<p>^Yes, I’m sure that a 3.6, 2000 is more impressive then a 3.6, 2400. <em>eye roll</em></p>
<p>I firmly believe that most, if not all, of 2400 scorers are capable of getting a 4.0 in high school. It’s merely a matter of determination and motivation. I got a meager 2300 myself, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt (sorry if I sound arrogant) that I could’ve gotten a 4.0 in high school. Due to fickle motivation, I ended up with a 3.65.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, silverturtle understands me fully.</p>
<p>With respect to the idea that a 2400 is more a matter of dedication than actual ability, that’s exactly the point. Discounting luck, there’s a requisite ability level (which a lot of people underestimate) and a huge commitment. But why shouldn’t colleges select for people who work hard? The greatest geniuses I am familiar with (Napoleon, Michelangelo with the arts, and Alexander Hamilton) may well have been innately exceptional, but they stand atop the pantheon of greats because of their exceptional work ethic. They all had the ability to descend on any project with fetish-like (to use your word) devotion. They were all able to work at a high level outside of their home fields because they could take anything and drive away at it - for Napoleon, politics, for Michelangelo, painting, for Hamilton, organizing the coast guard.</p>
<p>Of course, I realize I am not Napoleon and the SAT is just one test. But I was hoping that showing the flexibility and endurance required to apply this energy to test after test, and competition after competition, would carry the day for college applications. Obviously it didn’t, but I digress.</p>
<p>The point is that 2400 shows something that 4.0 doesn’t. Or at least the way it came to me, I think it does.</p>
<p>A 2400 shows something that a 4.0 doesn’t, yes. But a 4.0 also shows something that a 2400 doesn’t; getting a 2400 requires a lot of dedication, but if you can’t do coursework well who cares? After all, your four years in college are going to be spent doing coursework, not taking the SAT.</p>
<p>^^I think most people who get 2400s probably just don’t think as much of those scores as you and silverturtle do. I know a girl with a 2390 and two people with possible 2400s (they’re presidential scholars, so 2390 or 2400, but I don’t know which). By the way, they also all have 4.0s, for the purposes of this comparison. None of them were as focused as you were in getting those scores or currently care as much as you seem to. Colleges seem to understand that the difference between the effort required for a 2350 and the effort required for a 2400 is probably not that great in most cases. Or perhaps they do recognize that there’s a difference in level of diligence, but the SAT simply isn’t the area where it matters for them.</p>
<p>You can miss many questions and still get a 4.0. In Texas they give them away like candy (twice as many A’s in Texas schools than in CT or MA). You can miss perhaps one question and still get a 2400. If it doesn’t matter to Harvard look at their SAT reporting, it would appear a full 25% are approaching if not touching the SAT ceiling.</p>
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Did you ask them how much work they really put into their scores? And are their answers reliable (perhaps what they perceive as standard preparation is a degree of diligence far beyond the usual scope)? My two cents are that people really do downplay the difference in effort between, say, a 2300 and 2400. Yes, luck will always serve to create variation, but one can’t assume most or even a significant number of perfect scorers achieved that score through luck. </p>
<p>I’ve been through the SAT prep stuff and I started off, without preparation, scoring highly but having weaknesses in certain areas (my reading comprehension was certainly shaky and my math was slightly careless). Had I taken the SAT back in August or September (obviously it’s not offered then, but just for example) surely I would have done well, likely somewhere in the low-2300s. But in retrospect, seeing where I was then and where I was when I took the SAT in December, I made such strides of improvement to the point where a score around 2400 was no longer a “good day” but an expected day. In those 3-4 months I simply mastered the test, not simply through tedium but through studying the dynamics of SAT reading passages, patterns in grammar/sentence completions, etc. As academically stimulating as my high school education has been (I say this without sarcasm; my school is quite rigorous) the SAT has unexpectedly been the one thing that has stimulated my mind the most, not because the exam itself is all that compelling but because of the pursuit of preparation on which it has led me. Frankly, I understood the test inside out. I realize that I have entered a whole new realm of pretentiousness (:p) but these reflections are personal and genuine. This is the first time I’ve reflected this closely on my experience with the SAT and it is perhaps the best explanation I can give as to why I feel there are significant differences between even a 2300 and a 2400 (and why I SMH when someone suggests a 2100 is essentially equivalent to a 2400). Maybe christiansoldier and silverturtle, if they haven’t already, could opine as to why they may share similar sentiments. </p>
<p>Regarding diligence: I think an exhibition of diligence is important regardless of the material. Frankly, with the level of school work in many school districts, diligence in terms of schoolwork might show little other than the ability to grind it out (and I realize I may come off as a little elitist here but I have seen both the good and the bad in terms of HS education and the latter is simply trivial work for probably tens, if not hundreds of thousands of kids in America (and sometimes the former has its moments of that too)).</p>
