<p>Can you have a reasonable chance to HYP, MIT, Penn, and Dartmouth with a 3.7 if you have a 2400 SAT, flawless</p>
<p>If you’re number one in your class that often sends graduates to HYP. Otherwise, the SAT does not make up for the grades.</p>
<p>You’re in competition with 2400/4.0+ applicants.</p>
<p>Depends what you mean by reasonable. Given the strength and size of the applicant pool for these schools, nobody has a very high chance. That being said, all the elite schools look at the whole student. A student’s four year high school experience cannot be adequately summed up by a single number. Did that 3.7 come because of one terribly low grade - perhaps because the applicant took on something that was just too hard? Or , at the other end of the scale, was the high school just so poor that the applicant was bored?
What else has he/she done? What is he/she like?
Don’t make the mistake, often seen here, of believing that a few numbers completely define an applicant’s chances.</p>
<p>Kids with perfect sats and perfect gpas get rejected from ivies</p>
<p>^ Yes, indeed, good point. There are so many with perfect SATs and high GPAs that many are rejected. A few with lower numbers get in as well, but the competition is tough.</p>
<p>So somewhat related question. Suppose I took really challenging courses, beyond what most people take in that grade, but managed to not do so well; for typical reasons of depression, self-discovery, and essentially typical things like that. That phase that almost everyone goes through. Freshman year was perfect though. Sophomore year, just really sucked because I was over-ambitious and over-estimated myself, which in turn lead to poor grades. Meaning B’s, borderline mainly. But in the end, I just couldn’t pull myself together, and I regret that. (They were actually APs, and I did get 5s) Then Junior year comes. Still highly difficult course-load, but manageable. Expecting straight A’s or very close. Cumulative GPA comes out to like 3.8. Do I still have a shot at top schools? Or does my GPA make it highly improbable?</p>
<p>You’ll do fine. Good schools will see what’s up. “Rigor” and “Challenge” count for a lot. I would suggest looking a little beyond the biggest name schools. Look at schools with holistic admissions. Check out “Colleges that Change Lives”. There are a lot of very fine schools there.</p>
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…but not at a terribly high rate.</p>
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<p>It depends on the school. My high school prior to 2009, GPA and SAT were enough to get you in ANYWHERE, no questions (assuming you made like the 3.8/3.9, 2350 cutoff, as 4.0s were essentially impossible). On the other hand, during my year, applicants with those same qualifications were denied for various reasons (i.e., one of HYP took five applicants, all legacies/recruits). It just depends.</p>