The following data are presented to provide information about level of achievement on the verbal portion of the SAT I for incoming students at the selective colleges and universities in the United States. Certainly the SAT I is not the primary instrument by which accept/deny decisions are rendered. Strength of curriculum, individual grade point average and recommendations letters generally carry more weight in the admissions process. Performance on standardized testing, however, is not unimportant, even if it may not be critical to one's admissions folder.

Below are two indices: the first is the percentage of the incoming class of 1997-98 (this year's sophomores, the first group for which these data are available) who scored 700 or higher on the verbal portion of the SAT I. The "top thirty" schools are presented. Military academies and specialty schools (such as Webb Institute of Naval Architecture) have been excluded from these lists, even though they are highly selective institutions. Additionally, neither Harvard nor Columbia appears because they do not release such data. The second is the percentage of the incoming class of 1997-98 who scored 600 or higher on the verbal portion of the SAT I. On this second list thirty-two schools appear because of identical percentages at the "bottom" level.

Interesting to note the pre-eminence of schools considered to be "technical" or engineering-specific within this list. Perhaps the sense of uni-dimensionality regularly ascribed to such institutions as Cal Tech, MIT and Harvey Mudd is undeserved. Notable also is the absence of public institutions (even the more prominent schools) and the virtually identical totals of larger, comprehensive universities and smaller, liberal arts colleges.

Data are taken from the 1999 Peterson's Guide to Four-Year Colleges (29th edition) and the 1998 Barron's Profiles of American Colleges (22nd edition). Compilations courtesy of Gary Glen Price, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin at Madison.