<p>I was wondering if there really is such a thing as a SAT score cutoff for very competitive colleges. I keep seeing on CC that everything 2250+ is looked at as the same but is this actually a fact? My single sitting SAT score is 2240 (770 Math 760 Critical Reading 710 Writing), which is just below this alleged cutoff. I know my Math + Critical Reading score (1530) is competitive for colleges but will my writing score and total score hold me back? I don't plan to major in anything related to writing (I plan to major in finance/economics.) </p>
<p>There isn’t a cutoff. Selective colleges use test scores to judge whether a student could handle the work load on their campus. The higher your ACT/SAT score, the less an Admissions Officer will question “If I admit this kid, will they struggle?” </p>
<p>Your score of 2240 is absolutely fine for all selective colleges, including HYPSM. For example, at Harvard: <a href=“The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2017”>http://features.thecrimson.com/2013/frosh-survey/admissions.html</a></p>
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<p>That said, a high GPA and test scores are a prerequisite for selective colleges. Faced with more academically qualified applicants than places in their freshman class, decisions come down to more subjective factors, such as personal qualities, character and leadership as well as intellectual curiosity, creativity, and love of learning. Admissions Officers learn about those factors from your essays, guidance counselor’s Secondary School Report (SSR), teacher recommendations and alumni interview. </p>
<p>Most schools use a holistic review approach. Therefore, there is no clear cutoff for SAT scores.</p>
<p>Your test score represents a a snapshot in time. Usually your score falls in a range of roughly 30-40 points above or below of your true ability. Colleges know this and they receive the score ranges along with your scores to consider that single snapshot in context.
<a href=“Understanding SAT Scores – SAT Suite | College Board”>The SAT – SAT Suite | College Board;
<p>Thank you for the responses. Does anyone know then how this 2250+ statistic started if it isn’t true?</p>
<p>I’m not sure where you go that bad information, but if you look at the “Common Data Set” for HYPSM – specifically the C9 Data, which is the 25th and 75th percentile test scores – you will see that 2250 is about the middle 50% for those schools, which means half of accepted students had higher scores, and half had lower scores. </p>
<p>Harvard: <a href=“http://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2011-2012.pdf”>http://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2011-2012.pdf</a>
Yale: <a href=“http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/CDS2013_2014.pdf”>http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/CDS2013_2014.pdf</a>
Princeton: <a href=“http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/common_cds2011.pdf”>http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/common_cds2011.pdf</a>
Stanford: <a href=“Stanford Common Data Set | University Communications”>Stanford Common Data Set | University Communications;
MIT: <a href=“MIT Institutional Research”>MIT Institutional Research;
<p>Selective colleges use test scores to gauge how well an applicant might handle the work load on their campus. The higher your test score, the less an Admissions Director will question “If I admit this kid, will they struggle?” No college wants to admit a student and set them up for failure, so to reassure Admissions Directors that you can handle the work load, your test scores should be somewhere in a college’s middle 50%. For selective college’s, once your test scores are safely within their range, other more subjective factors become the deciding factors in admittance, such as your teacher recommendations, EC’s and essays.</p>
<p>“I keep seeing on CC…”
Seriously, I think it’s mostly other hs kids saying it and encouraging each other to retest. Now focus on the rest of what will come through on your app, the points gibby mentioned in #1. Best wishes.</p>
<p>Thank you @gibby and @lookingforward I appreciate your help. </p>
<p>When people say X number, what they really mean is ~X number in most cases, but all of a sudden some people start taking it as a hard cutoff rather than the fuzzy approximation it is supposed to be, and then it takes on a new life. For scholarships and automatic admissions, there are hard cutoffs, but for holistic admissions, there are only approximations for everything.</p>
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That is called median, not middle 50%. ;)</p>
<p>^^ and it’s not the median either. At HYPSM the actual median might not be that much lower than the 75% percentile. </p>
<p>There’s really no way of knowing the distribution of scores in the “middle 50%”.</p>
<p>^^ No. It is median for the thing @gibby described as equal number of accepted students with higher and lower score. It is also called the 50th percentile. Middle 50% is mid 50, which is the range from 25th to 75th percentile. That is the published data. It may not be a normal distribution particularly for top schools. That’s why it is median, not a mean.</p>
<p>@billcsho except no one publishes the 50% percentile and it is not safe to take the mean of the 75% and 25%, which is what @gibby did.</p>
<p>@ormdad I did not say the 50 percentile is published. I said the mid 50s (the 25% and 75%) are. Also, @gibby did not take the mean of the 25% and 75%. He only said “2250 is about the middle 50% for those schools, which means half of accepted students had higher scores, and half had lower scores.” That is simpaly an approximation, not a calculation.</p>
<p>What I said was . . .
The implication being there isn’t one specific score, but rather a range of scores – something that is higher than the 25th percentile but lower than 75th percentile, which I approximated . . </p>
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Hoping to drive the point home, I went on further to say . . .</p>
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There range being: higher than the 25th percentile but lower than 75th percentile, My point, which seems to have gotten lost among the semantics argument: There isn’t a cut off. </p>
<p>Student’s become obsessed with test scores, often retaking tests thinking there is a score cut-off, and that a better score will magically increase their chances. However, at some school’s like Harvard, your high school GPA seems to be far more important than test scores. </p>
<p>Please go back and look at scatter diagram in the link I posted in #1 because it cross references a student’s GPA and test scores: <a href=“The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2017”>http://features.thecrimson.com/2013/frosh-survey/admissions.html</a></p>
<p>As the scatter diagram clearly indicates, there isn’t an SAT cut off.</p>
<p>Semantics aside, I agree there is no score cutoff at highly selective schools.</p>
<p>In fact, Yale has a section titled “No Score Cutoffs” on this page that presumably we will accept as face value:</p>
<p><a href=“What Yale Looks For | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions”>What Yale Looks For | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions;
<p>OP, it is worth a read. And btw a 1530 CR/M is competitive, and a low writing score will probably not hurt you. The general consensus is that W is not weighted as high as CR/M, if at all, and schools can use supplements to evaluate writing skills.</p>
<p>Not that 710 is “low.” </p>
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If you look at admit rate by SAT score while holding GPA and other factors constant, admit rate usually keeps going up as SAT score keeps going up, including for scores of well above 2250. </p>
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Selective colleges do not look at SAT test scores while holding GPA’s constant – that would be like evaluating a student in a vacuum. Admissions Officers look at the relationship between GPA and test scores to see if they are “in sync.” A student with a 4.0 GPA should have have high test scores – scores about 2250 or above. Often times students that have a low GPA, but high test scores are rejected because some colleges put more emphasis on GPA as it is a 3-year window into a student’s scholastic potential, whereas an SAT test is just a 3-hour window into that same potential. Therefore, it stands to reason that admit rates will go up when a GPA and SAT are in tandem. </p>
<p>When a school can cherry pick, it’s different than some cutoff.
Good example, as ever, is Brown <a href=“Undergraduate Admission | Brown University”>Undergraduate Admission | Brown University;
Clearly, something stopped those 2250-2400 kids from an admit. That’s what you need to figure out and ensure comes through in your own app. It’s not that hard. And it’s not curing cancer or raising some $ or leadership titles.</p>