Chances for Princeton ED

rattle1
Fri, 05 Nov 2004 09:42:46 +0000

For Brown U.'s chances of admission based on stats alone, i.e., SAT I Verbal, SAT I Math scores, and class rank when taken alone, irrespective of all other factors used for admission, click on:

Undergraduate Admission | Brown University;

As an example, for the group of applicants who score 750 to 800 SAT I Verbal, the chance of admission to Brown is 26%. The chances of admission to Brown for a Verbal score in increments of 750, 760, 770, 780, 790, and 800 are obviously increasing from the baseline 750, but the chances for admission are not listed. Obviously, for a score of 800, on either the Verbal or Math, when considered separately, the chance of admission is more than 26%.

There are thousands of scorers of 800 on either the Math or the Verbal separately, out of 1.5 million SAT I test takers this year, but there are only about 950 scorers of 1600 on the SAT I composite score this year. There are only about 700 scorers of 1600, just two years ago. Therefore, for the 1600 scorer, the chance of admission is much higher than 26%. By extrapolation, using the Brown admissions data and Harvard’s admission fact that it admits 50% of the applicants who score 1600 on the SAT I, the 1600 scorer has a much better than 50% chance of admission to Brown. Brown’s mean SAT I score is 1390 and Harvard’s mean is 1490.

We know that at Harvard, the chance of admission for the group who scored 1600 (800 Math and 800 Verbal together or composite score, on the SAT I) is about 50%, irrespective of all the other criteria used for admissions. That is to say, if you are an applicant in the group who scored 1600, you had a 50% chance of admission to Harvard. A couple of years ago, there were only about 700 scores of 1600 in the nation out 1.2 million SAT I test takers. About 400 out of the 700 SAT I 1600 scorers applied to Harvard, and Harvard admitted over 200 of them or 50%. Therefore, by just considering the SAT I score ALONE, the 1600 scorer had a 50% of admission to Harvard, which is 5 times the admission rate for the whole applicant group, which had an average SAT I score of over 1430. You can obviously see that, the applicant who scored 1600 had a TREMENDOUS ADVANTAGE in admissions to Harvard over the average applicant to Harvard, who scored 1430. Harvard’s SAT I average is approaching 1500. The top 25 percentile of Harvard’s freshman class (400 out of 1600) scored from 1590 to 1600 last year. This year, out of 1.5 million SAT I test takers, only about 950 in the nation scored 1600. Assuming that over 500 of these 1600 SAT I scorers applied to Harvard this year, and that over 50% of them are admitted, there are probably about 300 SAT I scorers of 1600 in Harvard’s incoming class of 1600 freshman.

Therefore, for the perfect 1600 SAT I scorer, irrespective of all other criteria used in admissions to Harvard, the chance of admission is 50%. That’s darn good when compared to the 10% chance for the entire applicant group.

By extrapolation, the chance for admission to Princeton for a 1600 SAT I score is higher than 50%, based on Princeton’s average 1470 SAT I score vs. Harvard’s average of 1500 this year.

Don’t trivialize a perfect 1600 SAT I. It is a distinction and very few achieve this score, no matter how much test prep one takes. Obviously, not everyone can acheive a 1600, no matter what they do to prepare. Only .0006 (900 divided by 1.5 million) of all test takers achieve this score. Translated, only 6 one-hundreths of 1% achieve a score of 1600. This would make the applicant STANDOUT and this score is quite a distinction and that’s why Harvard admits 50% of its applicants with a 1600 score. Princeton even admits more than 50% of its applicants with perfect scores and Brown even admits a higher % than Harvard and Princeton of its applicants with 1600 scores…