<p>^thanks for clarifying that. Most NC public schools use the latter scale</p>
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<p>What class you take absolutly matters for schools like UC Berkeley or UCLA. UCs recalulate your gpa based on the UC weighted formula.</p>
<p>If you go to a school in CA, you can search your high school in the UC database. It will give you a list of UC approved classes and which AP/Honor classes give your gpa an extra point for your high school.
<a href=“A-G Policy Resource Guide”>A-G Policy Resource Guide;
<p>You can search for a college’s common data set. There is a section in there that states what the college sees as most important factor to least important.</p>
<p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>The only issue I have with the GPA again is that some places have such high grade inflation. I was talking to my friend who is from Southern California, it’s called Palis Verdes I believe, and she told me that she had a 3.8 but that was bad. A lot of people she knew had 4.5’s (with the AP weighted.) </p>
<p>Those GPA’s are so much higher than where I am from. How can I compare to that?</p>
<p>^ School context is considered when admissions officers look at GPA.</p>
<p>Silverturtle,</p>
<p>They say that but do you really believe it?</p>
<p>Let’s say I am applying to Stanford from my school in CT. Do you think they will know of my school? </p>
<p>Maybe they will have heard of it, but they won’t know of it is easy/difficult.</p>
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<p>Yes, absolutely. I am the first to be skeptical of many things that admissions officers say, but it is quite obvious that they are not lying then they say this.</p>
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<p>Most likely. They have admissions officers assigned to relatively small regions. Even if they did not know your school, though, they will learn about it before reviewing your application. They get a sense based on average SAT scores, past applicants, fellow applicants from this year, how many AP courses are offered, whether your high school is ranked, etc.</p>
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Don’t forget the ACT! and also SAT II’s! and of course any national competitions like AMC, AIME, etc.</p>
<p>I believe that SAT’s weightings are much closer to 60% than 25%. In the book “A for Admissions” written by a former Dartmouth Admissions Officer, she said that SAT 1, SAT 2 and Class Rank each contribute 1/3rd to a score on an academic index. According to the book, the Ivies establish an academic index and if a student can’t measure up to index they would not be considered for admission unless there were compelling reasons.</p>
<p>Extra curriculars, for most, are just a tie breaker. An essay is an opportunity to be a game changer.</p>
<p>On another thread here at CC, someone aggregated the resuts of early action at Yale and the SAT scores of acceptances was 2350. That would be pretty compelling evidence that SAT’s are very important.</p>
<p>silverturtle,</p>
<p>Schools don’t have admissions officers travel to every high school in the country. I think it’s a bit naive to think that. What about states with smaller populations, for example South Dakota?</p>
<p>It’s not that I don’t believe admissions officers, I just think it’s unrealistic. It’d cost the university so much money to have admissions officers covering various areas in the US, and I don’t think admissions offices are that large.</p>
<p>Colleges do not use/care about the GPA that may be on your transcript. They take your grades/classes into consideration and calculate their own “standardized” version of your GPA. Trust me - my college guidance counselor is a former admissions director at a big university and head of college guidance for my state.</p>
<p>While I understand the SAT isn’t the only thing colleges look at, I would be willing to make the argument that it is the single most important thing. </p>
<p>Colleges, especially those large schools that receive many applicants, have to narrow down their search. The SAT is the most standardized way of doing this, because they can’t say, “OK we will cut everyone below a 3.3 and then review the left over applicants.” At some schools a 3.3 could be an equivalent of a 4.3 at another. It also wouldn’t be beneficial for the admissions committee to immediately recalculate the GPA under a different scale, because it would be a nearly insurmountable amount of work due to the extreme variation in courses offered.</p>
<p>Thus, the only reasonable way to make the initial cuts is to narrow the applicant pool by cutting anyone with an SAT bellow “1800.”</p>
<p>That is all assuming that admissions offices don’t thoroughly review each applicant on an individual basis(let me know if that isn’t how it works).</p>
<p>Quite frankly, I feel that if one applies to a top school with a 1600(out of 2400) SAT, even if he has some stellar ECs, 4.0 UW GPA, Valedictorian, All honors/AP, and recommendations comparing himself to Mother Teresa. He just doesn’t stand a chance.</p>
<p>Now that’s not to say that ECs/GPA/Recs/Essay and stuff aren’t as important as the SAT together, but the SAT is surely the single most important thing in college admissions.
In my opinion, I would put it at 50% with everything else adding up to 50%.</p>
<p>Anyone disagree?</p>
<p>@ivytune001, they have LOCAL admissions officers who kind of do that “preliminary round” of admissions.</p>
<p>If anyone says SAT matters more than GPA/rank, s/he is lying. Even the colleges themselves will tell you GPA is the single most important thing. That person with the 1600/2400 with a 4.3 GPA and top 5% rank still has a CHANCE of being admitted. The applicant with a 2400 and a 3.0 GPA has no chance at all unless he is Bill Gates’s son or won a Nobel Prize.</p>
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<p>I never said anything about traveling.</p>
<p>Unreal, the sh1t that comes from the uninformed. Really now? You’re joking when you say 1600 + Top 5% > 2400 + 3.0 GPA right?</p>
<p>If a 3.0 puts you in the 50th percentile or so of your class, then yes I stand by that. Due to the infamous GRADE INFLATION that everyone here seems to bash, then it’s very likely a 3.0 would but you in the 50th percentile. It’s not like a C is actually the average at most schools anymore.</p>
<p>If you are in the 50th percentile of your class and you attend a normal high school, you would have ~no chance at a top school, regardless of your SAT score. Similarly, a student with 1600 out of 2400 on the SAT would have ~no chance at a top school.</p>
<p>Colleges do build a history about high schools based on past student admits and their performance. They get a sense how a student say from Andover MA with B grades fare compared to say a reputed public school in NY or MI. These are all subjective and do play a role in admission, unfortunately or fortunately.</p>
<p>So worry about what you can control.</p>
<p>Ahhh, so many guides to getting 2350+. I wish they were all like merged together.</p>
<p>I think it is really unrealistic to think that colleges have an understanding about every high school. Do you have any idea how many high schools there are in the US, public and private?</p>
<p>The admissions offices at these universities are not very large.</p>
<p>I’m looking forward to take the October one which means I have about a little over three months left to prepare. My last score was 1800. And I’m serious about using this summer to study for the sats. How many months did it take u to study and how long did do u think it’s enough to study per day? Also, would u say it is necessary to go through the entire sat prep book page by page or just do the practice tests? Srry for asking so much, but I want to make the best of the few months I got left. I’m posting this from barnes an nobles btw. ;)</p>