Wierd SAT Statistics for Columbia?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
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<p>Check this,</p>

<p>SAT ranges from 25th percentile to 75th percentile</p>

<p>Columbia - 2110-2300
Yale - 2100-2370
Harvard - 2080-2370
Princeton - 2080-2360
Dartmouth - 2010-2320</p>

<p>Maybe I'm overreading but how come Columbia's 75th percentile is lower even though it starts at a higher 25th percentile than any top US college - perhaps barring Caltech. Only reason why I'm paying so much attention is because the previous year's stats gave an average SAT of about 2180 and I scored 2170 (690CR 760M 720W) so I thought I was fine. This year seems a bit different. I am applying ED to CC for class of 2014 this year and I might not have time to redo the SAT. </p>

<p>Any suggestions or insights?</p>

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<p>1) don’t overread this, you can, but it wont help you.
2) how is this weird - it is not significantly off from everyone else.
3) what the 25-75 really gives you is a sense of the distribution of scores, and so the only real thing you can surmise based on this is that is how ‘clumped’ the scores are together. columbia has the smallest gap, which just means that there is less pull either up or down, whereas schools like Harvard and Princeton clearly have a significant downward pull (probably from having more athletic teams) and a huge uppull from all those 2400s. it just means probably that applying to those schools and being within their 25-75 range means less because it is clearly being skewed by populations at the end.</p>

<p>Also, outside of Dartmouth, Columbia’s combined schools are the smallest, another potential contributing factor as to why it is not the same because the smaller the school the less chance for flattening of the curve.</p>

<p>4) so why do you call the stats weird, but then note that it has moved up from last year (as it has moved up about 20 points).</p>

<p>and though it doesn’t follow the i before e song, weird is spelled that way.</p>

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<p>Thanks a lot for explaining it. Yeah I was a bit unsure as to the purpose of the 25-75 percentile thing exactly but I guess you broke that part down. I understand the HYP downpull and upwardpull part but I dont understand how to read the stats of a school like Columbia’s “clumped” statistics. Does this mean that falling in their 25th-75th percentile means more than doing so at HYP? And sorry to be a little selfish here but for my own situation, would 2170 be more of a middle score which would neither keep me out nor in from the Columbia College Early Decision pool? (Asian, International)</p>

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<p>It’s all about the ACT baby</p>

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<p>just worry about it 2170 just high enough. you are higher than 25% of the people who got accepted</p>

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<p>I think it’s actually a little bit misleading to consider the statistics as you are: it looks like you’ve drawn the cumulative score range for Columbia from the 2013 profile site, whereas for the other schools you’ve just added up the College Board 25/75 range for each subject; I don’t think the two are equivalent.</p>

<p>To use Harvard as an example: 25% of Harvard students have an 800 in Reading, 25% have a 780 or higher in Math, and 25% have a 790 or higher in Writing, but I’m not convinced that 25% have a cumulative score of 2370 or higher. Put another way: I don’t think the 25% who have an 800 in Reading overlap significantly with the ones who have a 780+ in Math. My reasons are speculative and prejudiced by my experience in which very few people are superbly talented in both the sciences and the humanities, so take it for what it’s worth.</p>

<p>To offer some hard evidence, though, I offer this thread:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/154634-sat-score-distribution.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/154634-sat-score-distribution.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>To be clear, the data used in that thread is based on old SAT scores, so if we use Harvard as an example again, we can drop the Writing section score and compare. Based on your aggregation, Harvard’s top 25% of cumulative scores would be, in old SAT terms, a score of 1580+.</p>

<p>One poster relayed the following cumulative score distribution from a 2003 College Board report:</p>

<p>1600 0.07%
1590 0.03%
1580 0.05%
1570 0.05%
1560 0.07%
1550 0.09%
1540 0.10%</p>

<p>Also, there were apparently 1.4 million students who took the test in 2003/2004. Based on the above distribution, this means that 2,100 students had a 1580+. </p>

<p>Harvard’s incoming class is ~1,700, so it’s conceivable that 425 of them had a 1580 or higher, but then there are also Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and MIT among a bevy of similar schools who attract high caliber students. In fact, if you aggregate section scores for Princeton and Yale, their top 25% cumulative range is also 1580+. Theoretically, then, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton alone should attract around 1,100 of the 2,100 students who scored more than a 1580. </p>

