<p>If I have 5 Bs sophomore year (honors and 1 AP), and all As the rest of highschool w/ 11 AP rest honors can I still get into top colleges like northwestern and Cornell w/ a 2200+ SAT?</p>
<p>Not to be mean, but if you couldn’t get all As sophomore year, how do you expect to get all As the rest of high school? Did you just slack off or was it a personal issue (i.e. the kind of situation that can be explained by your guidance counselor to colleges if you so wish)? If you want to improve your chances at top schools, get your SAT in the 2300s and have stellar ECs and essays.</p>
<p>Agree on the 2300+ to make up for a not-so-perfect GPA.</p>
<p>Good essays.</p>
<p>It’s worst to have high SAT and low GPA, hard to explain why there is a disconnect.</p>
<p>I don’t think so…</p>
<p>GPA is more important than SAT.</p>
<p>I don’t think the GPA is very important. Books I have read give much greater defference to class rank.</p>
<p>As every school has a different GPA measure its impossible to compare across schools. SATs are the great comparison tool.</p>
<p>SAT is only one indicator, and sometimes people could get lucky. Whereas to achieve consistent high GPA for 4 years is more difficult, doesn’t matter quality of high school. Colleges care about applicants’ work ethic and time management. If a student is hard working (not a slacker), even if he/she may not as competitive when first entering college, he/she could still make up the difference. If a student is a slacker (smart, but has not applied 100% in high school), he/she probably not going to be that successful in college.</p>
<p>Adcoms look for consistency - SAT score needs to correspond to GPA and in the context of student’s high school. If a student has A in a AP course, but only received a 3 on the exam and the school profile shows 2 is the average, it speaks more about the school than about the student. Same with SAT I. If a student’s scored top 5% at his/her school, but is below national norm, it’s more of a bad reflection on the school. It may even give the student a boost because it shows the student has over come adversity.</p>
<p>To the few posters above: I agree that GPA (in the context of your school, whether indicated by rank or other method) is extremely important; however, the question here is not whether SAT or GPA is more important, it’s how you can compensate for a less-than-perfect GPA. An upward trend in GPA (which the OP clearly intends to have) and very high SAT scores are the best way to do this (in conjunction with excellent ECs, essays, and teacher recs). End of story.</p>
<p>I think it’s possible. I think Cornell in particular isn’t as competitive as people make it out to be - if the rest of your app is strong, you should be fine.</p>
<p>Really the classes I took sophomore year were very hard. In my school they put a ton of pressure on you sophomore year. The classes might not be AP but the honors teachers give you hell. For example in chemistry our final was the ASC general chemistry exam uncurved, its 70 questions and the national avg. is a 32. Many people got C’s overall, so that is why my class rank is a lot higher and I heard that junior/senior year is a lot easier. Like 95% of the people at my school who take AP chem get 5s. 
Same thing with AP World History the class average was a 73.2%, but soo many people get 5s on the ap exam, they just kill your GPA.</p>
<p>xFocus - I am sorry, my comments weren’t really directed at you. I was just talking in general GPA vs SAT, because other posters said SAT is more important than GPA. If you are top 5-10% of your school (everything is relative to your school) with high SAT, you should still be competitive for Cornell. Try to show upward trend for junior and senior fall semester. Both of those schools are high reaches for most people. Good Luck.</p>
<p>Just a note that if your grades do improve–which isn’t unlikely, because sophomore year was killer for me too (junior year’s harder, but you’re more equipped to deal with the course load by then)–colleges see it favorably. As in, rising GPA during high school career = sign of maturity to them. At least, I read something like that. xD It still might hurt chances for the top-top colleges, though, if they look at all GPA from 10th-12th. Like the others said, study hard for the SAT, and take a lot of practice tests from the official study guide.</p>