High GPA, OK SAT - how much will the SAT hurt me?

Student Lounge African-American Students
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<p>So, I got my SAT score back and it's an 1820 (610 CR 590 Math 620 Writing). I raised by 90 points from my last test, which is nice, but I was hoping for at least a 1950. I'm taking the SAT next week (my final time), and I'm REALLY hoping to do a lot better. I'm wondering, if I don't do much better and my SAT score is still an 1820, how much will my score hurt me? I'm a international student - an African who is a US citizen living in Sudan. Born and raised in California for half of my life but now I live here.</p>

<p>My GPA is a 3.92</p>

<p>AP Classes taken:</p>

<p>Junior: Only 2 APs were offered last year. Took one - AP World History. Got As on every quarter, and scored a 5 on the exam.</p>

<p>Senior Year: Taking 3 at the moment (And the most possible APs you can take is 4. AP Studio Art is the AP I'm not taking). AP Chemistry, AP English Literature, AP Calculus AB. I'm one of the only three students in our school taking 3 APs. Then again, our school is small (K-12, 250 students). </p>

<p>Subject Tests: 730 on World History. Taking ML2 and Chemistry in December.</p>

<p>EC: Being a small school located in a war-torn country (in some parts, anyway) like Sudan, the school has always been unable to truly provide in the EC department. We're a very small school, so we hardly have any teachers who could set something up. So the only EC in recent years has been Model United Nations, which I have done since the 10th grade now. I was the Secretary General of our school's MUN, the highest position attainable. Also I'm part of Community Service, which I'm one of the heads of. There's simply not much else to do in our school for EC. I guess the only EC I could've done is playing Basketball or Soccer for our school's teams but I was too focused on my studies to spend a few hours a day having practice.</p>

<p>Also, again, I live in Sudan. Being a country sanctioned by much of the West, many things typically offered and found in schools in the US and Europe are completely unavailable to us.</p>

<p>So ultimately I'm wondering how much will an 1820 impact me if they take all of this stuff into consideration (GPA, APs, EC). It's the only thing bringing me down. I'm applying to some reach schools (MIT, Stanford, Harvard), but how much of a shot do you think I'll have for schools like University of Southern California, NYU, UVA, Boston University, and Northeastern, with my current stats?</p>

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<p>I don’t know what your chances are in general, though I think that they are low for your reach schools, something that’s true for everyone who applies to a school like Harvard. </p>

<p>Unless you have a way via your family or government to pay for your tuition or unless you get into a place like Harvard that guarantees to meet everyone – including internationals’ demonstrated financial need, I think that you need to be far more concerned about paying for the colleges than getting into the colleges. It’s very hard for internationals to get their financial need met at U.S. colleges. Few U.S. colleges meet internationals’ demonstrated need, and those few that do are the most difficult ones to gain admission to. I don’t think that BU, Northeastern, NYU are able to meet the financial need of their international applicants. NYU can’t even meet the financial need of U.S. applicants.</p>