<p>Pea, I disagree.</p>
<p>All non-affluent students have limited resources to work with. Let’s say a family can budget $1,500 per year on out-of-school educational tutoring. Should that money be spend on a twice-monthly chemistry tutor, or a twice monthly SAT tutor (again assume there is not enough $$ to pay for both), or some combination of the two?</p>
<p>Many adcom offices will in fact assign some kind of a rank and score for each… let’s say something like this:</p>
<p>GPA, weighted: 4.3+ 15 pts.
4.1 - 4.3: 13 pts.
3.9 - 4.1: 11 pts., etc.</p>
<p>SAT:
1500+ 5 pts.
1400-1500: 4 pts.
1300 - 14–: 3 pts., etc.</p>
<p>So, if a family were to budget tutoring, the relative importance of the SAT vs. GPA is a very real factor in the allocation of limited resources.</p>
<p>In point of fact, the University of California, San Diego uses a point formula for GPA, 5 SAT tests, ECs, and different measures of overcoming life financial/familial/health, etc. obstacles. It is published for all to see. UCSD published it, but in reality all adcom offices use some sort of informal, unpublished adding of points that is not dissimilar to that used by UCSD.</p>