<p>I’m sure someone else has already done so, but I e-mailed US News this morning about it. They said that I should have a response within 2 days.</p>
<p>phuriku - we are finally beginning to see through the fog. did you include the newest information provided by bclintonk?</p>
<p>I didn’t include the information from bclintonk, since I e-mailed them a few hours ago, and I didn’t have that information then. However, I informed them of the discrepancy between US News’ and Chicago’s numbers, although I probably should have added in CollegeBoard’s as well.</p>
<p>phuriku - let’s see what they say.</p>
<p>I agree with that. I’m really curious about this now…</p>
<p>If there’s a mistake, then it should be corrected. But how…</p>
<p>I haven’t known USN&WR to change numbers in subsequent printings or online, but it could have happened.</p>
<p>If the usnews used the 25/75% for admitted students instead of that for enrolled students, correcting the mistake would detract already meager credibility from usnews and may even lower UChicago’s ranking. This would be a highly unlikely move for usnews. I hope the truth come out.</p>
<p>this thread is pointless. a few kids whining that a legitimate program was ranked higher than theirs or perhaps higher than they anticipated. grow up.</p>
<p>bayvcroberts comes onto this thread and start barking empty assertions with no proof. It’s tempting to assume that bayvcroberts is the real kid.</p>
<p>UChicago: CR: 690-780, M: 680-780 (usnews)
Princeton: CR: 690-790, M: 700-790 ([College</a> Search - Princeton University - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board))</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting thought: Fewer than 11,000 kids per year score 780 or more on the CR test. (The equivalent number for M is almost twice as large.) Thanks to Chicago’s supposedly “bad” yield, its admitted class is much larger than its enrolled class, and 25% of the admitted class is about 900 kids. Let’s assume for purposes of argument that only 75% submitted SAT scores, that’s still 675 kids, or more than 6% of everyone who scored that high on CR.</p>
<p>Do we really think that 1 out of every 16 kids in the country who scored that high on the CR test even applied to Chicago? Did Chicago accept everyone who applied with a 780 CR? It’s a little puzzling.</p>
<p>You want to hear something even more preposterous? US News shows Harvard, Yale, and Princeton all with 75th percentile CR+M scores of 1580 for the class entering in the Fall of 2008. According to the College Board, among 2008 HS grads only 2,146 in the entire country scored 1580 or higher in combined CR+M. The combined freshman classes at HYP number approximately 4,213. If 25% of them—or 1,053—scored 1580 or higher on CR+M, that would mean very nearly HALF of the nation’s 1580+ scorers attended HYP. And that, in turn, would mean there were only 1,100 or so 1580+ SAT-scorers to spread around among the likes of Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Penn, Columbia, Chicago, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Duke, WUSTL, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, Emory, Rice, Vanderbilt, Northwestern; not to mention all LACS; not to mention all the other state flagships including good ones like Michigan, UVA, UNC; not to mention all the lesser-known schools out there that offer generous merit aid including in some cases free tuition or even a full free ride to top SAT-scorers.</p>
<p>I don’t believe it for a minute. US News’ methodology is profoundly and perhaps irretrievably flawed. If they can’t even provide credible “objective” statistics like SAT scores, what good are they?</p>
<p>Well, it’s clear that they are not really talking about combined scores for the same people, just the sum of the 75th percentile scores for each component. 10,700 kids scored 780+ on CR, and 20,700 kids scored 780+ on M, and about 4,000 scored 1560+ on a single test combined, so that means that the population of kids who qualify for one or the other component is 26,000+, which is large enough to believe. I don’t think it’s crazy to imagine that HYP has 4% of that. There would still be plenty to go around to the other schools.</p>
<p>Also, remember that some people don’t submit SAT scores, and I believe the SAT quartiles are computed without reference to them. It’s not so many at HYP, but probably at least 20%. So, really, they only would need about 3.3% of the population to make their numbers. That’s well within the range of possibility.</p>
<p>US News’ calculation of 25/75% sat through addition of CR and M, although may not be most accurate and seem weird, has gained acceptance. I think it’s fine if it’s standardized when used. In cases of HYP’s, their 75% at 1580 are substantiated by their own and CollegeBoard’s data regarding enrolled students. UChicago’s case is different in that it’s 1560 is not substantiated by its own and CollegeBoard’s data.</p>
<p>UChicago: CR: 690-780, M: 680-780 (according to usnews)
Princeton: CR: 690-790, M: 700-790 ([College</a> Search - Princeton University - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board)) </p>
<p>Princeton’s data is regarding enrolled students for sure. It is difficult to believe UChicago’s data on enrolled students are that close to Princeton’s. In addition, after considering the much lower numbers reported on UChicago’s own website and on CollegeBoard, it wouldn’t be outrageous to assume usnews wrongly used UChicago’s data on its admitted students instead of its enrolled students. However, let’s wait for usnews’ reply before deciding on the validity of this assumption.</p>
<p>bclintock’s reasoning is very viable.</p>
<p>“Mistaken” reporting aside, 30-50 points really isn’t that big of a deal. There isn’t a huge difference between those scores – the difference between a 1340 and a 1370 is 2 percentile ranks (from 93st to 95th), and there is no difference between a 1560 and a 1510 (they are both in the 99th percentile – everything 1480 and above is in the 99th percentile). Either way you slice it, Chicago’s students are in at least the top 7% of SAT scorers across the nation, so whether there’s a 30-50 point difference in their reporting matters naught.</p>
<p>juillet - I agree. Questioning whether the discrepancy matters would be splitting hair; therefore, we are not questioning whether the discrepancy matters. We are solely interested in why such as big discrepancy exist, and whether or not “‘mistaken’ reporting aside” came into play.</p>
<p>This thread has nothing against UChicago. Almost everyone informed in the matter knows UChicago is peer with HYPSM, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Northwestern, etc., and that UChicago students are among the brightest in the world.</p>
<p>This thread is trying to find whether usnews made a reporting mistake, which would suggest it’s not careful with it’s data.</p>
<p>Why so hard to believe? WashU is close: Middle 50% of
SAT Critical Reading: 680 - 760 75%
SAT Math: 700 - 780 75%
as is Pomona: SAT Critical Reading: 700 - 780 88%
SAT Math: 690 - 780 88%</p>