<p>"A fair number of top schools don't even consider freshman grades (Princeton and Stanford I believe)."</p>
<p>i think yale doesn't either</p>
<p>What kind of score would you guyssuggest shooting fr for ACT?</p>
<p>^32+ ACT and 700+ in each section SAT. </p>
<p>It is hard to impress at highly selectives with great standardized scores, since so many applicants have great scores. A 2400 or 36 is surely notable, but some still get rejected with perfect scores. </p>
<p>While test scores are definitely important, MAKE SURE to focus on how you look OVERALL as an applicant.</p>
<p>Less competitive schools will notice you if your score is high, since you will stand out in the applicant pool.</p>
<p>No score is going to get you accepted. 2/3's of perfect SAT scorers are denied from H.</p>
<p>Here is a way to figure out where you stand....</p>
<p>X= # admitted by a school in last admit year;
(for example X might be 1900 for H, 1800 for P, 1500 for M etc.
this number is the number of applicants accepted not the
number who will attend - much smaller number than this)</p>
<p>If your state is in the main geographic region as the college
(New England Area for H, NJ for P, CT for Y) use
Y= X/10 otherwise use Y= X/40; exception if you are from SD, ND,
or one of those states no one sees license plates from use Y=X/10)</p>
<p>You can use exact gender % but typically just split in half(50%)
Z = Y/2</p>
<p>Could you honestly count yourself amongst your state's top
Z applicants to H/Y/P?</p>
<p>Types of national/state awards, score analysis for your state from
CB, AMC/USABO/USNCO/etc scores will tell you this.....</p>
<p>In the best cases Z is going to be a number around 50. In a nutshell
are you amongst the top 50 students (of a given gender) applying to
a specific college? In most states that number is going to be as low as
15-20 for a specific gender.</p>
<p>You can take this to the next level and split say 20 of a particular
gender to: 2 math focused, 2 science focused, 2 lang focused,
2 social studies focused, 2 arts focused, 2 litt and humanities focused
and an additional 8 hooked in athletics/visual performing arts including
music and legacy.</p>
<p>Now you can begin to appreciate how competitive admittance is and
how difficult is is for your regional rep to advocate your admittance to
their adcoms. they need a convincing case youa re amongst the top
2 within a narrow academic context.</p>
<p>Preparing for college admittance can be very eye opening on the state
of competition.</p>
<p>Thinking about things geographically is good, but the formula is problematic. If you're from NorCal, the formula would have you believe that you need to be among the top 50 students of either gender in the entire state to get into Harvard. Clearly this overestimates the difficulty of such a feat. A better way of doing things is to look at how many students from your state are represented in a college's entering class. [url=<a href="http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admission_statistics/map.htm%5DHere%5B/url">http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admission_statistics/map.htm]Here[/url</a>] are the statistics for Princeton's Class of 2011. Divide this number by the college's yield. Divide again by two to take gender into account if you are so inclined.</p>
<p>ivyleaguewannabe- it is that easy!</p>
<p>^ I totally agree. Just do the best you can in the time frame that you have. You can't do better than your best.</p>
<p>^^Good point...</p>