<p>i have to agree with the OP here...no matter how much people say the SATs don't prove much, adcoms still subconsciously think that the SAT is a measure of how smart you are...people with 2100s rarely get into the top ivy schools, unless they are a URM...however, people with 2300s have MUCH better chances...when people post chance threads for an ivy league school and they have a 2100, all other posters say "bring your SAT at least above a 2200"...although the difference between a 2100 and a 2200 is probably 4-5 questions, it still sticks in the adcom's mind...your ECs can be spectacular, but you're going to need the scores to back it up...
and another thing i want to say...at my school personally, the only people who ever get into the top schools are the national merit semifinalists...even though non-semifinalists have better gpas and ecs, they still dont get in...because the SAT has been used for so many years on a national level, adcoms trust it...sorry for the scattered ideas, but i felt i needed to get it out</p>
<p>In Risky Business - Tom Cruise had the secret formula - hookers for the AD COMs at Princeton</p>
<p>Secret formula for getting into the college of your dream:</p>
<p>Have a lot of money.</p>
<p>SATs (except those increasingly fake "learning disability" 3 hours extra time takers) are in fact an excellent measure of overall intelligence, particularly when confirmed by grades, class rank and quality of school and difficulty of courses</p>
<p>Note that when the elite colleges post median ranges their admitted classes for SATs scores - they are including in those numbers many lower scoring URM's -thus you will need a much higher score typically than what they are listing </p>
<p>For a non-URM applicant particularly from overrepresented geographic areas (e.g nearly the the entire northeast United States), below 2250 on the SAT for the top colleges - your odds are low</p>
<p>The thing about the SATs is that they give a real means of head-to-head comparison. Sure, they aren't the best measure of intelligence out there, and sure, they're kind of silly in many respects, and sure, a difference of 100 points combined isn't really very significant.</p>
<p>But it's better than most of the other tools that they have. Suppose there's a school in a tiny town in Montana, and the valedictorian applies to an elite college with glowing recommendations, saying that this is the best student his high school has ever had. Suppose he gets a 2010 on the SATs. I don't know a kid like that, but it's a perfectly reasonable hypothetical. Now consider a kid at an elite East Coast prep school with an A- average and a 2390. I do know a kid like that, and he's at Yale now.</p>
<p>Both kids are smart, obviously, but there's know way to fairly compare their averages. The kid from Montana obviously hasn't ever been in a class with anyone nearly as smart as him, so of course he's going to get a perfect transcript. The kid at the elite prep school is in a class full of smart students. The grading just isn't comparable.</p>
<p>The SAT scores, however, are. And as much as the admissions officers would like to know how the two students would stack up in the same classes, they'll never know that. They do know, however, that the kid at the elite school crushed his counterpart on the one thing that they have directly in common - the SAT.</p>
<p>An astronomical GPA can be explained away as the product of an easy courseload or grade inflation. A 2360 can't.</p>
<p>Note that the "SATs are unfair and s/b eliminated" crowd often have all sorts of convoluted ways where they CLAIM that student's (alleged) brilliance can be conveyed to the college. There are some threads right on this site where their are hardcore proponents of such alternative measures. These are largely academic style arguments having little connection to real life applications. The problem is: from my reading of these proposals is that they are nearly 100% nonsense and include such ideas as having teachers convey to colleges selective works of various students demonstrating the particular student's abilities and so forth</p>
<p>I can imagine schools with 15,000 applicants trying to sort out all this data</p>
<p>The reality is (despite the non-PC nature of this statement) is that people do vary in certain kinds of intelligence and while there are certain other kinds of intelligences (e.g introspective abilities, social skills, athletic, musical ability etc) - the SAT's do approximate fairly closely to general intelligence - the type most useful in certain professions such as medicine and law and various other fields</p>
<p>Other than the (recently) increasingly abusive use of "learning disabilities" by students seeking to game the system to get more time for the test w/o the colleges being flagged (since 2003) (no not all LD's by the way) - the SATs are the only way for schools to sort out all the information and understand the grades and class rank and other data they are presented with</p>
<p>No SATs are not perfect, however they are a necessary evil</p>
<p>However, that kid from the elite East Coast prep school with a 2350 is statistically more likely to have spent $1K for a test prep course or to have the fake LD time advantage or both. So the head-to-head comparison with Mr. Montana may be misleading.</p>
<p>And a lot of elite colleges are eager to bring in students from under-represented areas, like Montana, so the Montana kid may actually be selected in this case. I think SATs are important, but many more factors play in here.</p>
<p>I really don't see what reading the "300000000 SAT words" books and memorizing them has to do with intelligence. Or changing paragraphs to make them sound better.</p>
<p>FFS, isn’t it called “reasoning” test?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The ability to change paragraphs to make them sound better can take one far in one's career according to my English teacher. A lot of professional and leadership positions require that kind of intelligence.</p>
<p>Yes, the ability in itself is very important. Multiple-choice however is not a good way to test it.
