Thank You, Xiggi (Harvard Data Set Partial Info)

Parents Forum
1

<p>I just saw Xiggi’s post in another thread about Middlebury College’s test score range, according to the College Board college search database. I have never seen Harvard’s Common Data Set submission online, but on the off chance that the Harvard SAT score range data would be in the College Board database, I looked for it, and found </p>

<p><a href=“http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=1251&profileId=6[/url]”>http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=1251&profileId=6&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>where I see a score span from 25th percentile to 75th percentile of the entering first-year class (with 99 percent of those persons having submitted SAT scores) of </p>

<p>verbal 25th %ile 700 75th %ile 790 </p>

<p>math 25th %ile 700 75th %ile 800 </p>

<p>This suggests that someone with an aggregate SAT I score below, say, 1350 (by the usual top college method of counting the highest subscore from any sitting of the test) who gains admission has some SERIOUS hooks to bring to the table. </p>

<p>Yet I see CC posters wondering about their chances of getting into Harvard with self-reported scores near 1200, and no self-reported hooks (in some cases) that stand out. An SAT I aggregate score that high is above the national average, of course, but Harvard is but one school among many and such a score is not rare among high school seniors. </p>

<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>

<p>(reporting single-sitting scores) </p>

<p>Carolyn mentioned in an earlier thread that perhaps some applicants to the most selective colleges have NO chance, really, of getting in, because they never had the stats to begin with. (This, in turn, would imply that an applicant who has the base stats to be competitive might have a higher probability of acceptance than the general admit rate at such schools.) Perhaps the practice of “polite deferrals” in the early round is confusing this issue in some cases. Stanford appears to be the only highly selective college that ruthlessly (mercifully?) rejects a large percentage of its early round applicants. Maybe most colleges could afford to do the same, since most of the deferred applicants fare no better on reconsideration in the regular decision round, but choose not to reject so many applicants so early on various policy grounds.</p>

2

<p>Tokenadult, you may want to check some of the numbers posted in the Ivy League forum. For each school, there is a stickied post for the admissions statistics of the past years. The Harvard statistics also include some of the admissions ‘stories" released by the admissions’ office. One of the unanswered question relates to the impact of the deferred pool on the regular decision’s admissions. The CDS is not indeed not available, but Harvard publishes a “Fact Book” that contains selected statistics. </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=32814[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=32814&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Fact Book at <a href=“http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/budget/factbook/[/url]”>http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/budget/factbook/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>

</p>

<p>No question about it. I refer to these as the “culls”.</p>

<p>I suspect that the percentage of culls increases dramatically as the brand-name of the college becomes more familiar to the general population without having invested ten minutes of research into colleges. For example, Aunt Mildred saying, “you’re the smartest girl in your class, you should go to Harvard”.</p>

<p>Even those who do a few minutes of research can get misled by the guidebooks. “Oh, look…I’m in the average range at Harvard with my 1400 SATS, I have a good chance…” Of course, if you are white from an affluent suburb with no hook, no interesting ECs, non-stellar recommendations, no recruited athlete, etc., you have zero chance of admission to Harvard with a 1400 SAT (or even a 1500 SAT).</p>

<p>Conversely, many of the schools that are not as well known in the general population probably get a lower percentage of “culls”. You simply aren’t going to stumble across a Swarthmore or a UChicago unless you’ve invested some level of research into the college selection process. That level of research probably implies some degree of understanding whether or not you have a snowball’s chance of getting in.</p>

4

<p>Thanks to Xiggi for the link to the Harvard Fact Book. </p>

<p>Interesteddad, yes, I think that there are certain “brand name” schools that get application numbers way out of proportion to the number of students who really fit into the various academic programs in those schools, and other “unheralded champion” schools that for various historical and geographical reasons get missed by a lot of students. I recall a thread by Northstarmom that expressed the opinion that about 85 percent of the applicants to Harvard have the ability to complete a degree at Harvard. But since many of those applicants DON’T get into Harvard (and because even today a fair number of top high school students don’t apply to any Ivy), there are plenty of high-level applicants to raise the standards at lots of other colleges. That’s good news for kids who are looking for challenging academics but who didn’t get into whatever their first choice school was. </p>

<p>When I use the term “top” on this CC site, I typically mean “most desired” and sometimes mean “most selective.” But within a list ranked in either of those manners, there are students who have strong preferences for </p>

<p>a) a particular major subject, </p>

<p>or </p>

<p>b) a particular kind of college experience (one example being research U. v. LAC) </p>

<p>or </p>

<p>c) a particular region of the country, </p>

<p>or </p>

<p>d) a particular degree of affordability, </p>

<p>or </p>

<p>e) some other selection factor I’m forgetting at the moment. </p>

<p>A particular applicant with one set of preferences might wisely wholly exclude certain “top” schools from an application list while another applicant with differing preferences might wisely apply to all the schools declined by the first applicant. Difference preferences is part of what makes human society interesting. </p>

<p>I think I have seen a Yale statement quoted somewhere on CC to the effect that the lowest SAT score of a successful Yale applicant in [year] was [insert amazingly low number here]. That kind of thing goes on because indeed none of the highly desired schools choose classes strictly “by the numbers”–the admission officers have their varied preferences too in how to build an entering class. I suppose every high school student who desires to attend [insert name of hard-to-get-into school here] and hears such a statement from an admission officer of that school has to take that at face value and say, “Well, the one way I have NIL chance to get in is to not apply at all, so I had best apply just in case I’m this year’s lowest scorer who gets in.” But on the other hand, even the 1600 scorer has to say, “This isn’t a sure thing, and I had best apply to a set of colleges I’ve carefully considered that fit my academic plans, and hope for the best.” Applicants who answer, in a Columbia interview, “I want to go to school in New York City” as their reason for applying there probably end up getting culled, but those who can name the particular research program at that university that excites their demonstrated passions probably stay in the running unless the limited number of admission spaces is just too cruel in their case.</p>