<p>maof4-- Colgate’s SAT scores as reported by US News are not inflated. Those scores, like every other college reporting, represent the mid 50% range of ENROLLED freshmen. They are what they are. </p>
<p>ENROLLED freshmen are a subset of ACCEPTED freshmen. Without exception in my experience, the academic credentials of ACCEPTED freshmen are greater than ENROLLED freshmen, as the high flying accepted students tend more to enroll elsewhere than the lesser credentialed ones. As gellino noted, this phenomenon lessens as the selectivity of the school increases, i.e., the SAT scores for accepted & enrolling Harvard freshmen should be about even.</p>
<p>Colgate, Tufts & many other schools report a similar-in-format, but different-in-meaning range on their admissions web sites, namely mid 50% range of ACCEPTED students. ACCEPTED students’ SAT scores tend to be higher than those that eventually matriculate. Purely speaking, these accepted students scores are not “inflated” either…they are what they are. My point was that I feel that use of the accepted SATs can be deceptive to unsophisticated consumers because most folks are used to reading US News and seeing enrolled SATs…apples & oranges though…schools that report accepted SATs look much more selective to the unfamiliar used to looking at enrolled SATs.</p>
<p>Now, there may be some reason why schools have reported accepted scores…perhaps this gives a prospective applicant an idea about where they might fit in the accepted group, I don’t know. Personally, I prefer seeing the SAT score ranges & averages for the enrolled freshmen. Plus, it disturbs me to imagine that a school might be manipulating this stuff to look better, as I suspect is the case for a few, but perhaps not all.</p>
<p>ps…relative to how other schools were reporting, I WOULD say that Midd’s SAT’s scores were inflated on the Class of 2008 and prior US News & equivalent reports…different reasons why though.</p>