<p>This is for those who scored high but still got the boot.</p>
<p>A friend 2360 SatII MAthIIC 800 IC 800 CHM 800
Psat 238</p>
<p>Rejected</p>
<p>harvard
princeton
stanford
yale
tufts
johns hopkins</p>
<p>Now at caltech....an aberration</p>
<p>This is not necessary a surprise. For the schools that rejected your friend, no applicant can be considered a definite accept simply because they have way more than enough qualify applicants.</p>
<p>yes, but it is a real Bi*tch. ;)</p>
<p>What was the guy's GPA? I'd like to know before I make a judgement.</p>
<p>My friend got a 2390 and got rejected from UPenn Harvard Yale, applied EA to Stanford got deferred then accepted. Accepted to Georgetown, Columbia, Cornell, UMD and is going to Stanford now.</p>
<p>He also had a high GPA (97-ish?) and went to a Prep school</p>
<p>*dont see any hope now</p>
<p>Hey hey hey, SAT scores are NOT the most important things in this game, aisgzdavinci!</p>
<p>Interesting thread. </p>
<p>See </p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=377882%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=377882</a> </p>
<p>for what else can matter in the admission process besides test scores.</p>
<p>"What was the guy's GPA? I'd like to know before I make a judgement."</p>
<p>He had a 3.9-3.95 gpa from a private highschool.</p>
<p>I think this is an interesting topic. However, I also think the bigger issue is probably the score out of 1600. I have a 2190, but that's only a 1390 on the 1600 scale. 1390 is a very good score nation-wide, but not as good as 2190. My 800 W will help me for some schools; for others, it won't make too big an impact.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Rejected</p>
<p>harvard
princeton
stanford
yale
tufts
johns hopkins</p>
<p>Now at caltech....an aberration
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This just shows how the Caltech admissions process works, and it's not that much of a surprise.</p>
<p>What other schools did he get into, though?</p>
<p>And obviously, there are things that might've prevented his admission at those schools mentioned which didn't prevent him from entering Caltech, such as gender and race. I'll put $20 on the fact that he's an Asian male.</p>
<p>Caltech has the highest test score averages in the nation.</p>
<p>"Truly shows how shallow Caltech's admission is."</p>
<p>Or rather it shows how those other schools don't care about obviously smart people.</p>
<p>And Caltech is not an aberration. It is the hardest school period. They have like a 83% graduation rate (VERY low for a top university).</p>
<p>If they started accepting students with a lower test scores, you can bet that their graduation rate will go down even more. So, just because you didn't/couldn't get into that school, that doesn't make it shallow. They're trying to have a higher retention rate (which correlates well to test scores).</p>
<p>Caltech does not have the highest scores. only the highest math scores. average reading and writing are much lower</p>
<p>
[quote]
Caltech does not have the highest scores.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes they do. For Caltech, Math + Critical Reading is the highest in the United States.
They're only 20 points behind on critical reading in comparison with the top Ivies while being about 80 points ahead with respect to math. Thus, they do have the highest scores. This creates about a 60 point gap between Caltech and the Ivies in Math + Critical Reading and about a 40 point gap between Caltech and the Ivies in Math + Critical Reading + Writing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And Caltech is not an aberration. It is the hardest school period. They have like a 83% graduation rate (VERY low for a top university).</p>
<p>If they started accepting students with a lower test scores, you can bet that their graduation rate will go down even more.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Except that you're making the assumption that SAT scores are very highly correlated with intelligence, which isn't exactly the case. Apparently, even JHU and Tufts saw something wrong with this applicant, whereas he was just an auto-admit at Caltech because of high scores on reasonably easy tests.</p>
<p>There's a reason why Princeton and Harvard will reject you if you have a 2400 SAT, hard classes, but nothing else. It's because higher test scores don't necessarily correlate with success, whereas I think Caltech believes that it does. (This last paragraph is actually a suitable response for the OP's implied question.)</p>
<p>Studies have shown that SAT scores correlate to how you perform in college. They are the most sound measure of success that colleges have available. So no, I'm not making any assumptions. Higher test scores do correlate with success in college.</p>
<p>Of course SAT scores correlate to how you perform in college when you consider a 400 vs. 600 vs. 800. However, in many cases, a student scoring 750 is no different from a student scoring 800. The schools that rejected said applicant probably noticed this and in his place accepted a student with good (although not perfect) scores who showed more passion or intelligence through his essays/ECs than said applicant.</p>
<p>Caltech, on the other hand, seems to think that a 750 is an extremely poor score for mathematics, and 700 is pretty low for critical reading, and thus they will not accept many applicants with it. Thus, a 2360 becomes an auto-accept at Caltech many times compared with a 2200-2250, whereas at other elite universities, a student with a 2200 has about an equal shot compared to a student with a 2350.</p>
<p>""This just shows how the Caltech admissions process works, and it's not that much of a surprise.</p>
<p>What other schools did he get into, though?</p>
<p>And obviously, there are things that might've prevented his admission at those schools mentioned which didn't prevent him from entering Caltech, such as gender and race. I'll put $20 on the fact that he's an Asian male.""</p>
<p>He also got into:</p>
<p>MIT
Georgetown
Brown </p>
<p>AND YES he was an Asian male!!</p>
<p>Caltech scores: </p>
<p>any storys to share..........?</p>
<p>Phuriku .... JHU and Tufts at least at my school have a track record
of not admitting students over a certain level of score achievement.</p>
<p>They seem to assume that they are safeties for these students and
for the most part they are right. So rejection at JHU and Tufts does
not necessarily mean anything?</p>
<p>I view CALTECH as being pure - sans attempts at subterfuge... ;)</p>