Just as a little example: which would look better:
2300 w/ straight A’s
2400 w/ all A’s except a B or two in there
<p>In general, colleges care about 1) difficulty of curriculum 2) gpa 3) standardized test scores. After that they care about extracurriculars, essays, and recommendations in different ranking orders for different colleges.</p>
<p>Your example is too close together. Straight A's and all A's except for one or two B's are pretty much the same thing. For your example, I would take the higher 2400 SAT score. However, a 2300 with a 4.0 would probably be better than a 2400 with a 3.5.</p>
<p>The thinking is .... A high SAT with low gpa means the student is lazy. A low SAT with a high gpa means that the school grades easy.</p>
<p>All things being equal, legacies, URM's and athletes will fare better.</p>
<p>Absolutely without a doubt 2300 and straight A's...for top colleges, the difference between a 1450 and a 1550 (old scale) or a 2200 and a 2300 is non-existant. No student will ever get rejected based off of SAT scores if they are in that range, period.</p>
<p>jaug1
Are you sure you want to say that a 2300 with a 4.0 is better than a 2400 with a 3.96? What is the point of this thread anyway?</p>
<p>I was just wondering if colleges viewed SAT's as close as important as GPA. Sorry if this is a stupid topic, but I kind of want to know, lol.</p>
<p>No, its not a stupid topic, but the example had a 100 pt difference in SAT scores and a 0.02 difference in gpa. </p>
<p>In general, I would say that the gpa is more important, but the gpa and the SAT have to track together. If you have a high gpa and a low SAT, then the high school looks as if it just gives A's away. If you have a low gpa and a high SAT, then the student looks like he/she is goofing off. A high SAT with a low gpa is about the worse case.</p>
<p>Is that the same for the UC schools? (I'm asking for my little sister, who I'm sure will have extremely high test scores -- I'm hoping it'll make up for a few grade dips)</p>
<p>How does this apply to international students? The Malaysian syllabus places a lot more emphasis on memorisation and test-taking than American schools. For example, in one chapter of 8th grade history here, you need to memorise the personal biodata of 12 "revolutionary" heroes, including the names, dates and locations of the battles they fought. And this is just one chapter; the rest of the textbook is pretty much the same.</p>
<p>Thusly, I would wonder how much grades count for international students, since in some countries, education is based more on memorisation and test-taking (i.e. learning how to guess answers effectively, or know everything about a novel without actually reading it) instead of critical thinking.</p>
<p>Another question is: how much do SAT IIs come into play? Will they offset bad grades? If yes, by how much?</p>