UChicago's sat range reported by usnews is 1370-1560. oddly high.

College Search & Lists
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<p>zweebopp - UChicago is the only school where its self-reported combined score differs drastically from one reported by usnews. You shouldn’t compare mid-50% range for combined score with that for individual scores, even though they may be very close.</p>

<p>Many schools care greatly about their rankings, and UChicago is no exception (source: [U&lt;/a&gt;. of C. jumps to 9th place in ranking of universities](<a href=“http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/1096600551.html?dids=1096600551:1096600551&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Aug+18,+2006&author=Jodi+S+Cohen,+Tribune+higher+education+reporter&pub=Chicago+Tribune&edition=&startpage=8&desc=U.+of+C.+jumps+to+9th+place+in+ranking+of+universities+;+New+look+at+numbers+boosts+its+standing]U”>http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/1096600551.html?dids=1096600551:1096600551&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Aug+18,+2006&author=Jodi+S+Cohen,+Tribune+higher+education+reporter&pub=Chicago+Tribune&edition=&startpage=8&desc=U.+of+C.+jumps+to+9th+place+in+ranking+of+universities+;+New+look+at+numbers+boosts+its+standing))</p>

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<p>^^ because you stated that UChicago was better than both of those schools, not just in rankings. I wasn’t ranking them. I was saying that qualitatively, they are the same.</p>

<p>and wow, I can’t believe a person like you is going to Uchicago. o how the student body has changed :)</p>

63

<p>schools have to care about rankings to a degree. otherwise, how will they keep on keepin on? duh. but some schools care about rankings a tad bit more than other schools. that’s obvious.</p>

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<p>^ You realize there was a time when USNWR and no other ranking existed :slight_smile: and students didn’t give a crap about who was ranked slightly higher or lower, but generally knew exactly what the good schools were ;)</p>

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<p>There’s a very simple explanation for this discrepancy. US News miscalculates the 25th-75th percentile SAT CR+M scores for every school in the country. The correct way to do it is to take every enrolled freshman’s actual combined (CR+M) score, rank order them, then determine the 25th and 75th percentiles. That’s the figure U Chicago publicly reports.</p>

<p>US News doesn’t do that. It takes each school’s reported 25th percentile CR score (available from the Common Data Set, and reported in each school’s profile in the online edition of US News), then adds that figure to the school’s reported 25th percentile M score. US News then reports the sume of these scores as the school’s “25th percentile CR+M” score. Similarly, US News adds the school’s 75th percentile CR score to its 75th percentile M score, reporting the sum as the school’s “75th percentile CR+M” score.</p>

<p>It takes but a moment’s reflection to see that you’ll get a different result using US News’ method than you’d get if you ranked the actual (CR+M) scores of all the enrolled freshmen. That’s because not everyone in the bottom quartile in CR is also in the bottom quartile in M; and not everyone in the top quartile CR is also in the top quartile in M. In fact, it’s very likely that a lot of freshmen with low (bottom quartile) CR scores got in because they had significantly higher M scores (in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd quartiles), and vice versa. And same at the high end; a lot of top quartile CR scorers are in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th quartile in M, and vice versa. Nor do these effects simply cancel each other out. US News’ phony method for calculating “25th and 75th percentile CR+M” would tend to show a 75th percentile higher than the actual figure, and a 25th percentile lower than the actual. You’d get similar results for any school that reported actual CR+M percentiles for its freshman class—though most don’t report that publicly (but a few do, and they confirm the discrepancy).</p>

<p>You don’t get that discrepancy for ACT scores because there’s no phony addition for US News to use; every school just reports its 25th and 75th percentile ACT composite scores as single numbers, and that’s what shows up in US News.</p>

66

<p>bclintok:</p>

<p>Exactly. I tried to explain this earlier on another part of the forum. However, this argument seems to only work with CollegeBoard’s numbers. CollegeBoard’s stats for Chicago are 1310-1530 (compared to Chicago’s reported 1340-1510). This makes CollegeBoard’s reported stats about equivalent to Chicago’s. However, US News’ numbers are very different from both of these, and I can’t come up with an explanation.</p>

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<p>bclintonk - phuriku’s post #66 is exactly right. Discrepancy exist between UChicago’s report and CollegeBoard’s can be accounted by the different way of calculating the range, but the discrepancy between UChicago’s report and usnews is too great to be accounted by what you suggested.</p>

