As a mother with a son who is considering Williams, I have always wondered how to interpret Williams’ SAT averages, which are much lower than Ivy peer institutions. (I.e., about 1450 for admitted students, versus 1490+ for most of the Ivies.) Is that because recruited athletes and other hooked applicants take up a larger proportion of the admitted class? Does that mean that the average for non-hooked applicants is about the same as other elite institutions? Apologies if this has been covered in other discussions-I couldn’t find it. Thank you.
Lowish? 1450 is 98th percentile.
I know — still very high, but seems a bit lower than others and somewhat more within reach as a result. Maybe that’s deceptive.
If you read Williams’s stats from their student profile of the class of 2021, on Math SAT 37% of the class scored 780-800 and 16% of class scored 750-770, which implies the median(not average) is at least 750. For R/W 25% scored 780-800 and 26% scored 750-770. Again the median is at least 750. So overall median is probably 1500-1520 which is on par with Ivies.
Williams’s admit group as is strong as any school could be, but the yield is pretty low. Only 30% of RD admit students end up matriculating. The yields at the Ivies are usually much higher (Cornell has the lowest RD yield starting at 40%).
The strongest test takers are more likely to enroll at other schools, so the group Williams enrolls has slightly lower stats than them. This isn’t just a Williams thing- it happens with most peer LACs. If you take a look at the IPEDs data sorted by highest test scores, LACs don’t begin showing up until around 15th or so (beyond Harvey Mudd, which deliberately admits high scoring applicants). Amherst distinguishes between admitted and enrolled students (https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/669797)- the admitted group has stats rivaling HYPS, whereas the enrolled group is only slightly weaker. Not a meaningful difference IMO.
The new Class profile at Williams does seem stronger than the group enrolled in recent years (for instance, the ACT middle 50% seems to be 32-35, whereas it has been 31-34/30-34 for the last five years), but I’m not sure if that is the admitted student group or the enrolled student group.
Yes the reason lies in the rather low yield that top LACs have. Many/most in the top-scoring cohort of the admit pool choose to enroll at an ivy instead.
A while back there was some discussion about Williams’ numbers with regard to the College Board’s concordance tables and which colleges actually used the tables vs which did not. Some colleges’ reported numbers for the most recent admissions season may include a mix of Old and New SAT scores with Old concorded to New using the tables and accordingly may appear “higher.” Williams kindly broke out scores between Old and New separately in their press releases, with the New scores being lower than the Old ones.
(The lengthy concordance discussion here at College Confidential debated the accuracy of the concordance tables, i.e. whether higher New scores were really equivalent to lower Old scores. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/1890397-sat-concordance-table-compare-old-and-new-sat-scores-p22.html As it turns out, last month the College Board released actual percentiles for the Class of 2017 that differs from the percentiles predicted based on research study and used for the 2016 concordance tables.)
Its literally 1-2 questions different