With all the angst surrounding getting into “name” colleges, I thought it appropriate to summarize some key data reported by US News in its latest ranking of national universities. The overwhelming majority of these universities admitted at least 30% of their applicants, while about ⅔ of them admitted at least half. Less than two dozen schools admitted fewer than 20% of applicants ― yet it seems that thousands of top students want to go only to these most selective universities.
You may be wondering about the test scores you need for these same universities. I’ve plotted the median SAT Reading + Math scores* for their admitted students below. While a select 20-odd universities have median scores in the 1400s or higher, the median scores for students admitted to almost ⅔ of these universities are 1200 or less.
What a less stressful process college admissions would be if only students (and parents!) would focus more on fit than on prestige ― there are so many top-notch universities where students can be happy without killing themselves to get in!
* I used the SAT-ACT concordance table to convert ACT scores to SAT scores for those colleges that reported ACT scores to US News.
