Very high GPA -- Middling SATs

<p>We were in similar situation with our child, top 5% of class, very high GPA - did not crack 2100 on SATs (2090). He had the tutoring which we hope would help boost it, did practice exam after practice - tutoring not worth the money. We say it all goes back to him not being a reader when he was younger. He got into some great schools but missed out on honors program (and $$) by one school because they said they said his SAT scores were too low. In hindsight we wish he’d taken ACTs as well. But we are pretty happy with is choice (and received a great merit scholarship). Not his first choice school but he/we considered all factors (cost, location, school ROI) in his decision…Please tell her not to get too upset if she’s not getting her expected results - our child realized early on some of this is really a crap shoot and you are only capable of so much- so many really bright kids out there - some with perfect SAT scores not getting into their #1 schools. </p>

<p>Some schools look at the English and math sections of the ACT and not the reading ( like on the SAT).</p>

<p>@dreadspirit, I am well aware what the ACT English and Reading sections are. I am saying that colleges look at the Math and English sections. </p>

<p>For example, download the CDS from Stanford (2013-2014) and take a look at the test score section. For the SAT, the columns are CR, Math and Writing. For the ACT, the columns are Composite, English, and Math. To me, that says Stanford cares about the composite, English and Math. Some colleges include the essay scores here and other colleges just list the ACT composite here.</p>

<p>Trust me, I wish they looked at Reading instead of English. Reading is my daughter’s strongest section while English is her weakest.</p>

<p>The thing is Reading is only 35 minute 40 questions long. It is barely more than a quiz. </p>

<p>To the OP, I would be strategic in your daughter’s case and maybe get a LOR from a history or literature teacher commending her work and abilities. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Thank you so much. This is very helpful.</p>

<p>

Yes! She is doing that. Her LORs will be excellent. One from AP History teacher, one from GC.</p>

<p>Ugh. Just read this, posted by @JoshWilson15‌ in another thread:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>^^^THIS is what really worries me about my high GPA, middling SAT D – who, for the benefit of anyone who has not read my OP, goes to a very competitive high school.</p>

<p>Brantly, there is a lot of stuff posted on CC that is total garbage. As you can surmise by the user name and posting history, “JoshWilson15” is a high school junior who has recently found CC, has not yet applied to or been admitted to any college, but is understandably very proud of his own SAT score of 2290.</p>

<p>In the real world, colleges would only use an individual’s SAT score to draw conclusions about high school rigor or grading system if there was a dearth of other information about the high school. So, those SAT scores could be very important for a kid coming from a small rural high school, or a newly established and small charter school, or a homeschooler whose without any GPA at all.</p>

<p>In your case, the ad com is going to be looking at the profile provided by the high school, plus relying on the ad com’s likely familiarity with the high school. </p>

<p>Read *The Gatekeepers<a href=“Steinberg”>/i</a>. It’s old, but it will give you a sense of what is more likely to make or break your daughter’s admission prospects, coming from a private school that is clearly already on the radar the most selective colleges. Your daughter may or may not be at a disadvantage compared to classmates, but her SAT score is almost irrelevant – what the g.c. and teachers write on the LORs will have a bigger impact, because she is essentially competing mostly against her own classmates for the most popular colleges. (That is why she is better off to broaden her college search – her SAT might not matter, but the teachers & GC’s view of how she performs in comparison to her classmates might.)</p>

<p>Keep in mind that that your daughter could very well apply to the same schools as classmates with higher SAT scores but lower GPA’s. Do you really think they are going to say, “hmmm, Brantly-daughter has middling SAT scores so the high school must not be very competitive” - and then looking at the other student assume that their higher SAT scores must mean that grading at the same high school must be very tough? When they do that, do their heads explode? </p>

<p>@calmom‌ Thanks for that. I know that. I just reacted after reading the post that aligned with my (somewhat unfounded) fear.</p>

<p>Just for the record: She goes to a public school, albeit one that is well known among adcoms.</p>

<p>@calmom I would think a 1650 SAT would make it hard for the high GPA student to be considered at many schools and people do make that assumption that the SAT score is the true measure of the applicants intelligence and the GPA is influenced by many factors besides intelligence. Please correct me if I am wrong.</p>

