<p>I'm not sure that the post about the quality of applicants is valid. The admissions rep at my info sessions ensured us that almost all of Stanford's applicants are extremely well qualified. I doubt people would pay the $75 to apply to a school they don't think they'd get into, especially if it's Stanford.</p>
<p>And correct, it's not all about test scores. The admissions lady also said that they could accept a whole class of kids with perfect 2400s and 36s if they wanted too. So entirely discouraging...</p>
<p>The admissions lady also said that they could accept a whole class of kids with perfect 2400s and 36s if they wanted too. So entirely discouraging...</p>
<p>I hate when people propogate this myth. Every year only a couple hundred people get 2400s and 36s every year and Stanford's incoming class size is roughly 1600. Furthermore, the perfect scorers are also applying to HYPM and others and might end up there, so that's even less perfect scorers Stanford can rely on to come and fill up their class.
So in short, top colleges have no choice but to "dig" out lower scorers to accept, because there aren't enough tippity-top scorers to go around.</p>
<p>Whether or not the admissions rep was exaggerating, the point of the matter is that if they admitted only the absolute top-scoring applicants, their acceptance spread would look drastically different. Scores aren't everything.</p>
<p>Obviously each school wants top scorers (although the last top scorer I met, never did his work, couldn't get along with others, and needed his mother to tell him what to do)-but they also need poets, athletes, musicians, community organizers, artists, politicians, entertainers, nurturers...this is the task of the admissions committee.
Admission to Stanford is not a prize for getting a 2400.</p>
<p>I think it's wrong to say that "each school wants top scorers". Harvard and Stanford don't give a hoot how many 2400 scorers they have -- they don't promote that, and as far as I can tell don't even count them. They certainly don't try to maximize the number. They do value qualities that the SAT and ACT purport to test, and that at the very least are strongly correlated with high test scores, so that even if they didn't look at the scores at all they would probably be accepting a population with high test scores. But, really, they don't care about 2400 vs. 2300 or 36 vs. 35.</p>
<p>As for 2400/one test vs. 2400 superscored: Someone a couple of years ago had a pretty good analysis that suggested that superscoring made much less of a difference than people might think. The analysis suggested that the maximum number of people with 2400 superscored basically corresponded to the number of people with 2370 or higher on a single test. That would mean a maximum of about 1,000 students in any class, except that lots of people with high scores don't bother retaking the test, so the actual number of super-scored 2400s is probably significantly fewer than that.</p>
<p>Yeah, I don't think the 2400's matter as much as you think because it's really, really hard for any one school to get more than 1/4 of its study body to have perfect scores, which means it wouldn't show up anywhere.</p>
<p>2400s aren't that big a deal. Its just that a lot of people that apply to Stanford happen to also have insane scores. The events of getting in and having a 'perfect' aren't necessarily correlated, they just happen to coincide often.</p>
<p>Well, let's not get crazy Murasaki. As one of the best schools in the country, Stanford is looking for bright people, and getting a 2400 on what is mostly a logic and reasoning test is a fairly good way to make that claim.</p>
<p>Amadeuic: while a 2400 does indicate some level of reasoning ability, so does a 2300, a 2200. However, that's not what they're really looking for. They're looking for people that are going to be intellectually engaging/that will make a difference to the life on campus & beyond. Unfortunately the SAT fails to measure anything remotely close to that. What Murasaki said is absolutely true...top scores coincide...but are certainly NOT causative.</p>
<p>I believe there isn't any difference in intelligence/reasoning skills/etc... between someone who gets ~2250 (that is a 750 average on each section - which corresponds to around 2-3 question wrong on that section) and 2400. I think anyone who scores a 2250 can make as good a claim on being "bright" as a 2400.</p>
<p>well if you think about it, isn't it twice as hard to get 1 wrong than it is 2 wrong? so really, a 790 would be twice as good as a 780. no that can't be right, then an 800 would be an infinite amount better than anything else... uh oh.</p>
<p>OH HEY GUYS. :)
6 out of a 100 is still better than a 0 out of 100, eh? </p>
<p>dammit. arrrghh. Why don't they just make it a lottery? Chances are (almost) just as bad...
94 rejections per 100 students is just crazy if you really think about it.</p>