What's more important to CMC: Passion or a test score?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Claremont McKenna College
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<p>I'm a junior who is absolutely smitten by CMC. I took a week off of school to come visit, fell in love with it even more, and now I know exactly where I want to go. I am in the top 10% of my class, 3.85 UW GPA, Captain of a soccer team (and D1 recruit,) and I received first place in an economics competition (there were hundreds of videos all around the country. I received letters of recognition from the Board of Education, Senator Cardin, and Senator Mikulski.) </p>

<p>I am worried about one foible on my application: standardized test scores. I remember them saying at my CMC info session "We don't even look at SAT II scores or AP exam scores unless it's for scholarship information." However, like all top liberal arts schools (with the exception of maybe bowdoin or pitzer,) they require the SAT.</p>

<p>Now I am in love with this school. I have spent countless hours researching, emailing faculty, getting involved, showing my interest, and making my presence heard. However, I am consistently scoring below 2000 on my SAT's.</p>

<p>Does my leadership (I'm also a member of the Future Business Leaders of America and Student Government Representative while stile maintaining captainship of my soccer team and winning national recognition) outweigh such a low test score? My school is ranked in the top 5% of the nation but we don't focus on standardized tests at all. From what I know, nobody in my class (class of 2014, woo hoo!) has scored better than me, and I know of only one person at the school to have ever scored above 2100 (he got into Harvard and Yale but went to a state school due to financial issues.)</p>

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<p>To answer your question, if you’ve got a passion and it’s backed up by your application, that’s more important than a sub-stellar standardized test score.
The last couple sentences of your post just come off as whiny, so cut that out and you’re good to go.</p>

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<p>You still have time to raise your test scores, just practice more. Maybe try the ACT. The more you practice, the better you tend to do (as long as practicing efficiently).</p>

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<p>Thanks guys!</p>

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<p>I would give the ACT a try; I found the questions to be generally more straight-forward, but you have less time to do them.</p>

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<p>my son is from a stellar highschool in maryland and just got turned down by CMC for ED. I think it is about everything with them and the sports part doesn’t help at all - you need the whole package and test scores are part of that</p>