<p>bachovchin,
Thank you for you reply, it is very much appreciated. Obviously we would like our daughter to attend the best school possible, but as you can see from my posts, merit aid is a factor. You mention MIT as a reach, is there any merit aid potential there? You also mention that you see her biggest weakness being SAT writing. Do engineering schools give that much weight to the writing section, especially with it being so new? I was thinking that she needed to improve math and CR up to around the 1500 level.... please comment on this.</p>
<p>Also, just out of curiousity, are you a student, graduate?</p>
<p>I love CC, just wish I had more time to read through all the interesting and informative posts.</p>
<p>Rated PG:</p>
<p>I am an undergraduate student at CMU.</p>
<p>I think MIT would be a good reach school for your daughter, but unfortunately MIT does not offer merit aid to ANYONE. (This is the case with many other elite schools: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, among others.) If you're looking for great school that offer merit aid, one intriguing option is Caltech. They are undoubtably a top engineering school, but also offer merit aid up to a full-ride. A student from my old high school, I know got a full-ride to Caltech. However because their average SAT score is over 1500, I would assume it takes a valedictorian with a 1600 SAT score to get a scholarship. So unfortunately unless your daughter can significantly improve her SATs, it's severely unlikely that your daughter could get a merit scholarship from Caltech. Sorry.</p>
<p>As far as the importance of the critical reading + math versus the writing, that's a much tougher question. I'd be interested in hearing others' answers to this too. What I would say though would be that, yes, the math score + verbal score is more important. However I would already say that her math score + verbal score would be pretty good for most of the schools we talked about (MIT being an exception). The writing score is a lot lower than the other two and may raise some red flags to the admission committee at CMU or Tufts. Certainly though rasing the math + CR reading wouldn't hurt. For the record, I had 1430 SATs (800 math + 630 verbal) and graduated second in the class (I went to a private boarding school where we only had 55 students in our class though). I got denied (well actually deferred then denied) by both MIT and Caltech and was accepted into RPI and CMU among others, so that should give you an idea.</p>
<p>Again, I would say your daughters critical reading + math scores should be good enough, when coupled with her outstanding grades, to get her into CMU if she can improve her writing scores.</p>
<p>Always a pleasure and I hope my response has been of some help to you.</p>
<p>I think that it would be important for your daughter to raise the math + verbal part of SATs. While they're pretty good for the schools, they need to be great for scholarships. With a 3.7 GPA, tough courseload, strong extracurriculars, and 34 ACT (equivalent to 1520 M+V on SATs), I got under $20,000 to Case Western, under $10,000 to Illinois, and nothing to CMU. Getting admitted and getting aid are different stories. Writing is less important than math and verbal, but it shouldn't be too low. I'd aim for 700 but settle for 650 if she can't get 700.</p>
<p>I would totally agree with chocolateluvr about the need to raise the math + verbal part of the SATs in order to get scholarships.</p>
<p>I agree with bachovchin that the main issue with the writing score is that it is notably lower than the other scores. Math score is more important than reading and writing scores since your daughter is applying for engineering. I know that last year many schools didn't look at writing score since it was the first year and they weren't sure what to do with it yet; I imagine that many weight it however they did the SATII Writing, since that no longer exists.</p>
<p>Continuing on the statistics/admittals etc. I was 9/668 with a 4.0/4.0 (ranking by weighted GPA), all AP/honors classes for core classes + AP computer science and physics, as well as 100+ hrs community service and all state orchestra, 15 hrs/week orchestra stuff, and I only got merit aid to CMU after an appeal (with a half tuition offer from USC). I was deferred/rejected from MIT, though another girl from my school was accepted with stats almost identical to mine.</p>
<p>The people I do know at CMU with merit aid (not on appeal)... one went to a competitive private school, is URM, and had very high stats, another went to a magnet school and is female and URM, and the third had a 1600 and state level science fair as well as summer research.</p>
<p>If you're looking for schools where merit aid is a possibility, I would highly suggest looking at USC (in LA). They seem to be very interested in attracting top students with 1/4, 1/2, and full ride scholarships, and when I visited I was very impressed with the campus and how I was treated (admittedly, I was there interviewing for one of the scholarships, so they wanted to look as good as possible). Rice University (Houston, TX) has tough to get merit aid, but has tutition about 10k/yr less than most other private schools in the top 25. It's a very nice, small school, particularly good for biomedical engineering since it is close to the medical center.</p>
<p>RatedPG, I (CMU parent) basically agree with the others about scholarship to CMU. You're D's transcript is excellent but 1340 for SAT v&m (writing less important but I don't know how much) is actually below the CMU average, which for all schools is probably somewhere around 1380. So in spite of her record my hunch is, for merit aid, she'd have to be WELL above 1500, probably above 1550 and although it sounds doable, going from 1340 to 1550 is a huge jump that is statistically improbable.</p>
<p>My thought is she has better than 50/50 chance of at least getting accepted with such a strong record.</p>
<p>KrazyKow, just wondering, did you by any chance applying to Caltech?</p>
<p>KrazyKow, just wondering, did you by any chance apply to Caltech?</p>
<p>Just a follow-up on what KrazyKow said about Rice. In the "Great schools, great Prices" section of USNews, Rice is rated #6 behind Caltech, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and MIT.</p>
<p>None of those schools ahead of Rice, however, give merit aid with the exception of Caltech. For Caltech, of course, it would take a truly amazing individual to get a merit scholarship. Like I said above I know one amazing individual from my old high school who got a full-ride to Caltech. His AIME score was 14 to give you an idea for those of you familiar with the test (for those of you who aren't the national average is about 2.5 and only the very TOP students in a school take it). Generally speaking, Caltech and Duke are regarded as the best schools that offer merit scholarships.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>You have all been very helpful. Thank you for the insight and advice.
