No matter what you hear, the system favors a students GPA over their SAT scores. Heres how… The basic formula for admissions, not including EC’s, into most UC’s is as follows: (( New SAT I + 2 SATII’s) * 80%) + GPA * 1000. That means that every .1 Gpa points is worth a good deal more than 100 points on the SAT. so a student with a 4.3 ( a great GPA) and a 1950 (not so great SAT’s) will look bettet than a student with a 4.1 ( still a great GPA) and a 2150 ( excellent SAT’s) That seems CRAZY! What do you guys think?
<p>No that's not crazy. It's widely known that the UC system had always favored GPA over SATs. The reason why there are the new SATs was because the UC system was thinking about dropping the old SAT I from their admissions criteria, and since collegeboard could not afford to lose its biggest customer, it decided to make a new SAT I that would be more favorable to the UCs. </p>
<p>Besides, in general (for all colleges), students with a low GPA but a very high SAT score are viewed as smart but lazy. And don't think that SAT scores mean everything... there are a lot of other factors taken into account in admissions. Also, there hasn't been solid proof that SAT scores are predictors of success in college. I could make some more arguments against the SAT but I think you get the point that SAT's aren't everything. </p>
<p>by the way, I wouldn't know if the 4.3/1950 is actually better or not compared to the 4.1/2150 without knowing a lot more information, because the UC's use comprehensive review. Hey, maybe a 4.0/1920 might be even more qualified than both of your sample applicants!</p>
<p>well, I had a 3.5 weighted gpa (3.2 unweighted) and 1530 SATs (~2260) and I got into UCLA. So I dunno. I guess I'm an anamoly, because I seem to be doing pretty well here.</p>
<p>brandnew2, you also come from a very competitive high school that is known to send a bunch of kids to berkeley and ucla annually (20-30?... to each school).</p>
<p>absolutely, grades are number 1, but the Writing score is important to Berkeley and UCLA (for middle-upper class apps).</p>
<p>the writing score is the most important score on the SAT I?</p>
<p>well, yes, now, for most folks (engineers should take Math 2). It used the be the SATII Writing...but, its been moved over to SATI. For non-hooked apps, a 700W looks a LOT better than a 650, unfortunately.</p>
<p>While most colleges will ignore the new Writing, the UC's HAVE to embrace it bcos they pushed for the change.</p>
<p>I think this is why grade-inflation is so prevalent in California's high school system. Every California high school wants to send as many kids to UCs as possible, so they pad their students' GPAs to meet the eligiblity requirement. Eventually, honors/AP courses become a neccessity for the upper-tier UCs (UCB, UCLA, UCSD) while the ceiling for a "weighted" GPA gets inflated from 4.0 to 4.5 and in some schools, 5.0... As a result, you end up with most of each graduating class having >4.0 GPAs, a trend that is unheard of outside California.</p>
<p>Insightful.</p>
<p>flopsy:</p>
<p>no grade inflation at our competitive public HS -- yes, the top ~15% have a 4.0+, but that's about it. OTOH, they give out B's like candy, so 75% have a B average or better.</p>
<p>Flopsy: The 8 semester cap on extra credit for AP and honors classes puts an effective ceiling of about 4.4 on a UC GPA. In my son's high school students with weighted GPA's as low as 3.9 got "you may be eligible for ELC" letters - i.e., they were considered close enough to the top 4% to warrant sending their records to UC for their analysis. So while there may be grade inflation at a lot of schools, I'm guessing it isn't universal.</p>
<p>Bondsfan: the exact formula differs from campus to campus. The formula you gave is used at UCSD; each tenth of a GPA point = 125 SAT points. I think Davis used a formula last year where each tenth of a GPA point equaled 100 SAT points. Other campuses are less rigid. But your basic premise is correct.</p>
<p>Bluebayou, 15% having a 4.0 is unheard of at truly competitive schools.</p>
<p>It depends on the weighting system</p>
<p>Although they pushed for the change, I disagree that the writing score will make or break a candidate for UCLA or UCB. I think that grades, and overall SAT are more important, and ECs are becoming more important each year. UCB uses 680 (old SATIIWR) as it's cut-off for kids not having to take the freshman English course -so apparently that's not considered such a bad score. Until they can norm this test and correlate it with the old SatII, it doesn't mean a whole lot.</p>
<p>The changes that were also very important with the UCs were the ones made to the critial reading (no analogies) and math(more advanced). One can directly compare these two test scores with the old SAT scores.</p>
<p>Although they pushed for the change, I disagree that the writing score will make or break a candidate for UCLA or UCB. I think that grades, and overall SAT are more important, and ECs are becoming more important each year. UCB uses 680 (old SATIIWR) as it's cut-off for kids not having to take the freshman English course -so apparently that's not considered such a bad score. Until they can norm this test and correlate it with the old SatII, it doesn't mean a whole lot.</p>
<p>Grades - and now ECs - are more important than the tests at the UCs.</p>
<p>asap,
I hope you are correct (for the sake of my S), but anecdotal evidence in our community this year was those with 700+ on SATII-Wr got into UCLA and those below 700 did not (otherwise similar gpa's and ec's).</p>
<p>SAT II Writing is pretty different from new SAT writing. The curve is much more harsh on the new SAT writing. A 700 on the new test is meant to be about 95th percentile (although that data hasn't come out yet), while a 700 on the SAT II Writing was about 80th percentile. If you miss 5 and get a 10 on the essay, it would be a 710 on new SAT writing and approximately a 770 on SAT II Writing.</p>
<p>ramsfan:</p>
<p>unlike many private schools which will accept the old and new SAT. the UC's will only accept the new. As such, the system has a ready-made norm; it really doesn't matter what the percentiles are at this point.</p>
<p>Wow, that seems to be pretty thoughtless on the part of the UC system. They probably just wanted to divide up the masses as quickly as possible I suppose. Either way, 700+ should be fine for writing this year for any college.</p>
<p>ramsfan, though writing on the SAT I may indeed have a harsher curve, the students who took it as a SAT II were in general smarter, because they were the ones considering more selective schools, so it isnt exactly proper to compare the two percentiles.</p>
<p>Thats why SAT II averages are usually in the 600s, not 500s.</p>