Providence College in Rhode Island has advised U.S. News that it misreported data to U.S. News on the average SAT and ACT scores for its fall 2012 entering class.
The school has provided U.S. News with new data it is reporting as correct. Providence said when reporting its average SAT and ACT scores to U.S. News it mistakenly provided scores for students that had been accepted instead of those for enrolled students as the reporting standard requires.
Thus, the school's average SAT critical reading score should have been 569 rather than the 611 erroneously reported to U.S. News, and the average SAT math score should have been 580 rather than 624. The average composite ACT score should have been 24.8 (25), rather than the 28 reported.
Providence College also told U.S. News that no other SAT and ACT data were misreported. This means that all the 25th and 75th percentile SAT and ACT scores that were reported by the school for the fall 2012 entering class were all correct.
The incorrect average SAT and ACT data were used by U.S. News to compute Providence College's rank in the 2014 Best Colleges rankings published in September 2013. In the Best Colleges ranking methodology, we factor in the admissions test scores of all enrollees who took the SAT (math and critical reading) and ACT, which have a total weight of 8.125 percent in our ranking model.
However, the difference between Providence College's misreported data and newly reported data wasn't significant enough to affect the school's numerical rank in the Regional Universities (North) ranking category. Therefore, based on our calculations, the school's published numerical rank is correct and will not change.
U.S. News has replaced the misreported school data at usnews.com and in the U.S. News College Compass tool with the new data reported as correct by the school for the fall 2012 entering class, where such data were provided by the school.
U.S. News will continue to handle each instance of data misreporting on a case-by-case basis.