a little off topic, but what are your recommendations on the best way to prep for the next SAT sitting? Do you feel a prep course is the way to go? I believe my daughter's true weakness in the case of her SAT score was endurance. She totally fell apart near the end of the session and didn't even do one whole part on the writing section. She needs a lot of practice do built up her stamina in the test taking process. Any advice would be appreciated.</p>
<p>That's a hard question to answer obviously because it depends so much on the individual. Personally I think the prep courses do NOT help with speed. They are mostly about strategies, how to eliminate certain choices. The only area where I think a prep course could help would be on the essay. Did the essay hurt your daughter's writing score a lot?</p>
<p>As far as the speed issue, I think that the best way to help with that is just practicing. I would also stress continuing practicing, not just practicing this summer and then doing no practice on the SATs till October. I know it's hard to find time for both school work and the SATs, but I think it's important to keep doing the SATs to stay in the habit of working within a time frame.</p>
<p>While I said this is the best way, by no means do I think it's foolproof. A lot of it, I think, is innate ability to work fast. I too had problems with speed, on the verbal section. I was able to improve my score a little by practicing, but not a lot, and soon I reached the point of diminishing returns. I could get 750 + on the practice verbal sections I did without being timed, but I just did not have the ability to read fast and I never completely finished a verbal section ANY of the times I took the SATs. It was frustrating because I always had a lot of time left over after the math sections. Could've used that extra time on the verbal haha.</p>
<p>It is unfortunate, at least in my opinion, that one's ability to work fast can be such a big factor in one's qualifications for a college. I know exactly what you and your daughter are feeling. It is my belief that my inability to read fast (and thus my mediocre verbal scores) was the only thing that cost me a chance of getting into Caltech or MIT, and I lament that every single day. Once again, I think a small improvement in speed is reasonable, but a large improvement will be tough.</p>
<p>Hope this helps and feel free to ask any more questions you might have.</p>
<p>I can't give any suggestions on prep, since I never did any- I've always been a good test taker. I'm convinced that most people I know who took prep classes didn't get much out of them, since they'd go to the class, get vocabulary lists, and never actually study the lists. All I recommend is a good night of sleep and a non-stressful week before the test, if possible.</p>
<p>No, I didn't apply to Caltech. I was looking for a larger school, and at the time I was considering a music minor, so I wanted to go someplace with a music school (I don't think Caltech has one, though I may be wrong). I applied to UT (in state, safety with 10% rule), USC, Northwestern, Rice, CMU, and MIT. I visited all of them and found they had very different feels, and CMU was my favorite. I'm pretty sure I didn't get into MIT because I had a horrible interview. The interviewer asked me several times (phrasing in different ways) what I planned on doing after college, and all I could say is that I had 4 more years to figure that out.</p>
<p>One of the reasons I suggest Rice is that they don't place much of an emphasis on SAT scores. They proudly practice 'holistic' admissions, and it is my understanding that after a certain point they don't care about scores. Also, it's a bit easier to get in from out of state, since they want to build a national reputation .</p>
<p>I know what you mean about Caltech. It is really, really small and there's not many option beyond math and science there. However I really liked it though. My high school had only 50 students in a class, so I'm used to and like small. Also I'm not sure if you ever visited but Caltech has a beautiful campus in a beautiful location. Would've been a hard call especially since my dad went to MIT, but I think I'd have gone to Caltech had I gotten into both. But I guess that's pretty much a moot point now haha.</p>
<p>Thanks again for the input. I tend to agree on the prep courses, that is why we never really seriously considered them. I believe she got an 8 on her essay, but as I said before, she missed one whole section in the writing portion.</p>