Will low SAT/ACT kill application entirely?

Test Preparation
1

<p>After doing some research, I have read that colleges, especially those of the Ivy League, use GPA and SAT/ACT scores as the sole factor in determining whether or not they will consider an application in its entirety. In other words, if the applicant does not have scores up to par, the entire application is tossed without looking further into it. Is this true?</p>

<p>I am very comfortable with my GPA, and although my school does not rank students, I know I would be placed among the top 5-10%. However, my SAT (2080 superscore) and ACT scores (30, 31) are not as high as I had hoped. I'm worried that some schools will not even consider the rest of my application and miss my extensive community service work and achievement on the violin just because of my sub par scores.</p>

2

<p>It’s not that they’ll completely throw your application away, they won’t. The rest of your application should be impressive and show potential. Of course, if your test scores are unusually low (e.g. 500 math applying for a top math/engineering school), that will almost certainly lead to rejection.</p>

<p>Also, my scores weren’t much better than yours (2090 superscore, 32 ACT), and I’m at MIT now. Low test scores are not the end of the world.</p>