@northpole:
If I listened to you, I would never have been accepted to MIT.
@jpm50 I was thinking exactly the same thing.
@rothstem same.
Graduated with a BS from MIT this year. 740 on the SAT physics subject test (if I remember correctly), and my reading score was a whopping 610.
And I think that this is what @northpole is missing. MIT is in the very fortunate position of being able to fill their class three times over with academically qualified students. As such, academic excellence forms a necessary but not sufficient criteria for admission. MIT is not going to accept a student if they do not think that they can do the work, and MIT being MIT, they have mapped the data very closely. Up to the low 700’s then success on the SAT correlates very closely with success at MIT, above that point, while there is still a correlation, is it much, much weaker.
A Math score of 800 says that you can do math pretty well. A math score of 760 says that you can do math pretty well. A math score of 730 says that you can do math pretty well. A math score of 620 says that you possibly cannot do math at the level MIT would expect.
Chris P, who is an admissions officer, said that you should be aiming for scores that begin with 7. Believe him. It is the match between the applicant and MIT that determines admissions, scores are a sideshow (which is one of the reasons why so many “Chance me” threads are so meaningless).
It’s not the math that I’m concerned about, it’s the Reading section that hurts me a lot as an international student. I got 710 on math but 550 on Reading and writing. I think they should consider that, international students can’t get 700+ on the English section easily, and it’s fairer to evaluate them based on their subjects test scores…
And here I am with bad EC’s and a bad unweighted. My test scores are all perfect, but my EC’s are lacking. Sure I did mu alpha theta and fbla for all 4 years, and snhs and I even won a few trophies here and there. But what good will this do when a whole bunch of people make USAPhO or USABO, USAMO and even IMO IPhO.
Even if I do make it into AIME or to USAPhO, it’s too late as a senior for it to count for any college decision 
Don’t worry so much about scores. After hours and hours of scrounging around for admission results from last year, I found that the test scores varied around a lot. Some of the lower ones got in but they had great EC’s. Just make sure it is at least decent so as not to have the admissions officers doubt your skill in say Mathematics (which is integral to a tech school, so don’t be getting 640s or something in math II)
Just look at the statistics, although they are from the old SAT, those who got less than 600 in math . and those who got less than 27 in ACT math were not accepted.
Now, if we look at the 25th and 75th percentiles of the SAT II’s, you will notice how many points might MIT consider as qualified.
SAT Subject Test - Math [780, 800]
SAT Subject Test - Science [740, 800]
Keep in mind that this are just hypothesis and there may be students in the 650<x<740 bracket who were accepted, it’s just that they don’t make a big difference when calculating these percentiles.
I retook the subject tests. 740 on physics (25th percentile for MIT) and still a sad 730 on math II. Is it worth retaking one more time?
Also, it may be important to note that physics is what I’m planning on majoring in… Will the test be weighed significantly more then?
@northpole: I certainly hope you are truly new here, as the number of your responses under your tagname indicates.
You’re going to push back against the voice of the one person in this thread who can truly point an applicant in the right direction?