<p>How many applicants do you reckon have 2300+ SAT scores? How many do you reckon have 4.0 GPAs? How many do you reckon have both?</p>
<p>[Test</a> Requirements & Scores for Harvard University](<a href=“http://www.collegeview.com/schools/harvard-university/testscores]Test”>http://www.collegeview.com/schools/harvard-university/testscores)
You should find what you’re looking for</p>
<p>Can’t tell if those are for applicants or admitted students</p>
<p>Does it matter? Students with either one or both still get rejected.</p>
<p>^^ Correct. FWIW: My son had a 3.9 GPA with 36 ACT, 5’s on six AP’s, and a sister currently attending Harvard and was rejected.</p>
<p>Oh of course, but I’d still like to know rough proportions.</p>
<p>As far as I know, Harvard does not publish those statistics.</p>
<p>About 5,000 students per class get 2300 or more on a single SAT. Superscoring probably boosts that by 2,000-3,000, and ACT-equivalence probably gives you about 13,000 students nationwide with 2300 SATs superscored or the ACT equivalent. How many apply to Harvard is anyone’s guess, but I bet it’s a fair number, several thousand at least.</p>
<p>As for a 4.0 GPA – there are 4.0s and 4.0s. Weighted 4.0s (and higher) are as common as sand in the Harvard application pool; I would be surprised if 70-80% of the high test-scorers don’t have that (out of the ones that go to schools that publish weighted GPAs). Unweighted 4.0 GPAs are also pretty common. There are over 40,000 high schools in the U.S. alone, plus homeschoolers, and I bet almost all of them have a few 4.0 kids in every class. But unweighted 4.0s are not necessarily common among students with super-challenging curriculums, or who go to demanding schools. On the other hand, THOSE students are far more likely to apply to Harvard than most other groups. Not all of them, of course, but it’s got to be a high percentage, and those students are also very likely to be among the SAT 2300 group as well.</p>
<p>I don’t think your assumption about the ACT boosting the total 2300ish type scores to 13,000 from the roughly 7,000 for SAT alone is correct. The number is far lower considering that just about everybody who takes the ACT (and scores high) also takes the SAT. These days given that colleges look at both sets of scores equally - most students take both to maximize their chances at getting a really high score.</p>
<p>…you didn’t read the post. The estimate includes superscored SATs, as well as ACTs. Bottom line answer to OP. Lots of applicants have both. And a lot of them were valedictorians/salutatorians of their class. (And there will be lots of accepted students who didn’t fall into any of the 3 categories of perfect test scores, GPA’s or class rank).</p>
<p>Yes I did read the post - you obviously didn’t read mine. The 7000 (the 5000 plus 2000 for super scoring) for the SAT and maybe another unique 1000-2000 ACT scores. Many of the 7000 super scoring SATs ALSO take the ACTs. Virtually everyone at my daughter’s school who scored over a 30 (in Michigan where every student is required to take the ACT) also took the SAT - everyone. This is true just about everywhere. </p>
<p>My point is that there are far fewer of these level scores than you might think.</p>
<p>Isn’t it better to just look at the published stats instead of guesstimates of how many and who got what?</p>
<p>The student profile is academically gifted and talented kids for all the Ivies.</p>
<p>From there, the schools design a diverse and interesting student body out of the pool of applicants.</p>
<p>mekozak – I don’t doubt that in Michigan (a natural ACT state) many high ACT scorers also take the SAT, especially at schools where students are trying to “maximize their chance of getting a really high score,” but the converse isn’t necessarily true on the coasts. While it is increasingly common for students to take both, someone who scores 2300 or higher on an SAT test is unlikely to feel like it’s necessary to take the ACT, too. And not every high-scoring student attends a school where the general culture is to obsess about getting high scores. </p>
<p>Frankly, I don’t understand why someone who takes one of the tests and gets a really high score would bother taking the other, since they are complete substitutes.</p>
<p>Nationwide, I think there are about 1.6 million kids taking each test, but only about 3 million kids going to college (and not all of them take either of the tests). I was basing my estimate on the idea that about 40% of high-scoring test-takers would take the ACT alone; that’s a guess, but I don’t think it’s a horrible one. There will be students who take both, but only score 2300 or its equivalent on one of the tests, so I think that does expand the pool somewhat, too. </p>
