<p>Hey, I was wondering, isn't your SAT scored looked at in relevance to your environment and your surroundings? In other words, let's say someone got a score like a 1410 on the old SAT (lol i promise... this isn't me). Obviously, there are other CCers with scores much higher than that, but what if that student went to a high school where the average SAT was a 1000? Wouldn't they look at that favorably, as compared to another student who gets a 1410 yet goes to an elite prep school where the average SAT is 1410? Please post some comments!</p>
<p>I'm not an adcom, but...if I were...I'd probably not compare SATs to people in each school. I always thought SATs were used as an unbiased common comparison between applicants, whereas GPAs and things can vary more (because on teachers who grade differently). The SAT, however, is scored the same way for all.</p>
<p>If someone had a score that was so much greater than his/her peers, that person would probably be in the top of the class and THAT would probably be more important for the adcom, seeing how you compare to others within your school (GPA and rank) and others all over the world (SATs)</p>
<p>And ec's are really important too.</p>
<p>So, it's a lot more complicated than just numbers. J'ai fini.</p>
<p>In her book Michelle Hernandez, a former admissions officer at Dartmouth said that they sort of lowered the SAT standard for low-income students since they often can't afford the SAT courses that more affluent students applying to top schools take. Also, I heard a girl got into Harvard with like an 1100 cause she was extremely poor.</p>
<p>Wait, I'm poor, but I got a free sat book from my school. I got a pretty good score...</p>
<p>me too. but that's what i read in the book.</p>
<p>yeah they do compare it against your upbringing. i think harry bauld (or someone) said that a 700v from a kid whose parents are both english professers is less inpressive then a kid in arkansas who got a 650 verbal despite the only books in the house being the bible and TV Guide.</p>
<p>Hey don't stereotype people from Arkansas. That sounds more like Tennessee folk if you ask me. Bill Clinton's from Arkansas and he went to Yale. It was for law school not as an undergrad, but still.</p>
<p>Being serious for a moment, I'm glad someone brought this up, because it's something that's been on my mind. I know that last year the average SAT score for the 40 kids at my hs that took the test was about 850. I go to school in the ghetto, 90 percent of the student pop. is non-white and some 60 percent are on free/reduced lunch, so unfortunately the low student achievement is almost what you'd expect. Now compare that to another hs in my district which is feed by students from affluent, well-educated backgrounds and the average SAT score is 1200. Without drifting into the complexities of the race/class/gender gaps in SAT scores, I think it's fair to generalize that home environment and to an extent school environment influences how a student performs on the SAT. So it's not entirely accurate to use the SAT as a gage for intellectuality vitality or really anything else since there's more that goes into a score than smarts.</p>
<p>I'm the guy that brought this topic up! =DDD</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>Agreed. I do think they discuss environment. What makes you so different if you are like, the 40th person in your school that has a 2400? I mean, impressive, I guess, but so what?</p>
<p>I was about...ummm, yeah, like almost a thousand points higher than my average for my school. So I'm probably saying that that helped, seeing as why did I get so high when the majority in my school failed? </p>
<p>I think its' a comparison of backgrounds in that situation.</p>
<p>My score is 1410--and I have the second or third highest SAT score in my class. This is EXTREMELY low for Yale or whatever top tier school, but in comparison to my class... I'm not feeling too bad about it.</p>
<p>My class is made up of 600. The average SAT score is 920 or so.</p>
<p>In terms of the new SATs, I'm about a 800 points higher than the rest of my school. Compared to the Yale applicants on CC, I'm about 200 points lower. I say that it's all relative.</p>