<p>I believe last year at Havard and Yale the upper 25% of admitted SAT scores was 2380. For the class of 2011, according to collegeboard, 889 students across the country received a 2380 or higher. If harvard and yale accept about 2000 students, about 500 of them had a 2380 or higher. I doubt every single one of these 889 students applied to harvard and yale. 500 out of sub-889 students (probably alot less than 889 just based on people applying early decision places and of course Stanford..) with a 2380 were accepted. </p>
<p>For all those 2380+ applied hopefuls here on CC, do these chances look very good?</p>
<p>No!
Chances at the very top colleges such as HYPSM, Cal Tech, Columbia, Penn and Chicago and so on are below 10% if you are an unhooked applicant.</p>
<p>If you are Asian (male), chance is even lower.</p>
<p>I find it somewhat funny that the people who responded so far have completely ignored the quantitative argument. </p>
<p>It’s pretty obvious that the odds are a <em>lot</em> higher than the raw acceptance rate if you have a score like that. Colleges care about SAT scores. Princeton’s own website says that the acceptance rate for last year was was 21.6% for those with 2300-2400. Presumably at the top end the rate is higher. We can only guess whether the starts are similar for other schools.</p>
<p>One thing that may weaken you argument is superscoring. If the CollegeBoard number is for scores on a particular test, and the college stats are superscored, there’s potentially a very large gap. Additionally, if the colleges break down the middle 50 by section rather than present it in combination, it’s sure to be true that some students scored in the top 25% in some sections but not in others, meaning that the average of total scores is lower than the sum of average section scores.</p>