<p>If you go to a really competitive private school where the top 10% might average 2250 SAT, and you're in that group (but your SAT is like 2100), how do colleges interpret that discrepancy? I'd say I'm in the top 5%, but my SAT (~2100) is way below those of my peers (~2250) who got worse grades in the same classes.</p>
<p>What's your opinion?</p>
<p>They’re better at standardized testing, or not as motivated as you in the classroom.</p>
<p>You are not as naturally intelligent, but you work harder.</p>
<p>Yeah, you probably turn in all of your homework assignments and study for tests. I never studied in High School and frequently got 0’s on my homework and got a 3.5 UW (top 20% of my class), but I had a 1460/1600 on my SAT, which was higher than most of my friends, many of whom were ranked higher. My best friend had about a 3.0, but she got a 1590/1600, so I’d say you work hard and my best friend and I were lazy lol.</p>
<p>I didn’t make it into UF while nearly all of my peers that did had better GPA’s and lower SAT scores. I think many colleges are looking for students that work hard.</p>
<p>The single most important factor in college admissions is your transcript (courses taken and grades earned). That is because this is the single most valid predictor of all measures of success in college (first year GPA, graduating GPA, years to finishing degree, etc., etc.). The SAT and ACT add very little prediction value (some researchers would say that they add none). Don’t worry one second more about your test score.</p>
<p>If you want to read up on test score validity, you can start with the articles published at [The</a> National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest](<a href=“http://www.fairtest.org%5DThe”>http://www.fairtest.org) While you are there, you can check out the list of some 800 accredited colleges and universities that have test-optional, or no-test admissions policies.</p>
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<p>That’s not what the data show. Studies that control for course selection (weaker students enroll in easier courses, inflating their GPAs) find, as one would expect, that SAT and high school GPA are comparably strong predictors of college performance. They remain at the top of the list of predictors, both in magnitude and statistical significance, in models that also take account of additional factors such as family income, parental education, first-generation college status. This is true for outcomes such as four-year college GPA, graduation rate, college credits attained (controlling for course difficulty), pretty much everything. </p>
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<p>The added value of SAT given GPA is similar to the added value of GPA given SAT. It was clear from the tables in the Berkeley study (the one advocating SAT-II over SAT, and comparing them with GPA as predictors) that test scores alone were a stronger predictor than GPA, especially when course selection was taken into account. This was not the intended message of the study, of course, but it can be read off from the regression outputs.</p>
<p>^ I disagree, but you are so wrong and I have so much work to do, that I will not even go there.</p>
<p>This has been debated ad nauseum (like we don’t even need to go there)- but from my experience, not only with college admission but college itself-neither GPA or SAT score really matter much in determining your performance after a certain level.</p>
<p>bumpppppppppp</p>
<p>says the admissions officer at Stanford: your transcript is much more important than the SAT, because it shows your work over a 4-year period rather than how well you did on a 4-hour test on a Saturday.</p>
<p>A difference of 150 points is pretty minimal. It shows that they are either: quicker than you, smarter test takers, slightly more intelligent, have a bigger vocabulary, better fit for the SAT, were slightly lucky on the questions/essay, or had a better Saturday than you. None of those are significant enough to be a big deal. Now, if the disparity were 400 points or so, then there would be a problem.</p>