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I'm curious if my SAT score of 1250, will be enough to get me into San Diego state if I only have a 3.3 GPA. Appearently my SAT score is in the 90th percentile or so...but with troubles in the UC's, budget cuts and all that, i've heard rumors that SDSU will only be having a 14 percent acceptance rate. I believe you were the one who posted that, is that the truth? because thats up there with Harvard. Do you think SDSU will be rejecting applicants who have amazingly high statistics and are just using it as a back-up and might accept people like me? who most likely will be enrolling there.

By Collegeguy (Collegeguy) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 12:07 am: Edit

I have no idea where you got that information from. Keep in mind that MIT has a 14 percent acceptance rate. SDSU is a state university, and there's NO WAY it will become more competitive than UC Berkeley, which had a rate of 25% last year.

By Savedbythebell7 (Savedbythebell7) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 12:17 am: Edit

Caryoln posted something saying San Diego State would only be accepting 7,000 applications out of 40,000 a while back.

By Barrons (Barrons) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 01:22 am: Edit

14% of a second tier group is still not much to crow about. Half of them probably have sub 1000 SATs. The quality of the applicants is way more important than the percentage rejected.

By Carolyn (Carolyn) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 11:12 am: Edit

I was wrong - or rather, the San Diego Union Tribune story I was quoting was! If you go to the individual schools board and look at SDSU you will see that the newspaper report I reported was talking about the total number of new students that will be incoming for fall, not total acceptances.

In order to get those 7000 students, SDSU will actually accept around 15,000 this year. However, SDSU has received more than 44,000 applications this year, much more than in previous years and actually more than UCLA.

That means the acceptance rate for next year's class will probably be about 34% - way above Harvard but still pretty tough.

That's a big difference from previous years - for example, in 2002, they received 29,000 applications and accepted 15,774 - about a 50% admit rate.

And Barrons, SDSU has raised its admissions standards considerably over the past few years - With a pool of 44,000 applicants to choose from, I expect that their standards may go up even higher this year. The SDSU President has confirmed this in several interviews as well.

However, I'd venture a guess that anyone with SATs above 1200 or so and good grades will still have a good shot at SDSU this year - the students most likely to be left out in the cold are those with lower level SATs/grades. But that's just a guess on my part - with 44,000 applicants it's impossible to predict with any certainty.

By Dstark (Dstark) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 11:21 am: Edit

I agree with Carolyn. Go to http://sonicpixel.net/ahs/
It gives a snapshot of one large high school in Southern California, who applies, who gets in.

By Thedad (Thedad) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 12:40 pm: Edit

Nifty link. I wish there was more data like this available in aggregate.

By Dstark (Dstark) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 12:49 pm: Edit

Me too. Sure would make the process more understandable.

By Carolyn (Carolyn) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 02:54 pm: Edit

It would be especially nice if colleges themselves offered this information --- but that would probably make the process tooooooo understandable, LOL!

By Thedad (Thedad) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 05:53 pm: Edit

I've been able to ferret info in aggregate from two colleges off the top of my mind: Georgetown has a six-page breakout (compiling stats for each of their different schools) that makes you want to cry...application/acceptance numbers (raw) in a grid broken out by Top 5 percent, second 5 percent, and then deciles vs. 800 and then 100-point decrements for the SAT Math and SAT Verbal scores separately. It's stunning. It's also depressing...and would take the wind out of the sails of some of the misinformed "You're in" or "You have a good chance" posts on this board.

Wellesley has a slightly stripped down version of the same thing on their website.

I could have sworn that I'd once found the same thing for Stanford but just yesterday I was browsing the Stanford website and couldn't find it.

By Bluebins (Bluebins) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 06:04 pm: Edit

Thedad, Could this be the link you were thinking of for Stanford?

http://www.stanford.edu/home/statistics/#admission

By Metz (Metz) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 06:11 pm: Edit

Thedad, do you have a link to that Georgetown information, or is it in a brochure that you have? If it is in some brochure/packet, would you mind giving me the percent acceptance for each of the following stats:
780 math
730 verbal
top 7% rank
From what I hear, my rank is gonna hurt me bad. Someone told me that GU accepts at a LOT higher percentage if you are in the top 5% of the class as opposed to teh top 10%.

Thanks for any info.

By Barrons (Barrons) on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 11:47 pm: Edit

Here is another decent grid for UW

http://www.admissions.wisc.edu/fr_expect.pdf

By Dstark (Dstark) on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 12:54 am: Edit

That's great that Wisconsin does that.

By Thedad (Thedad) on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 03:08 am: Edit

Bluebins, no, that's the common data set. The stats I recall seeing had it broken out so that you could see the number applying/accepted in each range.

Metz, the Georgetown stuff is in a brochure and it was for the 2002 entering class, so it's a little dated now...stats are probably even worse.

2nd 5% class rank

800 Math 6/24 Top 5% = 55/102
700's Math 32/243 Top 5% = 235/754

800 Verbal 2/8 Top 5% = 55/102
700's Verbal 24/204 Top 5% = 229/728

Just to give you a flavor.

Not pretty, eh? For all that people tout the "scores don't matter" line, the percentage of acceptance drops rapidly with score. Just because you *can* get admitted doesn't mean it's good odds...and it doesn't say anything about what hooks you have.

E.g., 2nd 5 percent,

600's Math = 127/795
600's Verbal = 110/770

Extrapolate from these numbers to the HYPSM schools and you see that it's Bloody Shiloh.

By Caparanoia (Caparanoia) on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 01:11 pm: Edit

Is the UC giving false 2003 datas or something because according to them, there data seems way too competitive compared to the link Dstark gave us.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/sept03/302attach.pdf

Open adobe and press Ctrl+N and enter 44. It will give you info for each UC for 2003 and if you go even further down, it gives what the 7 UC's used for admission.

By Silverstar (Silverstar) on Monday, May 31, 2004 - 01:08 pm: Edit

where did you find that site, Dstark?