Georgetown admits 12.9% of applicants. Carnegie Mellon admits 11.7%. By the number most students use to sort their list, these are the same school.
Now look at the scores of students who actually got in.
| Admits | SAT 25th | SAT 75th | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georgetown | 12.9% | 1390 | 1550 |
| Carnegie Mellon | 11.7% | 1500 | 1570 |
A quarter of Georgetown's admitted class scored at or below 1390. At Carnegie Mellon that line sits at 1500. Same selectivity, 110 points apart.
If you are sitting at 1420, these two schools are not the same bet. Not close.
Why the two numbers come apart
Acceptance rate is a ratio of applicants to admits. It moves with how many people apply — which moves with brand, marketing, application fees, whether the school is on the Common App, and how easy it is to add.
The score range is a description of who got in. It moves with what the school weighs.
A school can be brutally selective because a huge number of people apply, while still admitting plenty of students in the mid-1400s — because it is weighing something other than scores heavily. Georgetown's own filings describe an application review where scores sit alongside a long list of other factors.
A school can be similarly selective and still have a very high score floor, because its programs are quantitative and the applicant pool self-selects that way.
Acceptance rate tells you how crowded the door is. The score range tells you what the doorway is shaped like. Students routinely use the first to answer the second.
The wider spread
The same pattern appears across selective schools:
| School | Admits | SAT 25th |
|---|---|---|
| Yale | 3.9% | 1470 |
| Harvard | 3.7% | 1510 |
| Boston College | 16.4% | 1440 |
| Georgia Tech | 14.1% | 1370 |
| Babson | 17.1% | 1390 |
| Lehigh | 25.9% | 1370 |
Yale and Harvard sit within 0.2 percentage points of each other on admit rate and 40 points apart at the 25th percentile. Georgia Tech is more selective than Babson by admit rate and has a lower score floor.
How to use this on your own list
For every school you have called a reach, check two things instead of one:
- Where does your score fall in the admitted range? Below the 25th, between, or above the 75th.
- How selective is the school?
Those two answers produce four very different situations, and only one of them is the situation most students imagine when they write "reach" next to a school name. Being above the 75th percentile at a 4% school is not the same as being below the 25th at a 13% school, even though both get filed under the same word.
What the range does not say
The 25th percentile is not a cutoff. A quarter of admitted students scored at or below it, and they were admitted. Recruited athletes, first-generation applicants, students from underrepresented regions, and applicants with unusual records sit disproportionately in that bottom quarter. If you are not in one of those categories, the bottom quarter is a thinner door than it looks.
And where a school is test-optional, the published range describes only students who chose to submit. That group skews high by construction.
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Source
Admitted SAT ranges are institution-reported figures from Common Data Set filings. Acceptance rates are institution-reported figures published through IPEDS / College Scorecard. Ranges describe enrolled or admitted students who submitted scores.