Would 1580-->1600 SAT make a difference? & other UChicago admissions questions

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
1

Hello,

I’m fairly new to this forum. I listed my stats, ECs, and profile over on my first thread (http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/2168122-do-i-have-a-chance-at-the-ivies-next-steps-for-senior-year-p1.html), but since this thread is more focused on a specific university I thought I would start a new one. I’d also like to thank everyone who provided their advice on my first thread—I really appreciate it.

The more I read about colleges and universities, the more attractive UChicago has become. It’s landed on the affordable side of my list according to the net price calculator, and it seems to score high in quality of life metrics such as dorm quality. Above all, I admire its core liberal arts education and its seemingly intellectual culture. I’ve become tempted to apply ED if I like what I see when I visit in February.

To summarize my stats and profile in brief, I’m a junior in high school applying to colleges in the fall of 2020. I’m a white male from a mediocre high school of around 600 students in Michigan. My GPA is anticipated to be 4.00UW or a little less by the end of senior year and will be in the ballpark of ~4.3W. I’ve taken the SAT once and gotten a 1580C 800M 780RW in one sitting. My EC highlights would be student council president and extensive involvement in a local state rep’s campaign since the summer before freshman year (my intended major is Political Science).

The question that I pose today is whether it would make a difference in the admissions process to have a score of 1600 vs. the 1580 I have now. In addition, does it matter if this is a superscore or in one sitting? I know plenty of 1600 kids get rejected from UChicago—these kids seem to be mostly STEM who apply EA but don’t articulate that UChicago is their first choice well in their essays.

Regarding the general characteristics of the UChicago admissions process, would you say UChicago is more stats-driven when making an admissions decision or does it use a more holistic process? I’ve read on CC that Northwestern is stats-focused, for example, while places like Brown are more holistic, but I’ve heard differing opinions on UChicago; some say it used to be stats-minded but has tried to shed this attitude along with the whole “where fun goes to die” perception—going test-optional would be an example of this POV.

Thanks!

2

No

3

No. The biggest factor for UChicago, given your outstanding record, will be whether you apply ED (preferably ED1). They are very ED-driven these days.

4

Whether U Chicago is stats-driven or not, 20 SAT points is not going to tip the needle. You’re overthinking this. Your energy would be much better spent on the “Why us?” essay.

5

I tend to overthink these kinds of things. The only reason I really asked is because my principal told me that I should put my energy towards getting a perfect score and that would greatly improve my chances at top universities. But it seems like they may be wrong.

Does the prompt for the Why UChicago essay change from year to year?

6

Your energy is best directed towards maintaining high grades and participating in meaningful ECs that you enjoy…not studying to go from a score of 1580 to 1600.

7

Your principal is wrong and should focus energies on not running a mediocre HS. :slight_smile:

Question 1 is virtually the same every year. Question 2 changes each cycle.

8

UChicago is test optional. I’m sure it will be viewed as excellent and top of the heap. It’s one box of several. And the other boxes will be make or break for any one school on any given day and the one particular first reader.

9

Thank you all so much! I know UChicago doesn’t require subject tests, but would it still be to my advantage to take them?

10

It may be if you have other colleges on your list that consider them. If no other college considers them, then no, I would not take just for UChicago.

11

Does question 2 change every year by changing the six or so options initially presented to applicants or does the whole purpose of question 2 change? That is, will next year’s Q2 be the same out-of-the-box essay with six different initial options and keeping the option to write your own prompt?

12

A 1580 one-and-done is superb and you can only potentially signal an over-attention to standardized testing by re-taking.

A high subject score in an area not already highlighted by your stats and AP scores might be useful but not necessary just for UChicago. If you were planning to take them anyway and you are happy with the results, then you should go ahead and submit to UChicago. But otherwise, I agree with @skieurope on the subject of subject tests. UChicago will probably get a strong sense as to your academic prep from your transcript and interests so it’ll really be about the essays and which admission plan you choose. Do try to pay a visit if you haven’t already done so. Good luck!

