<p>Does anyone know which top-tier universities have admissions based heavily on SAT/ACT and GPA? I mean, I know extracurriculars/essays/etc are important too, but I want to know which schools place a lot of emphasis on scores and grades. (For example, a school that would easily accept a 2400 valedictorian with decent level extracurriculars). I have perfect stats as far as ranking, gpa, and sat scores, and I am involved in a lot of extracurriculars, but none of them stand out THAT much (as in, I haven't won any MAJOR awards, etc), they are semi-generic and slightly above average at best. And it doesn't help that I'm Asian. I've heard that large state schools, Duke, Caltech, Northwestern, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, and Oxbridge admissions are largely numbers based. Is this true?</p>
<p>That is definitely not true for Northwestern and Brown. I don’t know about the other private schools on your list, although I suspect raw numbers will not get you into most of them.</p>
<p>Most state schools weight numbers very heavily. But most state schools are not affordable for most out-of-state applicants. Some state schools do have significant merit scholarships for the very top applicants, but not all do.</p>
<p>Caltech is purely numbers based.</p>