<p>Neato - depends on the college, but in general, interviews help clarify a lot.</p>
<p>If you can’t get to campus, or find an alumni interviewer locally for instance, some schools will waive the interview. But the percentage of students admitted with interviews seems statistically higher than those who don’t get them at my college. I think that extra “data point” really enhances an application. Don’t know if that is universal.</p>
<p>My husband is on the admissions committee for a different college and you can’t be considered without an on-campus interview on campus. There, you’ll find no “graces” for URM’s, public schools, athletes, etc. You either score high, or you don’t get an interview. Mostly because they are flooded with apps and have to cut somewhere because the interviews are mandatory and there’s only so many hours in the day.</p>
<p>But yes - the importance of SAT (or ACT) scores do vary by student which is why most colleges don’t use them as a single determinant and some are moving away from them altogether.</p>
<p>A student with straight B’s at Andover is likely not a slacker - though lack of any A’s in core courses may be a red flag. If that student has low SAT scores it may very well be test anxiety. If it is - it should be explained in the recommendations (if the teachers are doing their jobs). </p>
<p>However, if a student has A’s from a public school (rigorous or not), and has lower SSATs, AO’s would look at other factors to determine if they are capable of doing the work and would examine what type of rigor is presented at that particular school. Kids from our local college prep, for instance, may be more prepped for a competitive college than from other area high schools because of IB and AP exposure, advanced foreign language instruction and extremely competitive teams (debate, NAL, etc.) </p>
<p>If a kid from Andover has B’s, a less than ideal SAT and no extracurriculars, they may be beat out by a kid from public school with A’s, a less than ideal SAT and substantial extracurriculars. People forget that MIT, for instance, has creative people as well as science nerds so nontraditional EC’s can stand out.</p>
<p>It just depends - on the mix of students in any given year. AO’s are doing a delicate balancing act. </p>
<p>So how low is low? Neither student is going to get considered at 1500. In most cases admissions officers might look at ranges within a few hundred points, but below 1800 is going to be a flag for that school without a lot of other factors to explain why the score is an anomaly. But EVERY admitted kid is within a reasonable range in terms of scores.</p>
<p>And remember, colleges have hundreds or thousands of courses that allow bright students to quickly get up to speed if they need a boost. At MIT I took a course affectionately nicknamed: “Physics for Poets” (taught by a professor who was science advisor for NOVA) instead of “Physics for normal people” or “Physics for Masochists” (people planning to major in Physics) and suddenly Physics made sense. Despite going to Exeter and despite scoring well on SAT’s, high school physics was still an enigma whereas my brain totally wrapped around chemisty. So I wasn’t a “perfect” student, but I was a good one.</p>
<p>So the school, if it is doing its job - looks at the whole person not the score. But the score still counts.</p>
<p>The lesson - be the best you can be and the universe will put you where you need to be to fulfill your destiny (even if you don’t agree with the plan) :-)</p>