<p>it seems to me that amherst puts A LOT of emphasis on the sats. is this true?</p>
<p>I think it's more like SAT's get you into the admissions party, then other criteria take over from there.</p>
<p>what type of score would keep one out of "the game"?</p>
<p>And does anyone know how much emphasis is put on SAT IIs? Because mine sucked big time.</p>
<p>Amherst's SAT interquartile range for both Math and Verbal is 660-770...might be a little higher, that data's a couple of years old but is what's at hand.</p>
<p>For "unhooked students", anything below a combined 1320 or so (Math + Verbal) is going to look dismal. So 1320+ and you're okay, right? Wrong. If you broke down the <em>percentage</em> of applicants in each SAT range that get accepted, a much lower percentage get accepted in the lower ranges because more applicants have scores in these ranges (duh!). Given Amherst's profile, I'd want a 1500 to feel moderately confident about admissions. </p>
<p>No someone is going to say "TheDad says you can't get into Amherst without a 1500!" I said nothing of the sort. It's just that your odds go down and you need more compensating factors to boost them. Less than 20 percent of applicants are accepted...you need to find some way to stand out. I think your odds drop below 1500 and drop again below about 1420. Yes, a fair number of students will get admitted with scores below that but it's a small number out of the total applying with those scores...and when you factor our athletic, URM, and legacy status, the numbers get even more brutal.</p>
<p>Pongo: when they're making hard choices between similar students, of course they're going to use the SAT II's. If you had two students with virtually identical SAT I's, GPA, EC's, and recs...and one had much better SAT II's than the other, which one would you take?</p>
<p>Many applicants count on writing a killer essay. So is everyone else. And experience on CC has shown that most "killer" essays aren't.</p>
<p>Regardless of the odds, just go in with the assumption that you are going to be rejected, regardless of your SATs, and that you have found a GREAT safety that you love. Then you might be happily surprised later, but you won't be disappointed.</p>
<p>It's just numbers.</p>
<p>I would endorse what TheDad wrote about SATs. That's the way I view it as well.</p>
<p>I would add one more point: SATs alone, no matter how strong, are not sufficient to get admitted to a school like Amherst. Class rank/GPA or some other measure of performance in high school is more important than test scores. And, it is rare that a student gets accepted to a school like Amherst without successfully communicating something of interest that would potentially add to campus life.</p>
<p>Right. Amherst gets enough strong applicants that they're looking for strong all-around apps: scores/GPA/what the EC's/recs tell them.</p>