<p>The dean of admissions is clearly a wise and experienced man. When you read his comments over time you find things that suggest that excellence is the standard, not high SAT scores per say. In fact the college’s minority outreach is premised on the hope of finding excellence wherever it may be, and in many forms. On test scores, he is quoted one place as saying that SAT IIs and AP scores are more reliable indicators of college performance than the aptitude test. However it is clear as HarvardParent suggests that clusters of high SAT performance inevitably turn up in the admission rates. One thing outsiders will never be able to guage is whether those bleary-eyed committee members who spend months of review before voting end up tilting on SAT at the end of the day.</p>