<p>
</p>
<p>I think parents (and some students) assume that college admission officers are looking for things that weed out applicants until, in the end, the ones still standing get admitted. I submit to you that if they are looking for great students, they’re reading files with a view toward finding out why each applicant should be admitted – a very different approach. By reading applications from this perspective – trying to build a class of the best people as opposed to building a class from the ones who weren’t “defective” – they aren’t unringing bells when superscoring. This is true even if they see the other numbers inside the folder after being impressed by the super scored numbers that the assistant scribbled on the folder jacket.</p>
<p>What’s more, the information reported for “Common Data Set” purposes (and regurgitated by USN&WR and other college guides and ranking services) is superscored data. When you see what the average SAT or ACT scores are for an admitted or incoming class, you’re not seeing how those students performed on all administrations of those tests. You’re getting the average of the superscored results for those students. So evaluating applicants by looking at superscored numbers dovetails with their subsequent reporting standard.</p>