<p>Remember, I was talking about the total national pool, not the Harvard applicant pool. Checking Harvard’s admitted student numbers, about 1/3 submitted ACT scores, but only 10% submitted only ACT scores (and notice that only 22% submitted both). I suspect the proportion in the applicant pool is higher than 10%, but it certainly isn’t 40%. But all I said about Harvard was that I thought “several thousand” (meaning in my mind two or more) of that pool applied to Harvard. It may be less, I don’t know, but it’s not a really small number.</p>
<p>Brown gives more detail, and probably isn’t a terrible proxy for Harvard in terms of proportions. Last year, it got 28,700 applications, of which about 22,700 submitted SATs and 10,700 submitted ACTs. So about 21% of Brown applicants submitted ACT scores only, and slightly fewer submitted both types of test scores. Brown got 5,500 applications with SAT CR scores 750 or more (and many more math and writing scores that high – 7,400 and 6,700 respectively). I don’t think it’s a crazy estimate to think Brown had 1,500-2,000 2300 SATs applying, or about 7-9% of SAT-submitting applicants. On the ACT side, it got only 143 36s, and you can’t tell exactly but it looks like high hundreds of 35s, so maybe 800-1,000 between the two of them, for about the same 8-9% of ACT submitters.</p>
<p>Brown also got applications from 1,600 valedictorians (a decent number of whom probably had 4.0s), and fewer than 40% of its applicants had a class rank (although some of the valedictorians may have come from non-ranking schools). </p>
<p>The bottom line, for me, is that Brown looks like it got applications from at least 2,000, maybe more, 2300 SAT equivalents, so it’s unlikely Harvard got fewer such applications. And Brown had maybe hundreds of 4.0 students applying, so ditto Harvard. And there ought to be a fair overlap between those two groups. And, by the way, Brown accepted about 25% of the valedictorians, about 20% of the people who scored 800s on an SAT section, and about 25% of the ACT 35-36s. Those are pretty good numbers, but it doesn’t make me think that a 4.0, 2300 kid is a shoo-in at Brown. And if not at Brown, then not likely at Harvard, either.</p>
<p>“Frankly, I don’t understand why someone who takes one of the tests and gets a really high score would bother taking the other, since they are complete substitutes.”</p>
<p>Sometimes a high school will pressure students to take the SAT because only the SAT will qualify a student for the National Merit Scholarship Award. And it doesn’t matter that the ivies do not give NMS money. Many high school’s compete for bragging rights of having the most National Merit Scholarships. Without naming names, this happened to my son. He took the ACT at the end of his sophomore year and scored a 36. His high school, however, pressured him (and other students) to take the SAT in his junior year – and even paid for him to do so – so that the high school could claim that they had more National Merit Scholars than any other high school in the nation.</p>
<p>@gibby, I think you’re thinking about the PSAT instead of the SAT. I could be wrong; you know WAY more about the college admission process than I do, after all. However, I’m pretty darn sure it’s only the PSAT that qualifies a student for NMSF.</p>
<p>…and some students take the SAT despite a high ACT score because they haven’t had much luck with outside scholarships and need the National Merit money…like my D.</p>
<p>^^The PSAT gets you over the first hurdle. The SAT is needed to obtain scholarship money.</p>
<p>@Adodie: Although NMSF is based upon a student’s PSAT scores, a student cannot qualify as a finalist unless they take the SAT confirming their PSAT performance. See #7: <a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/Merit_R&I_Leaflet.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/Merit_R&I_Leaflet.pdf</a></p>
<p>“Frankly, I don’t understand why someone who takes one of the tests and gets a really high score would bother taking the other, since they are complete substitutes.”</p>
<p>This rings true for areas of the country where the SAT is the default test that kids take rather than the ACT. And JHS’ analysis in post #14 appears reasonable to me. For both of my kids, they scored high enough on their first try of the SAT (and SAT II) that they did not want to waste another Saturday with additional testing.</p>