<p>I take back some of what I said. I was working under the pretense that you are an American student. As an international student applying to top tier American schools, you are in fact going to want to have an SAT score over 2300. They won’t throw out your application if it has an SAT score of 2250 but ideally, you want to have it a little bit higher. The test still wouldn’t represent 70% of what is used in admissions, but yes, they are right somewhat. You do want to aim for 2300 and ECs do matter a lot. Once you get over 2200, and even just 2100, it’s generally clear that you are academically qualified and they scrutinize your ECs.</p>