<p>If you want any credibility on these threads, you better document each figure, saying specifically where it came from.
In terms of the class of 2011, this gets reported on the Common Data Set AFTER the students have shown up in the fall. There is no admitted and enrolled class until that happens.</p>
<p>Seriously, I was just trying to be helpful by putting up these scores, but you guys just started beating down on me.</p>
<p>I love how you people love to argue when people try to help you. danas, you belong at Dartmouth (for reasons I won’t give.)</p>
<p>You added 700 as a “rough estimate” when the previous year’s Writing score was 770?
Rough estimates don’t cut it with people on CC. Too many of us are knowledgable.</p>
<p>Okay, well, I’m sorry that I’m not as “knowledgeable” as the rest of you claim to be. Damn, some of you are so snooty.</p>
<p>For Christ’s sake, I spent two hours researching this stuff, and all I get in the end is crap from people like danas.</p>
<p>By the way, brassmonkey and tokenadult are entirely correct in pointing out that one can’t simply add up the 3 25th and 75th percentile numbers to get an overall 25-75 bracket for the class.
USN&WR does this. But a school showing a mid-range of 1200-1400 in USN&WR, for example, may have actual strudents whose mid-range is, say, 1230-1370.
This is often overlooked, and was pointed out in “The Early Admissions Game”.</p>
<p>The most important number to look at is the median, and then the 25th percentile, if you want to look at your candidacy. The median, because being above or below it will drag the schools average in either direction, and it is indicative of where you stand among the class. The 25th percentile is also extraordinarily important, because it shows sort of the (for lack of a better term) “lowest scores” for your typical applicant admitted into these schools. You don’t want to be below the lower quartile unless you have some strong soft factors, special status, very high scores in the other two sections, or something else to compensate. Smaller schools, and schools that focus less on numbers will give you more leeway in this area.</p>
<p>Okay, if you two wanna start correcting anyone, I suggest that you both research for two hours individually, and shut up when other people are talking. Thank you.</p>
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<p>This should be an FAQ. The figures are wrong but not for the reason you describe. Addition of scores from different sections of the test is fine. The problem is adding scores from the tests taken by different PEOPLE. The student(s) at the 75th percentile of math for a given college are not necessarily at the 75 percentile on the verbal or writing tests, so adding those numbers together is mixing data from different people’s score reports.</p>
<p>Unfortunatley most schools only report the data this way–in aggregate by section. So you do the best you can with it and use it as a guide. Nobody gets into a school just on SAT scores anyway. It’s maybe 25% of the puzzle.</p>
<p>…not to mention that most SAT info for the Class of 2011 represents “accepted” students, not “matriculated” students. We don’t really know who matriculates until the day school starts (because of wait-list, summer melt, etc.)</p>