@hola1997 At the next meeting, I’m so telling my legion members that she likes manga. ^^
Why would you spend a whole summer studying? How bout fun? Activities? Or the Harvard stereotype really is true 
@Oddenigma : No the Harvard stereotype is NOT true. I love studying so I like to spend time reading books and studying in the Widener library. There were LOTS of activities for fun. For example, I joined the Harvard Summer Chorus and we sang Handel. Moreover, there are trips to like U2 concerts, college visits (which I didn’t take because I’ve already been to those colleges). There are opportunities for community service as well, which again I couldn’t do because the volunteer spots are filled up. There are sports, trivia bowl, and many more. For me fun means studying, research, and choral music.
Oh oh phew. For a moment there I got scared 
@hola1997 I love reading also but puh-lease we all need some fun activities.
Choral music 
@Oddenigma : Well, you know. Fun is different for each individual.
@Oddenigma although it’s impressive to be in the top .01% of anything, I don’t think anyone on CC really is going to know enough about the Nigerian testing system to draw a conclusion about whether this will help in a Harvard application. If you want some context, the US SAT comparative is a 2400 score, which approximately 500 per year are able to reach. That’s .03% of the 1.7 million SAT test takers. If you received a 2400 on your SAT I, I think we could all safely say that a 2400 would brighten your prospects for Harvard admission immensely. But we don’t know what your .01% of Nigerians equates to. My question is, if you are so young as you say you are, why don’t you wait until next year to apply and really get all your scores and application in order? You seem to be rushing in your SAT scores when you could be pulling together a truly complete and fully realized application for admission.
Actually, no, a 2400 does NOT improve prospects at Harvard. Anyone with a 2250 is at the top of their game and can handle the academics. Scores stop mattering once they reach a certain threshold and other, less tangible qualities, become most important.
Another question: Why go to college overseas at your age anyway?
I was speaking relative to the OP having no SAT score at all, rather than a score of 2250. Be that as it may, I think what you say is not correct. It clearly is a distinct advantage at the top schools to have 800s on your SAT scores. If you look at the schools that report their SAT scores to that level of detail (I can think of Brown and Princeton that do), the odds of being accepted with 800 in M or CR is double the rate of acceptance for people who get in with 750-790 score. At Princeton, https://admission.princeton.edu/applyingforadmission/admission-statistics, you can see that there is a 14.5% acceptance rate for people with 2300-2400 scores; the very next tier below falls to Princeton’s overall acceptance rate of 8%. I suscribe to your view to the extent that you are stating that 800s are no guarantee of getting in, nor should anyone who has a 2250 continue to retake the SAT to try to get 800s. But the converse of that statement is not true–people with 800s have a significant advantage when it comes to admissions to HYPS and other elite schools.
^that’s a false-positive. The students who have 800’s have so many excellent other qualities (intelligence, creativity, leadership, kindness…) in addition to the 800, that they get admitted for these qualities, not for the 800. It just so happens that exceptionally smart kids who are the whole package are admitted to a higher extent, but the test scores don’t tell the real story, and that also explains why each year we see so many discomfited 800-testers who are turned down. The decisive factor is something else that may correlate with a perfect score, but it isn’t the perfect score.
It tests university level knowledge and it’s taken in about 8 countries, England inclusive. My percentile was in the whole of the 8 countries.
So it’s not necessarily a Nigerian exam.
I didn’t want to give too much away…but meh i’ve said it.
I get your point though >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>SAT scores = big thing. Deficiency of perfect sat scores = no good uni in most cases.
@spayurpets I’m one year behind. I have a plan and it definitely doesn’t involve getting into uni old.
P.s the syllabus is way harder than subject SATs and stuff. Think CLEP- ish.
@superbowser12 that’s a story for another day and another venue
Frankly, “national exams” in most foreign countries are worth zero in the US. Yes, most Nigerians I have met and worked with were really bright. But the truth is unless you take US standardized exams, there is no way to tell how you compare to an average Harvard applicant.
0.01% = 1 out of 10,000. That is not NEARLY enough on the math SAT, where top 0.01% is noted as 700 or more according to several sources, to get into Harvard.
Anybody that thinks that a 2400 or a 150 point difference on the SAT doesn’t make a difference is kidding themselves. My children are prime examples. My first child had over 2300 on SATs, a very high 4.0+ grade point average and top 2 or 3 class rank. Going to an Ivy League school, but did not get into any HYPSM schools. Younger child, much more checkered HS transcript, sub-4.0 GPA, lower class rank–10% barely, but had 1600 CR+M SAT score. There is a palpable difference in the ways schools treat my younger child—likely letters, merit scholarship offers out of the blue, acceptances to the overlapping schools the two siblings applied to. Will attend HYPSM school. Ask any teacher at their high school, and judging objectively or subjectively they would say that the older child was the better student. The only thing the younger one had going in favor was the higher SAT score, which in raw numbers was only 60 points higher than the sibling. That is not proof by any means, but I think @MYOS1634 is taking an extreme indefensible position by saying there is NO weight given to a 2400 over a 2250 on the SAT. As I said, the tippy-top of test takers (800s on SAT subscores) have what appears to be a 2X higher admit rate than the next highest tier. Significantly, 150 points is nearly one-half of a standard deviation from the mean SAT in statistics, and is the difference between being in the top 3% of the test-taking population and being in the top 0.3%. No one believes that there is proof of causation, but when the numbers correlate as they do, you would be wise to at least give them some weight.
Back to the OP, for your purposes, understand that knowing the mean and standard deviation would allow people (read: admissions officers) to compare student aptitude scores with each other, provided that the tests they took have “normal distributions” like the SAT and ACT generally do. If–and it’s a BIG IF–your Nigerian school score is normally distributed, you might be able to conclude that your score was nearly 4 standard deviations from the mean (4 SDs is generally 99.994% under normal distribution), which is to say that you are the Nigerian equivalent (when compared to your Nigerian peers) of an American SAT taker who scored a 2400 or an ACT of 36. That being said, what’s important to Harvard is how you would compare to other Americans, so the best data set is your own SAT score, which you do not yet have. So all this theoretical discussion on what your score means is pretty much irrelevant.
I have a kid at Harvard . I have met a lot of kids at Harvard. I don’t think a 150 point difference on the SAT means anything at all. Nor do I think it is necessary to get 800 on the subject tests Correlation does not necessarily mean causation. A lot of the 2400 scorers may have other things going for them as some of the posters explained. There is a 100 per cent correlation between being admitted to Harvard and being a human being. That doesn’t mean all human beings get admitted to Harvard
I can’t attest for Harvard but an admission of Duke went to my school and explained about the admission process and he said that once the kids who are qualified academically are chosen (1st round), then the differences in SAT score, 100 points or more doesn’t matter anymore as they move on to compare essays, qualities, and such. Of course it is not Harvard but Duke is also very selective.
^^ It’s the same at Harvard: http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/harvarddean-part2/
Thanks @gibby ! I guess that article never ages huh.
fingers crossed
FWIW, I just said I lacked subject SATs and APs. Doesn’t mean I don’t have any American examination result.
Thanks a lot everyone! I think this thread has been useful!
*I know it has been useful.