<p>What's the relationship between theese two things ? Are they important equally ? Or one is more important then the other ?</p>
<p>For example, if my GPA is very good, but my SAT score is not exceptional, this is better than having an highest SAT Score but a GPA not particularly high ?</p>
<p>And what do the best universities - like Stanford or Cornell - prefer, between theese two thing ?</p>
<p>I am not sure about their influence on the admission process (it seems thats what your question is), but I think that a high SAT score indicates a higher intellectual potential, whereas a high GPA speaks more of diligence.</p>
<p>Colleges would like you to think and will tell you to no end that they weigh the GPA higher because it’s the “result of 4 years of work instead of just a few hours.” But we all have been told since we were like 12 that the SAT was more important.</p>
<p>The fact is that the SAT more than likely weighs more heavily than the GPA in your college admissions. Some Ivy League schools use something called the “Academic Index,” this number was originally designed to be used for recruited athletes to ensure they live up to the expectations of an Ivy League school. Some Ivies, however, use the AI for ALL students. If you’d like to know your own AI, you take the average of your SAT Reasoning Test scores and divide by ten, then you take the average of your Subject Test scores and divide by ten, and the other 1/3rd of it is based on putting your GPA into a mathematical formula.</p>
<p>Ahah! The SAT counts for 2/3rds of this number. And there are good reasons that colleges trust the SAT more than your GPA. Admissions officers don’t know if YOU happen to have had the one Biology teacher who basically gave everyone As. But the SAT is “standardized,” which means that although not everyone takes the same test, the scoring system should give you close to the right score for you each time. Not to say I agree with any of this, but you can see the logic behind it.</p>
<p>That being said obviously this isn’t true everywhere. I can’t tell you whether GPA or SAT factors more at any given college as each college, and each admissions reader, is different. But in general I find students with better SATs do better than students with better grades.</p>
<p>For example, the valedictorian of my senior class applied to two Ivy League colleges and one more in the top 25 (and a few LACs mixed in). She had amazing grades, she took AP class after AP class, and on her SAT she got an 800 in Reading but a 550 in Math. Her grades were obviously top notch, but her SAT score was REALLY lopsided, and those top colleges didn’t like her for it, she got waitlisted from about all of them.</p>
<p>It would be comforting to think that there is some all encompassing formula, but except for a very few (University of Iowa), I don’t believe it exists.</p>
<p>I suspect that the elite schools, (i.e., Stanford & Cornell), look at your academic performance in its entirety. I simply can’t envision an adcom viewing App A with a 3.80/2200, and app B with a 3.93/2000 as being significantly different.</p>
<p>But to CMU2013’s example, I can see them being concerned about a dramatic difference in the numbers. With admit rates of 10% - 20%, at some point schools will start to look for reasons not to admit you.</p>
<p>In the best of cases Stanford is a roll of the dice. If you’re telling us your GPA is 4.0 UW and your SATs 1700/2400, then you’ve got trouble ahead. If it’s 4.0 and 2100, then your chances are as slim as everyone else’s.</p>
<p>as CMU2013 said, I believe that the main problem with judging an applicant by GPA is unforseen variables in the grade-giving department. A teacher could be extremely easy, extremely hard, etc. Also, the differences between schools can be immense. A student from a top public or private school might have a good gpa, but should not that be equal to a perfect GPA at a crappy public? Someone on this forum (forget who :/) said anything from a 96 (out of 100) and above is considered good; admissions cant really distinguish a 96 from a 98 if the schools are different. So, generally, i think that they use SATs more.</p>