Harvard was at our school’s college fair on Saturday and I asked the representatives who were at the booth about a “suitable” SAT Score for class of '10 (2006ers). While I was told the usual, there is no formula for admissions clause, they said they are looking at a range of 1800-2400; that’s 1200-1600 in Old Sat terms, what the heck?? Why do they say these things?
<p>Because that's the low and high percentile they expect to accept. It's not a lie, it's just a very obtuse answer.</p>
<p>They told the truth. A handful of applicants are accepted at the 1200 range, but they need to have something even more special going for them than do applicants at the 1600 range.</p>
<p>To get more info, you needed to ask follow-up questions such as how one's chances are affected by having a very low or very high score.</p>
<p>In all seriousness, unless you have something amazing going for you, a score below 1450 / 1600 significantly lowers your chances.</p>
<p>The colleges usually give these hugeeee ranges so that more people would apply, thus lowering the admission rate and improving the school's ranking.</p>
<p>Well, it's not lying. It's misleading because chances are, you're not that 1200-score applicant who stands a chance getting in.</p>
<p>they lie and mislead because they are evil</p>
<p>actually...maybe because they don't want to discourage anyone from applying regardless of scores and such so that they get the best applicant pool possible ...maybe??</p>
<p>They mislead because it is their job to mislead. There is a lot of money involved. Since US News and World Report began publishing their ranking of top colleges, everyone is very conscious of the relative standings of the schools. USNWR rankings are really stupid. A school can go from #25 to #19 in one year, and so how accurate can the rankings be? However, one of the primary determinates of a school's rank is its selectivity as measured by what percent of its applicant pool does it accept. There are other factors such as SAT ranges and student-faculty ratios, but the selectivity is very important. In order to get the selectivity up, they want everybody to apply even though they know that they are going to reject most of them. Why else does Harvard market itself so heavily? Do you think that Harvard had to market itself so that it has enough qualified people apply? </p>
<p>If a school's ranking starts to drop, it may snowball. If it goes down in 2003, then it is less attractive to applicants in 2004, and so it goes down even further. If a school's ranking drops, there are less donations from alumni. The admission committees follow their numbers like a major league baseball manager follows batting averages. The admission officers mislead students into thinking they have a chance to be accepted. It is their job to do this. A saleman does that.</p>
<p>I have always wanted for someone to ask a Harvard admission officer whether their 900 SAT scores are going to be a problem. I'm sure that they would answer "We look at a lot of factors besides SAT scores".</p>
<p>and the $50 for each app doesn't hurt either</p>
<p>"I have always wanted for someone to ask a Harvard admission officer whether their 900 SAT scores are going to be a problem. I'm sure that they would answer 'We look at a lot of factors besides SAT scores"'.</p>
<p>I have heard students ask a Harvard adcom what's the bottom SAT score that is considered. The adcom responded that while Harvard considers more than SAT scores, Harvard also only admits students who clearly have the ability to graduate from Harvard. Thus, usually the lowest level of SATs that would indicate this is a 1200 SAT (old SAT). Presumably that means that 1800 is the new floor. Of course, only extremely extraordinary applicants would be admitted with scores that low (when compared to the rest of Harvard's pool).</p>
<p>dufus3709's description on the power of commercialization of the college admissions process is very accurate. my education professors who research on college access seem to complain about the same thing too.</p>
<p>
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but the selectivity is very important
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</p>
<p>That's debateable. I didn't think it mathematically had a lot of weight. Aren't they axing it next year, anyway?</p>
<p>One of the reasons admissions officers seem to lie is that students, parents, and others are constantly pressing them to provide information that is impossible to give accurately. If you want to know whether or not you'll be admitted, the only way to know is to submit an application. An admissions rep at a place like Harvard can't give you an answer based on a few facts thrown out there, because that's not what admissions decision at Harvard are based on. For every "rule" you want an admissions rep to provide, there's probably more than one exception to it. They'd be just as guilty of misinformation if they gave you a hard and fast rule.</p>
<p>Anyone who thinks colleges are making money on their app fees is delusional. App fees help defray the costs of the process, and they (hopefully) suppress apps from people with little interest. But they are not some cash cow that would lead admissions officers to solicit additional apps.</p>
<p>The issue of selectivity determining the USNWR ranking as well as how adcoms try to have many applications as possible in order to improve their USNWR ranking is covered in "The Gatekeepers" by Jacques Steinberg. It is also covered in "Admissions Confidential" by Rachel Toors although that book is routinely criticized in the CC forums. Both books describe how admission officers feel bad about doing it.</p>
