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Not true. But you are set to be in range for your dream school. Unfortunately, so are many other kids applying. But it is important to get up to the range, or you almost definitely won’t get in.</p>
<p>^ Agree. No school will give a guarantee seat for any given gpa/sat</p>
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<p>Your “opinion” is incorrect. Every college is different in the way they view the parts of the application. I know for Penn (drawing on what I know best) it would go high school transcript (GPA included) > Essays/important ECs > SATs > Recs</p>
<p>Based on your knowledge of one school, you can not rule out other’s general opinion… more so after agreeing some schools value sat over gpa and some reverse. Funny!</p>
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<p>The point I intended to make was that it’s different for every school. You can’t make a blanket statement such as in post 20. Also, having good stats certainly does not guarantee admissions for applicants. Many applicants who apply to top schools (HYP) have 2300+/4.0s, but they’re rejected.</p>
<p>Would it be better if I’m african american and my SAT score is almost an outlier for my race?</p>
<p>Better than what? Not sure what “almost an outlier for my race” means. Maybe the <1 percentile for African Americans, which might be the <5th percentile overall? You should check out the “actual results” thread. In my observations, there is more leeway in SAT than there is for GPA and class rank for African Americans. Probably depends on the school. For a UC, race without adversity may be irrelevant.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Sorry to hijack the thread… What’s the rule with international students? I know that admission is much more competitive especially if you need financial aid, but generally speaking, do they look more at your GPA or your SAT?
I’d figure they’d value GPA more over SAT (if they are familiar with the grading system and the educational level in the country the applicant is from, of course) because internationals don’t get the same exposure to the standardized tests like domestic applicants. And for subject tests, the differences in terms could be a hindrance. For example, I was a Biology olympic, but I scored a 650 on the biology sat. Do they take that into account? The differences in terminology, I mean.</p>
<p>I’m really interested in finding this out, because I’ve applied to a lot of good schools, and I would have to be rejected because of SAT scores. I feel like they don’t really measure anything…</p>
<p>GPA is more important than SAT.</p>
<p>A great GPA, 3.9+ UW in honors/APs, will pretty much guarantee you admissions to your state flagship, albeit there are some states where it won’t. If you have a great GPA, SAT begins to play a huge factor when you apply to Top 50 schools. </p>
<p>On the other hand a great SAT, 2200+, won’t guarantee you admission anywhere, but it will certainly help you immensely.</p>
<p>If two candidates had a 3.9 UW GPA and a 1950 SAT versus a 3.7 UW GPA and a 2200 SAT these candidates are fairly equal academically. At that point essays and ECs play a huge factor.</p>
<p>@alisyn</p>
<p>What country/region one’s from really matters for internationals. Based off my experiences, I can tell you that the standards are very, very low for Gulf Arabs. How low? You can get into an ivy with a 1800. I believe this is how it goes:</p>
<p>English-speaking countries + India + China + Korea: Very high standards.</p>
<p>Middle East + Africa + South America: pretty low standards.</p>
<p>Europe: Really depends on the country.</p>
<p>Not too sure about the rest.</p>
<p>The TOEFL also plays a factor for international students. For example, MIT is willing to substitute the English portions of the SAT with the TOEFL. </p>
<p>If you got a 650 and are one of your country’s top Olympiad students, I’m going to say they won’t take your country’s competition seriously. All of my country’s top chemistry Olympiad students (at least the ones that wanted to study in the US) have 800’s in SAT II chem- as they do in physics and math II. However, biology is a little different because it involves a lot of jargon and is more broad- so they might go easy on you. </p>
<p>For the SAT/GPA question, they’ll compare you to other applicants from your country. If you have the best SAT/GPA combination, you’ll probably get in. If not, somebody else will take the seat. It’s all relative.</p>
<p>Thank you Cardgames!
