bad sat scores

runningncircles1
Sat, 03 Dec 2005 18:41:01 +0000

I wish people wouldn’t obsess over SATs so much… a lot of wasted time from a talented person going into a stupid 3 hour test. Makes me sad. Also, all people really see are the “middle 50%” of each section on Collegeboard and USNews rankings; they think that adding Math and Verbal medians will get the middle 50% total. I actually read somewhere that only 46% of admits to Harvard (I know, not Yale but similar in stats) get above 1400. Yet, the rankings suggest otherwise to worrying parents and students (by adding the two middle scores, you get 1400-1580). Why? They throw out “special cases” (including URMs, athletic recruits, socioeconomically disadvantaged, legacies, internationals) to up their averages, thus increasing their ranking.