<p>I agree that the application fees don't have anything to do with it, and I agree that admission officers don't have any hard and fast rules that they follow. Certainly applying to any of the most selective schools resembles a lottery more than a fair contest. However, I do feel that admission officers never discourage anyone to apply due to the reasons stated above.</p>
<p>There may not be hard and fast rules; but if a college has a 50% SAT range of 1350-1550 and someone asks should they apply with a score of 1220, the admission officer could explain that you don't have any chance at all during regular decision unless you're a legacy, minority, athlete, development case, or VIP or have a score of 1480. The situation makes it hard for applicants to gauge their safeties, matches and reaches. I'm afraid that some applicants may think they are a match during regular decision if they are even in the 50% SAT range when they actually need to be towards the top.</p>
<p>I will say this--a high number of applications, and good selectivity measures, are advantageous to a college/university. It's a sign of healthy interest in the institution, which raises its stature in the eyes of credit/bond rating companies, trustees, potential donors, etc. So yes, there are some advantages. It just rankles me to see so much power be (mis)attributed to US News & WR.</p>
<p>Having said that, processing applications is onerous for a place like Harvard (which already gets lots and lots of applications). They don't want (or need) applications just for the sake of having more applications. It isn't worth it to solicit apps from people who have no chance of being admitted. It's more work, and it's more disappointed students and families when they get rejected.</p>
<p>What colleges want to avoid is having capable, amibitous, desirable, non-typical kids self-select themselves out of the applicant pool because they heard a rumor from the dentist's mailman third cousin that Harvard won't ever take anyone below an SAT of X. That's a bad outcome for everyone. There are a lot of available statistics and anecdotes out there, such as that 50% score range referenced already. Students should make some considered judgments based on that, with input from their guidance counselor if he or she is knowledgeable. There are some students who will 'take a chance' and that's perfectly appropriate, especially since some of them really do bring something to the table that makes their lower score or GPA a non-issue.</p>
<p>I don't think any college will ever give a minimum SAT score for acceptance - and that includes even the lower tier schools. Hoedown describes the situation perfectly in Post #13 (and post #11). If SAT's were the sole determining factor, then maybe colleges would say you have no chance if you don't have X score. But most colleges look at the high school exp. - classes & grades, recommendations & essays, EC's etc. together with the SAT score to determine who gets admitted.</p>
<p>Does Harvard usually accept students with mostly OUTSTANDING SAT scores -yes. But will there be students in their entering class who have lower SAT scores than 50% range, that's a yes too, (in very limited numbers).</p>
<p>I always told my daughter to remember that every party wants to be the one to have the final right to say "no" - ie to have the most options.</p>
<p>If Harvard can get people with SAT's ranging from (old) 1200-1600 to apply, they have the ultimate choice in then picking who they want for their class - they have a chance to find those handfull of 1200 SAT kids who bring something unique to the table (perhaps something that can't even readily be described ahead of time) that adds something they feel they want.</p>
<p>As the flood of postcards and mailings hit my daughter's mailbox - I always told her, don't assume that means that college REALLY wants you - they just want you to be interested in THEM so that they get the chance to decide whether they want you.</p>
<p>Students do the same thing when they try to convince an interviewer that they love a given school when deep in their hearts they know it is really number 4 on the list. But they want the interviewer to believe it could well be number one - because, you never know, if numbers 1 through 3 don't come through, it could end up being number 1 and the student wants to still have that option.</p>
<p>When we were looking at colleges, what I found much more telling than the statistics on how many students in given gpa/SAT range they accepted was how many in those same ranges they rejected!!! You may think you have an ok shot if you hear that 200 out of the class of 800 students has your gpa/SAT - but if you learn that those 200 were out of 2000 with those stats who applied, you should reconsider what your chances are! Unfortunately a lot of schools don't break down acceptance RATES by these subcategories. I think Princeton does at their webiste -- I had a discussion with a friend once - her daughter wanted to go to Princeton and ther mom kept telling me that as long as you were within their "range of scores" they focused on other things - my response - well than why does a much higher perentage of 1500 SAT's get accepted than 1300 Sat's - it can't just be coincidence that the onces with 1500 also have some other thing going for them more so than the ones with 1300!</p>
<p>northstarmom is correct. </p>
<p>Those 1200 kids need something else, and it needs to be big and/or nationally-ranked, such as throw a fastball 90 mph, be Jodie Foster (oh sorry, she went to Yale), having won Intel/Westinghouse (700 math, 500 verbal), played violin with Itzak Perlman at Carnegie Hall, valedictorian of a inner city school that only sends 1 kid a year to a four year college.....you get the pic.</p>
<p>Think about it another way, there are ~30,000 high schools in the country.....not enuf slots at all the Ivies combined just to offer the vals a spot.</p>