Higher Education - SAT Scores and Acceptance (Admission) Rates

Another round of analysis of the higher education data - This time, I compared SAT scores to Admission rates. You can find my public Tableau here.

I grouped the Age of Entry into four (17 to 19, 20 to 23, 24 to 27, and 28+). As you can see from the distribution below, 22.503 is the average of the Age of Entry with standard deviation of 2.549. Majority of the age groups are in the early 20s, and they are very much clustered together on the average SAT scores. Not so surprisingly, many of the ivy league universities have much higher average SAT score (highlighted in green).

High SAT scores are saturated to top ivy league schools.

There are several factors to consider why average SAT scores are so high among ivy league schools.

First, it could be simple as supply and demand. Clearly, the demand to join prestigious colleges and universities is much higher than the supply of the schools. Perhaps there are more applicants to these schools. As a result, the average admission or acceptance rates are significantly lower than in other schools. 

What's interesting is how the age of entry is isolated to younger students. It makes me wonder if most older students don't apply to ivy league schools. Perhaps these students have jobs or careers already, and their focus is to graduate. Their journey could be much different than an 18-year-old high school graduate. 

At the same time, there are schools like Virginia State University, with an acceptance rate of 95%+. The school is a public historically black land-grant university. As a result, the number of applicants is likely much lower than in schools like Harvard and Yale. However, there is no reason to believe that the school provides less quality education.