<p>Is there any readily-available data regarding the acceptance rates of perfect ACT/SAT scorers? Not even just to Harvard, but to any other ultra-selective school?</p>
<p>You can find anecdotal evidence on CC and elsewhere, but there isn’t any published data that I’m aware of about the acceptance rates of perfect scorers. That’s probably because schools use test scores as an indicator of “college readiness.” The higher your test score, the less likely an Admissions Committee will question if you can do the work. The lower a student’s SAT/ACT score, the more an Admissions Director will ask themselves, “If I admit this kid, will he struggle with the work-load on my campus? Will s/he become a ‘B’ student or a ‘C’ student?” That’s why it’s important to remember that the higher your score, the more a committee will think you can succeed at their institution.</p>
<p>That said, test scores are really secondary to teacher recommendations, guidance counselor’s Secondary School Report (SSR), essays, extracurricular activities and “wow” factors. My son is a perfect example of how subjective and random the applications process really is. He had a 36 ACT and was rejected from Harvard (even though his sister attends there), but accepted to Yale and Princeton. Does it make sense? Not from my point of view, but whatever thought process went into Harvard’s decisions, I’m fairly certain that my son’s perfect test score was secondary to whatever the Admissions Committee’s were looking for.</p>
<p>The missing link is the data of the rejected, without it all we know is that great Boards help a lot. But exactly how much? No one knows but the colleges and they ain’t saying.</p>
<p>I agree, gibby, that all of the subjective areas of an application are more important to the selection processes of the ultra-selective schools. However, there is definitely a significant advantage that a 36 has over, say, a 33, even if it’s just the ability to say, “I got a 36/2400.” </p>
<p>The acceptance rates for perfect scorers have to be much higher than regular ones…right? I’d imagine, even for the likes of HYPS, etc., that the acceptance rates for 36s and 2400s hovers between 20% and 30%. I may be completely wrong (and it’s also comforting to think that, seeing as I’m fairly confident I got a 36 on the ACT this past Saturday).</p>
<p>I would like to make a point here.</p>
<p>Stop worrying about the acceptance rates of perfect scorers. If you got a 36/2400, you are done with the testing. Now make the rest of your application stand out. Perfect score does look impressive, but it does not influence the decision solely.</p>
<p>A 36/2400 cannot tell you that you have a greater/lesser chance of acceptance than your peers with 2200-2300.</p>
<p>Well I think I should worry, because possibly finding this type of information could have a huge impact on where I apply (which, in the end, really boils down to a financial matter). A 36 will determine if I apply to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, while anything lower than that might just determine if I apply to only Harvard. </p>
<p>So, yes, it does actually matter in my eyes. And I can almost guarantee that a 36/2400 gives a person an objectively (and mathematically) better chance than someone with a 32/2200.</p>
<p>FWIW: This article was written 6 years ago, back when acceptance rates were almost double what they are today: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/education/04colleges.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/education/04colleges.html</a></p>
<p>“Harvard turned down 1,100 student applicants with perfect 800 scores on the SAT math exam. Yale rejected several applicants with perfect 2400 scores on the three-part SAT, and Princeton turned away thousands of high school applicants with 4.0 grade point averages. Needless to say, high school valedictorians were a dime a dozen.”</p>
<p>@gibby, I actually read that article in my search for data. Needless to say, those numbers are undoubtedly higher since acceptance rates have done a nose-dive.</p>
<p>What the OP said above makes absolutely no sense. Why would he or she only apply to Harvard with a 35 ACT, while applying to all of HYPS with a 36? If anything, I would think Harvard was the first college to drop, not the last, if you were worried about your test scores. But the probability of admission difference between a 35 and a 36 is not likely to be enough to change one’s plans in any direction. I’m sure the data would show that people who scored 36 are more likely to be admitted than people who scored 35, but both groups get admitted to these colleges in decent numbers (relative to other groups, not absolutely), and members of both groups are still probably more likely to be rejected than accepted.</p>
<p>I doubt, by the way, that the test score itself makes any difference at all near the top of the scale. If it looks like 36ers have a somewhat better chance of admission than 35ers, it’s probably because high ACT scores correlate somewhat with a host of other qualities that Harvard looks for. If Harvard is looking for applicants who are great writers and whose teachers see them as once-in-a-career students, there will be a few more of those students in the 36 group than the 35 group. But simply scoring a 36 does not meaningfully indicate that you are that kind of student, and most 36ers won’t be, just as most 35ers also won’t be.</p>
