<p>I would guess I’m probably over thinking this, but humor me for a moment. Is it possible that an Ivy League school, or any other super prestigious institution, would almost be more likely to admit a student with an average GPA and very high SAT’s than vice versa? I think that the common wisdom would say that GPA is more important to a school than test scores, however a lot of these schools care a lot about their admissions profiles. If a student applied to Brown, for instance, with high test scores but a lower GPA, Brown would know that if they accept the student he WILL accept the admission because no one else of that caliber will accept him. If it was the other way around, a student with a 4.0 and a slightly lower SAT, they will assume there is a higher chance that they will be competing for the student with a lot of other schools of the same caliber, and thus might actually deny them admission to keep up a good admissions profile.</p>
<p>That musing didn’t really make much sense, but if you were able to discern my meaning, do you think there’s any truth in it?</p>
<p>Because GPA varies widely based on the school—some schools never let kids get As, some schools are far too generous—it’s easy to see why SATs might be a preferable indicator.</p>
<p>However, it’s not that simple. Admissions offices are aware of how rigorous your school is. If your school isn’t that hard and you have As, they know you’re comparable to a B- student from a top-notch college prep environment.</p>
<p>But from a yield perspective, Ivies aren’t concerned. For every kid they admit, there’s 4 or 5 who would love to take his or her place. Certainly there are some schools who reject or waitlist students that are unlikely to attend (because their academic achievement places them far outside the range at that college)—I’ve had this happen to a few of my friends.</p>
<p>On the other hand, SATs, to an extent, measure test taking ability over intelligence. This is why Brown uses a complete profile to evaluate people as opposed to just GPA or just test scores. The question about GPA is…what does your GPA mean with respect to your school? Is a 3.6 good at your school? Or awful? How does it compare to a 92/100 at this other school? Weighted GPAs say something about the relative difficulty of your courses, but they, and unweighted GPAs, can be manipulated by students (and schools) to make themselves seem better.</p>
<p>Of course, a high GPA probably means more than a high SAT score, but it depends on the person.</p>
<p>I know enough about admissions at Brown to tell you confidently that Brown simply does not think this way. It accepts students it wants to without worrying about what other schools will do and which colleges students will accept. Brown has been told point blank that student X prefers MIT or Harvard or whatever over Brown, and yet will still accept that student. </p>
<p>The problem with the high SAT low GPA student is that they may be smart and/or good test takers, but are not willing to do the work. A lot of work in college takes place outside the classroom. Students who don’t bother studying or reading books or doing problem sets, etc., may struggle in college no matter how high their SATs were.</p>
<p>GPA is of more importance than test scores. If you have a 2400 and a 3.0 you are not getting in (unless that’s still top 10% or something). If you have a 3.9 adn a 2100 you have at least a shot. Test scores matter…you need to have solid scores to be mildly competitive, but high school performance aka GPA is far more important, far more requisite, and far more common. </p>
<p>See, the thing is, these colleges don’t have to make these decisions. They get to admit a class chalk-fullof students with both.</p>