We really won’t see the full impact of the state-mandated SAT exams for another year. My son’s class had the privilege of being the first group to take the new in-school SAT this March, a few days before the new SAT was administered nationwide on a Saturday. A small number of other states, and Michigan was one of them, also adopted the SAT as their in-school standardized test, administered in lieu of whatever state test had been administered historically. A lot of students wanted to avoid the unknown of the new SAT, and therefore either shifted to the ACT this year, or took the old test prior to the March administration of the new exam format.
The ACT overtook the SAT because the ACT was being used in 18 states (I think) as their in-school mandatory test. SAT is now trying to play catch-up.
@ormdad – I fear that this coming year will be a really difficult one to track as schools will now need to report old SAT score ranges, new SAT and the ACT. This will not affect your analysis of the CDSs released this fall, but next year will be interesting!
@billscho true, other schools are trending down. UC Berkeley went from SAT @ 90% to 85% to 82% last year, whereas Michigan went from 33% to 32% to 27%.
I have no doubt that both schools have very smart kids at all levels, and obviously both schools provide elite educations. But to push the 800 SAT Math 75% number is just false advertising, plain and simple.
ACT is more popular than SAT outside the east coast. So the fact that ACT submissions are so much higher does not surprise me.
I was not trying to “add new data”, just showing that this was “entering students”, not “accepted students”. (Most people will not bother to click your link. There is no need to snark.)
There seems to be a nonmidwestern bias that UM simply can’t be that good. And evidence that it is must be wrong…That is the impression of this NYer…
UMich has the best enrolled ACT/SAT statistics of a university this large. — private and public. Yes, better than NYU, USC, UCLA, and Berkeley. Very impressive considering that most outsiders consider the state of Michigan a flyover state. The majority of people would prefer living in Bay Area, LA, or NYC, so those universities have a distinct advantage. Ann Arbor is a draw, but the average person who hasn’t visited before would rather go to those 3.
The link reports data through “June 2016.” As of that time, Michigan had no actual matriculants for the class of 2020. In terms of an opinion, then, I’d say you should wait for the information to settle before drawing firm conclusions.
For standardized comparative score data, articles such as Business Insider’s “The 50 Smartest Colleges” can be helpful. However, their analysis may not be sufficiently current for your purposes.
@ormdad Why would the publish “new” SAT stats? Any 2020 admits would have taken the 3 parter. That seems suspect somehow. (see now that other mentioned)
Also, as far as “3 admitting classes” there are more, really. Biz and Eng students apply to Ross or COE, for instance (COE fwiw, claimed the 2020 class was the highest stats “ever.”) Ross is supposed to be even more competitive that COE, I think.
And UMich, a small-town public with, what 28k undergrad and Tufts, a suburban private with maybe 10K - they’re just different animals. I don’t think a few SAT points are going to tell you much about either school.
But there is something fishy about that scale. No 2020 admit came close to the new SAT.
@merc81 really I’m just trying to calculate something like USNWR Selectivity (incl yield) plus Graduation and Retention rates for the class of 2020 at top-30 schools. UMich is not included on http://ivyleagueprep.com/ so I went to umich.edu to find it and the numbers seemed a little off. Now that I know a large majority submit ACT scores I’ll probably just use those and convert to SAT so I can finish this silly little project.
June is after the May1 commitment deadline. It is usually the time for schools to calculate yield rate and admission stat. After May 1, only a very small number of students would get wait list admission and change their enrollment. And that small percentage would not change the stat significantly.
GoBlue, I am going to hold my breath on this…until the CDS comes out in January!
Regardless, Michigan’s class profile was already comparable to Cal’s and Cornell’s. It has been slightly stronger than UCLA’s for some time now.
As for the acceptance rate, Michigan enrolled 6,800 freshmen this year, compared to 6,000 last year. That could explain the slight rise in the admit rate. As long as Michigan continues to grow, the acceptance rate will continue to rise. But the students who enroll are indeed stellar.
Even if the posted numbers drift a little downward at a later date, they are and would remain quite phenomenal for a class of 6800 students.
While the numbers place Michigan’s class in the nation’s elite, I am concerned about the sheer size of the class. Based on their scores, all 6800 may be deserving of admission, but I’m not sure if there are enough facilities and dorm rooms to manage 6800 freshman. A class size increase of nearly 15% in one seems unusually large.
@tranandy The small class size last year was mainly due to the over-enrollment in the previous year. After all the dorm renovation was finished last year, they can increase the freshmen class this year. If you compare the class size of 2016-2017 with 2014-2015, the difference is only 5%. When it had 6500 freshmen in 2014, it was ~300 dorm space short while West Quad was closed. After the renovation of West Quad completed in 2015, it brought back 1100 dorm space. So it can easily house 6800 freshmen in 2016 particularly with a smaller sophomore class.
My concern isn’t with dorm space but with providing undergrads with the best experience, in and out of the classroom. 7,000 Freshmen seems a little much, even given Michigan’s vast resources.
^ For that they just need to admit more OOS students without increasing the class size. A larger freshmen class actually involve investment in infrastructure. Not to mention they are also increasing the financial aid for OOS students.
