<p>Though I agree with most of the points you made, I would like to point out that the study you’re talking about has to be taken with a grain of salt. The sample in question was taken from information compiled here on CC, which is notorious for being unusually self-selective in terms of student qualifications. The 75th-percentile rule for nonhooked applicants gets thrown around a lot on CC, but I find it unlikely that any one of the elite schools fills 75% of its classes with less-qualified URMs, athletes, and legacies (though I could be wrong). And in many cases, these hooked admits have SAT scores well above the magical 75th percentile as well.</p>
<p>I completely agree that median scores are unreliable benchmarks for elite school
admissions, but generally speaking, a well-distributed 2300 like the OP’s isn’t likely to be the immediate cause for a rejection anywhere.</p>
<p>The Yale class of 2014 Scores. 45% score 760-800 on CR, 50% on same range for math and 51% on same range for Writing. While one cannot just add 760+760+760, which is 2280, it does suggest that 2300 could be closer to the middle than you think. Hence my recommendation to shoot for 2350+. Again, this is one of the few criteria you can control. If you can’t make yourself into a recruited athlete, legacy, URM or donate $1 million, you might want to do the one thing that is easy to control and arguably gets as much weighting as 3 1/2 hard years of work (transcript)</p>
<p>@katytx: I’m a double legacy at both Stanford (undergrad) and Yale (grad). My sister was deferred ED from Yale, then rejected, and waitlisted-rejected from Stanford RD. She had a 740CR, 740M, 800W (1480/2280 total). I think I have better ECs (accomplished pianist, which I know is stereotypical, but it’s the truth) and my essays will be killer (hers were good, but not anything out of the ordinary). god, I feel like the worst sister in the world right now.</p>
<p>does that help at all?</p>
<p>actually, while we’re talking about it, does anyone have a better idea for something I could use as a hook? nemom, any thoughts?</p>
<p>My point, katytx, was that the number of slots in the Ivies + MIT + Stanford is considerably greater than the number of students scoring above 2300. </p>
<p>You assert that 75% of the accepted students at I/S+M (I’m not going to type out “Ivies+Stanford+MIT” anymore.) have SATs at or above 2300. Let’s work out the math.</p>
<p>Again, there are roughly 17,000 freshman slots. I’ll ignore the question of how many actual individuals were accepted (there should be roughly 28,000 acceptances, but some individuals have more than one.) It’s hard to know how factor in those who have acceptances to more than one school in the set. Let’s just assume that 70% of the acceptances are different individuals. That yields 21,000 individuals accepted to I/S+M.</p>
<p>There are about 7000 students, according to Kei-o-lei, with a score of 2300 and above. Doubtless there are more when superscoring is considered. Let’s allow 50% more. That gives us 10,500. Now, we know that some kids who score at or over 2300 don’t get into any of I/S+M. Some are rejected, and some don’t apply. If we assume that just 25% of the 10,500 either do not apply or are rejected, then we have , at most, 7800 who score at or above 2300 accepted to I/S+M. Given the 21,000 individual acceptances, this yields a rate of roughly 37%.</p>
<p>Mining some naviance data, kids from my child’s school got into various of the I/S+M group with SATs as low as 1920. Lots got in with scores below 2300. A few may been URMs, none are athletes, some may be legacies, and probably very , very few are development.
SAT scores are important, but they are taken in context. They are not a common denominator - students in varying conditions have widely varying abilities to prep and retake which does have an affect.</p>
<p>nemom - You refuted what you thought was katytx’s assertion; but I think she(?) really was saying that 2300 is the 75th percentile - meaning that 25% of the students are at/above 2300, not 75%. </p>
<p>But it’s understandable, because her first statement was somewhat garbled; “percent” doesn’t fit the sentence, but “%” is not a symbol for percentile:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But the second statement cleared it up; “percentile” was intended:
</p>
<p>I have made the peace. </p>
<p>Actually, I thought katytx made some pretty good points here. Earlier in the thread I said “just stand pat with 2300”, but maybe that’s not a great idea if you’re unhooked, and really dead set on one of these super-selective schools.</p>
<p>nemom, not trying to fight you on this, just trying to make sure OP doesnt have a false sense of security, which you are giving her. I did not mean say “75% of”, that was meant as 75th percentile, so I apoplogize for the confusion. Yes I am asserting that the 75th percentile at Yale and other elite schools is 2300 or so.</p>
<p>OP, fine, if you’re conentent with your SAT’s, great. When you don’t get in, please don’t second guess yourself. In my family, a 7th generation legacy (yeah, back to the mid 1800’s) 2320 superscore, #2/800 ranking, great EC’s and leadership (I can go on) only got a deferred decision at Yale. Legacy status is not as much of a boost as you might think. Unless you really set yourself apart in another area, why not retake the SAT’s and shoot for a better math and W? that’s your highest utility move to improve your chances. I will admit, your 800 CR is very impressive and may win the day.</p>
<p>MisterK - We’re on the same page. scores less than 2100 to the elites are anaomolies or belong to hooks - period. nemom, I hope if you have a kid getting ready to apply you seriously consider what I said. Obvioulsy there are a lot of factors, but my motto is focus on what you can control (SAT’s) not what you control (subjective stuff and adcom’s opinion)</p>
<p>ahhhh ok, I guess I will retake them, then? I mean, I know somebody with a 2400 who was rejected from Yale, so clearly SATs aren’t everything… but I still want to do as much as I can.
is there a collegeboard option to send in your highest scores by section, or is it just by date? any threads you can direct me to for improving my essay?</p>
<p>One thing worth noting is that policies on score choice are constantly changing. And, how CB handles various score options is changing too. Don’t base your plan too heavily on the current rules. Yale, for example, does not participate in score choice.
