<p>Does anyone have admission statistics (acceptance rate) for people who has applied to ivy league schools with a 2400 on the SAT?</p>
<p>Sigh. This seems to come up a lot. I believe the answer is no, but there is much speculation.</p>
<p>Some people have reported hearing from representatives of a couple top schools that the rate is about 50%. There is no confirmation on these claims, however. But that number seems reasonable.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the score itself does not grant you a 50% (or whatever) admissions rate. Typically 2400 scorers are also extremely strong in other areas. So don’t think that because you’ve scored a 2400 that you’re good to go.</p>
<p>Elite schools like MIT will tell you that an individual score of 700 or above gets you consideration, and a higher score just means you answered a couple of extra questions correctly; many schools don’t care much about the Writing score at all. So a 2400 is impressive, but no guarantee of anything. My son had a 2400 and was waitlisted at multiple Ivies (he’s at MIT).</p>
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<p>This myth seems to get perpetuated quite a lot. In reality, there is overwhelming data to suggest that a higher score is always better. See post 18 of Silverturtle’s thread here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/955109-silverturtles-guide-sat-admissions-success-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/955109-silverturtles-guide-sat-admissions-success-2.html</a></p>
<p>Having a 2400 is much better than having a 2100 in the same sense that having a 2100 is much better than having an 1800. There is no logical reason to assume otherwise. If you think that having 1 more question wrong has no meaning than you get trapped in a Sorites Paradox in which a 600 is equal to a 2400, and of course that can’t be.</p>
<p>As people in this thread have said, there is no way to know that exact answer to the OP’s question but it is believed to be around 50%. However, 2400 scorers are probably on average better qualified than the overall application pool even without their test scores, so this number will seem to slightly inflate the value of the score by itself.</p>
<p>50% seems awfully high. Is there any evidence at all to support that? Also, as was said above I think there is a significant difference between 2100 and 2400 or even a high 2300.</p>
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<p>Not really. But based on my analyses of CC results threads, the rate for 2400ers is usually a bit higher than that, which is to be expected because of the self-selection factor for CC users. If 50% isn’t the number, the real one is probably not too much different.</p>
<p>awfully high? I read somewhere there are only 300 or so 2400’s a year…that’s a pretty small group.</p>
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<p>Rarity in itself is not necessarily meaningful. In any case, there were 297 in 2009 and 294 in 2008.</p>
<p>Though EC’s, awards, and the like are extremely important when everyone has good stats, there are people who literally have perfect stats. As Silverturtle’s data has shown, the average student accepted at a top school doesn’t have perfect stats (that would be impossible); they just have very high stats. Therefore, a 2400 can be a strong advantage in and of itself. The fact that 2400 scorers tend to have very high GPA and are usually very good in their interests makes it not too surprising that their acceptance rate is around 50%.</p>
<p>People can say what they want about the SAT in general, but almost all 2400 scores are very well rounded academically and are extremely intelligent. These two factors probably add to the high rate of acceptance almost as much as the score itself. There really isn’t enough data to determine how much of a role this effect plays, though.</p>
<p>Bottom line: A 2400 is very good in and of itself, but what’s just as important is that if you are the kind of person that gets a 2400 you are probably well qualified for top schools anyway. Obviously there are unmotivated and brilliant 2400 scorers but they are decidedly the minority.</p>
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<p>Many people who probably could get 2400 single-sitting or 2400s composite do stop taking the test. Someone gets 790-790-780? Natural variation suggests that they might hit a 2400 by chance eventually, and if they studied a bit more their chances might increase. But is it really worth it for them to take it again? I would be doing more interesting things with my life.</p>
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<p>(How is this a response to what you quoted?)</p>
<p>I agree that some people who don’t get 2400 could get 2400 if they were to retake the test. But admissions officers shouldn’t just assume this in all cases.</p>
