<p>There are various journalistic and memoir-type descriptions of actual admissions decisions out there. And I challenge you to find one where, in making the difficult last round of decisions, anyone even mentions SAT scores as playing into the decision. Grades, recommendations, background, passions, yes; SATs, no. SAT scores probably play a part in getting candidates to that point – and at that point many decisions have already been made, and SATs may have played some role there, too. But when the chips are down and the most important choices are being made, SATs are close to irrelevant.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a correlation between SAT scores and admission chances. SATs measure SOMETHING, and whatever it is the SATs are measuring, it has a lot to do with some of the qualities colleges are looking for. But when the best SAT scores translate to no better than a 1-in-5 chance of admission, and scores that are meaningfully lower mean no worse than 1-in-8, it’s difficult to conclude that SATs themselves are making a difference at all. Sure, among the various numbers that qualify as objective data, there is a relatively high correlation between SATs and admissions, but that just means that none of the objective data is anything close to determinative in elite college admission.</p>
<p>By the way, I believe the study HarvardParent is referring to deals with data that is around 15 years old now, or older – almost a different generation in college admissions. That Princeton N-curve was what I was mentioning in my earlier post, but I doubt it’s still there.</p>