Is there a tangible benefit to having more than 1540 SAT?
I doubt it. People with perfect SAT scores get denied from elite U’s while those with lesser scores do get in. I guess having a perfect score would give a student bragging rights (which don’t mean anything) but won’t get an admission over less than perfect high scores.
Not really. At that point she’s shown she can do the work, so it all comes down to personal characteristics (achievements in ec’s).
no
No. The decision will be based on other things.
Just based on discussions with counselors, parents and teachers (so please take this for what its worth as my children are currently only high school juniors), the individual scores obtained on each section is where the focus should be, and not the overall total score. For example, a 1500 obtained with the combination of CRW 700 and M 800 may not be as favorable as a 750 on each section. The goal, I understand, is to not have lopsided scores and to reach as close to 750 on each section as possible.
A score of 1540, whatever the combination, would reach that goal I would say.
I so hope this is helpful. I struggle with whether my twins should be satisfied with their Aug. scores as well…
I wonder if it “looks better” to take the test one time only?
Not at all. And that is bcos it is in the college’s best interest to only look at your superscore.
@ThinkOn that seems counter to what I’ve been hearing - colleges prefer kids who are ‘pointy’, so if you’re 700m/800w and you are involved in a lot of writing/humanities ECs, the SAT supports this picture - you are competent at math but excellent at writing. An engineering kid with 800m/700w shows that they’re excellent at math/competent at reading/writing and the further picture is in their ECs. The bad picture would be someone who claims to want to be an engineer but had the lower score in their math SAT. Someone who is 750/750 is an all-arounder who isn’t spectacular in either direction. It’s not a bad look, but it’s not as striking.
There are so few colleges that will care how your 1500 is broken up. 700 m 800 w for an engineering student? Stanford or MIT might care but the rest of the colleges for ordinary mortals don’t.
Sorry, but that makes absolutely no sense. Again, it is in the college’s own best interest to accept kids with the highest test scores – on both parts of the SAT – for all kinds of purposes.
Sure, one better be strong in one’s intended major: an engineering applicant to MIT ain’t gonna get much love with a 650 Math score. OTOH, MIT is NOT gonna “prefer” a kid with a 800 M and a 700 CR over an 800/800. Just makes no sense.
Look at Caltech’s numbers: they have staggeringly high CR scores (top quartile is 800, same as Harvard) as well as M. “Pointy” kids need not apply.
It isn’t worth spending another moment on this matter. Admission to a preferred program is going to depend on advanced tests – beyond the SAT 1 – including AP scores.
My oldest got 1570 on his only take of the SAT I as a junior (didn’t prep for it but he’d taken the test years earlier for talent search programs). Did he repeat it in search for perfection? No. Prepare for other exams? No. But he took SAT II and AP’s, and got scores in comparable range, perfect score (no wrong answers) on SAT II math.
Even with such scores, there’s much more to an application including GPA and curriculum taken, extra-curriculars, essays, and LUCK.
“a 1500 obtained with the combination of CRW 700 and M 800 may not be as favorable as a 750 on each section”
This probably depends where you are applying. When I was at MIT, there were a lot of students who had 800 on the math part of the SAT, and 700 or less on the English/Reading part.
That SAT score is fine.
If it were me, I’d be looking at the other things this student’s application will have on it.
@ninakatarina In my experience (which is very limited so please take it for what it’s worth) the “pointy” statement is usually heard when addressing EC’s and other choices that the student has (e.g., which SAT Subject tests to take, which AP tests to take, summer activities…).
In general not much benefit, and I wouldn’t worry about it. However, the specific details vary between colleges. Some examples are below.
If you look at scattergrams for Vanderbilt admissions, the rejections seem of form a wall at their reported 75th percentile ACT of 35. Many rejections occur at 34. Few occur at 35+, which is the equivalent of slightly above 1540. If they are trying to keep their reported 75th percentile score at a particular level, then there may be a significant benefit to being above Vanderbilt 75th percentile in all publicly reported sections on the SAT. Their 75th percentile is currently 790 and 760.
A few years ago, the dean of admissions at Duke wrote a letter describing their admission process and the six categories in which the rank applicants on a scale of 1-5. He said to get the maximum 5 rating in test scores required SAT scores that fall in the high 700s across all three categories,". 1540 may or may not meet this description, depending on how the scores are split up and the specific threshold for “high 700s.”
MIT has said that there is no difference in their admission process between a 740 math and 800 math, and the 800 math only has a higher admit rate because it is correlated with other achievements they value. They used the example of IMO. The same idea would apply to CR.
It depends the rest of the application, as well as whee you are applying. For example at many holistic colleges, high math and relatively low CR looks a lot better on a prospective engineering major than an English major. When I applied to colleges, I had a 800 math and 500 CR. I was accepted to MIT, as well as Stanford and Ivies as a prospective engineering major. While my experience was by no means typical, it shows that there is far more to admissions decisions than being at the pinnacle of highest test scores.
As to whether >1540 improves chances over 1540, there is data available that indicates that it probably does… For HYPMS admissions data from Naviance scattergrams at my son’s HS, going from the low 1500’s to high 1500s tripled the acceptance rate. In another thread last month, @BKSquared http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20968922/#Comment_20968922 posted a link from Brown https://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/explore/admission-facts indicating sharply higher acceptance rates as scores rise from 700 to 800 on each section of the SAT.
You are comparing high 1500s with on average more rigorous curriculum, better LORs, more likely to have state/national level academic ECs/awards, … to low 1500s with on average less rigorous curriculum, worse LORs, less likely to have state/national level academic ECs/awards,… Which do you think has a greater influence on the decision – the difference between high and low 1500 SAT scores or the difference between the other parts of the applications? I posted a partial quote earlier, where a MIT admissions rep explains this difference between correlation and causation when interpreting SAT admit rate numbers. The full quote is below. That said, there are exceptions and differences between different colleges, as I mentioned in my earlier reply.
@Data10 if you’re suggesting that correlation between higher SAT section scores and greater admission success does not necessarily imply causation and may instead be related to other positive factors which you (or the quoted MIT admissions rep) believe tend to correlate with higher SAT section scores, I tend to think that is a distinction that makes little real difference. In the example you quoted from the MIT admissions rep: “does that mean we preferred an 800 to a 740? No. It means we preferred the IMO medalist, who also happened to get an 800!” I’d reply fine, but that doesn’t say anything about how he, or admissions reps at other schools, differentiate between two non-medalists, one with a 740 and one with an 800.