<p>“So it looks like marginal students have a real good shot at getting in to most any public school.”</p>
<p>Maybe step back and think about your analysis. Many of these schools have large athletic programs which have a much broader spectrum of acceptance. Unless you’re one of these recruitable athletes, you’d be crazy to assume a “real good shot” of any single one of these colleges unless you’re plainly above the lower 25th percentile.</p>
<p>At a school like Wisconsin, between the football team, men’s and women’s bb, track, etc., there are fewer than 1000 athletes.</p>
<p>That’s fewer than 250 per class. Wisconsin has 6,000 freshmen. The lowest quartile make up 2,000 freshmen. And of the 200 per freshmen class athletes, I’m sure many of them have scores above the 76th percentile, especially the athletes in the nonrevenue sports.</p>
<p>I could see your point if there were maybe 1500 or 2000 freshmen.</p>
<p>The SAT scores for the other UC campuses for the lowest 25% are even more mediocre.</p>
<p>UC Irvine is 62nd percentile.
UC Santa Barbara 65th percentile
UC Riverside 39th percentile</p>
<p>^I was just going to post something similar. No way can the numbers be attributed to athletes at those large universities. UT has 38,000 students and only 18 sports (so maybe 450 athletes, total or 115 per year). Even assuming that all of the athletes are stupid (which is patently wrong), their scores won’t make a dent in the SAT scores averages.</p>
<p>They may consider test scores to be less important in admissions than high school record (e.g. at least some UCs, and also Texas public universities with respect to automatic admits by rank alone).</p>
<p>But remember also that public universities often admit by division or major, so that some divisions or majors may be much more selective than others. The “low end” of the incoming freshmen by stats may be more concentrated in the less selective divisions or majors.</p>
<p>“So it looks like marginal students have a real good shot at getting in to most any public school.” </p>
<p>So you are condemning people as “marginal students” simply because you aren’t impressed with their test sores? Really? There’s nothing else important about a candidate other than his or her scores? And what about those people who are great writers but suck in math, which brings down their scores, or visa versa. </p>
<p>I hope you never become an admissions officer.</p>
<p>I’m honestly not that surprised by these stats. Public universities have a duty to their respective states to admit as many in state students as possible. Universities such as the ones you listed are great institutions, but they also have thousands of spots for their freshman classes. That, along with the fact that they accept probably well over half of their applicants and know that many of the better students won’t attend, adds up to lower average scores.</p>
<p>The UCs make clear that gpa is much more important than test scores. Plus, California has a lot of non-native English speakers; clearing 700 is hard enough even for some who score a 5 in AP Lit.</p>
<p>Feel free to apply to UCLA with “marginal” stats and see how far that gets you. :)</p>
<p>To tag onto ucbalum’s response, at least at UIUC, you can’t look just at the aggregate scores. For example, the College of Engineering’s 25th ACT percentile is at 30; the College of Education’s 75th is at 29.</p>
<p>I can tell you why UT has these kind of numbers: it is the ten percent rule. They have to let the top ten percent in. So if you have an inner city kid that is in the top ten percent and has a 1800 on the SAT, they have to let him or her in over a suburban kid that has a 2100 but isn’t in his top ten percent.</p>
<p>I’ve posted this numerous times, but here it is again. Look at the scatterplots for admitted students. Below is a link which represents self-reported data from kids using a particular web site, likely to be highly motivated kids. GPA is the almighty ruler in UC admissions, there is even talk of dispensing with SAT altogether. A painfully detailed analysis of SAT scores and acceptance rates was published as an e-book with the title something like “Fox parent’s guide to college acceptance”. He also noted the lack of correlation between SAT score and UC admission. His data showed UIUC had the highest SAT scores relative to admission rate (high rate of admission AND high SAT scores), and advocated that school as a ‘good deal’ for those willing to suffer through winter in central Illinois (as I did for 4 years). </p>
<p>Again, please stop calling these kids with good scores marginal. Do you know how offensive it sounds? As if people are their test scores. As if these scores are actually marginal. And even if your scores are great, that doesn’t make you a more worthwhile person.</p>
<p>“Marginal” students? The 78th percentile means those kids scored higher than 78 percent of test takers. That’s not marginal; that’s the top fifth of students across the country. Comparing Stanford to schools like Penn State and UNC is odd, given that public universities have a mission to serve their state’s students whereas Stanford has no such mission.</p>
<p>You’re also making the erroneous assumption that SAT scores are perfectly (or even highly) correlated with one’s preparation for college and/or one’s success in college. Many of those students may be good students who simply don’t perform well on standardized tests, or who are outstanding in other areas. There is far more that makes up a student than simply the SAT.</p>
<p>Personally, I’d rather take a student with a high GPA and a lower SAT score than the other way around. The high GPA shows persistence and consistency of work over the course of 4 years, whereas the high SAT score shows that you can settle down and bang out answers to some ridiculous questions in 4 hours. (And I say this with a combined score in the 98th percentile myself.)</p>
<p>Your point is well taken. However, not all GPAs are cast from the same mold, and sometimes dramatically so. My D had a 3.9 GPA as a freshman at our small, poor, rural high school, and that with very little effort. In three years at a math and science magnet school, she’s compiled a sub-3 GPA; yet I can assure you she’s had to work lot harder (and had to learn how to work smarter) and is now far more ready for a vigorous college curriculum than she would have been had she stayed at our local school. Fortunately there are many colleges who recognize this.</p>
<p>There is so much grade inflation going on out there and weaker academics, that test scores offer some reference. </p>
<p>That said, I would rather have a 3.8 GPA kid with a 30 ACT, then a 2.9 GPA with a 34 ACT…coming from the same good school with the same classes.</p>
<p>(I apologize for repeating the phrase “marginal students”. I don’t think that these kids’ scores are marginal. I was really just speaking to how their stats relate to these schools.)</p>