<p>“What the OP said above makes absolutely no sense.”</p>
<p>Of course it doesn’t . . . the OP is 17-years old. Actually, efeens44 reminds me very much of sliverturtle who several years back was convinced that his 2400 would give him an edge at HYPS. I believe silverturtle is currently at Brown. Not the school he wanted, but a great school nonetheless. Bottom line: It’s impossible to predict what a college will be looking for. They could certainly fill up their entire class with students who have 35/36 and 2300/2400, but they don’t.</p>
<p>The acceptance data that I have seen from Brown (ACT), Princeton and Stanford for perfect scorers in the recent past has ranged from 28-32%. You can probably find the Brown (their website) and Princeton data but the Stanford data was from an unpublished source. In any event, about 30% seems like a good working number for the top schools. Good luck!</p>
<p>I obviously didn’t make myself clear nor did I elaborate on why I would apply with a 36 and not a 35. I understand the “gap” between 35 and 36 scorers is almost negligible in the eyes of adcoms. The ONLY REASON getting a 36 would provoke me to apply to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford instead of only Harvard is because 1) I’m not confident at all in my ability to get into these schools (so I guess not like silverturtle at all) and 2) I guess the “prestige” (please notice the quotations) surrounding a 36/2400 would give me a boost in confidence to apply to more top schools. </p>
<p>My logic is this: without a 36 and the undoubted confidence boost that would come with it, I would only apply to Harvard because, in my mind, I’ll be sure of my rejection, so why waste money and time applying to other top schools when I’m sure of a rejection from each one? I don’t see any flaw in that thinking. Dismantle my “logic” if you will, but I don’t think anything I said doesn’t make sense.</p>
<p>I agree with JHS on the misguidedness of applying to different schools depending on whether you’ve achieved a perfect score or some other very high score. Gather your list of schools you may apply to based on where you’d like to attend and where you would be a competitive applicant. Scoring 36 rather than, say, 34 on the ACT may slightly improve your chances of being accepted to Harvard, but it certainly won’t render you a competitive applicant if you weren’t otherwise. </p>
<p>Spend a reasonable amount of time preparing (this will vary based on your other commitments but probably will not need to exceed several months of well-focused preparation) for the SAT and/or ACT so that you do as well as you can. Don’t get bogged down by minutiae like marginal acceptance rates as a function of scores or attempting to identify causality amid the confounding factors JHS mentioned. Your other achievements, academic and extracurricular, will more significantly affect to which colleges you are accepted. And what matters even more is how you take advantage of the college you ultimately attend rather than whether it’s Harvard or a school with less prestige.</p>
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<p>This is misleading, though I did write in support of the idea that, if there was a point beyond which score increases were entirely irrelevant in admissions, I believed the data suggested it was a very high threshold (one greater 2300 on the SAT). I was aware that, even with my objectively favorable numbers, HYPS admissions was challenging and unpredictable.</p>
<p>“so why waste money and time applying to other top schools when I’m sure of a rejection from each one?”</p>
<p>The problem with that kind of logic is that you’ll never know what will happen unless you apply. If you have a 34, 35 or 36 ACT, and like HYPS, then you should invest the money in applications to all four of them, as one my want you, while the others may not. Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>I’ll add my piece of circumstantial evidence to this fray. Many around me were very score obsessed in terms of college admissions (ie. How could any school reject a person with a 2400/36 in favor of a better candidate with a 2250/34?). </p>
<p>With my ‘lower’ scores, I was encouraged by many to look at the less selective ‘lower’ Ivies outside of HYP. Due to this, my initial college list consisted of my once favorite school (P) for SCEA and then slightly less selective schools for RD. </p>
<p>In other words OP, I was exactly like you. I doubted myself because of lower scores and only applied to one of HYPS initially, even though I really saw myself at H, P, and S (never really at Y). I was deferred at P (another confidence blow) and thought I made the right decision not applying to my other ‘dream’ schools. However, upon looking at the results threads on CC and seeing no strong correlation between really high scores and admissions (many rejected with very high scores and many accepted with 21xx or 22xx scores), I decided that I should just shoot for the stars, pay the application fees, and see what happened. I changed my list on around Christmas Day and submitted my applications on January 1st.</p>
