<p>I've seen several statements from several CC participants in various threads recently that Harvard rejects 50 percent of all the students who apply to Harvard with perfect SAT scores. Where is there a convenient source to verify that statement? Where is a webpage produced by Harvard that says so? Where is there a journalistic report of exactly such a figure? </p>
<p>One student commenting in a thread just today mentioned that a 50 percent acceptance (among the other 50 percent of perfect-scoring students who presumably were NOT rejected) sure beats a 7.something percent overall base acceptance for all applicants to Harvard, so maybe high scores aren't such a bad idea. Of course, the frequently made statement about half of perfect scorers being rejected implies that high scores are not a guarantee of admission, an idea with which I certainly agree. But I wonder if the statement is even numerically true. I wonder if Harvard even bothers making such a statement officially.</p>
<p>The Revealed</a> Preferences Paper has a graphic of the acceptance rates by SAT percentile at Harvard, MIT, Yale, and Princeton. It has a "100th percentile" data point, which I have always assumed was a perfect SAT score.</p>
<p>If my assumption is correct, then even more perfect scorers are rejected -- that data indicates that 50% of perfect scorers are rejected at MIT, 60% at Yale and Princeton, and 80% at Harvard.</p>
<p>Token, I have seen remarks from top schools, not necessarily H, say that top schools have rejected perfect scorers. Also have heard anecdotally from press, and other sources. Not accurate reporting, I'm afraid.</p>
<p>However, I know that many colleges use scores ranging from say 1-5 in assessing areas of the application. When assessing the test scores, the top score of 5 does not distinguish between perfect and the threshhold for that score. Also schools that use an academic index comprised of SAT2s will use all 5 or 6 numbers, again diluting the impact of a perfect SAT1. In other words, the perfect SAT1 scores are not highlighted but are mixed into the other admissions criteria.</p>
<p>why does it do that?!?!?!? i'm sure correlation=/=causation but why is admissions %s higher around 92%? is that cuz less people apply and if they apply it means they have some qualifications to offset their low scores?</p>
<p>I'm sure that a higher percentage of perfect scorers are rejected than individuals from families with $10 mil. incomes. (and take out those students and admissions rates are well lower than 7%).</p>
<p>I agree that we know anecdotally that some students with truly "perfect" scores (2400 on the three-section "new" SAT or 36 as an ACT composite) are rejected by their favorite colleges, which in many cases includes Harvard. Thus far what I don't see is any evidence of a current statement from Harvard's admission office that perfect scorers are even tracked separately as a noted category. As mentioned above, the revealed preferences working paper category of "100th percentile" includes scores that are not peak scores. Moreover, the revealed preferences working paper information is almost surely not current for Princeton (I don't believe Princeton practices that form of strategic admissions anymore) and may not be current for Harvard.</p>
<p>I'll let you guys Google around Harvard's website for a confirming quote, but here is confirmation of the acceptance rates for students scoring a perfect 800 on the SAT Verbal or SAT Math at Swarthmore College.</p>
<p>It's an interview with Admissions Dean Jim Bock in the Swarthmore Bulletin, the alumni magazine, from 2001. I've seen more recent quotes, but this should suffice as authoritative. Of course, Harvard is even more selective than Swarthmore.</p>
<p>
[quote]
One often-cited number, Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores, is no exception. Bock calls them “useful when used appropriately,” but scoffs at the idea that Swarthmore has a particular target or standard. “Sure, our median is high [1,450 for the Class of 2005]; it reflects the overall quality of our applicant pool. But we may accept students who are well below our median when we see that he or she is way above the average student in a school. These scores can mean different things in different schools, so we work hard to understand their context.”</p>
<p>This year, more than half of all applicants with perfect 800 scores on their SAT verbals were not accepted. Just under half of those with 800 math scores were also not accepted. It’s pretty clear that if SATs were the deciding factor, Swarthmore could admit a class with near-perfect scores. “You wouldn’t need us,” says Bock of his staff. “We could just plug in the numbers.”
