<p>which one do admins consider the most? </p>
<p>I've heard that it's different for every school
does anybody know which of the top schools look at GPA / rank more?</p>
<p>also, do they look at your GPA for all 4 years of high school? i heard that gr 11 is the most important year,is that true?? </p>
<p>thanks for your time!</p>
<p>both are important.....GPA is obviously the most obvious way to see if you are achieving. But since many schools have different levels of difficulty and standards, test scores are EXTREMELY important to gauge how good you are against everyone, not just in your school. Every school looks at 10th and 11th, most look at 1st semester of 12th. Some schools don't look at 9th at all because for lots of people its a rough transition period, and others give it a reduced weight when recalculating your GPA, and some weight it equally to 10th and 11th.</p>
<p>both are important.....GPA is obviously the most obvious way to see if you are achieving. But since many schools have different levels of difficulty and standards, test scores are EXTREMELY important to gauge how good you are against everyone, not just in your school. Every school looks at 10th and 11th, most look at 1st semester of 12th. Some schools don't look at 9th at all because for lots of people its a rough transition period, and others give it a reduced weight when recalculating your GPA, and some weight it equally to 10th and 11th. And yeah, 11th is definetely the most important.</p>
<p>I have pretty great school marks. 97%average. and ranked 1% in my class, but my sat is only 2150, will that hurt me a lot? also, how much do they look at SAT II ?? I had 2380(800,800 and 780)...</p>
<p>haha, don't worry, you're fine for basically all schools except for Ivies. Ivies you might need to sweat out a little... Jeez dude 2150 is still really good... plus your grades show that youve been achieving at a high level consistently for 4 years. For your SAT or ACT, you could get lucky, or have a bad day, or something because its only 1 day. and your SAT II's are excellent so I definetely wouldnt worry about it that much. What are you majoring in? That's important for whether SAT II's matter- for example if you want to go into engineering, having good scores on Math II and chem would really show that you're qualified. I know that most public schools don't look at the SAT II's at all, but lots of private schools require SAT II's.</p>
<p>Most schools say GPA/transcript is most important. I think they purposely downplay the SAT because so many people aren't confident in their scores, but I think GPA still matters more (by a hair).</p>
<p>i forget who put it like this, but it somes it all up:</p>
<p>"The SATs are three hours...your GPA is three years"</p>
<p>^ Yeah Tzar, but at the same time some public schools give out sooo many As; rendering the gpa 4.0 meaningless and making it very difficult to distinguish applicants. Whereas some top private schools have integrity and only give out a small percentage of As. I think one Vanderbilt rep put it well "Gpa is quickly becoming the most useless number in college admissions." </p>
<p>How can someone say for sure that a 4.0 at a public school > say a 3.5 at a top private? At best, a gpa can distinguish applicants within a school and schools with very similar grading systems and competitiveness. Most schools are very different though.</p>
<p>GPA compares you to the rest of your school.
SAT compares you to the rest of the country.</p>
<p>I do like the quote from Tzar09!</p>
<p>See the FAQ mentioned in my signature:</p>
<p>According to our school profile, "Grade inflation during the past five years has not been evident.. and we have only graduated four 4.0 students in the last 26 years. Honors courses (AP, CIS and Accelerated) are not weighted."</p>
<p>Here's a question though.. for those kids that take AP etc, did you take honors/accelerated curriculum all along? I know some kids at S's school who may take AP Bio, European History or CIS econ senior year having not taking any other honor courses.</p>
<p>^ Yeah I know a lot of people that do. It's recommended at our school but not required. Some classes the honors course is a prerequisite to the AP class but you can get around it by talking to the teacher/parent contacting the school.</p>
<p>To assess the GPA vs. SAT for yourself, go to CollegeData, and look at scattergrams for various colleges. There is a green line for average SAT and GPA for acceptances, and a red line for average rejections. The greater the college emphasizes SAT the greater the SAT spread between acceptances and rejections; so too for GPA. You can thereby see at a glance where each college puts its emphasis. What is more, you can see what subsection of the SAT is emphasized amongst CR, W and M, and likewise for UW vs. W GPA.</p>
<p>An example for Cornell, for which there are many applicants compiled:</p>
<p>i'm planning to major in business, and for my sat IIs, Math II and language will be helpful, but not the science i took ... and yes i want to try for Ivies!=(</p>
<p>the honest truth is that both are important.<br>
GPA can not always be accurate since some schools are dramatically easier and give out more A's than other more competitive schools. Of course, most college admission officers will have a good idea of which schools are tough based on region, but there's no guarantee someone will know you could have gotten two more A's if you went to the public school down the street. </p>
<p>Anyways, the SAT also has weight and those who say SAT's mean nothing are probably idiots. The SAT tests intellect to a certain extent. Someone who gets 2400 isn't going to be the smartest person ever. On the other hand, someone who gets a 2400 is probably smarter than someone with a 1300, get the picture?</p>
<p>Both SAT and GPA have to be taken with a grain of salt (looked at carefully), but they both also have to work together in order for one to gain a good understanding of a student's abilities.</p>
<p>Good point, nooob.</p>
<p>Sometimes the people who say that the SAT means nothing are the ones who, despite having done extensive prep, still haven't gotten a score that they feel is "good enough". Rarely are the people who say "the SAT is stupid" the ones who get perfect or near-perfect scores.</p>
<p>Exactly. It appears that schools care about GPA over SAT though, which is quite unfortunate because GPA does not really show much, because different schools are completely different. I'm not saying SATs are perfect, but at least they give something in comparison against everyone else instead of just 1 school or class.</p>