<p>Such a statement has been widely associated with the Ivy League schools and other top universities; on these boards, most people associate it particularly with HYPSM. I think most people would agree with me that the statement means that admission rates for 2400ers is ~40-45%, perhaps closer to 35% on the more conservative side, at HYPSM.</p>
<p>Now, it is widely claimed on these boards that the difference between a 2400 and a score in the low 2300s is negligible. After all, admission into HYPSM is holistic and so the SAT doesn't play as integral of a role as it does at state flagships. But is it necessarily true?</p>
<p>Looking at Princeton's website, applicants scoring in the 2300-2400 range are admitted at a rate of 28.1%. Now, I do not have concrete research stating the admission rate of a 2400er, but most people would say approximately 40%, no? Is it possible that there is a greater difference between a 2400 and 2300 in terms of admissions at top universities than most of us on these boards believe there is?</p>
<p>There are other possibilities, of course. Perhaps the admission rate of a 2400er is more like 30%, and so there really wouldn't be a true difference between a 2400 and a 2300. But somehow, it seems more plausible that the 2400 has an admission rate higher than that, thus making the difference much wider. Is there a source confirming or contradicting that?</p>
<p>I think there are two reasons why 2400 scorers would fare better than 2300 scorers:</p>
<p>First, when people say 2300=2400 they are assuming a relatively even distribution: 770, 770, 760 is very different from 800, 800, 700. I personally feel that most people scoring in the 2300-2400 range fall more into the latter category. If for no other reason, it is usually just hard on some tests numerically to get “770, 770, 760” given the curves. Although you might say “well not all the people in the 2300-2390 range scored a 2300” it is certainly heavily shifted towards 2300 since there are probably 10 times more 2300ers than 2390ers.</p>
<p>Secondly, people who tend to get 2400 are perfectionists. Therefore you have some correlation not causation in the application process. The 2400 students are more accomplished on average than the 2300-2390 students so even without any favoring of one score over another we would expect the 2400s to do better.</p>
<p>Who cares? According to the College Board, among 2008 college-bound seniors, there were exactly 294 people who scored a “true” 2400-- i.e., 2400 in a single sitting—at any time in their SAT-taking career. That’s just a trivially small number. So let’s just stipulate they all get into very good colleges, and most of them—those with GPAs, class ranks, ECs, essays, and teacher and GC recs that are as stellar as their test scores—get into some of the very best schools. But they don’t all get into their first-choice schools. So what? Who cares whether 40% of them (= 118 of the total pool, assuming they all apply) get into Princeton, or only 30% (= 88). We’re talking about what happens to 30 people, for gosh sakes; 30 people who are all going to go to very good schools, most of them to great schools. What an inconsequential subject! Who gives a rip? </p>
<p>You know what? The colleges themselves don’t care, simply because there aren’t enough 2400-scorers to worry about. To the extent they care about SAT scores, their principal concern is going to be to maintain or improve their 25th and 75th percentile SAT scores. And because very few schools have a 75th percentile SAT score above 2300, any score above 2300 is going to be just as important as any other score above 2300. Making an offer to the kid with the 2400 score may be a wasted offer if you don’t think you have a good chance of landing him; in which case, the 2300 or 2310 who says he really, really wants to come to your school is more valuable, because your offer won’t go to waste.</p>
<p>Why the obsession with 2400 scores? It’s really an inconsequential part of the admissions process because so few people will be there and because colleges have absolutely no incentive to care whether the applicant has a 2400 or a 2300, except insofar as the 2400 may be more of a jerk, thinking he’s God’s gift to the world, thus less likely actually to attend and therefore less valuable to the school.</p>
Even if students with a 2400 are admitted at a higher rate than students with a 2300, this does not mean that students with a 2400 are favored explicitly for their test scores.</p>
<p>Thus wouldn’t a student scoring in the 2280-2320 range feel more compelled to try and boost that score up to 2400, in order to get into that elite group and increase his/her chances at Princeton? You say “who cares,” but if you assume that the acceptance rate for these perfect scorers is somewhere around 35-40%, there might be a significant boost up from the 28.1% for all 2300+ students.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to argue that this is a proper way of going about admissions, but is it possible that some schools are less holistic than they claim to be? Or perhaps Morsmorde is right, is a higher acceptance rate mostly due to 2400ers often being that type A profile?</p>
<p>And even those are only for break down the individual test, not the total. That said, the student profile on the last page seems to imply that getting an 800 increases your chance of acceptance, especially on the Critical Reading or Writing portion. Though the bump in admit rate goes from 11% to 18% in both cases.</p>
<p>Regardless, with only 284 (out of 1 million?) students pulling 2400s in a single sitting and then applying to multiple different schools, it strikes me that you’ll need a lot of years of data before you can say that there is a statistically definitive advantage to a 2400 vs a 2300.</p>
<p>“but is it possible that some schools are less holistic than they claim to be”. </p>
<p>I disagree. Common sense would scream at all of us that a 2320 scorer and a 2400 scorer have both attained the highest minimals for any college. At that point, if I were a reader at a top college, I would trust my instincts (formed from the entirety of the file) rather than some 80 point spread. Could my instincts be wrong? Certainly.</p>
<p>Selective college admissions is art and not science.</p>
<p>Students with 2400 are admitted to top schools at a much higher rate than those with 2300. Period. Adcom can say anything (and do), the numbers speak for themselves.</p>