Haha, speaking of not knowing how to do math.
That’s not how people do top 1%.
When people talk about 1% of anything they mean 1% of students belong in that category.
This is one link, you can find many more.
https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-percentile-ranks-composite-crit-reading-math-writing-2014.pdf
^Right, top 1% (99th percentile) is 2220 and above, top 2% (98th percentile) is 2160 and above, etc.
Or maybe a bit higher, since I believe those numbers are single sitting scores, and many colleges super score for students who take a test more than once.
@bluewater2015
“I know you were probably using Ivy League just as examples of schools with highly competitive admissions but just wanted to be clear on their policy around financial aid.”
Yes, definitely. I was thinking of Duke, Vanderbilt, U of M, or other schools ranked in top 30. Thanks for clarifying that matter. In other words, those schools with very competitive admissions that don’t have the very large endowments enabling them to give large need based aid to their students demonstrating need- that is, the schools that can give a limited number of large merit-based scholarships.
My very quick & dirty initial screening method:
I start off w this list:
http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php
I copy the entire list into Excel and sort the columns.
I look at the % of students receiving merit aid.The schools w a miniscule percentage of merit recipients (e.g. Tufts, Johns Hopkins 3%), I immediately nix.
For the popular schools remaining on the list, if the candidate’s stats are not very comfortably in the school’s top quartile, the school gets nixed.
For the remaining schools on the list, I eliminate the obvious zero interest schools. Then I multiple the % merit recipients X avg merit award $. This gives me a weighted merit probability that takes into consideration: likelihood of getting an award and the size of the prize. What floats near the top then gets further examination for non-financial qualities.
“2400-1%=2376
2400-2%= 2352”
I don’t believe these numbers are accurate. Can you provide a source before you make the claim?
@texaspg
I believe both SAT and ACT give percentiles for each test that is administered. I also found the averaged scores for 2014 @ https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-percentile-ranks-composite-crit-reading-math-writing-2014.pdf.
Upon further review, it seems someone else already posted this link. I would think the numbers from menloparkmom are either from a particular sitting in which the test was easier/ students better prepared or that this number could represent super-scored test results.
@momofsmartdancer - Your link is the chart most people use to define top 1-2% in the nation.
I added the numbers upto 2160 or 98%ile and that adds upto 40,733 students who qualify for the initial screening nationwide.
https://about.usc.edu/files/2015/10/USCFreshmanProfile.pdf
There are 120 full tuition scholarships per the list 350 halfs and 211 national merit. I assuming NMS are in addition to presidential scholars but only someone more knowledgeable can clarify whether there are 560 half tuitions or total of 350 which includes NMS.
There is also this SAT percentile for critical reading + math score @ https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-percentile-ranks-composite-crit-reading-math-2014.pdf
My d got a1580 her first time taking SAT (with no formal prep)- according to this chart, it would put her in top .125 percent. I did not realize her score was that high of a percentile.
Furthermore, Forbes ranked the top schools by their average SAT critical reading + math score or ACT composite @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2014/08/04/top-100-sat-scores-ranking-which-colleges-have-the-brightest-kids/#6219652538a1
@LOUKYDAD You might want to have your son reevaluate the list of schools in post #64 based upon their respective Honors college/programs. In general, the average ACT for students in the honors college/program is about 31 which is comparable to most elite universities and top LACs.
In fact there are schools like the University of Alabama that have an honor college of over 6000 students with an average ACT of 31. This translates to schools like UA having larger high achieving student population than most LACs and most elite universities if student quality is an important consideration in your son’s decision making process.
So, there will be quite a lot of high achieving students at schools with relatively lower ACT scores of the entire student body.
For example, I was accepted to University of Kentucky with merit scholarship and its honors college. The average ACT for honors students was 32 as compared to the overall university wide average ACT of 25.
Yes, that list counts only 2 subjects and a score of 1580 out of maximum 1600 is very high indeed.
The other list I gave counts 3 subjects and the max score is 2400.
Two important math errors here, first you have assumed SAT scores follow a uniform distribution (they do not) and second you have used the wrong range of possible scores.
The top 1% of possible scores are between 2400 and 2382 (2400-18), not 2376 (2400-24), because the minimum possible score is 600 and therefore the range of possible scores are spread over 1800 points, not 2400 points.
More importantly, as others have pointed out, the scores are not uniformly distributed, they are closer to a normal distribution (colloquially, a bell curve).
I get it.
my bad.
apologies all around ^:)^
“Yes, definitely. I was thinking of Duke, Vanderbilt, U of M, or other schools ranked in top 30. Thanks for clarifying that matter. In other words, those schools with very competitive admissions that don’t have the very large endowments enabling them to give large need based aid to their students demonstrating need- that is, the schools that can give a limited number of large merit-based scholarships.”
