Yield by SAT Range - New Way to Look at Selectivity

Applying to College
1

<p>Decided to look at yield rate by SAT (M + CR) range, which I think gives a good indicator of selectivity. If you look at which schools were able to draw the greatest percentage of students that score in a particular range it gives you an idea of the most desirable schools for students in that range SAT-wise. Because these are all top schools, most students will have quite strong high school transcripts with high GPA's and a large # of AP/honors courses (or otherwise demanding course load) and strong other test scores (SAT II's, AP's, etc.). Doing well academically in high school courses doesn't really distinguish an applicant that much from another in applicant pools to these schools. Scores, however, do differentiate applicants significantly. It also indicates which schools were able to snag the students with similar academic credentials but more compelling EC's, life stories, hooks of some sort, or some edge that gives them more options to choose from when the admissions offers come in. I understand that the cutoffs are arbitrary, but they seemed natural. The SAT data reflects the average of the 25th and 75th percentile information rounded to the nearest possible score (i.e. 1435 was rounded to 1440) from Princeton Review's website.</p>

<p>Highest Yield by SAT Range for Top 40 National Universities According to U.S. News & World Report</p>

<p>1520 – Caltech (34%)</p>

<p>1500 – Yale (68%)</p>

<p>1490 – Harvard (76%), Princeton (59%)</p>

<p>1480 – Duke (43%)</p>

<p>1470 – MIT (66%)</p>

<p>1460 – Washington U in St. Louis (30%)</p>

<p>1450 – Columbia (64%), Northwestern (32%)</p>

<p>1440 – Stanford (71%), Dartmouth (52%), Rice U (34%)</p>

<p>Highest Yield: Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Duke</p>

<p>1430 – U Pennsylvania (63%), Brown (55%)</p>

<p>1420 – U Chicago (38%), Vanderbilt (37%), Tufts (33%)</p>

<p>1410 – Emory (28%), U Notre Dame (54%)</p>

<p>Highest Yield: U Pennsylvania, Brown</p>

<p>1400 – Cornell (46%), Johns Hopkins (30%), Carnegie Mellon U (29%), Georgetown (45%)</p>

<p>1370 – USC (35%), Brandeis U (30%)</p>

<p>1350 – College of William & Mary (35%), NYU (37%)</p>

<p>1340 – UC Berkeley (41%), Boston College (27%), Georgia Tech (42%)</p>

<p>Highest Yield: Cornell, Georgetown </p>

<p>***Master List of Top Yield Rate Schools by SAT Range</p>

<ul>
<li><pre><code> Brown
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> Columbia
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> Cornell
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> Dartmouth
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> Duke
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> Georgetown
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> Harvard
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> MIT
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> Princeton
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> Stanford
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> U Pennsylvania
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> Yale
</code></pre></li>
</ul>

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<p>Nice to see Caltech up there (which I think you forgot on your final “Master List” haha).
…but I think that most people who understand admissions understand that Caltech gets a boatload of brainiacs. I always heard that CT bases its admissions policies on merit/scores/grades moreso than Ivies (ethnicity, athlete, legacy, etc.).</p>

<p>and yay for Duke :)</p>

3

<p>I’m a bit confused about what you’re trying to say here. So schools like Caltech and WUSTL have a high SAT average, but they failed to “snag” the students with desirable qualities? Or are they just not desirable/selective schools?</p>

4

<p>The data shows the schools with the highest yield by SAT range. Yield is indicated in parentheses. So, it’s more like they failed to “snag” the most desirable students scoring in that SAT range because yield suggests that they were perhaps admitted to Caltech but choose another school in that range with a higher yield like MIT or Stanford. It also suggests, if you follow the logic out, that students with SAT scores in that range are more likely to get into Caltech, Stanford, and MIT and choose MIT or Stanford, but also that they are more likely to get into Caltech if they get into MIT and Stanford than they are likely to get into MIT and Stanford because they got into Caltech.</p>

<p>In response to the other comment, Caltech DOES NOT belong on the master list because their yield is lower than the other schools in their SAT range.</p>

5

<p>After rereading your post, I get what you are trying to say – I think it is both astonmartinDBS (that’s one of my favorite cars FYI).</p>

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<p>For those of you who are going to bring up including LAC’s, several LAC’s do not require SAT scores as part of the application, and thus their SAT ranges are inflated because the applicants that choose to submit them that are counted in the data as part of the freshmen class naturally would have higher scores than those who did not send them and were not counted in the data. Bowdoin, Middlebury, Bryn Mawr, Connecticut College, Smith, Union College, Mount Holyoke, Sarah Lawrence, College of the Holy Cross, Hamilton, Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall, Gettysburg are examples of LAC’s that either don’t require the SAT at all or give you other options to submit other test scores in place of it (like SAT II subject tests, for example). </p>

<p>I may be wrong about this, but the only SAT optional national university that I can think of is NYU.</p>