DaDobester I agree with your latest post which is why I tried to provide a different perspective of what it means to be a “Top university” as it relates to standardized testing as well as other factors that others on this thread have pointed out.
However, for me, the single greatest factor in determining the quality of an institution is the quality of its students. I just happen to think that if a university has a critical mass of top achieving students attending it that the university should be considered as a part of any list of top universities even if its average student might be lower than the currently designated “elite schools”.
As to your wish that there should be “some other method which can replace the SAT/(ACT) in determining the level of students” is something that many people can relate to and I fall in that category, but otherwise difficult to do. There are people who want high school GPA to be the standard, but as most of us know, all high school GPAs are not equal. A student who goes to a rigorous academic school who takes advanced calculus and earns a 3.0 GPA may be better student academically than a student who goes to a less rigorous school who earns a 4.0 GPA and only took basic algebra.
Currently the SAT/ACT are the only uniform tests that allow universities to compare one student against another. These standardized test plus a student’s high school GPA are the best gauge to determine the strengths of a student until something better comes along. I have ideas for that but that is for another thread.