<p>The OP has an SAT much higher than this though-the average SAT score per CB for 2013 is 1500.</p>

<p>Agree Pepper. It’s not so much the school rigor that an adcom will doubt, it is the score threshold that will do it. My sense is that the scores are only there to confirm the grades and aren’t regarded with the precision we all tend to think, but they are a checkpoint. Some schools, notably LACs, are more holistic in their evaluation of an applicant and a particular score won’t be an automatic no, while some only become holistic after the score threshold is met. I have no idea what that cut off point is–OP’s daughter is likely above it at most schools with the possible exception of the moonshot schools. </p>

<p>I suspect that the only time rigor is doubted is in the case where the vast majority of the scores coming from the school are low but I’m just speculating. </p>

<p>At every single school I have visited with three children, the message received loud and clear was that the single most important piece to an application is the gpa coupled with the rigor of the classes. At several schools, the standardized testing was downplayed as unimportant or flexible and at one school (Claremont McKenna), the presenter actually said, “we barely glance at your test scores.” I hope that helps. </p>

<p>

Different colleges view test scores differently, so it’s difficult to make a general statement about how test scores will influence applications. </p>

<p>Some colleges do appear to have score thresholds. I’ve only seen strong evidence of this at less holistic colleges, which are often public schools. For example, Binghamton was mentioned in another thread. Among Parchment members who were in-state with a GPA of 3.5-3.7, the acceptance rate was 0% for test scores of under ~1900, and ~80% for scores of 1900-2000. Acceptance rate exceeded 90% as scores increased to higher levels. Out of state students appear to have lower score thresholds. With the same 3.5-3.7 GPA range, acceptance rate for out of state applicants was 0% with scores of 1720 or below (small sample size) and 100% for with scores of 1720+.</p>

<p>Other colleges show a steady increased chance of admission as test scores increase, with an extremely high chance of admission with near top stats and a near 0% chance of admission with top GPA and poor SAT. I’ve mentioned Vanderbilt as an example earlier, Selective colleges that sponsor NMSs often fit in this category.</p>

<p>The colleges we tend to focus on most on this forum (ivies, Stanford, MIT, …) usually do not show an obvious minimum threshold, and in many cases they do not show an obvious pattern. For example, the admit rate by ACT score for Cornell applicants on Parchment with a 3.7-3.9 GPA and 4+ APs (no filter for years, school, hooks, etc). Maybe the admission rate is a bit lower for ACT scores below Cornell’s reported 25th percentile ACT of 30, or maybe it is just a small sample size issue. Either way, test scores do not appear to have a tremendous influence on admissions decisions in this GPA range, which is consistent with what Cornell writes about tests scores and score thresholds on their website.</p>

<p>36 – 0% (small sample size)
35 – 41%
34 – 34%
33 – 44%
32 – 36%
31 – 44%
29-30 – 36%
25-28 – 29% (small sample size)
Under 25 – No applicants in GPA range</p>

<p>

A couple years ago, Claremont McKenna was caught “exaggerating” the test scores they report to USNWR (and likely other publications), so they do seem to at least think the USNWR and published score aspect of test scores is important. Some colleges do appear to show an increased or decreased chance of admission when crossing the 25th and/or 75th percentile published test score thresholds.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Not always. Sometimes, the rigor is doubted about a particular HS track or courses selected by an individual student, not necessarily a given high school as a whole. Especially if the given student has little to no supporting LORs, GC report, or other supporting evidence which may indicate otherwise and/or the given track has had a past known reputation for having less rigor. </p>

<p>But the point is, they aren’t making the determination based on the SAT score of an individual student alone. They understand that some students don’t do well on standardized, multiple choice tests. </p>

<p>@3girls3cats that’s the question is there a threshold and if so what is it?</p>

