<p>Now I am totally confused. - Take a bunch of schools from different data sets - LaC - highly selective, most selective - universities - etc etc and compare SAT 25-75% ranges in Fiske, US News and Princeton Review.</p>
<p>Who is correct and who is not? </p>
<p>Just spotted Gettysburg - a difference of 70 points.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>Probably different scores from different years. I'm not sure who has the newest scores - try looking up the latest (2004) Common Data Set for each college.</p>
<p>You may be looking at different years reported in the various publications.</p>
<p>Best bet is to use the school's own Common Data Set that they have to report to the government each year. Many, but not all, schools publish their CDS on their web site - do a search for it. U.S. News uses this information too so I think they are the most reliable and a good source when you can't find the CDS on the school's site. For $15 you can get access to US News' premium online service that breaks down the numbers in even more detail and shows what percentage of students were actually in each tier of SATs for verbal and math - very useful (this is also in the college data set) The published books like Fiske, PR, etc. tend to be at least a year or two out of date, even though new editions are published each year so I don't rely much on them.</p>
<p>An additional resource worth using is The College Board. </p>
<p>Actually the Common Data Set is not something the schools have to report to the government rather it is a questionaire submitted to the schools by a consortium of publishers. Stretching the truth a bit or telling a whopper for that matter when reporting is not a crime though it could bring bad publicity. Nevertheless both may happen from time to time when schools do their reporting.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.commondataset.org/%5B/url%5D">http://www.commondataset.org/</a></p>