<p>... rank 1 unweighted GPA compared to perfect 800s on SATs?</p>
<p>Which rank does your school send out? I know my school sends out only the weighted GPA rank, but if your school sends out the unweighted GPA, and you have decent SAT scores, it'll be all good. Look at it this way. One year, Brown rejected everyone with a perfect SAT score.</p>
<p>unweighted rank only. which is rank 1. im rank 1 weighted, too.</p>
<p>i think a 1580 is superior to a 1600 in terms of the jealously factor.</p>
<p>I have rank 1 status for my three years, but I hope it doesn't change my senior year... im taking ap chemistry.</p>
<p>How in the world is a 1580 more impressive than a 1600 in any way?</p>
<p>it's not... im just saying... considering schools do reject 1600ers</p>
<p>oh yeah, and schools don't reject 1580s...EVER.</p>
<p>^ hahaha, this thing he says, it's obviously true :p</p>
<p>about 1600s: I doubt the rationale of schools who do that. 1600s increase SAT score averages, for one, so the only reason they should be rejecting 1600 (or any other high scorer) is if the rest of the applicant's app isn't so hot.</p>
<p>Schools that know what they are doing and are highly desired schools have admissions probabilities that are "monotonically increasing" (I wouldn't have said it that way, but it's a nice way to say it) by SAT score. In other words, at Harvard, MIT, or any other school that doesn't have hang-ups about applicants preferring some other school to it, applicants will be more likely to be admitted the higher their SAT scores. </p>
<p>Oh, and to answer the OP's original question, neither characteristic is particularly impressive in itself when possessors of each characteristic number in the thousands (people at the top of their class) or many hundreds (people with 1600 SATs). There are only so many spaces in Princeton's entering class--and, no, the top scorers or top grade-getters aren't going to fill all of those spaces, because of the desire the university has to admit a balanced, diverse class.</p>
<p>well very few people got perfect scores on the new sats (107 i think), so thatll be more impressive than a 1600 was in the past. I think if you had #2 and perfect 2400, youd do better than #1 and 2300. just guessing.</p>
<p>The 107 persons with 2400s on the new SAT (and I do find that impressive, PERSONALLY, by the way) are from just one test date. There will be more to round out a whole year's worth of test-takers. Most top colleges (definitely Harvard) give you the benefit of your highest section score, section by section, from however many times you took the test, so perfect scorers by institutional methodology are more numerous than the single-sitting perfect scorers that the College Board counts. Once you get into the hundreds of people per year having some characteristic, you and I may be impressed, but a top college need not be impressed--it has seen lots of other applicants with equally impressive statistics.</p>
<p>I don't think you can compare class rank with SAT score. We have had some vals from our school who were the "hard worker" type of student, with SATs in the low 1400s or even high 1300s. We have had others with perfect or near-perfect boards. It's the big picture that counts, and the big picture needs to include some impressive ECs (beyond the school clubs) as well as a very challenging courseload.</p>
<p>At Princeton, 800s on each section and being ranked 1 will get you in the door, but they only mean so much. After all, what do the SATs test? Algebra, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and grammar? Those are pretty basic skills. When you say you got a 1600, you're saying you just aced a 10th grade level math/reading/grammar test. Commendable? Yes. Something to get really excited over? Not for the Princeton Admissions office. As far as being ranked #1, if you're coming from a really good school, and have taken the most demanding schedule possible, then that means a lot. If you're coming from a not-so-good school, then it's still impressive and they're not gonna hold your high school against you. But they need some other evidence that you are really that smart and talented and of good character. For people from such schools, I think SATs are a little bit more important in assessing this, as well as ECs and awards. It looks really good if you go beyond what is expected of you, if you create opportunities for yourself to develop your talents and intellectual passions.</p>
<p>There are more than 38,000 high schools in the United States, and many more worldwide, and most suffer from grade inflation. So I doubt that a perfect grade average does anything other than remove the negative implication that a person with a lower grade average is less smart than higher-ranked persons at the same high school. I'd have to see the high school's curriculum to decide whether or not to be impressed.</p>
<p>I think rank is more important because it illustrates long term achievement but then again, SATs are a normalizing factor that compares your school to others.</p>