<p>What are some schools that in regards to admissions care more about applicants' SAT scores than their GPAs?</p>
<p>I highly doubt it. Most schools care about GPA first.</p>
<p>I would think SATs count more, because classes can have inflated grades, favoritism, kids can cheat, etc.</p>
<p>There’s no Loop hole in the SATs</p>
<p>HA I wouldn’t count on any college looking more at SAT than GPA. Any kid can be intelligent, but colleges want a student that works hard because you don’t make it though college without some hard work. For most colleges the SAT is a jumping off point and just acts as a leveler to some degree. While it will play into how much of a scholarship a person receives and can show which students have a “gift” if u choose to call it that, it will never hold as much weight as a GPA.</p>
<p>Look at the school’s common data set and see where scores are weighed more than GPA. There are some, particularly state schools.</p>
<p>but there are thousands of colleges in the U.S., and going through all of their common data sets would take too long for any person. If anyone knows some schools that look at it above GPA that would be awesome!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>SATs are a couple hours worth of time on a given day. Grades are dispensed over years, and statistically (you can look it up), grades are a better indicator of how well a person will do in college than SAT scores. Some people are good test-takers, but the day-in and day-out studying that leads to final grades generally shows more of how a student performs. It’s also not impossible to cheat on the SAT, either. </p>
<p>If someone has mediocre grades but stellar SAT scores, it points to a problem somewhere. Most likely, the person was rather lazy during high school and just woke up in time for the SAT. If someone is a good test-taker for the SAT, there’s no reason s/he can’t be a good test-taker for other classes in four years of high school, as well.</p>
<p>good SAT: smart.
good GPA: hard working
colleges need: smart +hard working.
Sometimes hardworking is more important than high IQ.</p>
<p>SAT has more loop holes than GPA, I would argue. You can literally train for the SAT, the question types are predictable and kids pay tons of money to study for the SAT. GPA shows consistency over years; SAT shows consistency during the 3 hours.</p>
<p>
Being rich.</p>
<p>Truth</p>
<p>sat= My parents are rich and they can hire private tutors that i will meet every saturdays so that i can get a 2100 AKA rich (most cases of high SAT scores)</p>
<p>GPA= Im hardworking</p>
<p>classrank= im one of the bright ones in my class</p>
<p>dont give me some ******** that SAT scores measure your intelligence because it doesnt. It only measure’s how well you take the SAT. A test where you can “learn” it is flawed. Everyone has the potential of getting 1800+ if they were supplied with tutoring. I can disagree that a 4 hour test you take on an early saturday morning measures you intelligence.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>People on these boards are always ultra critical/dismissive of students who do well on the SAT, but have mediocre grades–much more so than they are of mediocre students whose test scores are within range for their grades.</p>
<p>I’ve always found this kind of strange. It’s almost like people find, what was the term, “good test-takers” with low GPAs offensive or irritating or unnatural. I was actually the target of a very passionate rant about laziness and entitlement once, and I still don’t know how I managed to provoke it; all I did was mention my SAT score in conjunction with my GPA.</p>
<p>A bit funny, really.</p>
<p>To the OP: As a B+ student with a great SAT score (3.3/2350), I can only tell you this: Write amazing essays. Seriously. Don’t bother looking for schools that prioritize test scores over GPA because there are none. Just write amazing essays. And don’t make them about your grades.</p>
<p>
I agree with all of this. My best essays got me into Notre Dame with a 2280 SAT and a 3.65 GPA. Also: upward trend.</p>
<p>
If you include middle class, since they have such a large chunk of the population and also have the resources for good schools, extensive prep, a stable life, and educated parents. Though some poor/working-class students can still score well (ie, 2280).</p>
<p>I self-studied (another thing, you can study for it) for the SAT and got a great score my second time, but that’s the same as some kid whose parents hired a private tutor for and who took the SAT maybe four times, starting in middle school when the times don’t count. It’s not even that valid in first place.
GPA, on the other hand - there’s the whole weighted-unweighted affair/competitiveness of school/teacher inflation to take into account, and there’s (depending on the school) almost no difference between an 80% (B-) and 89% (B+), but there’s a huge, huge difference between 79% (C+) and 90% (A-).
[/rant]</p>
<p>Back to the original topic…I’d say less ‘holistic’ schools, like state schools, would place weight on the SATs since your GPA is likely at least average for their standards already, and a high SAT would probably help to earn a merit scholarship. And yeah, listen to the guy who said write amazing essays. Blow yourself away or else it’s not good enough.</p>
<p>By the way, I never took any SAT prep classes and I come from a low-income family by American standards (I’m receiving over $50,000/year in grants to attend college), but that didn’t stop me from doing very well on the test.</p>
<p>I’m not saying the SAT measures intelligence, because I don’t think it does, nor am I trying to deny the general correlation between family income and test performance, which has been shown to exist numerous times, but please be aware that there are people who manage to do well on in despite coming from underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds. So clearly money is not the sole deciding factor here.</p>
<p>
Same.</p>
<p>
It’s the things that come with money. Did you have a stable household? Did you have a non-failing school? Did you have to work full-time to support your family? Did you move around? Did you live in a very poor area? If all of the answers were for the negative options, then I’m surprised and impressed. However, in my case (and probably of most low-income high-scorers) the answers are a mix.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well yes, there is that. My family is quite stable and happy, I’ve never had to work, and I attend an excellent private school. So in a sense I am quite privileged, and I suppose I should have acknowledged that earlier. I apologize.</p>
<p>Again, however, money does not explain everything.</p>
<p>But anyway, I apologize to the OP for the digression :D</p>
<p>
Oops, same here.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>…I’ve heard the “Any kid can work hard” argument bandied around, but never “Any kid can be intelligent.”</p>
<p>The OP was just asking about the relative significance of SAT scores vs. GPA scores; s/he didn’t imply that his/her GPA was only mediocre or worse–it may be simply that h/she has fabulous SATs but “only” a 3.8 GPA (the CC boards can give people some odd ideas of normal). It is true that this is a hard question to answer, mostly because of all the “holistic” stuff; a far easier question is, what schools care more about GPA than SATs. However, if you look at the admissions criteria that schools publish, there is generally a value given to each element, such as “very important,” “important,” and “considered.” A school that lists SATs as “very important” may not privilege them over GPA but is probably likelier to consider high SATs significant than a school which lists GPA and rank first, or even calls SATs “important” rather than “very.” I’m sure it is safe to say that schools don’t want to see a big discrepancy between the various criteria; an SAT of 2350 coupled with a rank in the 4th decile and a GPA of 3 does not indicate much willingness to do the hard work of college. Even that, however, could be explained by illness, family trauma, or some other mitigating factor. And while SATs can be gamed by various methods, it is also true that a GPA can be misleading: a kid taking a really hard course load might take a hit in his or her GPA that doesn’t have anything to do with his or her likely success in college–which is what all this is supposed to measure, by the way.</p>
<p>In any case, an SAT score might be high for one school, and ho-hum for another–you need to find the school who wants your score, as well as the rest of you, and that won’t be on a list of “colleges that want high SATs more than high GPAs.”</p>