Yes, that’s pretty much how I envision international admissions. Although, I have to say that I didn’t think the toefl meant anything to them! I got a 114 which is an alright score, and if they can see that as an indication of my English comprehension and overlook my mediocre sat scores, then woohoo! My sat is 2010, which isn’t all that bad, but man I would have loved to have an extra 90 points. Oh well.</p>
<p>I don’t know how many people apply from Romania, but I reckon a pretty few. Whenever I went to take the SAT, there would always be a whole bunch of other people, which naturally freaked me out. I guess I’ll just have to hope that I have better recommendation letters and ecs and essays. It’s going to be a long wait until April…</p>
<p>A few people have commented (nerdyasiankid for example) that GPA alone is not very valuable because colleges have no way of knowing the quality of the school. That is NOT true. First of all, admission officers specialize in geographic areas and I bet there are few HS’s (or school systems) that are unknown. </p>
<p>More importantly however is the secondary school report that accompanies each transcript. It tells not only what course offerings there are (how many APs etc) but also metrics like what percentage of students attend college (maybe even the college breakdown?). That gives admission officers a good idea of the quality of the GPA.</p>
<p>What if your GPA is high, but your SAT is low? I have a 3.9 UW GPA but only a 1880 in one sitting for the SAT. I got two 5’s and two 4’s on the SAT. I’m will graduate with 10 AP credits and everything else besides the AP credits being honors classes or gym. Will this be seen as me being in an “easy school”? In my opinion, my school is anything but easy. It’s a national school of excellence, if that helps.</p>
<p>Sparrow- Schools much prefer your situation over the opposite. They would rather have a hard worker with a good work ethic vs a super smart kid with a questionable work ethic. Also, your SAT is not that low and will probably improve significantly when you take it again. For one thing you get to “superscore” which often raises someone’s total even if their scores were very similar (or even the same, but with a different breakdown). Secondly, if you haven’t taken an SAT prep course you will improve even more (my D went up 150 pts). </p>
<p>Finally, like I said, those scores aren’t all that low (of course it depends on what school you are talking about). Take UVA for example- close to 30% of all the students admitted had a score lower than you and that is without you improving or superscoring.</p>
<p>Lol, well my superscore is a 2030. I’ve retaken it three times to improve my composite score because I’m applying to U-M(doesn’t take superscores). Good thing I’m taking the ACT …</p>
<p>Will colleges see that and recognize that I am a hardworker, at least? I mean, technically the reason that my SAT score is so low is because I have ADHD. But I don’t really know. I didn’t mention it in my applications as being a problem.</p>
<p>So, you don’t think a college will see those scores and assume that my highschool is “easy”? Oh, and it might help to know that I’m 14/475 in my class. (so I’m in the top 5%)</p>
<p>They will look at your 14/475 (exactly my D’s rank btw!) and your HS being a NHSE (ours too- what a coincidence eh) and know that your school isn’t easy. Are you IS or OOS for UM. We had a friend just get deferred there with a 2370 but he only had a 3.7 weighted GPA.</p>
<p>I’m legacy OOS. And that’s is very coincidental! I think my rank and GPA should go up considering I’m getting straight A’s in 6 AP classes so far. :D. I’m hoping my ACT score will be a bit better. Oh and my weighted GPA is a 4.8</p>
<p>I think you should have a great shot at getting in</p>
<p>Cool, thanks. I wish you and your daughter the best of luck with college admissions. I’m going to do everything in my power to raise my standardized test score.</p>
<p>Order of importance according to USNews’ survey of admission officers (I can’t remember when I read this, but I remember the chart they perfectly)NOTE: Schools put different weights on things but these are general trends.
In order:</p>
<p>1.GPA/SAT
2.Rigor of Courses (This has had a Great increase in the last 20 years)
3.Senior Year Course Load
4.EC’s
5.Essay’s
6.Class Rank (Consistently, since the 80’s I believe, this has ranked the lowest and continues to decline in how much it is worth to colleges )</p>
<p>The class rank has been seen as the worst deciding factor because it doesn’t put things into perspective clearly enough. If you go to a top ranked high school and have a GPA of 3.9 with 10 AP classes and all other being honors, well you may be ranked 24/240, which is misleading of such as high caliber student. And another bad school down the street, a 3.9 with no honors/AP classes is 1/400…see the point?</p>