<p>I know of no college that likes to admit there is a threshold, but it’s clear from what data is out there, that for many schools there is a threshhold for all but a handful of students. I think the truth is closer to what I heard from any number of admissions officers, “Your SAT score is less important that you think, but more important that we like to admit.” calmom’s daughter was not only a strong student, but she also had an interesting back story. Top students from lousy schools may well do better than their numbers predict because their deprived background makes them desirable. A very good student from a very good school will get into plenty of good colleges, nevertheless realistically they are likely not to do as well as their fellow students who have similar profiles and the scores.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Lots of public universities have well known minimum thresholds for eligibility for admission (e.g. minimum eligibility requirements for California State Universities based on a GPA and SAT/ACT chart).</p>

<p>Of course there is a threshold - but it is a LOT lower than CC’ers believe, because it covers the full range of scores that a given college accepts - not just the top 25% - or top 50%-- or top 75%. </p>

<p>I was told by a supposed “expert” that my d’s alma mater wouldn’t even consider her unless she had test scores above 1400 (for CR + Math). That made no sense at all to me, because I could see from the CDS that 25% of entering students had individual test scores under the 620 level - so that suggested to me that the threshold had to be lower than that. </p>

<p>Yes, my kid had a good “back story” – but she made her own story – and certainly others have stories to tell if only they focused more on that part of their application and less on the tests score.</p>

<p>And of course my daughter would not have been hurt in any way with higher tests scores. But the point is, 25% of enrolling students are always going to be those with scores at the bottom of the score range – that’s simple math - and it is far more likely that the colleges are going to be a lot more flexible when looking at “middling” scores of a student with a strong GPA and challenging curriculum from a high school known to be very competitive. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Well, if by “scores” you mean batting average, that might hold true. For a decision being made purely on academics, class rank is probably more significant than SAT score. But it’s really more important that the student is able to distinguish herself from the competition in some way that goes beyond academics. It’s not a stat-based decision, it’s a people-based decision. The biggest barrier that many students face is that so many others from their same high school or community are applying to the exact same colleges. </p>

<p>Oh I agree if a rank is available that’s probably the most important number. I am talking about on average (aka batting average). I agree with you 100% that too many applicants don’t think about what makes them special and that someone has to be in the bottom 25% - it isn’t all athletes and legacies and big donor kids. My younger son was in the bottom 25% in math (though really his math score was not bad) and top 25% in CR at most of the schools he applied to. We had no idea how is grades would be regarded because when you threw out the non-academic courses he was a B+ student, but he’d somehow managed to get a top 6% rank. I think his real strength was his ability to sell himself, and not all those contradictory numbers.</p>

<p>And I should have been clearer, I know of no private university that will tell you what the bottom threshold is. I know that years ago Brown admitted a kid with scores in the 400s. He struggled, but has had a successful post-Brown life. <a href=“A Hope in the Unseen - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hope_in_the_Unseen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

Well, that’s the problem with competitive admissions – we are at the the point where a score that puts a student in the top 15 or 20% of all students nationwide is probably bottom 25% for the more competitive schools. But we can’t all be top 5% in everything.</p>

<p>You can pretty much figure out the rock-bottom threshold from the common data sets-- you can see the score range where the numbers fall off to 5% or less of admitted students. That won’t give you a specific number, but it does make more sense to me to view an app as being pretty close to a lost cause if the numbers start getting that low-- unless there is some sort of extremely compelling hook. So that’s basically going to be scores in the 500 range for the most elite colleges, and in the 400 range for other highly selective colleges. </p>

<p><a href=“Undergraduate Admission | Brown University”>Undergraduate Admission | Brown University;

<p>Draw your own conclusions about the 25th percentile. And remember that many students have lopsided scores, meaning your admitted 640 or 660 might very well have a couple of 800 in the other two sections. </p>

<p>@calmom I respectfully disagree to what you said about my comment a few days ago - I think that SAT scores are a good way of “validating” GPAs or addressing misrepresentative GPAs. I go to a very competitive high school where only ~3% of seniors graduate with 4.0s, but our imperfect GPAs are made up for by the fact that our average SAT score is a little above 1950. This basically lets colleges know that while we may not have straight A’s, it’s because our school is challenging and not for a lack of intelligence.</p>

<p>But hey, I’m not a college admissions worker! I could be totally wrong for all I know; this is just what I’ve ascertained from older siblings/counselors/college meetings.</p>

<p>P.S. - go cal! Both my parents went for undergrad.</p>