<p>Sure there are outliers to the correlation. As far as I have seen, though, the students' SAT scores are consistent with their overall performance and thus their college admissions. - Of course I know of far fewer students than many posters here. - I still think the scores are a revealing indicator of a student's intellectual capacity and learning potential. I don't deny that other evaluations are important; even the East Asian countries have started adopting measures similar to those practiced by the US undergraduate admission. And I agree that a student with other exceptional achievement should receive favorable considerations as well. But don't you find being one of 269 nationally pretty amazing? Isn't the stat alone merit enough for an otherwise average student?</p>
<p>I think it's an impressive achievement, but no, I don't think it's merit enough for an otherwise average student applying to top schools to be ensured of a spot. It shows smarts - I've met some smart people with lower-than-stellar scores, but less the other way around - but nothing else, and smarts by themselves won't get you through a top school.</p>
<p>Also remember that you're talking about schools with 10-20% acceptance rates that have very self-selected applicant pools to begin with. It's not necessarily that the kid with the perfect score doesn't have "enough" merit, for whatever definition of merit the school is using, but that some other kid with a non-perfect score might have, when taking the whole app into consideration, had more.</p>
<p>Oh, and for the record, I was a high-scoring high schooler...I'm not saying this stuff out of bitterness. ;)</p>
<p>hmm i'm thinking of applying to caltech EA too, is that weird?</p>
<p>To MIT11Dad:
The Correlation you are talking about span through the WHOLE RANGE of the SAT scores. At the competitive rate for schools such as MIT, small difference in SAT score doesn't really show how qualified one is. Just do a bunch of practice tests and your score will go up. And 269 per year isn't as little as you think.
Think in the old days when USAMO was only for 250 people, just say that about 125 people per graduating class ever qualified, about only 100 people per graduating year qualify for the AIME since like 8th grade or something, but out of those small amounts of people, many won't make it in to MIT. And in terms of SAT scores, like every high SAT scorer that i know thinks it's a stupid test that doesn't accurately measure one's ability. </p>
<p>and to OP: applying to Caltech EA too is not weird. All the MIT EA (that's like 3 people.... )at my school are also applying to Caltech EA. You got some great stats, but just stats isn't enough.</p>
<p>pwafflesprinkles: No, it's not weird. Both MIT and Caltech expect that a significant fraction of their applicants are interested in the other, and the point of their EA systems is that you're not restricted to one school in your early apps.</p>