Now that the first New SAT scores are out, I’m wondering, as I’m sure many others are, what score “range” can be considered good enough to be competitive for those top Ivy and other highly selective colleges? Of course, this is quite relative, but the score of 2200+ with the old SAT is what I looked at as “within range.” I did look at the new SAT to old SAT concordance tables, but there’s much confusion about it and it’s hard to tell by the tables alone. Is any score above 1500 considered to be in that range or is it more like 1550+ given the testimonies out there that the new SAT is much easier than the old?
Many merit scholarships (e.g. Bama’s Presidential Scholarship) had a 1400 CR+M threshold, for the Old test. The equivalent score for the New test is 1450.
I think that the smaller and thicker tail you are seeing on the SAT is intentional – both on the part of the College Board to make it easier to get a good score, but I would also imaging that super-selective schools were included in that decision. I think they want a larger group of top students to choose from without it affecting their selectivity ratings. I would guess that a 1550 is good enough to get the attention of any school, but 1500 may still fit the Stanford-Harvard-Yale range too. One interesting point is that the top schools will be able to do their own statistical rankings without using the College Board correspondence tables. I assume they will rank scores compared to all other applicants.