@merc81 I think 35-40% may be an exaggeration. Also, all you have to do is pretty much select at a high bottom quartile (remember that some athletes will indeed fall into the middle-50) and most of the athletes will fall below that (doesn’t really matter how much below). If 75% of the students are above 1400, then it really has no effect, so all a school has to do is maybe select between 1400-1500 for 75% and that is indeed what some schools do. Less elite schools will start higher knowing they will yield lower (they are basically catching high scorers who were denied, waitlisted, or screwed by fin. aid at more elite schools). Emory has yet to jump on this bandwagon and could honestly at least start by aiming for 75% being above say, 1320-1350.
As for the score: Not too sure how it works (maybe based on the new metrics, but on slightly older ones, these weaknesses took a while to catch up), because the other schools had no problems in past years raising their score which is how Emory started to fall in the rankings initially (its score would be like 81 and the others started pulling ahead). Also, Emory basically always had lower scores than the other schools (even when it was cheating) so that used to not be much of a problem keeping it in the top 20. I think it has been more negatively effected by bad press (which influences peer and counselor evaluation) and a lower graduation rate. Things like faculty salary also play a role. Emory has also increased its class sizes (which hurts, went from 7:1 to 8:1), and traditionally has had higher admit rates (still does) than other schools. It is quite amazing it is 21 if they held those metrics in high esteem. I suspect that it is overachieving in many other metrics that technically more selective private schools ranked below are not (because based on selectivity, several schools should be ranked higher if we talk about scores and admit rate). Again, if Emory played the rankings game with its admissions office without cheating, then it could probably tack on some more points. It doesn’t seem hard to change admissions scheme at all as the schools I mentioned just kind up and did it one year and continued to do so (they first began a spamming campaign and the apps then started to flow in and then they dropped their admit rate and intentionally cherrypicked super high scores).
Emory should consider doing it in moderation as doing it to an extreme hasn’t worked for 2 of those schools in terms of improving the outcome of the graduates (post-grad. scholarships, placement, etc) but has stabilized them a higher rank than they would otherwise have been. However, I don’t know if that is because of the students they recruit or the schools. Maybe Emory could just be good at scoring in those areas (post-grad success) already and even higher scoring students will make it appear more successful. I’m not sure. The thing I don’t want to see at Emory is an “underachieving” student body that doesn’t garner the amount of recognition it does now but comes in with higher scores than ever. It isn’t good for the institution.