<p>Because no one knows for sure what the grading standard is in any particular school, colleges have to pay some attention to other lines of evidence when deciding who is ready for competitive college work. The college admission tests such as the SAT I and the ACT are also imperfect, just as grades are, but they do have the advantage of being COMPARABLE across a huge population of test-takers. </p>
<p>In general, anyone who is an avid reader, given enough years of avid reading, will eventually score high on the SAT I. (By that I mean the person will score high on the verbal section AND the math section.) Some kids get into high school having done remarkably little independent, challenging reading, especially in this day of video games and instant messaging. Young people who READ, READ, READ, and READ pretty nearly never fare poorly on the SAT I verbal section. Young people who actually do all the math problems it takes to master math through geometry and THINK about the math as they do generally do fine on the SAT I math section. Such young people are, other things being equal*, more ready for challenging college work than young people who score significantly lower on the SAT I (or ACT). </p>
<p>BUT, BUT, BUT, the commonly observed phenomenon of kids scoring high on the SAT I but getting poor high school grades is very inexpedient for those kids. I knew a lot of kids like that when I was in high school in the 1970s--those kids were brilliant, as evidenced by one-on-one conversation, some of their written work, their IQ scores, and their college entrance test scores, but they were bored silly by their high school assignments. Now that I have lived overseas and have traveled all over the United States and have seen how meager the academic standards are in most United States schools, and how socially disaffected some bright young people are, I can sympathize with such young people in the United States, but I can't advise imitating their example. To a college admission officer, high test scores plus low grades equals LAZY. The kid who isn't doing his high school homework had better be doing something REALLY HARD (finding a cure for cancer would be hard enough) to show that he is not simply shirking opportunities to find learning challenges in his environment. Often the most expedient thing to do for a bright (here defined as scoring high on tests) kid to do if the first school is too boring is to find another school, or get out of school entirely and into homeschooling (perhaps with early enrollment at a community college or distance learning to find challenging courses). ]</p>
<p>*Other things usually aren't equal. A child from a poor family who works to support his family and gets moderately high but not super-high grades, and above-average but not spectacularly high test scores, will probably look more appealing as a candidate for college than a rich kid whose free time is taken up by recreation. A first-generation immigrant, naturally, is hardly expected to have as high a verbal score as a native speaker of English who grew up in America. There are many extracurricular actitivities that can demonstrate character and commitment to personal challenge and growth that show up neither on test scores nor on school grades. But the expedient thing to do for applying to college is to have good grades (I think you know what to do to get those), good test scores (reading more will help you get those), AND a record of challenging extracurricular activities (which can vary as widely as the interests of young people; do what is interesting to YOU). </p>
<p>One data point I know of is a boy who grew up MOSTLY in the United States but also lived for three years in a non-English speaking country. He aced the SAT I math section at age eleven, but still has some room to grow on the verbal section. He has straight As so far, but takes many ungraded classes and is mostly homeschooled. There is a HUGE variety of other examples of kids with every which combination of test scores or grades. </p>
<p>Good luck in your studies.</p>