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There are many exceptions. For example, the Stanford admissions page at [Applicant</a> Profile : Stanford University](<a href=“Page Not Found : Stanford University”>Page Not Found : Stanford University) shows 28% of the freshman class had under 700 on the SAT verbal section. The other SAT tests were similar. The admit rate was ~4% for persons who scored in the 600s vs ~9% for persons who scored in the 700s. I was accepted with a 500 several years ago. </p>
<p>Awhile back, Chirstopher Avery from Harvard did a paper that graphed the chance of admission by percentile of SAT score at various schools (<a href=“http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803.pdf?new_window=1[/url]”>http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803.pdf?new_window=1</a> ). Some of the graphs were interesting in that the chance of acceptance sometimes decreased as SAT score increased. For example, at Princeton students in the 92 to 94th percentile SAT (~2000 combined score) had twice the acceptance rate of a students in the 97-98th percentile (~2150 combined score). He suggested it might relate to manipulating yield, as the lower percentile students are more likely to choose to attend Princeton while the top scoring students are more likely to be cross admits with schools that students tend to choose over Princeton. None of the graphs showed a sharp division at a particular SAT score, such as 0% chance of acceptance at 2090 vs 6% at 2110. Instead it was more gradually reducing chance of acceptance as SAT decreased.</p>