<p>I really don't seem to have an idea about whether these scores are good or bad when it comes to 'Harvard'! It would be great to have CC'ers views on these scores, especially the one's attending the place right now. If it takes perfect subject test scores (amongst other things!) to file a rivalrous application to Harvard, I am willing to invest more time into the preparation and ameliorating my scores.</p>
<p>Thanks for lending a helping hand!
Harvard17</p>
<p>^ They look fine to me. Generally to CCers 700 is a baseline, over that is good, and I have heard that 750+ and they (adcoms) don’t really discrimminate. </p>
<p>No, I am not a current Harvard undergraduate, but I am applying this year. I’m sure undergrads will also be happy to assist. </p>
<p>I’m sure perfect test scores would make an application more competitive, but at the end of the day, from what I have learnt/read/observed, perfect SAT scores do not guarantee admission, and many do get rejected even with perfect scores. </p>
<p>There will be no one factor that determines one’s admission or rejection, because Harvard (and peer selective schools) are admitting students holistically, looking at applicants as a person and not just as a number or letter. </p>
<p>Hence a whole lot of tangible (grades, SAT scores, GPA) as well as intangible (essays, reccommendations, extracurriculars) things weigh in. </p>
<p>But one of my batchmates told me here in my home country that you just don’t have a shot at places like Harvard (being an international student) unless you don’t have a score of like 790 or 800! What say people? Is it same for us?</p>
<p>Generally, this is correct. However, if the curve is as generous as it used to be for Math SAT II, 800 is considered as significantly different from 790. It used to be that you could get an 800 with 6 wrong.</p>
<p>From what I understand, scores are considered in tranches of 50. So a 750 is more or less the equivalent of 800. An applicant who scored 770 will not have an advantage over one who scored 750. And students with perfect 800s have been known to be rejected.
At this level, what counts is not higher scores, but other elements of the application.</p>
<p>^^I’ve heard that before too, but that’s only because one wrong on most SATIIs will drop your score down to 780 or 770. For the math SATII, the curve is (or was) such that you can get 6 wrong and still have an 800. So, in that case, there is a big difference between an 800 and a 780 score.</p>
<p>^ Since colleges know that they cannot tell if an applicant’s Math 2 800 is with 0,1,2,3,4,5, or 6 wrong, do you really think that they would penalize a 790? BTW D is a freshman there with a 790 Math SAT II.</p>
<p>To the OP, your scores are fine. But they will not be the reason that you get either accepted or denied.</p>
<p>To smoda61 - I highly doubt they’d discriminate between the two scores. If it came down to choosing between two students to accept, and one had an 800 while the other a 790, I doubt that the 10 point difference would be the deciding factor!</p>
<p>Since they can’t tell whether a person got 1,2,3,4, or (if possible) 5 wrong, they can’t really discriminate against someone who got a 790 too much. It’s much easier to discriminate between a 790 and a 740 perhaps…</p>
<p>I’ve seen people get into HYP with 600-something SATII’s but that’s not the point. </p>
<p>I know that not getting an 800 in the MathII is viewed as something of a red flag at a place like Caltech. In contrast, for the other SATIIs Caltech considers scores of 750-800 as basically the same. </p>
<p>But again, I don’t know if they fixed the curve so the point may be moot. If the curve is the same, though, a 780 on Math II is the same performance as a 680 or so on the physics/chem SATII.</p>
<p>The reason why 750-800 is generally viewed as a perfect score in general is because within this range one could have mastered the material but just made a couple of dumb errors. For the math SATII, you have to be exceedingly careless or not been able to do some of the problems in order to get a sub-800 score.</p>
<p>^ Actually for physics the curve is even more “lenient” than math II, but proportionately the difficulty is about the same. You can get around 12 wrong in physics and still get an 800, whereas math is usually around 4-5 wrong.</p>
<p>Accessing how Harvard will view a 790 or 800 by using the policies of Caltech is a mistake. Similarly, I would not use MIT’s. Though those schools certainly overlap with their admitted students, the required math skills for Harvard students is not the same for MIT. I am going to extrapolate and assume that would be the same for Caltech. Does Harvard have students with spectacular math skills? Sure. But unlike MIT, their english, music, spanish (etc) majors and not required to compete the year of intensive Calculus that every student, regardless of their major, must complete at MIT.</p>
<p>790 Math 2 is more than fine to gain an acceptance at Harvard. But no score, even an 800, will guarantee admission.</p>
<p>Thank You every one for posting your viewpoints!</p>
<p>So, do you think that I should sit again for these tests and try aiming for that coveted ‘800’ to make my application more ‘competetive’? If this helps, I would like to double major in Astronomy and Computer Science, if admitted to Harvard and I am from India.</p>