<p>^ bluebayou,
Don’t you mean a 75th % SAT score of 1460 (=730 + 730)?</p>
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<p>Well, I’d like to see some more analysis. I think particularly at the 75th percentile level these figures can be highly misleading. It’s relatively easy to find applicants with high scores in CR or M; it’s much rarer to find both. According to the College Board, 9,648 college-bound 2008 seniors scored 790+ on CR, and 10,583 scored 790+ on M. But only 2146 scored a combined CR+M 1580+. In other words, about 80% of those scoring 790 or 800 on either CR or M didn’t match that performance on the other section.</p>
<p>US News shows both Harvard and Yale with 75th percentile CR+M of 1590. By that logic, a full 25% of the entering class at each school must have scored at least one 800 and one 790 (or another 800) on the CR and M section. But 25% of Harvard’s entering class is 415 students; 25% of Yale’s entering class is 330, for a combined total of 745 CR+M 1590+ scorers at the two schools. But that’s fully 56% of the global total of 1325 1590+ CR+M scorers reported by the College Board. I find this highly improbable as it leaves precious few 1590+ scorers for Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Penn, Columbia, Duke, Dartmouth, etc., not to mention all the other fine schools out there that tend to have at least a few stellar SAT-takers. No doubt Harvard and Yale have more than their share of double-high scorers in CR and M; and I don’t doubt for a minute that their 75th percentile CR and 75th percentile M scores are what they say they are. But 25% of their freshman classes 1590+? I really, really doubt it. I’d take all these 75th percentile CR+M scores as reported by US News with a heavy grain of salt. I think they’re all skewed high by the erroneous methodology that publication uses, and to that extent deeply misleading.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I think the US News-reported figures are also deeply misleading at the 25th percentile level, for similar reasons. This gives false hope to thousands of applicants who in reality don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hades at many top schools. Stanford’s 25th percentile CR score is 660 and its 25th percentile M score is 680. US News translates this to a CR+M 25th percentile of 1380. Sounds pretty good, but not not so terribly high; and a full quarter of the class BELOW that level? Wow! Makes you think you might actually have a shot if you have a 660 CR and 680 M. But my guess is Stanford’s actual 25th percentile CR+M is considerably higher, because its adcom will overlook a certain number of low CR scores if they come attached to high M scores and vice-versa. The number of Stanford admits who have BOTH a CR score below 660 AND a M score below 680 could be vanishingly small; but if 25% of its admits are sub-660 CR scorers with M scores well into the 700s and another 25% are sub-680 M scorers with CR scores well into the 700s, it’s going to show up on US News with a (misleadingly labeled) 25th percentile “CR+M” score of 1340—even if nowhere near a quarter of its entering class actually has a CR+M score that low.</p>
<p>This may not affect the rankings all that much. But to judge by what appears on CC, a lot of people seem to rely pretty heavily on US News data to gauge their chances of admission. And US News is, to put it bluntly, providing faulty data that may be quite misleading at both the high and low ends.</p>
<p>Oh, and by the way: you can get exactly the same 50% median with a 75th percentile score that’s too high and a 25th percentile figure that’s too low by a like amount.</p>