Why aren't universities' SAT/ACT scores a bigger part of the US News ranking?

In terms of academic peers for a college student, wouldn’t most colleges have more of a concentration of academic peers than most high schools?

For example, suppose you attend a high school where one third of the students go on to a four year college, and you are one of them. Going to a four year college means being surrounded by four year college students, rather than in high school where two thirds of your peers are not going to four year colleges after high school and fit the definition of academic peer less well than the other college students.

@ucbalumnus you are 100 percent correct. It isn’t backed up science or reality. It’s an illusion that supports a belief. It self reinforces a belief and justifies certain pre disposed positions on things. It the same thing as a school being “life of the mind” versus all of the terrestrial beings studying at animal house u. It is stuff humans do. That’s why people buy $5000 handbags.

@socaldad2002 – but your daughter will have academic peers if the outcome is UC Santa Cruz or Riverside as well. By definition, the UC system is drawing from the top 10% of high school students – and the main difference between the various UC’s come down to demographic factors. Certainly, the UC’s that are less selective will end up with a larger number of students with relatively weaker academic credentials – but they also will have plenty of students with equally strong or stronger credentials, and there will be an internal sorting going on tied to choice of major and course selection. For example, the students coming in with more AP’s will start with more advanced courses So the academic peers will be there as well.

So in that context, the PC’s statement is somewhat meaningless – as others are pointing out, just about every college your daughter is considering will have students who are academic peers. There may be many other factors to differentiate the colleges – but median test score range probably doesn’t tell much.

Both Regent and Yale have non-denominational/multi-denominational divinity schools. It could conceivably be on that basis.

Finding your peer group is why many bigger state universities will have honors programs and honors dorms. If you have a shy kid who is not much of a joiner they may be better off at a place where their peers are “thick on the ground” to quote another CC poster, but it certainly isn’t necessary. I know for my oldest who’d been the smartest kid in his classroom all his life, I felt it was really important that he find some kids who were smarter than him and for him to have some friends who shared his somewhat limited interests. He got that in spades where he ended up. It wasn’t the school with the top SAT scores, but the CS program is a stand alone school at Carnegie Mellon and the school makes a real effort to create an atmosphere where they get to know each other, including a class where freshmen explore the city, and another for technical writing. The CS building have spaces to hang out with cafes.

And in the spirit of the OP the SAT ranges are almost identical if you compare CMU’s SCS with Harvard, but if you compare CMU overall the scores are slightly lower, though even the College of Fine Arts kids have pretty high scores.

Generally, I think that point is approximately . . . always, already. In real life, I have never met anyone as obsessed with a tiny number of universities as people seem to be on CC. And I’m a tremendous fan of those universities – my wife and I between us have four degrees from two of them, our kids both went to another, and some 30+ relatives including my parents and grandmother were undergraduates or grad students at a fourth. In real life, I have only seen one person turn down actual admission to HYPS to go to a public university (and that was a special situation, where the public was clearly superior for the kid’s career plan, which did not involve getting a BA). I have seen more on CC. But I personally know several people who turned down other Ivy admissions to go to Michigan, Pitt, McGill, Toronto, and also Wesleyan, with enormous (and expected) success. “Success” defined as admission to ultra prestigious graduate/professional programs in the field of interest to the kid. None of them ever complained or agonized. They knew exactly what they were doing, and did it enthusiastically. They got the excellent undergraduate educations they deserved.

Of course, fetishizing test scores is one of the ways USNWR weights the scales against public universities. They have bigger student bodies, and a much wider range of abilities. But a class at any of the best ones probably contains at least an LAC-worth of kids practically indistinguishable from students at HYPS.

“But I personally know several people who turned down other Ivy admissions to go to Michigan, Pitt, McGill, Toronto, and also Wesleyan, with enormous (and expected) success. “Success” defined as admission to ultra prestigious graduate/professional programs in the field of interest to the kid.”

Of course. Actually going to Harvard is probably not all that important.

Being a person who is able to get admitted to Harvard is more significant. And getting admitted to Harvard, among other things, requires the person to be a very good performer on standardized tests. And getting into high end law/med/biz schools typically requires…wait for it…high test scores.

So the good test taker who turns down Harvard for Pitt will still be a good test taker 4-6 years later when applying to grad school. Pitt has some very good test takers but Harvard has many more (as a percentage of enrolled students). Which is why the Pitt-type kid will discover he has a bunch of grad school classmates who went to HYP. Along with some who also went to Home State U. That’s exactly how it was for me.

I appreciate your point, JHS, but I think you actually underestimate how many top students are at the leading public universities. There are more high test-scorers at Michigan than at Harvard. For the class entering in the fall of 2017, the data look like this:

Harvard entering class = 1685

submitting SAT = 1126 (67%)

25th percentile SAT verbal 730 = 845 students above 730 (75% of 1126)
25th percentile SAT math 730 = 845 students above 730 (75% of 1126)

submitting ACT = 889 (53%)

25th percentile ACT composite 32 = 667 students above 32 (75% of 889)

Michigan entering class = 6185

submitting SAT = 3534 (52%)

75th percentile SAT verbal 730 = 884 students above 730 (25% of 3534)
75th percentile SAT math 770 = 884 students above 770 (25% of 3534)

submitting ACT = 5035 (74%)

75th percentile ACT composite 33 = 1259 students above 33 (25% of 5035)

In short, in the class entering in the fall of 2017 Michigan had: 1) more students scoring above 730 on SAT verbal; 2) more students scoring above 770 on SAT math than Harvard had scoring above 730; 3) nearly twice as many students scoring above 33 on the ACT than Harvard had scoring above 32.

Yes, Michigan’s class is weaker at the bottom, not surprising given its mission to educate large numbers and not only the select few. And Harvard might well have more certifiable geniuses at the top end… And of course, test scores aren’t everything. But when it comes to test scores, at least the top quarter of Michigan’s class and probably more would be right there in the broad middle 50% of Harvard’s class. And if that’s not a sufficiently large peer group for an academically gifted student to find his or her place among the similarly gifted, it’s probably due to social deficiencies that would be an impediment at Harvard as well.