<p>I agree with thethoughtprocess in terms of SATs. We have no other solid way of comparing students from school to school.</p>
<p>thethoughtprocess, that’s assuming the SAT is weighed equally by all universities. But that isn’t the case. Some universities do not really emphasize the SAT and admit students according to other standards. Stanford is one such school. Furthermore, some universities report superscores, other universities report scores in one sitting. Finally, some universites, like Dartmouth or Duke, are entirely made up of Arts and Science and Engineering students. Other schools, like Cornell, have large programs in Agriculture, Human Ecology etc…In short, although the SAT itself is standardized, interpretting SAT averages at universities is anything but.</p>
<p>Does anyone actually have stats on the SAT average for Cornell’s Arts and Sciences/Engineering schools? That would resolve a lot of things.</p>
<p>It’s not published, but it’s probably between 2200 and 220 or so. And it is probably not statistically different from Penn or Dartmouth. There are a fair number of students accepted at Dartmouth and not CAS, and vice versa. </p>
<p>Engineering is funny, because a lot of engineers have relatively poor verbal skills. So while most engineers will have 750+ Math scores, a sub 700 verbal score is not out of the question.</p>
<p>Cornell is really a different beast. It’s just not easy to compare the school to others. For at least 500 students out of Cornell’s entering class every year, SAT scores did not play an important factor in their admission – fine art, architecture, landscaping, hotel, design, textiles, agriculture and horticulture, food science, etc. Even in a program like ILR, if you can prove that you are really interested in labor unions and conflict resolution, you can get accepted with a sub 1800 SAT.</p>
<p>alexandre,
I’m a little surprised at your naivete on the Dartmouth engineering numbers. The website numbers may relate how many undergrads take a course at Thayer, but that doesn’t automatically mean that all of these students are engineering students or are registered in Thayer. The true facts for each college are revealed in the Common Data Set, which is where I believe collegeboard.com got its info from and is the source from which I posted. </p>
<p>For undergraduate students in 2007, the number of diplomas awarded in engineering was 5%. Here is the link to Dartmouth’s CDS. Look in Section J: Degrees Conferred.</p>
<p><a href=“This Page Has Moved”>This Page Has Moved;
<p>patlees,
For your law school comparisons, please keep in mind that Duke has an outstanding law school and many of its undergraduates will opt to continue their studies there as will those with an orientation to points outside of the Northeast. Only about a third of Duke’s law graduates will go on to work (and maybe practice) in the Northeast.</p>
<p>Hawkette, I an not naive. Even from a diploma standpoint, Dartmouth handed out 130 Engineering diplomas out of a class of 1,000. So that’s at least 13%. </p>
<p>[Facts</a> and Figures](<a href=“http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/about/factsfigures.html]Facts”>http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/about/factsfigures.html)</p>
<p>Alexandre – </p>
<p>Are you looking at the same numbers we are? The link you provided indicates that there were 67 Bachelors of Engineering degrees conferred last year, out of a graduating class of ~1000.</p>
<p>A.B.s are not an engineering degree.</p>
<p>Yes, I am. Those are degrees conferred by the Thayer School of Engineering.</p>
<p>Alex,
According to the CDS for Dartmouth and for Cornell, the distribution of majors for fields of study related to engineering for the latest graduating classes was:</p>
<p>Cornell % of degrees conferred
3% Computer & Info Sciences
19% Engineering</p>
<p>Dartmouth % of degrees conferred
2% Computer & Info Sciences
5% Engineering</p>
<p>I have heard that CALS is actually pretty selective.
I know of a lot of high-SAT scoring people who applied to CALS and not CAS because of financial reasons and they were interested in science.</p>
<p>Hotel School & ILR, not as hard to get into.</p>
<p>CALS is a mixed bag. But you are right. there are a lot of really smart in-state students there studying biology, and I can think of at least three friends from my graduating class that are now at very prestigious MD-PhD programs.</p>
<p>Mondo, and everyone else addressing the all mighty importance of the SAT. </p>
<p>IT’S NOT IMPORTANT. It unfortunately is to admissions committees, but it is a very poor measure of potential and intelligence, and has been proven to be skewed towards white males. Especially the PSAT taken by a bunch of scared 14 year olds. </p>
<p>I got a measly 1370, and I got into penn, brown, swarthmore, vassar…</p>
<p>And I have a cum 3.8, a 4.0 at my Ivy. I know people with much better scores who are far less successful. </p>
<p>We’re all in a tough spot because we need some kind of universal measure, however, the current SAT is not it!</p>
<p>The thing with SATs is that they gauge more towards how smart you are, rather than how hard you work. Its easy to spend 30 hours working on a lame high school project to make it A+ material, but its harder to do well on a three hour test. I think a lot of kids who do really well on the SATs might not have good study skills (maybe they go to an easy HS?) and end up getting swamped and overwhelmed with college work.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Terribly untrue. I’ve seen many an idiot get over a 2200 with a lot of tutoring/studying. Yes, MANY.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I would agree this actually. I got a 1560, went to an easy high school, and am honestly working hard for the first time in my life. </p>
<p>
For every person like that, there are four or five people who get scores like that without any studying or tutoring. Hell, I didn’t have the luxury to easily afford a private tutor and many high-scoring students don’t have that. </p>
<p>This is why I am for economics-based affirmative action. If SAT score and income level are really correlated, then top colleges should be accepting the highest-scoring students from each income level. This would take out one of the problems. The SAT isn’t perfect, but the question is… do we have anything else that is more fair?</p>
<p>I do not believe the SAT is indicative of ability. I scored in the mid 1500s (out of 1600) in 1992, before the SAT was recentered. My sisters both struggled with the SAT and scored under 1200 (out of 1600). Academically, I think my sisters are seriously better than me. I struggled to maintain a 3.4-3.5 GPA at Michigan, they managed practically straught As at McGill and Georgetown. The mean SAT score at Michigan when I attended was roughly 1220 (before the recentering), so I had a good 300 point advantage over the typical Michigan student, but academically, I considered myself only above average (definitely top half, but not quite top quartile).</p>
<p>One of my buddies finished college with a 3.9 GPA in Engineering with a double major in 4 years, his SAT score? 1230. But he was class valedictorian in high school and took more than 8 APs, and got 5s on all of them. It’s easy for people with good SAT scores to feel good about themselves, but I really don’t think the SAT is a good indicator of college success. </p>
<p>Of course this is purely anecdotal, but I think the verbal portion is a better indicator of verbal ability than the math is at showing math ability. The math section is simply too easy to really measure how good you are. I have very rarely seen idiots get 800 on the Verbal.</p>
<p>
SAT score is highly correlated to income. As an example, take a look at data from Berkeley’s Fall 2007 applicant class and their parents level of education (which is a good indicator of income).</p>
<p>
High SAT No HS Some HS HS Grad Some Coll 2 Year 4 Year Post</p>
<p>200-499 891 502 786 728 308 679 321
500-599 787 575 1473 1400 651 2712 2633
600-699 280 289 1209 1349 787 5014 8163
700-800 47 71 301 302 185 2151 6242
</p>
<p>[University</a> of California: StatFinder](<a href=“http://statfinder.ucop.edu/statfinder/]University”>http://statfinder.ucop.edu/statfinder/)</p>
<p>Maybe IQ is correlated with income, and is also correlated with SATs…we need to run some multivariate F-tests…</p>
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<p>The men’s Duke BB team? </p>
<p>Definitely overrated the past couple of years.</p>
<p>As for the school itself, your opinion may vary depending on what factors you think are more impt.</p>
<p>Personally, I would place the big, public elites in a separate category from the privates - they just have different mandates.</p>