How exactly important is the SAT/ACT?

Test Preparation
1

Take Williams for example. Their ED accepted students had an average of 724 in EBRW and 720 in math.
Many say that you should aim to be within 75th percentile of the incoming class in order to have a realistic shot at gaining admission to top tier schools if you are not an 1)recruited athlete 2)have multi-million dollar donor or hooked in some other way.

Take student A for example.
He is an Asian student with test scores applying to Williams without any hooks:
730 EBRW 800M =1530 his EBRW is about average and M is well above average.
Would his chances increase significantly if he were to raise his EBRW scores to 780-800 range?

My question is really:
Is SAT used merely as a threshold line where once you are above this threshold, the increase in score is negligible in terms of admission?
So is the admission committee, once they have seen that the student has a “good” sat score, scores won’t really be considered further and will focus on other parts of the application?

2

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1971287-perspectives-from-an-admissions-office-at-a-selective-school-part-1.html#latest

Pretty sure scores don’t matter that much after a certain benchmark. Since you are a low-income student, you should look into college fly-in programs(especially Windows On Williams if you are interested in Williams College.) These fly-in programs are completely free and if you get accepted and attended these programs, you are pretty much gonna get into the school itself(Tufts fly-in is the only exception. Only 50% of the kids that did the fly-in get in according to the people I talked to.)

Schools with fly-in(or similar to fly-in) programs:

Darthmouth, Amherst DIVOH, MIT, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Tufts, Hamilton, etc.

3

Yeah, pretty surethere is a certain point where good scores on the SAT don’t really help out that much. Maybe a perfect score will help you to stand out a bit more, but it does not matter as much.
I would worry more about doing decent on the SAT’s and very well on the extra-curricular. Too many people get perfect scores/high scores on the SAT/ACT’s and they don’t mean much if they can’t stand out from the rest.

4

The others are correct, once you hit a certain number, it’s not going to make a difference. All colleges want high test scores. You are probably well aware that tens of,thousands of Vals and Sals with high test scores are rejected from Top 20s and LACs every year.

To answer your question:
Correct, once you hit a certain threshold, wihtout hooks, etc…it’s all the other stuff that decides admission. And to answer your title, at schools that want test scores, high test scores are very important.

5

If you have access to Naviance and your school has had enough applicants to top schools, you can see pretty clearly how it works. At Williams, Amherst, most Ivies, UChicago, MIT, Stanford, Duke and a few more - the admitted students are all above a certain test score and GPA, but after that, the admissions pattern remains scattered. Other factors like ECs and recommendations and essays all clearly play a major part in determining whether you get admitted.

Now there are some competitive schools where test scores seem to matter more than others. For our high school and from what I have heard from others posters on CC, it seems that Vanderbilt, WashU, Tufts, Notre Dame, USC, Northeastern, and some others seem to emphasize test scores more highly. Virtually every applicant with an extremely high SAT or ACT (and good grades) gets admitted to those schools from our high school. ECs, recs and essays don’t seem to matter much at all.

Finally, there are schools that care less about test scores than others. The most obvious examples are UCBerkeley, UCLA and the other UCs, which all emphasize grades, class rank and class rigor more than tests. They want the very top students from every high school in California to get a chance at a UC, even if the school was poor and lousy. They cannot consider race, they don’t care much about hooks, and they don’t have time to carefully evaluate your essays - they have over 100,000 applications to get through. Basically, if you aren’t the very top of your high school class, your 36 ACT won’t get you in, but if you are, your 26 ACT won’t keep you out.

So, the upshot is - if you are aiming for Ivies, Williams, Amherst and similar schools, if you get your test score into the top range, lets say 34-36 ACT or 1500+ SAT, you can stop and worry about other things. If you are aiming for Vandy, WashU, etc., you should maximize your test scores to improve your chances. If you are aiming for UCBerkeley, worry about your grades and class rigor vis-a-vis the rest of your school.

There’s a good place for every good student. You will find yours.