Pre-Med Colleges in Tennessee: SAT Scores, ACT Scores, Costs, and Programs

The table below covers every four-year public and non-profit institution in Tennessee with at least 1,000 undergraduates that reports an admit rate or admitted test scores. Twenty-five institutions meet that description. Tennessee has more four-year colleges than most states in this series, and without a size floor the table would run past thirty rows.

Colleges are sorted by the midpoint of the two SAT section ranges, with ties broken on the Math 75th percentile. The two colleges reporting no scores go last, ordered by size. An ACT column is included because Tennessee’s state assessment and its scholarship thresholds are both written in ACT points, so that column is the one a Tennessee student checks his scholarship eligibility against.

Each range covers the middle 50% of admitted students who submitted scores. A quarter scored below the lower number, and the top quarter scored at or above the upper one. Being under the lower number does not rule a student out, and being just above it is not as safe as it looks.

Two institutions below the size threshold are worth naming because their absence is otherwise odd. The University of Tennessee Southern in Pulaski enrolls 864 undergraduates at a cost of attendance of $24,750 and admits 87%, and it is a University of Tennessee campus when four others appear above. Baptist Health Sciences University in Memphis enrolls 770 at a cost of $22,227 and admits 82%, and it now houses a college of osteopathic medicine that the medical school section below covers.

Four things in that table are worth stopping on.

The second most selective institution in Tennessee is Fisk University, which admits 37% of applicants. UT Knoxville admits 42% and Rhodes 50%. Only Vanderbilt is lower, at 6%. An HBCU of 1,035 undergraduates is more selective than the state flagship, and nothing else on this page would lead a reader to expect that.

Cost of attendance runs from $22,233 at Austin Peay to $89,590 at Vanderbilt. That is a spread of better than four to one, the widest in this series.

Belmont admits 95% of applicants while reporting an ACT range of 24 to 30 and a cost of attendance of $62,570. High reported scores, near-open admission and a high price sit together in one row, and a cost column exists to make that visible.

Tennessee’s public universities differ enormously in what they charge non-residents. East Tennessee State charges out-of-state students $4,050 more than residents. Middle Tennessee State charges $21,308 more and UT Knoxville $19,444 more. That is a fivefold spread inside a single state system, and an out-of-state student pays $14,522 at East Tennessee State against $33,256 at UT Knoxville.

Rhodes College is a private liberal arts college in Memphis with 1,836 undergraduates and a 50% admit rate. The admitted range runs 650 to 733 in Reading & Writing and 650 to 753 in Math, with the top quarter at or above 733 and 753. Its ACT range is 26 to 32. Rhodes charges $57,110 in tuition and fees against a total cost of attendance of $71,136.

Three colleges on this page report SAT and ACT ranges that cannot both describe the same admitted students, and the reason this is worth a section is that the other twenty rows agree.

The arithmetic caveat comes first, because every comparison here depends on it. The table reports each SAT section separately, and adding two section percentiles produces a figure higher than a college’s real composite range, normally by approximately 20 points at each end. Every comparison below subtracts that before drawing any conclusion.

With that correction applied, twenty of the twenty-three colleges reporting both tests agree within approximately 75 points of their ACT equivalents. Tennessee’s two score columns broadly describe the same students. That is a different situation from a state where one test dominates and the minority test is taken by a small self-selected group, and it is what makes the three exceptions interesting.

Fisk University reports an ACT range of 19 to 24. On the official concordance that is an SAT of 1010 to 1180. Its reported SAT sections sum to 1140 and 1510. After the correction, the upper figure sits approximately 310 points above its ACT equivalent. That is the largest gap this series has found anywhere. Stated more plainly, a reported Math 75th percentile of 790 sits beside an ACT 75th percentile of 24. Those two numbers describe different populations.

Freed-Hardeman University runs the other way. Its ACT range of 19 to 26 is worth 1010 to 1240 on the concordance, and its SAT sections sum to 952 and 1087, so the upper figure sits approximately 173 points below its ACT equivalent. Its reported SAT ranges are also unusually compressed, 481 to 549 and 471 to 538, each spanning under 70 points where most colleges on this page span 100 or more.

Austin Peay State University reports an SAT 25th percentile sum of 843 against an ACT equivalent of 970, approximately 147 points low.

Both figures stay on this page in all three cases. Neither is reconciled, neither is quietly dropped, and a student considering Fisk, Freed-Hardeman or Austin Peay should ask that admissions office which figure describes the class he would be joining.

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The gap between each college’s reported SAT range and the SAT equivalent of its ACT range. Twenty rows agree and three do not.

There is a general lesson in that pattern. When a state’s two score columns agree almost everywhere, the few rows that disagree are normally telling a student something about the reporting rather than something about the students. A single odd row in an otherwise consistent table is a reason to ask a question, not a reason to recalculate a target.