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<p>I felt Colgate did this to try to attract the 1460 SAT applicant aspiring to Dartmouth or Williams that has somewhat (but not great) chance to be accepted there, but look at Colgate with a 1415 median accepted SAT and think maybe Colgate isn’t beneath them after all and apply there too. When these candidates get W/L or rejected at Dartmouth or Williams, suddenly Colgate has a chance to get a high level student that they might not have gotten otherwise.</p>
<p>I get the impression that this type of approach is what helped Middlebury become such a hot school by being able to report such a high SAT average because they were SAT-optional and not reporting the scores of the lowest 30-40% of the class. For a couple years, they were actually reporting higher SAT averages than Dartmouth or Williams until they started reporting the SAT average of the entire enrolled class (instead of cherry-picking their highest scorers); however, at that point the desired effect of becoming a more sought after school was achieved.</p>