The College Board reports that fewer than 600 people a year get 2400 in one sitting on the SAT. Any idea on how many more get 2400 with superscoring across multiple sittings?
Probably not that many because they’d be unlikely to re-test if they were close to 2400 on the first try. You might as well ask how many would get it if you look at the error bars on the score report. A lot.
Apparently all of them are on College Confidential.
Or maybe it just feels that way.
Curious why you are asking this. I don’t think it matters whether someone gets 2400 versus some other score that meets the benchmark for a particular school, and chasing a perfect score seems like a lot of stress, for a goal that really doesn’t mean that much.
Just curious how common it really is, as it’s mentioned with some frequency here to eastcoascrazy’s point.
I agree that there’s probably not a lot of upside in terms of admissions for 2400 versus 2300 for example, and SAT scores are only part of the equation in any case.
A good number of posters on CC seem to have a different opinion on scores. One poster went so far as to start a thread asking if his superscored 2390 (over 3 attempts) was good enough of if he should keep trying until he gets up to a 2400 superscore.
^OMG :((
Nobody cares about superscoring. The only real 2400 is a single sitting score.
superscore doesnt even matter that much because most of the better schools that people with 2400s would be applying to ask for all scores anyway
I have a feeling a student who keeps retaking for a supescored 2400 isn’t going to impress the elite school admission office. Hopefully such child has other activities and accomplishments.
A poster (whose name I don’t remember, unfortunately) addressed this question very intelligently a few years ago, when the mania for superscoring was in its infancy. If I remember correctly, I think he concluded that if everyone took the test at least three times, the number of superscored 2400s would probably approach the number of people with scores of 2340-2350 or higher on a single test, but that because clearly not everyone took multiple tests the likely number was probably around the number of people with 2370-2380 or higher on a single test. Roughly 2-3 x the single-test number. His analysis was really convincing, but of course I don’t remember that, either, not exactly.
The other thing you need to take into account is that there are about as many ACT takers as SAT takers. There’s an overlap between the two, but it’s not more than 35-40% of the test takers. Bottom line, there could be as many as 3,000 kids out there, maybe more, with some claim to a superscored “perfect” score.
DS had the sane response when classmates (not GC or parents!) pressured him to retake a 2360. He joked that he had dodged a bullet, because AOs always love to brag about how many 2400s they had rejected. :))
I think it was originaloog who did that analysis. I couldn’t find it using the search function, but maybe someone else can.
It’s important, also, to recognize why colleges are perfectly happy with superscoring. If that’s what they use in their admissions process, it can also be what they report to USNWR and NCES. So it’s like Lake Wobegone: all of the children are above average. If a college’s 75-25 split would be 2100 - 1830 with single test scoring, with superscoring it may be 2140 - 1880, and it looks that much more impressive.
JHS, yup, follow the money 
That’s interesting JHS, if that’s correct some of the top schools could see perfect SAT or ACT scores in ~10% of their applicants, which is considerable.
I wouldn’t go that far, @bluewater2015. There’s no chance that all 3,000 of them apply to any one college, or anywhere close to that number. Even Harvard and Stanford aren’t that popular.
JHS’s post brings up an interesting question.
What percentage of tippy-top kids, in the US, apply to Harvard (just to pick one school).
By tippy-top here, let’s say I mean 2350+/35+ SAT/ACT, top 1% of class (if not valedictorian), solid extra-curriculars…
Or, more broadly, what % of such kids apply to ANY school in the top 10-20? What % apply to Harvard in particular? How many of the top 10-20 do such kids apply to, on average?
OK, so I’m a bit skeptical anyone here has or can point to such precise data (or something close to it), but it would be interesting to know…
Tippy top doesn’t matter. Above 2200 matters much more, then over that is just icing on the cake and won’t make a mediocre application acceptable.
I do understand why people who get 2000 or 2100 without studying would want to study and retake.
I do not understand why anyone with a 2250+ would want to retake, especially if they got any 800s.
Adcoms are not impressed with the ability to do really really really well on the SAT as opposed to really really well.
You can find more than a few threads of people whining “but I got 2300+ on my SAT and was rejected!!!”. They just don’t get the college admissions process.
@MWDadOf3 - Here’s some data that’s relevant -
[ul]
[]Last year, about 10,300 kids got an 800 on the SAT CR. About 4,200 of them applied to Stanford.
[]Last year, about 14,700 kids got an 800 on the SAT M. About 7,600 of them applied to Stanford.
[/ul]
This would suggest about 40%- 50% of “tippy-top” kids apply to Stanford. Pretty high fraction if you ask me. But that’s just one school and uses a very narrow definition of “tippy-top” (BTW - only about 10% of these 800 scoring kids are admitted).
@al2simon - Thanks - great info. And considering that Stanford is West Coast (thus far from ~3/4 of the population), and that, despite whatever USN&WR thinks in a given year, many/most students & parents would put Harvard at the top of their dream list, I’d guess the numbers for Harvard are somewhat higher.