<p>25% of all applicants to Yale this year had perfect SAT scores.</p>
<p>That doesn't mean you should retake your test. It means you shouldn't get sucked into self-satisfaction and complacency. Forget about the exam and go find other ways to distinguish yourself from the many, many other smart students with perfect or near-perfect scores.</p>
<p>If you are getting scores like this as a sophomore, you should be looking <em>beyond</em> the SAT/PSAT at things like regional and national competitions. Those are the tests that will set you apart for the Ivies. . . not your standardized exams. Look for leadership opportunities, ways to demonstrate your passion, academic awards at the state and national level, and don't waste your time studying for the SATs. Whether you retake or not is not actually a big deal either way; colleges will look at your top score in any case. Just don't think that your score is going to buy you a berth at a tiptop school.</p>
<p>I should add that the majority of those perfect scores were rejected, while many (at least half, I believe) of the students whom Yale accepted did <em>not</em> have perfect scores.</p>
<p>definately DO NOT RETAKE!!!!!!!!!!!! That would be a waste of time and brain power. Like most others have said take SAT IIs. I personally wouldn't bother with the ACT. To me it would just be more time wasted. Great job btw :)</p>
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I should add that the majority of those perfect scores were rejected, while many (at least half, I believe) of the students whom Yale accepted did <em>not</em> have perfect scores.
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<p>At Yale and its peer schools, for perfect scorers the acceptance rate is 4-5 times higher than the overall applicant pool, and significantly higher (15 to 25 percent) than for scorers in the 2300 range. That is, the acceptance rate is about 40 percent at 2400, and drops quite linearly by 5-7 percent per 50 point SAT tranche (on 800 or 800+800 scale, I don't recall at the moment).</p>
<p>That's helpful and informative. Can you tell me where you got that info?</p>
<p>I should clarify. I didn't mean that a perfect score won't help you. I meant that it's virtually never enough for the most competitive colleges. In the last two years I've seen at least three students with fantastic numbers (grades/scores) who were devastated when their top choice schools turned them down. In every case, they lacked outstanding honors or leadership positions.</p>
<p>It's very possible that the majority of students with perfect scores also had other important qualifications: for instance, I bet that a large percentage of kids with perfect 2400s have found ways to pull off regional and national awards, and that a large percentage have many extremely high SAT IIs and APs. And I bet that a large chunk of the 60% of perfect scorers who get turned down do <em>not</em> have have those other awards or test scores. </p>
<p>Getting a 2300 as a sophomore is definitely something to celebrate. . . but then again, it's not cause for complacency. It's time to look beyond the test! That's all I meant.</p>
<p>The data for Brown is on its web site, admissions rate per SAT score tranche and by GPA and class rank. In addition to the linearity of admission rate, one sees the much stronger influence of SAT than grades or class rank. I can hunt down the link (eventually) if needed, but it's been posted several times on CC.</p>
<p>For Harvard, Yale and some other Ivies, particular data points (percentage of 2400s or valedictorians rejected, percent above given composite score, etc) are published occasionally, and are close to Brown's data after normalizing against the overall admissions rate of the school. You can also see, where the linear SAT pattern stops and the admissions rate bottoms out at a number different from zero (650 or 600 subscore range), the point where recruitment of athletes, legacies and minorities shows its effect; at this range admission is insensitive to SAT and "hooks" have taken over. </p>
<p>The admit rate of perfect scorers has gone down largely because the SATs themselves have been gutted. An 800 verbal used to be very unusual. For today's test one might define a "true perfect scorer" on the SAT as a 2400 plus very high SAT II and AP results on several math- and English-related subjects. It would be interesting to estimate what level of SAT II and AP performance is needed to pack the same admissions wallop as a 1600 on the old SAT.</p>
<p>i agree that you should feel out your scholarship interests before entirely writing off a retake...for presidential scholar, for instance (not a scholarship but an honor), you need to take it within a certain window of junior year.</p>
<p>also, for you "get a life" ppl, there *are *students out there who can score highly w/o massive amounts of prep. secondly, you're posting on CC. who's going to cast the first stone?</p>
<p>Thanks for taking the time to respond with those details. I agree with your analysis; I think it would be interesting to figure out what "the new perfect score" looks like. My guess is a 2400 + 3 perfect SAT IIs/APs in disparate subjects (i.e., not all in quantitative subjects or all in languages). . . maybe 4 perfect SAT IIs/APs. What's your estimate?</p>
<p>This thread is ancient but I felt the need to update.</p>
<p>According to New York magazine, Harvard "rejects 1 in 4" students with perfect SAT scores. That's another way of saying they accept 3 in 4. I don't know where New York got this information, but they are a pretty credible magazine, and that's <em>much, much</em> higher than I expected:</p>
<p>Thanks for the follow-up in post #31. I'm not staking a belief on any particular set of numbers, but it was my impression from studies of admission probabilities that probability of admission goes up as SAT I score goes up at most highly selective colleges. Especially because SAT I score reports note the date at which the test was taken, and the test-taker's grade designation as of that date, the OP in this thread may be "one and done" as to taking the SAT I. In a private message not long ago, a mother (whom I met in real life years ago) of two Ivy League students mentioned encouraging one child to do a retake after already scoring quite high. I might not have thought that was strictly necessary in that case (as I wouldn't in the OP's case, either) but evidently the one retake was not a barrier to admission to the child's preferred college, which was the subject of news stories I saw. </p>
<p>P.S. By the way, lotf629, are you attributing to New York Magazine the credibility that most people attribute to the New Yorker? They are distinct magazines with distinct reputations.</p>
<p>You're right: probably all the students who posted on the original thread has moved on. :) I just didn't want to leave up misleading information in case anyone else read this thread in the future.</p>
<p>I agree that top SAT Is have always been a significant part of Ivy League admission. At the same time, my understanding about five years ago was that Harvard in particular turned away enough perfect scores to fill the freshman class. However, by far the majority of students there didn't have perfect scores. I always worried about students who felt that a perfect SAT score was a ticket in to any school in the country, because in my experience it was only a piece of a big pie.</p>
<p>However, if Harvard is accepting 75% of all perfect scores, that suggests that the SAT is a huge piece of the pie--that a perfect score might be enough by itself to get a student in, if everything else was more or less in order. That didn't used to be true. I guess it's the relative importance of the SAT that surprised me.</p>
<p>It's hard to say if the observed rising rates of acceptance with increased SAT I scores are because the colleges are looking for SAT I scores as such, or just because they are looking for other things that correlate well with SAT I scores. But, at any rate, I would advise a young person who aspires to go to a highly selective college to do a lot of reading (which raises SAT I scores on all three sections) because that is good self-education anyway, and may help the young person thrive better at a highly selective college.</p>
<p>P.S. Yes, the New York magazine is not exactly a bastion of high-minded journalism :) , but I doubt their fact-finding and fact-checking is hugely irresponsible. But who knows? Maybe I'm naive; after all, I don't know the magazine that well. They aren't the New York Times. I wish they had cited their source. Do you find them to be disreputable in any way?</p>