<p>It’s certainly plausible - they are great schools with tremendous brand equity and a wide draw. However, there are something like 3,500 institutions of higher education in this country, and while I’m sure that a large number of top SAT scores (as well as SATs taken) are concentrated in the Northeast, it is my understanding that there are entire swaths of the country where there are strong state schools or regionally-reputed privates (i.e. Emory and Vanderbilt in the South, Big Ten schools in the Midwest) that attract top students who don’t even consider Ivies. </p>

<p>This is ultimately a very semantical discussion - the 7.5% RD figure says about all there is to be said for the difficulty of getting into Columbia - but something in me objected, perhaps on statistical principle, to adding 25/75 ranges for each section together and assuming those figures to be representative of cumulative score ranges.</p>

<p>To answer your question, then: I am inclined to think the score range says very little about the admissions process at Columbia, because it’s not at all clear what the score range actually is. I think it’s only intended to be a rough guideline for competitiveness.</p>

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<p>^yeah, long argument for a very simple statistical rule of thumb, adding up the separate sections does not give you the over all 25th to 75th percentile. The cumulative 25th - 75th percentile would almost always be tighter than the sum of the individual ranges would suggest.</p>

<p>so I’d say the cumulative ranges are something like:</p>

<p>Harvard: 2160-2320
Yale: 2150 - 2320
Princeton: 2140-2310
Dartmouth: 2070-2260</p>

<p>So Columbia’s range is comparable, we would have a slightly lower 75th percentile compared to hyp because they get slightly better applicants, we would get a lower 25th percentile compared to HYP because (I believe) Columbia is less score driven than those three and are willing to take a risk on someone with lower scores who really shines in other aspects of application. This argument is bolstered by our uncommon and flexible application, it allows a low scorer who is otherwise exceptional to really shine.</p>

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<p>who cares, point is score as high as you can on the SAT and you have a good chance
its not rocket science</p>

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<p>essays mean soooo much more anyway</p>

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<p>Why is life so complicated lol? So can I infer that a 2170 is a middle/alright/safe score? and yeah I guess essays matter much more. I’ll write a proper length reply later on.</p>

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<p>you’re a fcking genius aren’t you. </p>

<p>Understanding SAT score ranges are important for many applicants to have a rough gauge of which college a match, a safety, a reach by a little and a reach by a heck of a lot. Some people stand such a small chance at Columbia that it doesn’t make sense for them to apply to more than 1 or 2 schools like it, we don’t have infinite time, money and creativity so strategically optimizing where one should apply is essential for an applicant to get into the best colleges s/he can make it to.</p>

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<p>concoll,</p>

<p>i think shuai was approaching the situation from a different perspective. hoping the OP didn’t spend his/her life concentrating on a number. </p>

<p>though what you say is certainly valid, it is equally valid that said number is really not something to obsess over (which students do).</p>

<p>i think a similar backlash and problem is that the OP may be ‘satisfied’ with his/her score when in truth they could do better, or could take the ACT and do better. because the fact is that though the test gives clues if someone is within the margins, it doesn’t say anything about the particular circumstance. are there other good parts to the app that stand out? high sat II scores…etc. it could also come to deter students who would be good applicants from applying because they are on the lower end of the SAT range.</p>

<p>so the fine line to walk is from praising some pseudo-science of SAT ranges as good barometers of someone’s chance, and explaining that in reality all one can do is try their hardest and do well and hope it works out. </p>

<p>frankly OP - if you don’t rock your application, your test score is not going to matter. you gotta prove that you deserve to be at columbia (without coming across as groveling or arrogant).</p>

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<p>Well, I’ve started my application already and am confident of rocking it. Something I can say safetly after 4 years of hardwork in academics and ECs etc. Too bad the SAT is not taken as a very serious thing outside USA - not as much atleast as academics or ECs. Of course this is not an excuse for subpar scores as many internationals do as well if not better than Americans. However from reading the input of many experienced posters here, I dont think I should obsess over my scores too much.</p>