In life it doesn't always come down to right or wrong. If it did, then 80% of…everything would go bankrupt and only 20% would survive...until the next life/death question.
How about flexibility?</p>
<p>Um ... When it all comes down to it a 2400 is better than a 2200. Why? Because that person made mistakes and the 2400 didn't (We're assuming)</p>
<p>SAT's do count. And SAT's are the only thing you have control of in your senior year besides things like class rigor. Getting those extra 50 points will be well worth it.</p>
<p>I agree with the OP. A lot of people have taken "SAT scores aren't everything" to mean "SAT scores aren't that important." True, if you get a high score but are lacking in other areas, you probably won't get into Harvard. But if you get a 2100, you probably won't get in either. The importance of standardized test scores has been trivialized; they are, after all, the second most important thing besides your transcript. The numbers are the first things admissions officers look at, and if you score low, they'll subconsciously think you're less qualified than others when they're reviewing the other parts of your application.</p>
<p>To be sure, one ought never take the SATs too lightly. The degree of their importance, however, depends really on the college in question. The University of Chicago, for instance, does not place nearly as much weight on standardized test scores as does, say, Harvard. Too high of a score is never a bad thing (unless, of course, it was obtained through unscrupulous means), while too low of one is invariably damaging (though how much, again, varies according to the college).</p>
<p>The PC movement over the last few decades, among other things, has managed to shut down nearly all discussions of non-PC topics</p>
<p>The reality is is that SAT once stood for the Scholastic Aptitude Test - until ETS for reasons of political correctness -changed it to the SAT Reasoning Test</p>
<p>APTITUDE: described as an inherent ability,
quickness in learning and understanding, or (simply) intelligence</p>
<p>The SAT test when taken multiple times by random 11th graders from random schools - will generally correlate on an approximate basis with one's overall general intelligence - although everyone now has to pretend it has no connection to instrinsic aptitude</p>
<p>As for the "coaching effect" - it can make a difference for some, however it generally affects only on the margin. You are not going to turn 1600 scores into 2400 scores, except in rare cases, for example where the 11th grader hasn't actually opened a book beyond the classroom setting - since 6th grade social studies</p>
<p>It's a simple fact of life: some people actually are more intelligent than others</p>
<p>I have been reading books ever since i was young and am one of the smartest people in my grade and I still did bad on the CR and writing part. I even got a tutor to help me with the SAT and the only thing that did was raise my score from a 1800 to a 1980. How does making a kid sit through a 4 hour exam test their intelligence? How does an essay written in 25 minutes show a persons writing skills? I am excellent at writing essays and even better at finding grammatical mistakes but my SAT doesnt show this. An easy solution for the essay would be to give the topic beforehand, now that would show a persons true intelligence...</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>oh right, so kids won't be able to "coach" a great essay</p>
<p>the only thing i can say to the above poster is,</p>
<p>1) don't be bitter cause you didn't do well on the SATs
2) grow up. oh, and don't argue with parents</p>
<p>"I have been reading books ever since i was young and am one of the smartest people in my grade"</p>
<p>Classic example of what's wrong with the self-esteem based child-centric approach to education -which by the way. has nearly destroyed the public schools over the last several decades. Right, everyone is just brilliant, there are no longer any average students</p>
<p>Actually moderately bright, well read students today often think they are brilliant, because they've been told this by teachers and parents, and if they don't score 2200 plus on the SAT - well - it just HAS to be the test</p>
<p>
[quote]
it's people like celestial and pyar who inspired me to make this thread in the first place. imo, the two are at the least inconsiderate and ignorant to some degree
[/quote]
Awesome... I state my opinion that a test on one day doesn't define who you are and isn't the most important factor, and I'm called inconsiderate and ignorant by someone I don't even know.</p>
<p>I realize that I can't read adcoms' minds, but I don't believe you can either (unless you are one, or have interviewed many and come to a valid conclusion). I say what I do because I know people who have been admitted to top-5 schools with SAT scores <1400 (old scale). They had other things going for them, such as ECs (as you pointed out ARE important). I also know of people who received perfect scores and were not admitted to any of the top-5 schools. This is why I believe that SAT scores don't matter significantly once a "threshold" is passed. Yes, it's possible that I'm wrong, but that is my belief, and I don't appreciate being called inconsiderate for expressing that.</p>
<p>
<p>Classic example of what's wrong with the self-esteem based child-centric approach to education -which by the way. has nearly destroyed the public schools over the last several decades. Right, everyone is just brilliant, there are no longer any average students</p>
<p>Actually moderately bright, well read students today often think they are brilliant, because they've been told this by teachers and parents, and if they don't score 2200 plus on the SAT** - well - it just HAS to be the test**
</p>
<p>citation x - you are a god</p>