<p>
When everyone on CC is just like you - a 4.0/2100 student who wants it to seem like he has a better shot and therefore subconsciously belittles the weighting of the SAT score.</p>
<p>HYPS gets tons of applicants who are top in their grade-inflating easy public schools because they work really hard, but aren’t really the “smartest” or most “well-reasoning” student at their schools by far (I’m sure every one knows kids with this phenomenon, but it is hard to explain). Consequently they often end up struggling through college w/ B averages because they can’t handle the extreme jump in academic rigor. SAT scores are a decent way to observe whether an applicant is this kind of student or not.</p>
<p>That said, I have no idea what the cutoff is. All college admissions offices keep their own statistics on this (charts of SAT or high school GPAs on x axis, college GPAs on y axis), so they probably all have their own SAT ranges that they find to be the cutoff for a normal, unhooked applicant.</p>