<p>HelloKitty: Good to hear. and you are welcome :)</p>
<p>“You are right. But you can’t argue against higher SAT = better. Simply put, if you’re Asian, requirements will be higher. A 2200 SAT will be below average, and you don’t want to be fighting an uphill battle trying to convince adcoms.”</p>
<p>-Yes that is true. Maybe I should have made myself a little clearer. What I meant to say is that many Asians have this obsession for perfect SAT scores. Yes, students, esp Asian ones should try as hard as possible to reach a score above 2250 (or 750 or above on each test). But if they got into that 2250-2390 range, they shouldn’t try to take the SAT again to get that perfect 2400. Once you get into that set range, adcoms are not going to care about it. IMO, if you study and at least put in some effort for the SAT, top students like the OP and most Asian Ivy applicants won’t have an issue with getting into the 2250 range. </p>
<p>In another word, SATs are just like the minimum requirements for admission. You must satisfy this minimum requirement, esp for Asian students, before one can even hope to have a chance that adcoms will consider your ECs, teacher recs, etc (adcoms are very busy people). But once a student meet that minimum requirement, he/she don’t need to be an overachiever; he/she should focus more on ECs and such that would make he/she stake out. </p>
<br>
<br>
<p>-I agree with this statement to some extent. I think that it would all depend on what the OP wants to major in. If she wants to major in areas such as business (Haas), Engineering, and Chemistry, then Berkeley would be a good option. But if she wants to go into the humanities, +50k a year, large crowded public school, is definitely not worth going, especially when there are higher ranked private schools with better resources and lower student:teacher ratio that cost nearly the same. </p>
<br>
<br>
<p>-I wouldn’t necessarily say so. It’s easier to get in than an Ivy ONLY if you are a californian state resident and possibly international student. But the OP is clearly not. Cornell’s acceptance rate is 20+%. I doubt that for OOS students, the admittance rate for Berkeley is above 20%. Now, it is not as number-oriented as it was before. It might still be more numbers oriented than any good private school but the good stats sometimes are not enough to get you in. Seriously, this year, several people in my high school who did not have that great of stats got in while some with better stats did not. One kid who got a 2010 on his SAT, barely made it to the top 5% of the school, but did a great internship at Scripps got accepted to Berkeley’s prestigious school of engineering. Another was rejected and he was top 3% with 2200 SAT but didn’t do pretty much any ECs. I think Berkeley is looking for more well rounded individuals and thank god for that!</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>wow like that didn’t sound conceited at all ;)</p>