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<p>Top colleges tend not to give a whit about how USNWR ranks them. It took Chicago 15 years to figure out that it was reporting things differently than other colleges, to the tune of 5-7 ranking places. It made a one-time change. Big deal. (And it wasn’t the new administration – it was two years before it got a new president, and the people involved had been running admissions forever.) What that does point up is how dumb the USNWR methodology is for making fine distinctions among similar institutions.</p>

<p>If any of these colleges wanted to maximize their SAT score ranges, they would have no trouble doing that. They don’t do it because fundamentally they don’t care.</p>

<p>As for Chicago’s yield – I am sure it is affected by financial aid, especially in competition with the Ivies, all of whom seem to have better aid. But the thing that affects it most is that it has EA instead of ED. If you strip out ED and calculate colleges’ yield on students who aren’t contractually bound to enroll if accepted, only a handful have yields over 40%, and Chicago’s ~36% yield is actually quite good.</p>

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<p>I agree with phuriku and johntonishi. The difference between 1340-1510 and 1310-1530 is pretty much exactly the difference one would expect between actual combined scores and adding the separate range markers for CR and M. It’s almost impossible that there would be a 50 point difference between the top numbers for each method, and really impossible that the sum of the low numbers would be higher than the actual combined score low marker. (I’ll let phuriku prove that, though.)</p>

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<p>When it comes to what the University of Chicago reports to USNews, I certainly don’t know what to believe. They are desperately trying to climb up the rankings by manipulating their data (or at least trying to report it in the most favorable light possible). Given what their vice president for university relations and dean of college enrollment admitted a few years ago, I’m sure they could have been slightly creative with SAT scores. Excerpts from a Chicago Tribune article from August 18, 2006 (a portion of the original article was reported on the linked U of C affiliated blog):</p>

<p>U. of C. jumps to 9th place in ranking of universities
New look at numbers boosts its standing</p>

<p>By Jodi S. Cohen
Tribune higher education reporter</p>

<p>August 18, 2006</p>

<p>…Concerned that a continued slide in rankings might affect the University of Chicago’s reputation, Michael Behnke, the vice president for university relations and dean of college enrollment, went to Washington, D.C., with other top officials to meet with [USNews] magazine researchers and editors…</p>

<p>By including the [freshman] writing classes, the percentage of classes under 20 increased to about 67 percent, from 60 percent, Behnke said…</p>

<p>Officials also found a way to improve the alumni giving rank… by excluding graduates who couldn’t be located…</p>

<p>The university also improved its per-student spending calculation by relabeling $15 million in annual library expenditures… The additional per-student spending improved the university’s position in the “financial resources” category…</p>

<p>Behnke said the university also changed other calculations, but he declined to say in which areas.</p>

<p>“Frankly, I don’t want to help my competitors,” he said. “Let them figure it out. The problem is that they probably already figured it out. We’re late to the game.”</p>

<p>[The</a> Editors Blog: How UChicago went from 15th to 9th in one year](<a href=“http://the-editors.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-uchicago-went-from-15th-to-9th-in.html]The”>http://the-editors.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-uchicago-went-from-15th-to-9th-in.html)</p>

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<p>Some of the people participating in this debate are about as clueless as the far right-wingers in the health care debate. Chicago is not desperately trying to move up. As Behnke said, Chicago is just “late to the game.” People are just bitter that the sleeping giant didn’t stay asleep.</p>

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<p>It’s undeniable that some schools are trying a lot harder to play this game than other schools. While UChicago may have begun to play the game late, there no doubt are top 15 schools who haven’t even started.</p>

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<p>The quoted portion of the Tribune article above omits the following paragraph from the middle:</p>

<p>

</p>

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<p>I think the U of C has always had a low yield compared to peers because it is a school much like Johns Hopkins, viewed as offering a poor quality of life outside the classroom. Perhaps because the graduate and professional schools have dominated the image of both places, the schools have had a hard time developing an undergraduate focus and social life.
This has changed a bit at the U of C with the expansion of the College and the echo-boom overflow from the Ivy League. But still not considered a desirable place to spend four years, even for many applicants. For the right person, of course, the school is heaven.</p>

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<p>phuriku: “Some of the people participating in this debate are about as clueless as the far right-wingers in the health care debate. Chicago is not desperately trying to move up. As Behnke said, Chicago is just “late to the game.” People are just bitter that the sleeping giant didn’t stay asleep.”</p>