It occurs to me that this muddies the waters a bit more. If we assume that many applicants sit the SAT twice, and the Yale probably uses the higher scores for public reporting purposes, how do we look at the data?
I see that it seems that katytx was making a slightly different point that I thought.
However, I hope folks will still note that a very considerable percentage of admitted students have SATs below 2300 - that was really what I was driving at anyway.
None of our kids take ACTs (or at least none in the past five years or so). I don’t know about the SAT subject test scores, although I suspect they are very good. I will note that our kids tend to have hooks. All them have at least a few college courses under their belts which admissions folks tend to like quite a bit since it shows that they not only have the smarts to do college work, but the ability to deal with college courses which function differently than AP courses.
I do not intend to give the OP a false sense of security. Admissions at the elite level is difficult and hard to predict. leahmarie - don’t take what I have said to mean " Your SATs are great, you’ll be fine." What I think is that your SATs are fine and improving them will have little or no effect - the effort can better be spent elsewhere.</p>
<p>Leahmarie, your current 2300 SAT is great, but if you can improve it without stressing yourself out, you should consider it. Of course even a 2400 ACT is no guarantee of admission, but a higher SAT score should, in general, give you a statistically improved chance of getting into each school, all other elements being competitive. Keep in mind that an 8-10 point statistical increase in the likelihood of being accepted at a given school, times 7-8 elite schools could approach a high overall probability of acceptance SOMEWHERE extremely desirable. </p>
<p>Of course, if you have to take major time away from key extracurriculars to study, study, study, it may not be worth it, but squeezing in a few prep tests, reviewing a little math in areas you got wrong and taking a 3-hour test, shouldn’t take up much time and could give you the stretch of a couple more inches to help you make your goal.</p>
<p>Hi all. I recieved my January Score. I am in a similar conundrum as leahmarie (who started this thread). Except, I have a 2280, so I didn’t quite break 2300 but I got close. 770 M, 760 CR, 750 W (71 MC, 11 E). I registered for March as not to miss the deadline but can always cancel. Do you think I should take it to try and get above a 2300? Also, I’m thinking about being an engineer and many good engineering colleges have entire quartiles of freshman aceptees with 800s in math. Do you think that it is necessary for me to have an 800 to have a shot at good science/engineering programs?</p>
<p>Even MIT has plenty of kids who didn’t get an 800 in math on the SAT. You don’t need an 800 in math to have a shot at a good science/engineering program. You will need a couple of SAT subject tests - have you taken any yet? You should probably take math 2 (I would suggest doing that ASAP because you’ll be busy next fall), physics or chemistry (whichever makes sense to take this spring) and maybe one ‘soft’ test (aka not math or science) to show some balance.
Frankly, I don’t think you really need to retake the SAT. You have a good chance of bringing up math, I suspect, but you might drop a bit in W or R, so it’s really your call. One thing to consider - is there a better way to spend your time?</p>
<p>I know this is really stressful— and I don’t want to be insensitive— but I find the whole thing kind of amusing, arguing over 50 points on your SAT score. I’m a Harvard alum and have done alumni interviews for about 15 years, so I’ve seen a lot of transcripts and bios, and seen who got in and who didn’t. Now, mind you, I haven’t sat on an adcom, and have no idea what they actually LOOK for (so this isn’t an "“official” reply by any means), but from what I personally have seen about who gets admitted and who doesn’t, my feeling is that the relevance of SAT scores depends on many other factors. There’s a lot of talk about URM, legacies and so on on this thread, but from what I have seen, these things are fairly minor considerations. It goes without saying that you need to take all the toughest classes available to you and do very well in them. SAT scores generally above 700 on each section. After these basic requirements, the successful candidates I have seen have been local, state or national leaders in some academic or non-academic field, people who have made real and substantial impacts on some field. Of four students I know of, three which I personally interviewed, who ended up at Harvard, one girl was the national president of the Catholic Youth of America and had done a summer internship in the Vatican, a second was one of the best rowers in his state, and the third had done research at a major cancer research hospital. The fourth was quite amazing: he had already written three novels, his poetry had won a major international competition, he had written a symphony under the tutelage of the head violin player of a major symphony orchestra, he had taken 10 AP exams and gotten 5s on all of them, he had done scientific research at a major research hospital, and was so advanced in physics that he was co-teaching his high school physics class. Honestly, a 720 versus a 770 would have made little difference for these folks. So, basically, do extremely well in school and do amazing things in something you are passionate about. It seems to me that those who are successful are extremely dynamic people who are already out in the world making real contributions to society. If all you have is school, you had better be darn near perfect. And, to be honest, I have personally seen one applicant who was valedictorian of his school, 8 APs with all 5s, and 2400 SATs who got rejected from Harvard. I don’t know why he got rejected, but my point is, what seems to me is that what they want are real, passionate people who are out there doing important things and making a difference in the real world. APs exams and SAT scores show your intellectual ability… but that isn’t enough, it seems. (Unless, for example, you won the gold medal at the International Math Olympiad or something like that.) Anyway, my two cents. Maybe it was helpful…</p>
<p>You probably won’t get a consensus here on much of anything - but I’ll say that my position - that you do not need to retake - is the one taken by our school’s counselors as well. They have a great track record - generally about 2/3 to 3/4 of our seniors end up with at least one ED/EA/other early option acceptance at a good to great school, and a very considerable percentage end up at their first/second choice college. (Which is usually a very selective school). They know what they are doing.
The admissions officer from MIT who posts on CC also asserts that there is no need to eke out those last few points.</p>