<p>On Ivy Day, I was accepted to Harvard and rejected by Princeton. After visiting Harvard’s campus again (pre-Visitas) , I realized that it is the perfect place for me to spend the next four years. Harvard has an excellent program in my major, a plethora of extracurricular activities that I can’t wait to join, and above all a group of talented, motivated, young adults with whom I will learn and grow. </p>
<p>If I had adopted the same logic as you did, and stayed with my original list because of ‘inferior scores’, I would never have even applied to H. It’s really funny how things work out, but you have to buy a ticket to win the raffle.</p>
<p>People are right to downplay the importance of scores, especially at the high end, but there’s a noteworthy exception here. Perfect scores, on any section or especially overall, are FAR better than 790s. After that, the difference is minimal. Here’s why: imagine a bell with everyone’s “true” SAT score (aka the mean if they took it a dozen times). Most scores would fall on the curve. HOWEVER, anyone whose “true” SAT score is above 800 in a given section would be expected to get… an 800. So, objectively, the average “true” score of someone with an 800 on any given section is likely far higher than 800 (who knows what it is). Same thing goes with being valedictorian of a small high school, etc. The people who really benefit are those who barely get an 800, because statistically they are lumped in with the 900s and 1000s and 1500s. So, all things equal, you would expect perfect scorers to have much higher rates of admission than 2370s (790X3). I have a strong hunch that the data bears that out, but of course it isn’t publicly accessible.</p>
<p>^ I don’t agree. Students who miss only one question are separated from perfect scorers not by specific ability but only perhaps by the tendency to make fewer mistakes. The SAT questions aren’t advanced enough to be interpreted in the way you do. IMO medalists miss questions on the Math section but not because they aren’t quite at the test’s ceiling.</p>
<p>^ This may happen a little bit, but the fact remains that the utter geniuses will generally end up with a perfect score (especially if they take the test twice). I understand the bit about getting a question wrong here or there, but I also have friends who could finish an SAT math section in 15 minutes and spend the next ten double checking every answer. I doubt there are any IMO medalists without an 800 on the math section, and if one or two do that’s probably because they took the test once and got very unlucky. </p>
<pre><code>To be clear, I’m not saying the test is perfect or finely tuned, but I stand by my original statement. If I see someone with an 800 on the math section, I don’t know if they’re just really good at math or a math genius. If they have a 790, its a better bet they’re just really good at math. Not a perfect metric and again there are tons of exceptions, but it holds statistically pretty well, just like the valedictorian/small school issue.
</code></pre>
<p>^ Math geniuses constitute such a small percentage even among those who score 800 that an admissions officer would never assume a student to be a math genius based on the score alone; they would need additional evidence, such as the IMO medal. But as soon as that secondary evidence arises, the score is negligible. Even if the few math geniuses in the world all score 800 (counter-examples to which I am familiar with) on the Math section, they are outliers even among 800 scorers, so it remains that the difference between the average student who scores 790 versus that who scores 800 is not significant enough to warrant great admissions differentiation on that basis.</p>
<p>10jarsle, you are right that the top score stands in for a “long tail” of even higher possible scores on a more discriminating test, but silverturtle is right to note that feature is not likely to mean much on its own in the college admission process. Most of the top-score scorers will not really be more than 50 points better than the next-top scorers, and college admissions staffs don’t really care about 50-point or less differences. If someone really is meaningfully more intelligent and skilled than the test can measure, that will come out in myriad other ways in the application, and be taken into account. But the same will also be true of some people who made almost-top scores on the test.</p>
<p>In other words, high scores more or less ensure that someone will pay attention to the other evidence of what you may contribute, but small differences among high scores mean little if anything, except to the extent they help confirm what other elements of the application (recommendations, grades, essays) show.</p>