in Minnesota, for example, who are content to enroll in the state university honors program.</p>
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the difference between, say, a 720 and a 680 or 690, isn't truly a separation
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<p>Yes, but only for individuals or very small populations. Even there the differences tend to be significant; some correlation exists between higher SAT and higher ability. The correlation is weaker for modest gaps in score than for large ones, but not so weak as to erase all differences, on the average.</p>
<p>For populations of thousands of students, it is a significant difference. These 10 and 20-point differences understate the case because the 25/75 percentiles are very insensitive measures. If you look at further measurements the picture comes into sharper focus.</p>
<p>per data linked above - approx 4800 applicants with 2300 and better scores </p>
<p>what are there, about 4200 freshman slots at HYP?</p>
<p>so... it would seem that technically there are enough such scorers to fill all the spots - but barely</p>
<p>... if one were to expand the list of schools to include MIT and Stanford the number of freshman slots would exceed the number of 2300 and over scorers by some 2000 students</p>
<p>...so.... it is not even theoretically possible for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT and Stanford to all fill their classes with 2300 and better SAT scorers because there simply are not enough of those scorers to go round</p>
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[ I know ]people who have gone to the university of baghdad to study arabic for a year and have survived to tell the tale
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<p>That would indeed be quite a tale. I once had quite a strong interest in learning Arabic, but giving proper attention to learning Chinese crowded that out of my schedule. What a different life Arabic majors from the 1970s have led from Chinese majors!</p>