@TimeUpJunior Coz it makes them look cool and no one will ever know they lied.
I agree with @ReadyForTheWind . 2300 is a sleep at night score. No possibility that someone will reject you based even in part on your score. They may yet be disappointed by other metrics but not that one. Same thing with perfect single scores of 800. They are rare and valued.
@compmom I’m simply speaking from my personal experience. The average SAT at Harvard is a 2260-- you should generally aim to be there or a little above in order for it to not factor into the decision. I do not know anyone who got a 2300+ single sitting who got rejected from all the top schools they applied to, I know multiple 2200-2300 people for whom that is true.
I agree with @readyForTheWind. Many high schools no longer report GPA or rank to colleges, so Admissions Officers are forced to put greater emphasis on SAT/ACT scores. That’s not necessarily true at Harvard, but it’s true at many other selective schools. I’ve seen it happen multiple times over the years for it not to be a trend.
The higher your ACT/SAT score the less likely an Admissions Officer or Admissions Committee will question if you can do the work on their campus. That doesn’t mean a student with a perfect score will get accepted to all the colleges they apply to, but it does mean they are less likely to get rejected by all the top colleges on their list.
The difference between a 2200 and 2400 is pretty meaningless all things considered (in terms of intelligence, which really cannot be measured hierarchically since there are many kinds) and I believe that the more selective colleges spend so much more time on admissions that they are not numbers-driven but (repeating myself) are “holistc.” There has been a statistic on here about percentage of 2400’s rejected by Harvard and it was surprisingly high. Admissions is assembling an interesting class and a class full of perfect scorers with perfect GPA’s is not an ideal mix, unless they add something else. I remember Fitzsimmons joking about how the admissions office is next to Howard Gardner’s for a reason.
JHS said it much better than I have, back there somewhere. And sorry to repeat myself. It’s just that I hope high schoolers reading this don’t spend too much time trying to get a perfect score, and instead do something more interesting and fun.
@compmom The admissions committee is compiling a diverse class of students who they believe have the academic chops to handle Harvard. They aren’t going to be admitting students with little academic achievement simply for an “ideal mix.”
As I’ve said, SAT is not the be all and end all in any way shape or form of the admissions process, but the fact is that a 2200 can be looked upon as showing some lack of academic preparation for the school, while in no way would a score 2300+ be looked at the same way. Obviously students have to add something else in the mix.
A surprisingly high number of 2400s are rejected? No doubt. Is the number higher for 2200-2300? Again, no doubt.
Edit: Definitely agree with the sentiment that improving XCs and doing other things certainly has a larger marginal benefit, just don’t agree with the sentiment that it doesn’t make a difference past 2200.
What is your source? Can you cite it? I think a 2200 is a pretty healthy score. Harvard has explicitly stated they don’t expect everyone to do well in all aptitudes or subjects, hence the reference to Gardner and his multiple intelligences. A student could have a 700 in math, a 700 in writing and a 750 in critical reading for a total of 2150 and certainly be prepared. Sorry, I’ll stop. My intent is constructive and I have made the point I wanted to make for high schoolers 
Meet my children. 2300 and 2330. Both single sitting. The first one was taking the test for the second time; the second one only took it that once.
^^ And they were rejected by ALL the top schools they applied to?
I happened to be reading a Boston Globe article this morning on the issue of admissions for Asians, since there is currently a lawsuit going on. Here is an interesting quote:
“The suit cited a 2009 Princeton University study of seven top colleges that concluded an Asian applicant needed an average 1460 SAT score to be admitted, while whites with similar academic qualifications needed 1320, Hispanics 1190, and blacks 1010.”
Of course, in the group about which the article was written, there were several accounts of perfect scorers getting rejected. It is also widely recognized that scores aren’t the main thing: you need something else to make you interesting.
Here is another quote on advice to "avoid appearing like a “grade grubber: Schools don’t want students who care too much about their grades. They want kids who love learning.” Ditto with multiple efforts to get a perfect SAT score, time better spent.
Not that they applied to that many, but, yes, they were rejected or waitlisted (and not subsequently accepted) by all of the schools then considered “top” to which either applied: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and Penn. And Barnard, too, for that matter. Schools that accepted one or the other were the University of Chicago (back before the current Admissions dean got its admission rate into single digits), Michigan (with a full tuition merit scholarship), Berkeley, NYU, Oberlin, and Pitt (Honors College). Of course, some of them qualify as “top schools” as far as I am/was concerned, but at the time the admission rate for all of them was over 20%. They only applied to 7 colleges each, in large part because each had an early acceptance to a college he or she was happy to attend.
I’m not sure how admissions factors SAT scores into their thinking relative to other factors, but a 100 point difference in scores is a large difference in the sense that there are a lot more 2300s than 2400s, and a lot more 2200s than 2300s. Here are numbers from a recent year (these are single sitting):
2400 - 583 students
2300 and above - 8,812 students
2200 and above - 28,834 students
I wholeheartedly agree with compmom on this issue. In my own personal researches, I’ve come to the same conclusion that, once your SAT, ACT, GPA and other quantitative scores have reached a certain “range” (what compmom calls “benchmark”), there’s no discernible advantage for those with perfect scores for the Ivy schools with holistic admissions policy. For any high schoolers aspiring to Ivy schools, it’d be time wisely spent developing other areas of their strength than trying to achieve the perfect score. My own son, who’s a junior in high school, has reached that “range” with both his SAT and ACT, as well as his GPA. He’s NOT going to spend any more of his time and energy in trying to achieve that perfect score, or even trying to improve on his previous scores, for the remainder of his high school. Instead, he’ll be more focused on strengthening his EC’s.
“I do not know anyone who got a 2300+ single sitting who got rejected from all the top schools they applied to” How many do you know?
Holistic. You can score high, blow the rest of the app,and get denied. The tippy tops are not afraid to reject kids they feel are missing something.
It’s a mistake to look at this only hierarchically- best scores, best in some EC, etc. And sheesh, when the CR and M are high, (plus hs rigor and grades,) who’s going to seriously say there’s some doubt about a 2200 handling a TT?
So anyway, Princeton: SAT 2300-2400,14.5% admitted. That means 85.5% rejected. https://admission.princeton.edu/applyingforadmission/admission-statistics
One thing to bear in mind is that published average / middle 50% SAT scores are a factor in how these schools are ranked / perceived. Whether or not you believe an applicant with a 2400 is significantly more intelligent / able to do the work than another with a 2200, if a school accepts someone with an 1850 because they’re an “institutional priority” of some kind, they’ll have to accept three applicants with 2350 to get the average back to 2225. Similarly, if they want their middle 50% to have scores between 2250 and 2350, for every kid they accept below that range, they have to accept another above it. I have to think that counts for something and, all else equal, would make perfect or near-perfect scores a tipping point in deciding between otherwise equivalent applicants.
That said, I agree with @jhs that there’s also a correlation / causation issue here. While most of the classes at the tippy-tops are made up of kids who had stats above some acceptable level and a combination of other attributes that made them attractive on a “holistic” basic, some number (I’m guessing 10-15%) are demonstrably the film on the top of the academic cream and are admitted principally for that reason - that’s their hook, in effect. Those kids are just more likely to have scores at the upper end, it seems to me.
Harvard admissions had said their office is (was?) next to Howard Gardner’s, the innovative thinker behind “multiple intelligences.” Harvard admissions knows that the kind of intelligence required for great scores isn’t the only kind of intelligence they want on campus. Rankings are one thing. But creative scholars in all fields, musicians, actors, artists, writers, maintain a school’s reputation over decades and even bring their share of glory back to campus.