Middle 50th percentile of the admitted class: ACT Composite of 27–31 ???

Question

Can someone tell me what does this mean? I understand that it has something to do with the bell shaped curve.

Answer 1

The middle 50th percentile means the scores of the middle half, so the 25th through the 75th percentile. The ACT goes up to a score of 36, so if a fake college had 10 people who are accepted with these scores:

24 25 (27 28 29 30 31) 31 33 34

the ones in parentheses are the middle 50th percentile (it's weirder with only 10 numbers for this example), and these fit the above range. So you see, the top and bottom quarter are left out of the above stat. hope this helps