<p>I’m not saying there’s no difference between a 2100 and a 2400. I’m saying they’re both well past the threshold where you would predict that this person is able to get a 4.0. Nonetheless, GPA and SAT scores are far from perfectly correlated at the high end, for reasons which I would think would be tolerably obvious. </p>
<p>I don’t know exactly where to put the GPA/SAT comparison points (3.6 seems high), but I do think there is such a thing as a profile where the contrast between GPA and topped-out SAT is going to make the recruiter go “Uh-oh, this one looks like a flake,” where the same GPA with a somewhat lower but still pretty good SAT would look like a solid, reliable, bright-enough student. (We are, of course, talking about a recruiter from the kind of college that takes students with less-than-amazing-in-every-category records to begin with.) Of course, at the same time, the less-flaky-looking student would probably have grades that didn’t vary as much, while the 2400 person would probably get that GPA through a combo of very high and very low grades, which would also be a red flag.</p>
<p>As for it being “merely a matter of determination and motivation” – well, there you are. What if you don’t have those things? What if you have anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, a chaotic family life, or an undiagnosed learning disability? What if you’re physically not able to work long hours? What if you’ve only realized after a year or two of high school that you had any interest in going to the kind of college where you needed really high grades to get in? What if you’re passionately interested in a few subjects, about which you have graduate-level knowledge, but you don’t give a damn about half the stuff you do in school? None of these qualities seems to me to be exactly rare among highly intelligent people. </p>
<p>Once you get close to the ceiling of a test, the bulk of variation in scores is going to be by chance. That does not at all negate the possibility of scoring higher through hard work, as monstor344 did; it simply means that not everyone who goes from a 750 to an 800 had to work harder in order to do so, and those who went from an 800 to a 750 did not necessarily do anything terribly stupid.</p>
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<p>I have no idea how admissions officials see the two, but I’ll take the 2400 over the 4.0 any day. Depending on the school’s grading system, there may be quite a couple of people with 4.0 GPA even within one high school, whereas there are only hundreds or so students with a 2400 in the entire country.</p>
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<p>So that’s why I’m not getting A’s right now! Where did you find this information?</p>
<p>I have a 3.93 and a 2360. I’d rather have the 2400 than the 4.0</p>
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<p>Then you should not be accepted into a top school.</p>
<p>I don’t think top schools should reject students just for not having a 4.0. If students aren’t willing to grind through busywork or suck up to teachers, they shouldn’t be punished for being intelligent with their time.</p>
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<p>Of course.</p>
<p>Edited to add quote:</p>
<p>Quote:
for it being “merely a matter of determination and motivation” – well, there you are. What if you don’t have those things?</p>
<h2>Then you should not be accepted into a top school. </h2>
<p>That’s not the point. I never said anyone <em>should</em> be admitted if they didn’t meet the usual standards for that college. I was simply responding to Drought’s statement, “I firmly believe that most, if not all, of 2400 scorers are capable of getting a 4.0 in high school,” and suggesting that defining “capable of” was a little more complicated than it looked.</p>
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By “the usual standards” do you include having a perfect 4.0 (a laughable idea)?</p>
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<p>I know two of them quite well. While I don’t question them on their SAT prep, I’ve prepared for numerous academic competitions and a few tests, some of them College Board, with those two. I know what they consider to be adequate preparation and it’s not what any 2400 scorer here seems to support.
While I don’t know the other one nearly as well, from what I do know, I would bet near any sum of money that he barely prepared at all, as he doesn’t prep or study for anything.</p>
<p>But maybe they all have 2390s :rolleyes:.</p>
<p>I actually agree with Millancad that a substantial percentage of ~2400s come without extreme dedication or practice. And I don’t mean they come through luck. Some people just “get” the SAT through intelligence and logic (see the fact that there <em>are</em> very high PSATs).</p>
<p>coming from a competitive magnet school, I will take that 4.0UW over the 2400 anyday</p>
<p>I don’t doubt that there are people who can do it with little prep, but the only other person I know personally also prepped extensively.</p>
<p>And if you just have the brainpower to do it without the prep (which is possible, but I doubt there are that many people smart enough to consistently pop 2400’s on little-to-no-prep), all the more power to you. Whether a 2400 shows extreme dedication or extreme intelligence, it’s more valuable than a 4.0 which in my experience shows neither.</p>
<p>A 2400 may well show extreme dedication or extreme aptitude. The problem is, it shows those things for the SAT. Colleges ask for your SAT score because it’s a standardized predictor of how well you’ll do in college, not because you will ever take anything like it there. What does extreme dedication to or aptitude for a standardized test covering barely high school level material really show?</p>