<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>