<p>Based on my experience here so far plus what I know of the admissions process... SATs hardly matter. They very rarely say anything that the rest of the app didn't already strong suggest. Your academic record is very, very important. If you didn't do well in your classes in high school you aren't getting in. Your grades/scores need to suggest that you can graduate but other than that I seriously doubt there is a cutoff GPA or SAT score. Everyone here is really interesting and I often wonder how the admissions department knew that. It seems they must look at essays a lot. And think about it, if you were reading all these apps, the easiest way to get a sense of what this application is like is to read the written parts, much easier to interpret than all the stats and lists. That does NOT mean that grades hardly matter. Not at all. But how do you choose who to accept after you have a while of students with very similar academic records? Everyone here is also very good at something, many people are very good at several things. That could be a sport, an academic subject, debate, dance, etc. Really investing time in one or two activities probably helps too. </p>
<p>That is all just my opinion. No one here really knows what they look for. I bet that even the people in the admissions department couldn't really tell you exactly what makes the difference between admit and waitlist and reject for borderline cases.</p>