@momofsmartdancer Just wanted to clear up some misconceptions you have about Duke. I can’t speak for Vanderbilt and Michigan but Duke is definitely capable of providing competitive financial aid to the students it admits. Here are some facts to back that up:
Duke has a $7.3 billion institutional endowment (not including the additional $1.2 billion that it is entitled to from an independent endowment established by J.B. Duke). It has more money per student than Columbia, Penn, Brown, Cornell, and Chicago (if you include the value of the independent endowment) and is the 7th wealthiest private university in the country (http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-u-s-universities-the-rich-get-richer-faster-1429156904/).
In 2015, NPR ranked Duke first on its list of schools that “make financial sense” (http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/18/440973097/obama-wont-rate-colleges-so-we-did).
You may not be able to get credit hours for co-ops and internships before sophomore year, but a student can certainly do them if they get hired.
But be warned that it could be challenging to break $30/hr depending on the field of engineering and the kind of company. While that can be low for software engineering interns, that’s high for other types.
EDIT: talking about industry co-ops.
Received good news today with DS ACT result. 34 composite, 34 English and Reading, 33 Math and Science. Since he is a sophomore, he will still take again as a junior, but this takes some pressure off. I am guessing that from here, improving test scores won’t improve his shot as much as distinctive and interesting leadership and ECs.
@LOUKYDAD Congrats on your DS ACT 34! I understand your sentiment that some pressure is off as we felt when our son did the same. You are on right track, assuming your DS continues to pursue the highest academic rigor available at his HS. I can’t recall if you previously discussed, but it is critical in my opinion for your S to prepare as well as possible to nail the PSAT. Being a NMSF is equally important to unlock the most opportunity. My son didn’t take it seriously and fell just below the cutoff. He is a senior now and we can see that he is missing out on some scholarship $$$ only available to NMSF. Academically, they are his peers, but it is an extra level of distinction. So prep, prep, prep while he has the time. That one test counts a lot in the eyes of the scholarship folks. We have the equivalent of a full ride at a state school right now that has a 100 rank, and hoping for more at a few more to also be at or near full ride for a couple more ranked near middle. And yes, meaningful leadership matters and is the subject of many essay prompts.
@texaspg - and who do the full tuition scholarships at USC go to in your opinion?
@clarinetdad16 - Let me put out a hypothetical scenario since I am going purely numbers without any inside information.
Let us assume that the highest rated students at USC are those that get full tuition scholarships.
If there are 120 such scholarships and 51,000 people applied, it is turning out that only 0.2% of the applicants received them. That is a very high level of exclusivity.
Now they have to distribute the scholarships between the different schools and may be allocate some to each major within the school. Add another layer to this - interest in school and now things get a bit muddled.
One could be in top 200 of the Engineering applicants for example but if Engineering school has only 30 full scholarships to give (I don’t have any clue how many they actually do have), they have to decide which 60 are so (not sure about the number invited to compete) are the most desirable to that school and also make guesses as to who would actually show up if given a full scholarship. Let us say there are 150 of them who applied to computer engineering (CE) and only 50 who applied to other majors in Engineering. Let us say they are distributing the 30 scholarships somewhat equally between the majors or may be proportionally based on how many each department usually has and computer engineering has only 6 available to them (hypothetical number). So out of 150 top applicants in CE 130+ are eliminated from contention right off the bat. However, the 50 top students applying to other majors in Engineering school can probably all be invited to contend for a full scholarship since there are 24 scholarships available to them.
I believe the break down of full scholarships for each school and how each school distributes them within the school in terms of majors will determine how the kids fare. Being top 1% of the nation or top 1% of the school’s applicants still does not get you close to the full scholarship. Where you stack up in the applicants within the school you apply to determines whether you will make that cut.
texaspg has most of the process of how scholarship recipients are chosen correctly stated.
USC receives around 30,000 applications before their Dec 1 scholarship deadline, so the % eventually being offered the big scholarships is somewhat higher.
There are more than 150 students who are offered the big scholarships after they have been interviewed. USC assumes correctly that they will not enroll 100% of all who are offered the top scholarships. We read on CC each year about students who decide to go to HYPSM, etc instead of USC. So their yield ends up with around 150 full tuition scholarships /year.
But this is correct-
“I believe the break down of full scholarships for each school and how each school distributes them within the school in terms of majors will determine how the kids fare. Being top 1% of the nation or top 1% of the school’s applicants still does not get you close to the full scholarship. Where you stack up in the applicants within the school you apply to determines whether you will make that cut.”