<p>Well, I won’t stoop to calling you ‘clueless’ as you implied with me. But it is clear that U of C will take what USNews allows them to report. If the College Board has certain guidelines and USNews has slightly differing guidelines for SAT reporting, I can assure you that U of C, given the tone of the answers by their official in the Trib article, will report their SATs in a manner that gives them the highest range by the standards allowed by USNews.</p>

<p>Also the article reports “Concerned that a continued slide in rankings might affect the University of Chicago’s reputation” U of C officials flew out to meet USNews editors. I certainly think that many other elite schools would probably view that as a fairly ‘desperate’ measure, considering most of them view college rankings and especially USNews as something that undermines the integrity of higher education in the US and what these institutions are trying to convey and are concerned about. USNews is something they put up with and you have to give it to an institution like Reed which certainly wouldn’t have their officials fly out to meet USNews people in Washington DC to figure out how to game the system.</p>

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<p>I see. This one does seem to be in error. Whether it’s intentional on Chicago’s part or not is hard to say. It could be that. Or it could be an honest (but stupid) mistake on Chicago’s part, or it could be a data transcription error on US News’ part. In any even, I think it’s pretty clearly a goof. </p>

<p>FWIW, Princeton Review online has the same 2008 25th/75th percentile CR and M scores for Chicago as the College Board (660-770 CR, 650-760 M) which if added would give you 1310-1530; but Princeton Review also reports Chicago’s actual middle 50% CR+M of 1340-1510. So these numbers all square between Chicago’s publicly reported numbers,
the College Board numbers, and the Princeton Review numbers. The only one that’s out of step is US News.</p>

<p>Still drives me crazy that US News does their misleading addition thing, though. It means that at probably every competitive school, the actual top quartile is not quite so high and the actual bottom quartile not quite so low as US News reports, needlessly discouraging some high scorers and cruelly giving false hope to lower scorers. If Princeton Review can get the actual middle 50% CR+M, why can’t US News?</p>

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<p>There is no way the U of C would try to fudge this. Just human error somewhere.
Notre Dame’s range took an implausible jump, last year I believe.</p>

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<p>Of course I’m biased, being a student at UChicago right now, but the idea that this is anything other than a screw-up, seems odd to me. I mean, US News’ page, which details the procedures they undergo to collect data, stresses that if an independent source conflicts with the university’s data, they go with the independent source. The middle 50% sat score is one of the easiest things to verify using independent sources and so I just can’t see why anyone would even try to lie about it. </p>

<p>But I definitely want to see this resolved. I don’t put much stock in rankings anyway; once you’re in college, they’re just a source for fun, once in a while. They don’t validate education or people’s choices in any sense. I would like it if UC did what Reed does, on a moral sense, because I do think rankings are flawed; but the University is a business, and it makes sound business strategy to care about rankings, because, unfortunately, people do. </p>

<p>But anyway, my rambling is unnecessary. I look forward to any updates on this. I don’t like the idea that there is even a cloud of suspicion over UC… Hopefully someone will be able to get in touch with US news about it.</p>

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<p>Just checked US News 2010 online edition (finally—took a long time to get through). They show 25th/75th percentile CR score for Chicago at 690-780, and 25th/75th M at 680-780. Using US News’ boneheaded “add 25th to 25th and 75th to 75th” methodology, that would give you 1370-1560----just what they report. So it’s not a typo or a calculation error; they based their calculation on bad data. Very likely these are Chicago’s admitted student numbers, not enrolled freshmen numbers. The question still remains, intentionally misleading or innocent (but stupid) error?</p>

<p>And what does it tell us about the reliability of US News that they wouldn’t catch an error of this magnitude—nor, apparently, did they even bother to try to verify the data by cross-checking against other publicly available sources or their own past records which would have shown a jump of this magnitude to be highly improbable? Incredible. Simply incredible. Or is that uncredible—as in “utterly lacking in credibility”? Either way, this is just as big a screw-up by US News as by the University of Chicago.</p>

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<p>“They show 25th/75th percentile CR score for Chicago at 690-780, and 25th/75th M at 680-780. Using US News’ boneheaded “add 25th to 25th and 75th to 75th” methodology, that would give you 1370-1560----just what they report. So it’s not a typo or a calculation error; they based their calculation on bad data. Very likely these are Chicago’s admitted student numbers, not enrolled freshmen numbers. The question still remains, intentionally misleading or innocent (but stupid) error?”</p>

<p>bclintonk - thank you!</p>