<p>^ KWU, I don’t think anyone is arguing that <em>generally</em> the students at UCLA, Berkeley, UVA, Mich, UNC are not lower statted students.</p>
<p>We ARE arguing that if you take the top X freshmen, where X is the # of freshman students at Y presitgious Private University, the stats will be comparable.</p>
<p>The top 25% (1100) entering freshmen at Berkeley will have higher average stats than the average of the entire 1500 freshman class at Northwestern; The top 1100 will have higher average stats than the entire 1500 person freshman class at Duke, etc.</p>
<p>The counterargument is that these top 1100 are not segregated from the hoards of great unwashed at Berkeley (the other 3,200), UCLA (the other 3,500), UVA, MIch, and UNC.</p>
<p>The counter-counter argument is that these highly statted students at the elite Publics DO tend to coalesce around each other. They are the ones who are admitted into the Honors Program, admitted into impacted majors like Business, Business Econ, Communications, pre-med, and of course Engineering, who take leadership positions in student government and clubs.</p>
<p>I’ll take the top 1100 out of the entering classes at Berkeley and UCLA and bump them up against the 50% student at HYPSM any day of the week. That Berkeley student, aside from having taken 7-10 AP classes and carrying a 3.9 unweighted and 4.5 weighted GPA, will have scored a low of 1500 on the 2-part SAT (1460 75% + 40 points “single sitting correction”), up through 1600.</p>
<p>Where can you show me an entering class of 1100 with a midpoint SAT of 1550 and 4.5 weighted GPA? Not even Caltech’s 300 entering freshmen will show that highly statted a group of students.</p>