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<p>silverturtle, from where have you gotten this data? i’d like to see how the amount of 2400ers has changed over time, or if it has changed at all.</p>
<p>If your SAT score is 2400, you’ll get accepted to <em>some</em> good college on that alone (unless your GPA is very very low, or you’ve been caught cheating, or your application has some other glaring flaw).</p>
<p>Whether you’ll get into an Ivy League school/Stanford/MIT/etc. depends on the overall strength of your application. A 2400 helps a lot, but the adcoms at schools that routinely receive a lot of applications from perfect SAT scorers (because most of them apply to the same schools, unless they’ve already been accepted somewhere ED; however, sadly sound logic suggests that the first thought that strikes most people upon scoring a 2400 is, ‘I should apply to Harvard!’, which leads me to believe many of them choose not to commit early) have the freedom to be more discerning.</p>
<p>I think that perfect test scores and excellent essays would normally be the spine of a very strong application, but the admissions process, especially at highly selective universities, is quite complex and sometimes random.</p>
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<p>The number of 2400s will be lower and more rare than it could be. While I am not one of these people who believe that a 2200 is equivalent to a 2300, or a 2300 to a 2400, a lot of people who could score 2400 do not. (More than the number of people who could score 2300 and do not.) A 2390 is probably equivalent to a 2400, and so I was agreeing that it was not meaningful.</p>
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<p>2009: <a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat_percentile_ranks_composite_cr_m_w.pdf[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board;
<p>I don’t have the 2008 link anymore, but I remember the number.</p>
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<p>Analogously, the number of people with 4.0 GPA’s is lower than it could be if everyone were to try harder in school. In fact, almost everyone with a 3.9 GPA could probably have a 4.0 GPA if they were to dedicate themselves and not make little errors on tests and such. Does this make the number of people who achieve 4.0 deceptive? No. Likewise, we must not dismiss the figures for the number of people who do score 2400, but we should bear in mind that there is a disconnect between achievement and potential, as in all cases.</p>
<p>Anyhow, adding the number of people who score 2390 to those who score 2400 still results in a pretty low number: 481.</p>
<p>It seems abundantly clear that a 10 point difference on a test is not going to matter much. Someone who hits a 750 one test might hit 800 another test simply because the difference may come down to a reasonable variance of just a few questions. However, you should expect that the 2400-scorers have pretty decent admission rates simply because that category clusters together everyone who <em>could</em> break 2400 if allowed (not all 2400’s are created equal due to the way things are curved).</p>
<p>It’s like comparing the 800 kid who missed 4 Math IIC questions to the 800 kid who missed nothing and would continue to miss nothing even if you made the test 50% longer and 50% harder. The latter type of student is likely very strong in a variety of other areas and has a better application anyway. The “2400 category” has its own sub-segments.</p>
<p>What I am arguing is that if we could extend the maximum of the test such that nobody hit the ceilings, we’d find that the admission rates likely start hitting near-100% past a certain point – the types of students who hit this high mark are the academic juggernauts who have very strong applications in general, as their talents have likely permeated other areas. Alas, these students are clustered in the 2400 category, which is why we may see such a high “rate” for 2400’s compared to, say, 2360’s.</p>
<p>Hahah I started this same thread a while back.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/962600-2400-rumor.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/962600-2400-rumor.html</a></p>
<p>“If your SAT score is 2400, you’ll get accepted to <em>some</em> good college on that alone (unless your GPA is very very low, or you’ve been caught cheating, or your application has some other glaring flaw).”</p>
<p>How do you define “good college”? HYPSM? Ivies? US News Top 20?</p>
<p>I define it as a place where you will receive good education and sufficient opportunities to develop your interests. Is the US News and World Report really more important than that? (And for the record, no, I don’t think it’s possible to score 2400 on the SAT and 3x800 on the SAT IIs, and get rejected from all “US News Top 20” [or 30] schools, barring a serious disciplinary infraction or a GPA below 3.0. Or truly awful essays.)</p>