T20 undergraduate population vs # of available 99th percentile students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because I'm bored... if there are roughly 195,000 undergraduates students in the top 20... and roughly 48,750-ish incoming freshman... and only 12,000-ish 99th percentile test scorers... doesn't that mean only 25% of these students are in the top percentile?

That means don't worry if your kid doesn't score in the 99th percentile. There is plenty of room for them. Go ahead and apply and use your scores.

You don't have to estimate. This is published information.

https://prepexpert.com/harvard-acceptance-rate/

Harvard average SAT 1560 before TO

https://irp.dpb.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Profile2019-Freshmen.pdf

Cornell 1500 median, 1420 25%ile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I recommend that you don't use superscoring in this analysis. Superscoring seems like a public relations gesture to stressed out students. Rather than something that really impacts a lot of candidates to get them admitted. And you don't have any data on what improvements are typically seen with superscoring. Any assumptions might be quite off.

?? A 35 superscore is the same as a 35 in one setting. Test scores check a box not get you admitted. It is possible you could create a good impression by a one and done 35 but you would create a better impression by a 36 superscored. All colleges are looking for is the number. It does impact a lot of candidates.

No, it's not. It implies a different (lower) "true ability".

No, because you don't know if the person with a higher first score would sustain that score on a second sitting.

That's right, you don't know. They could score lower but they could also score or even higher. So, when you average all those possibilities, your beast guess is that they would score exactly the same. Meanwhile, for the student with 2 tries, your best guess is that their "true ability" of 34.5.

Once again you are ignoring confidence interval. 2 tests gives a much tighter confidence interval.

[Anonymous]

Easy enough to replace Berkeley and UCLA with the next two schools (like Michigan) and have a complete top 20 list of schools that use SAT scores. That 48000 is a good input.

1500 is a great score but it isn't 99th percentile. As framed this thread says the top 20 schools aren't packed with 99th percentile students because there are not enough 1530+ scores to fill all of those freshman seats. I think there may be at 97th and above but that is a different conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The number from a 2022 Common App report:

76,747 students applied to college with ACT/SAT scores >1500 (99%)

Thank you for this more realistic figure.

Person A: How many good apples do we have?

Person B: 76,747 good apples and pears.

Person A: That is great... but can we just talk about the apples for a minute?

Person B: No. I'd rather not

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because I'm bored... if there are roughly 195,000 undergraduates students in the top 20... and roughly 48,750-ish incoming freshman... and only 12,000-ish 99th percentile test scorers... doesn't that mean only 25% of these students are in the top percentile?

That means don't worry if your kid doesn't score in the 99th percentile. There is plenty of room for them. Go ahead and apply and use your scores.

You don't have to estimate. This is published information.

https://prepexpert.com/harvard-acceptance-rate/

Harvard average SAT 1560 before TO

https://irp.dpb.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Profile2019-Freshmen.pdf

Cornell 1500 median, 1420 25%ile.

The website says 1540 for Harvard

[Anonymous]

In 2016, 25% of Harvard's freshmen had below a 1400 on the SAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Easy enough to replace Berkeley and UCLA with the next two schools (like Michigan) and have a complete top 20 list of schools that use SAT scores. That 48000 is a good input.

1500 is a great score but it isn't 99th percentile.

It is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In 2016, 25% of Harvard's freshmen had below a 1400 on the SAT.

How is this posaible?

[Anonymous]

SAT Score Percentile
1600-1570 99+
1560-1530 99
1520-1500 98
1490-1480 97
1470-1450 96
1440-1430 95
1420-1410 94
1400 93
1390-1380 92
1370 91
1360-1350 90
1340 89
1330 88

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 2016, 25% of Harvard's freshmen had below a 1400 on the SAT.

How is this possible?

Holistic admissions. Even though I believe test scores can tell you something important, it doesn’t mean they tell the whole story. Perhaps these students are brilliant or otherwise unusually accomplished but they don’t test well (maybe they wrote a novel, or won the Menuhin competition, or saved an entire army of kittens)

And let’s not forget recruited athletes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 2016, 25% of Harvard's freshmen had below a 1400 on the SAT.

How is this possible?

Holistic admissions. Even though I believe test scores can tell you something important, it doesn’t mean they tell the whole story. Perhaps these students are brilliant or otherwise unusually accomplished but they don’t test well (maybe they wrote a novel, or won the Menuhin competition, or saved an entire army of kittens)

And let’s not forget recruited athletes.

I am talking about the change. The lower bound jumped 100+ points in less than 10 years. Holistic admissions are still in place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 2016, 25% of Harvard's freshmen had below a 1400 on the SAT.

How is this possible?

Holistic admissions. Even though I believe test scores can tell you something important, it doesn’t mean they tell the whole story. Perhaps these students are brilliant or otherwise unusually accomplished but they don’t test well (maybe they wrote a novel, or won the Menuhin competition, or saved an entire army of kittens)

And let’s not forget recruited athletes.

I am talking about the change. The lower bound jumped 100+ points in less than 10 years. Holistic admissions are still in place.

I missed the rest of the discussion but aren’t you comparing old test required results from 2016 to test optional results in 2023? TO skews everything because the lowest scorers are not reporting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:California Institute of Technology (982)
Dartmouth (4458)
Rice (4494)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (4657)
Princeton (5604)
Johns Hopkins (6044)
Duke (6640)
Yale (6645)
Vanderbilt (7151)
Harvard (7240)
University of Chicago (7470)
Brown (7639)
Stanford (8049)
Northwestern (8659)
Columbia (8832)
University of Notre Dame (8971)
University of Pennsylvania (9760)
Cornell (15735)
University of California, Los Angeles (32423)
University of California, Berkeley (32831)

Berkeley and UCLA are test blind. Shouldn't even factor into this

Yes they should, those kids are top 1% material even if they don’t take the test.

Not a # of the kids we know from Ca. who got in testblind.

[Anonymous]

Reading this forum you’d think kids who score in the 1300s should work at McD or be relegated to third tier schools.


For everyone with a special snowflake who scored in the 1500s, your kid may not be that special. My kid scored in the 1300s 4 times before finally putting in the effort and getting in the 1500s. He’s no smarter now than he was then.

Yes there are brilliant kids in that mix but there are also ones that didn’t care/study THAT much when they took the SAT. I’m happy my kid is in the group now but if you think your kid is going to run circles around the 90th percentile SAT kids, you are delusional. Though my kid wasn’t into sports the double varsity 1400 star involved in 15 clubs is likely going to out perform the kid who puts his nose to the grind all the time (like mine).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading this forum you’d think kids who score in the 1300s should work at McD or be relegated to third tier schools.


For everyone with a special snowflake who scored in the 1500s, your kid may not be that special. My kid scored in the 1300s 4 times before finally putting in the effort and getting in the 1500s. He’s no smarter now than he was then.

Yes there are brilliant kids in that mix but there are also ones that didn’t care/study THAT much when they took the SAT. I’m happy my kid is in the group now but if you think your kid is going to run circles around the 90th percentile SAT kids, you are delusional. Though my kid wasn’t into sports the double varsity 1400 star involved in 15 clubs is likely going to out perform the kid who puts his nose to the grind all the time (like mine).

It also assumes every kid scoring above 1500 is interested in the Ivy lottery. Our kid has a 1500+ score from August before junior year and will not apply to any top 20 schools because her interest lie elsewhere.