<p>I care about a lot of things. It’s just that going to school to do the same things everyday for 7 hours then doing homework for 3-4 more is very taxing, and pointlessly so, and I’m tired of it.</p>
<p>This is how colleges “assume” (in order of likeliness)</p>
<p>High SAT, High GPA- typical CCer
High SAT, Low GPA- smart but lazy, late bloomer, smart and massive grade deflation
Low SAT, High GPA- grade inflation (you got three chances at the SAT and ACT and still can’t do well, ***?)
Low SAT, Low GPA- no thanks</p>
<p>Low SAT, High GPA isn’t true. Not everyone can take the SAT/ACT three times, and people can try hard in school and get all A’s, but not be good enough at test taking. There are plenty of reasons why someone would have non-matching SAT’s and GPA’s, and schools don’t just “assume.” They would see your classes, your school info, recs, etcs and decide if you were just getting grade inflation.</p>
<p>I think colleges care slightly more about how well you’ll do in college than how well you did in high school. The problem with GPA is that it’s too subjective and is easily affected by how often you cheat, how much your teacher likes you (especially in English classes), and how well you can procrastinate for a test that you should’ve been studying for 2 weeks in advance… it isn’t a completely accurate representation of work ethic. The SAT on the other hand, is completely objective and tests the abilities that are essential in college which are problem solving and critical thinking. Rote memorization doesn’t work in college like it did in high school no matter how hard you try. So I feel like those people with 4.0 GPAs who squeezed by with a 90% in all CP classes are going to be met with a rude awakening in college, whereas the high SAT scorers would be more able to handle college material.</p>
<p>Haha, I’m sorry devrybound but you have the exact opposite of what most colleges look at. Look at any top college, and they want to see great rigor, and great GPA, and SAT is secondary. Most people get caught cheating if they do it often, and on important things, teachers liking you only does so much, and if you can get a good grade with procrastinating, you must know the material.</p>
<p>SAT tests how well you were prepared one day, after months of preparation, expensive tutors, etc. SAT has been proven to NOT correlate that well with college preparedness.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but your conjecture is completely false for most colleges. The rigor and GPA of your High School career is more important than how you did on one test that accounts for one day.</p>
<p>Class rigor varies from school to school, no matter if you take AP, Honors, or CP. Most people take the SAT more than once… and so what if a good score requires months of preparation or expensive tutors? If anything, that shows dedication and hard work. People get tutors for school subjects don’t they? Although I agree that teachers liking you does not do much for your grade, I still feel like the objectivity of the SAT beats the subjectivity of GPA anyday. There are so many factors that have an effect on GPA, like family situations, how involved you are out of school, and even how much time you devote to studying for the SAT. </p>
<p>One more thing, and I’m tired of hearing this. The SAT is not “one test that accounts for one day”. If you only read magazines and have never finished a novel in your life, then tough luck on SAT critical reading. If you’ve blindly followed math formulas without understanding what you’re actually doing in your math homework, then you will have a hard time on SAT math. And for the writing section, well, you have to be a good writer to do well on part of the test. In short, you had to have been academically geared for your whole life to do well on the SAT, and I have never seen anyone who scored a 1700 end up with a 2300+ after some “studying”.</p>
<p>Wow… You must not be a senior, or in college… Almost every school looks at Class Rigor and GPA more than the SAT. If you visit colleges, most will tell you that. People take the SAT more than once if they can afford it, and buying expensive guides, tutors, classes, etc. requires money. The SAT is not good at predicting anything, whereas at MOST schools you have to work hard or be extremely smart to get a good GPA.</p>
<p>The SAT depends on how you’re feeling that day, how tired you are, how much it compares to what you studied, etc. It is ONE day that you did, or didn’t, pay attention, feel well, etc. We’re not saying it’s one day academically, it’s one day in terms of what life was like that day. I know someone who’s grandma died that Friday, and he did 100 less that what he should have got (On two parts). Would that have affected his GPA? Maybe if it was really devastating and it affected a whole semester, but most likely not.</p>
<p>In short, colleges don’t place the weight where you think they do, and they probably shouldn’t.</p>
<p>“colleges don’t place the weight where you think they do”… No, no they don’t, and I never thought that. I was arguing that colleges should put more weight on SAT. Did you even read my post? Yes the SAT is one day, but like I already said, most people take it again until they are satisfied or reached a plateau.</p>
<p>The SAT comes into play after a certain point, which is when most of the applicant applying to Ivy schools have 4.0 GPAs. Yes, SAT is only one day, which I think makes it even more impressive. If you do atrociously on an exam in class, you have time to bring your grade back up. But, SAT has no mercy.</p>
<p>SAT can be tackled. Studying, learning vocab, taking it over, learning strategies. It’s still one day though. One day when you may be sick, or had a game Friday night and a long bus ride home, or your calculator froze, or whatever else. Give me a GPA and an accompanying transcript, with a school profile. Tell me how many kids go to college, and which ones. Let me know what challenging classes were offered. Then let me read the grades and recommendations. I can tell you what’s more likely to matter to me, and it’s everything except the test. Not saying don’t use it, but certainly don’t rely in it over other things. By the way, with effort, my D gained 500 points on the SAT over four tests from junior and senior year (not superscored). She works hard. She just worked hard for the SAT too.</p>
<p>Most kids applying to elite colleges do not just take one standardized test such as the SAT, they also take the PSAT, SAT Subject Tests and AP tests. My son’s school also provides results of State benchmark tests from each year as well as Lexile scores etc too. </p>
