Fun with numbers

I found myself in a library this week, so I did some research.

Peterson's 4-year Colleges is an interesting but hard to carry read. It lists information about every college in the US and Canada, from the smallest trade school to the snootiest Ivy League. I scribbled some numbers that make for very surprising comparisons.

What follows is the name of a school, it's enrollment, and the percentage of the freshman class that has an SAT score, verbal and math, above 500, 600 and 700. ( I was unable to find a source for the percentage of test takers scoring in each threshold.) I have grouped them by conference, alphabetically, along with some other schools for comparison.

Baylor 11.5 89/92 46/50 10/11
Colorado 26.1 87/91 40/50 6/9
Iowa State 21.3 82/89 47/62 13/23
Kansas 21.3 18/96 24/57 30/11 #
Kansas State 19.1 18/93 24/48 30/9 #
Missouri 22.1 89/87 51/54 12/11
Nebraska 17.1 79/86 43/51 13/16
Oklahoma 20.3 18/98 24/75 30/18 #
Okie State 18.8 70/76 23/33 3/5
Texas 37.4 88/92 55/66 15/23
Texas A&M 35.7 82/88 43/57 8/13
Texas Tech 23.3 78/86 27/36 4/5

Illinois 29.6 90/97 63/82 18/45
Indiana 29.5 71/77 27/33 4/7
Iowa 20.1 87/91 50/54 16/16
Michigan 24.8 95/98 70/85 20/41
Michigan State 35.4 74/82 35/44 7/10
Minnesota 32.7 86/90 50/60 20/13
Northwestern 8.0 99/100 91/94 51/63
Ohio State 37.5 85/91 42/54 9/14
Penn State 34.8 88/93 43/61 8/16
Purdue 30.7 77/84 30/43 5/10
Wisconsin 29.7 91/97 60/77 16/28

Dartmouth 4.1 100/99 93/94 65/70
Drake 2.9 86/90 47/60 13/13
Grinnell 1.5 99/99 86/91 48/46
Luther 2.6 89/93 60/63 14/16
Northern Iowa 11.3 55/66 29/27 6/8
Notre Dame 8.3 98/99 86/91 44/54



# only ACT scores reported- percentage of students scoring an 18, 24 and 30

Some notes:

First of all, sorry about the formatting. I didn't want to muck things up with frames.
This is NOT a scientific comparison, just a snapshot. My logic is that the higher the percentage of students in the right hand column, the tougher the acaddemics. Stat is not my day job, I'm sure someone will point out all the things I've done wrong.

My own personal comparison of how the ACT and SAT compare: the ACT has a higher percentage of students at 18 and 24 compared to the SAT 500 and 600, but the 30 and 700 are in the ballpark of each other.

I was surprised by how similar the Big XII schools are, and how big the spread is in the Big 10.

As always, this is for entertainment purposes only. No wagering.

Peterclone