<p>^^ Apologies, xiggi. Perhaps I misunderstood or am misremembering some of your earlier posts. I stand by my comment as regards some posters on CC, but I should not have attributed to you a view that you apparently do not hold. It was a cheap shot, and uncalled for.</p>
<p>As to delisting SAT-optional schools, I think there’s something to be said for it, but that would go only so far to cure the defects in the US News data. As long as some schools superscore the SAT and others don’t, you won’t get truly comparable data. As long as some schools rely on one test and some another, the data won’t be comparable, either—the ACT-SAT concordance is imperfect at best because these are quite different tests that measure different things. For that matter, as long as colleges allow students to submit either test, you’ll have SAT and/or ACT percentiles based on less than 100% of the entering class, and you won’t truly know what it means to compare the SAT data at a school where only 74% of enrolled freshman reported an SAT score (e.g., Amherst) to the figures at a school where 100% of the enrolled freshmen reported an SAT score (UC Berkeley). It makes all this 25th-75th percentile stuff little better than gibberish. And US News’ erroneous method of calculating 25th and 75th percentiles might also create additional opportunities for creative gamesmanship on the part of enterprising schools looking to boost their nominal selectivity rankings.</p>