<p>I'll note here that a student recorded as having a perfect score on the SAT math section (800) may have any score at all on the critical reading section (from 200 to 800), and similarly for a student who has a perfect score on the critical reading section. It's considerably rarer for a student to ace two sections, or all three of the new SAT, than it is for a student to ace one. </p>
<p>Brown University publishes figures for base acceptance rate (and, incidentally, for yield) for students with peak scores on one section or the other, but those figures are subject to the possible interpretation that the peak math scorers who are rejected are those with low critical reading scores, and likewise the other way around.</p>
<p>Token, you can ask Harvard directly. Don't know if they separate out apps with perfect scores, however. Some colleges truly do not. They may separate out scores but not per student. The admissions directors at some highly selective schools I know are not impressed with the perfect scores at all, and told me their process does not highlight them, and decisions are made without that knowledge. The scores are packaged within thresh holds and SAT2 scores.</p>
<p>I was shadowing the Stanford admission officer rather than the Harvard admission officer at last week's Exploring College Options program in my town. The Stanford officer repeatedly said, "It's not a numbers-driven process" when asked various questions of this nature about admission to Stanford. Stanford's website is certainly consistent with that. It's my belief, from having visited Harvard's website, that "perfect scorer" is not even a tracked category in the Harvard admissions process. But I could be proved wrong if someone can find a journalistic quotation from one of the leaders of the Harvard admission officer specifically referring to admission results for perfect scorers in some recent year.</p>
<p>Harvard tracks perfect scores. Possibly not 2400 total, but definitely individual Math and Verbal scores.</p>
<p>None of the links below give an answer to your specific question on %,....but allows for some "intelligent" inference.</p>
<p>Also...if you trust the self-reported scores on CC admit threads...you could do a non-statistical, but somewhat inferential look at admits and rejects with perfect scores.</p>
<p>And...some inference...Harvard accepted 2058 for the class of 2011. “Nearly 2500 applicants had perfect verbal scores”, “nearly 3,200 applicants had perfect math scores”. A</a> record pool leads to record results</p>
<p>We can be fairly certain that all 2058 admitted did not have either perfect math or verbal scores...just need an educated guess on how many did!</p>
<p>2boys, I know a number of kids with perfect math scores but unimpressive verbal scores. Now with a third part to the SAT1, it is difficult to come up with a number of kids with a 2400 especially when you know that they can get it at multiple settings. Also, it was my understanding that H and a number of other highly selective schools add in the SAT2 scores to get their relevant number for judging the kid.</p>
<h1>of kids with perfect math and possibly unimpressive verbal appears to be validated by the applicant #'s at Harvard (for class of 2011)</h1>
<p>OP didn't indicate if he was looking for stats for combined perfect score (2400 + SAT II's) or individual perfect scores....I just noted what I had found.</p>
<p>I notice the parabolic distribution in all categories from the stats posted by tokenadult (post #9).
This is not the pyramid distribution we see in other kinds of competition. If we apply the minimum value of calculus, it looks like students with 780 Math, 790 CR, and 780 WR are more preferred.</p>
<p>Math 800 - 9857
Math 790 - 4447
Math 780 - 2928
Math 770 - 5936
Math 760 - 5703
Math 750 - 6265</p>
<p>I suspect they can tell us a lot more about SAT's and admissions than any number of propagandized press releases</p>
<p>Please help me out here and correct me if I'm wrong, but these are some basic deductions I made:</p>
<p>MIT is the only school that is acting as expected, with an exponential curve representing the relationship between admissions and scores. This makes sense; they've been known to be more of a scores-based school. There will always be those luck-seekers who muddle the lower SAT range acceptance rates, in addition to the more subjective crapshoot aspect of less qualified (SAT-wise) applicants, so I think this curve is pretty standard for what you would expect at a top school. </p>
<p>HY, however, have definite bumps, and P is downright sinusoidal. Self-selectivity explains the roughness, but I think it implies something deeper: students give the SAT a lot more weight than they deserve, at least for HYP, such that high scorers are too confident and low scorers are too timid. For MIT, however, just the right amount of self-selectivity is applied - look at that curve, beautiful.</p>
<p>Can we conclude that Princeton puts the most emphasis on non-test-related-factors, whereas MIT puts the most?</p>
<p>Can we conclude that the dampening of Harvard's bumps is because EVERYONE wants to apply there for kicks, thereby lessening the effects of self-selectivity?</p>
<p>Do the graphical idiosyncrasies, such as the local minimums at 98 percentile, tell more about the brackets that are used by the colleges themselves or the analog nature of the students?</p>
[quote]
If a student takes the required tests more than once, which results does Harvard consider?
We consider a student's best test scores, but it is generally our experience that taking tests more than twice offers diminishing returns.
<p>"It’s pretty clear that if SATs were the deciding factor, Swarthmore could admit a class with near-perfect scores. “You wouldn’t need us,” says Bock of his staff. “We could just plug in the numbers.” "</p>
<p>I hate this argument. The adcomms are essentially saying that they have to do admissions holistically because otherwise they would be unemployed.</p>
