Objective789

While I have not done an exhaustive statistical analysis, it appears to me that the various college claims for the SAT scores of admitted students are suspect. School after school claims middle-50% ranges with high points in the 750-800 range. Yet if one reviews the actual statistics from the College Board regarding how many students actually score in those ranges the claims appear suspect. I realize that there is a great deal of overlap among the schools in the students they admit but the raw number of high-scorers reported by the College Board does not seem to support the claims of the schools. Any thoughts on this? Once my son's process is completed I may do some detailed analysis just to satisfy my curiosity about this.

MilwDad

Some colleges manipulate the data to make their incoming classes appear more accomplished (as test takers, anyway), in order to game the US News rankings. For example, some universities concede that they report "superscored" results, assembling the best overall scores possible for their incoming freshmen from all their test sittings. In principle there's nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but superscored results, if applied over all test takers, would create far larger numbers of students with higher scores than the SAT reports. The official SAT reports are based on single test sittings.

Objective789

That may be a factor, of course. I have to say, however, that nobody is auditing the statistical information that the schools are reporting so there is every reason to suspect that the information is at-best misleading and at-worst fabricated. The explanation could be no more complicated than that.

drusba

I am not sure what you are comparing when you say College Board reports who scores in those ranges. Do you mean CB's chart showing those seniors who made certain scores or are you referring to something it reports for each college? Also, what schools are you talking about that claim 750-800 middle 50% ranges? Most of what I have seen from colleges seems to be fairly accurate although it is usually based on a superscored result per candidate. Superscoring makes a big difference. For example, College Board may show only 500 people scored 2400 in a single sitting but if you superscore results, you can get 3,000 2400s.

Objective789

The schools are reporting middle 50% scores for the individual sections of the SAT so this is not a function of superscoring. Look at the US News site to easily see the number of schools reporting extremely high 75th percentile scores. The College Board site provided actual number of student who score at each level for each section of the test. It simply does not compute.

MilwDad

Checking the 2009 SAT data table, over 41,000 students achieved at least 750 on the Math section of the SAT in a test sitting and about 25,000 achieved at least a 750 on the Critical Reading section in a test sitting. Over 16,000 achieved combined scores of 1500 in those two sections in a test sitting.

SAT Data Tables

Most of the "top" Universities in US News, and all of the LACs, enroll relatively small classes. Without doing the math, my guess is that the 1/4 of those admitted freshmen that are represented in the 75th percentile you are referring to might fit rather comfortably in the numbers reported in the SAT test tables.