<p>The GPA is like a black and white movie and the standardized tests adds color to it, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Crimson, are you even reading what he’s saying? He didn’t say that colleges place more weight on the SAT’s than on GPA, he’s saying that the SAT should be worth more than what it is. I agree with devry completely - what if you’re in a school like High Tech or Thomas Jefferson? Every single student there has the potential to get a 3.8+ in a normal school, but the teachers can’t hand those out to every single student - they make the work harder and thus students have GPA’s that are lower than what they would be elsewhere. The SAT helps with this because even if a TJ student only has a 3.0 GPA, if he has a 2400 it’s exceedingly obvious that he has good worth ethic, is good at focusing, and is competent. Like he said, there is no way anybody is going to study from a 1700 to a 2300. The same applies the other way around: if you have the capability to break 2200 in the first place, having a bad day isn’t going to impact your score too dramatically. It’s a reasoning test, not a material test - you’re not being tested on material that you shouldn’t already have on lock. It tests your most fundamental abilities - focusing (reading comprehension), sharpness (correcting the wrong sentences), critical thinking (the math questions aren’t difficult at all, but they try to trick you), judgment skills (good/best answers), time management (the questions are arranged from easy to hard for a reason), inference skills (vocabulary - figuring out definitions with what’s given). I know people who have literally not slept at all the night before and gotten 2100 - lower than anticipated, but still high by normal standards.</p>
<p>@nyctempo</p>
<p>I agree with you and devry for the most part but I think you guys might be exaggerating how difficult it is to get an okay score.</p>
<p>Most people scoring 1700 naturally won’t be able to study up to a 2300 but I don’t think that, with the right tutor, a 2100 or thereabouts would be out of reach. I think that up to that point it doesn’t necessarily have to be a reasoning test and that you can very easily score 700 in each section (maybe not CR) by memorization and repetition. You could do very well for yourself even if you are one of those kids with no critical thinking skills just by recognizing question types and memorizing the solution process.</p>
<p>Despite that, I do agree that more weight should be put on the test. To me, the 4.0/1800 kids look lazy or stupid because it means either their grades are inflated or they are too lazy to study for what might be the most important test they ever take, a test that happens to be very easy to study for. Or maybe just too eager to blame their poor scores on the ever-popular ‘I’m just a bad test-taker!’ mantra.</p>
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<p>The problem is, the SAT Reasoning test has less predictive power on college grades than SAT Subject tests or high school grades. SAT Subject tests would likely fulfill the useful purpose of standardized testing (i.e. as a check against grade inflation or uneven course quality between high schools) better than the SAT Reasoning test.</p>
<p>^ucbalumnus: I too would expect AP and SAT Subject Tests to have the highest predictive powers, then grades then SAT Reasoning scores.</p>
<p>I have heard it said that some of these SAT predictive power studies do not take into account differences in course work difficulty. For example, they end up comparing gpas of engineering and sociology majors or gpas from very different types of colleges or students whose SAT score are not very different. What is your understanding on this subject?</p>
<p>Also, do these studies account for factors such as poor kids with higher SAT scores who have to work in college vs. low score kids from wealthy homes who do not have to work etc?</p>
<p>@Nyctemp colleges are well aware of schools like Thomas Jefferson. In fact they are well aware of about the top 200 schools in the nation. They are also aware of top private schools and regional powerhouses. The SAT is really a joke of a measure. If anything I’d say if you want to even out playing field use SAT 2s and make APs on a 100 point grading scale and use them. The SAT math section has basically ^no correlation with how good one will do in calculus or physics once the 700 mark has been passed.</p>
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<p>Are there any studies suggesting this?</p>
<p>NYCtempo, I see part of your point, but it is not at all accurate to say that no one can study from a 1700 to a 2300. I have seen friends of my son’s do just that, and if you read through CC, you will see examples of this. In fact, one person who posted on this very thread talked about going up 500 points by hard study from junior year to senior year. I think that the SAT or ACT should play some role (and remember, hte SAT is not the whole game—lots of kids submit only an ACT to top-tier colleges), but the overall GPA and rigor of courses should be most important.</p>
<p>The argument about being able to raise SAT scores by 500 points works both ways. If that possibility is to be used to say the student with lower GOA, but high SAT only did so because they studied for the SAT, doesn’t it also suggest that the high GPA/low SAT student should have been able to do the same, and was just too lazy to do so?</p>
<p>If anything, that high SAT shows that the student is capable of working hard to pull that score up, and has shown the dedication to do so. It might also show that a student is capable of higher order thinking, but is not in fact being asked to do so in the HS classes.</p>
<p>Additionally, while colleges may be well aware of top 200 high schools, there are over 25,000 public high schools in this country, plus another 10,000+ privates. The SAT does in fact provide context where a group of admissions officers are not able to be intimately familiar with 35,000 schools. School profiles help, but they can’t provide a completely clear picture. The admissions staff at our state flagship is going to be familiar with all of the high schools in our state (a relatively small number), but are they really going to be able to distinguish between two high schools in rural Texas, or between one in Alaska and another in Arizona? Unless they’ve had a number of applicants from our school in the last few years, is a small private college in Texas going to be familiar with our high school?</p>
<p>Both GPA and SAT (or ACT) are needed to be able to compare a broad range of students.</p>
<p>I think what I understood when colleges say that they value GPA, class rigor over SAT is that when comparing two students who have the same SAT scores, colleges probabiliy prefer the one with a higher GPA or the one with a rigoros course load. So selective colleges do value SAT scores. If you look at the 25% - 50% of any top ten universities, it is evident that they admit people who have high SAT scores.</p>