13

UChicago’s Uncommon Essay is kind of famous so they are not likely to change that out. They may add some new prompts. You always have the option to use an old prompt or make one of your own so each year simply adds more choices. Also, don’t rule out a third essay as they used to include that as an option but dropped it in recent years. Someday it could make a come back - you never know.

14

I’m not expert on what schools will take, just a casual observer who managed to watch my son navigate the process at UChicago and became interested in the whole college admissions process. However, I would suspect that any university would look at a 1580 as equal to a 1600, especially in a “took it once” scenario. Great Job. Like others have said, make your essays superior. They should be filled with examples or evidence that “You + target University = World a Better Place.” I’m a strong believer that in holistic admissions, the stats portion (test scores and GPA) get you invited to the party. But it is the rest of the application that gets you asked to stay around and join the club. Schools are looking for world changers and body of knowledge shapers. They are trying to admit you for what you will do, not for what you have done. Your application needs to tell them that you haven’t peaked. Your stats are historical, your essays and your Letters of Recommendation tell the AOs what you will do in the future. Similarly, these schools give you a few optional vehicles to tell your story. At UChicago it is an optional video, at Northwestern an optional Alumni Interview, other schools offer extra essays. Each one of these optional vehicles are opportunities for you to make your case. If you have one or two target schools, I always suggest putting a ton of effort in these. I think you will find that there are many examples of 4.0 UW GPA 1600 SAT scores outright rejected and plenty of stories of 3.7 UW GPA and 1400 SAT scores accepted (regardless of the application round). That tells me that it is all in the essay, LOR’s and optional video that make the difference.

15

For an interesting read, suggest to look at Ivy+ Admission Analytics for the Fox Parent by Vasavada. I read it a few years ago, and the author delves deeply into the odds of admission based on objective measures like SAT. It is written from a economists perspective, so it is heavy on probability and Bayes theorem.

But Vasavada’s essential point is that a perfect 1600 is quite rare. So he argues that it is beneficial. Not sure I agree, but I thought I’d put it out there for discussion.

16

Vasaveda’s work is from 2011 and likely based on data well before that year. Much has changed since that time, including admissions criteria and the SAT itself.

While 1600 is obviously the least common outcome, 1580 is a close third (behind 1590). They are all a fraction of 1% of test scores. What is the marginal benefit of a 1600 over a 1580? Unless CB provides the actual number of testers who got those scores so we can calculate the drop in frequency, this answer isn’t knowable.

A perfect 36 is also uncommon, and ACT does (or did) publish the number of testers who achieved this. It’s in the mid 2000’s (out of 2 million+ testers) last I looked. However, while rare, that number has also been increasing over time. Furthermore, it’s not clear that a perfect 36 or 1600 submitted as part of a UChicago application is the result of a one-and-done or several tests. Finally, as we saw just from this early cycle, perfect 36’s were deferred or outright rejected at UChicago so it’s not clear at all that such a score carries any marginal weight over and above other strong scores with the adcom.

17

It doesn’t matter much, but I am pretty sure this is wrong, both actually and theoretically.

It looks like College Board no longer publishes the actual number of unique test-takers who get any particular score, but it used to. And when it did, the number of people with a “perfect” score (in those days, 2400) was definitely higher than the number of people with “almost perfect” scores (2390, 2380, 2370). 2390 and 2370 were the two rarest scores; 2400 was fourth or fifth. You had to get to 2350 before the number of people with that score was meaningfully higher than the number of people with 2400.

That’s not surprising at all. There’s a good reason for that. The SAT does not calibrate whatever it is that it measures – ability, achievement, aptitude, smartness, preparation – above the 1600 level. Some of the people with 1600s would be getting 1650 or 1700 if the test were set up to make finer distinctions at the very top. A few might get 1800 or 1900. Others . . . 1600 was really the best they could do.

The number of people who would score exactly 1600 is certainly slightly smaller than the number of people who would score exactly 1590 on an expanded test. But the number of people capable of scoring 1600 or more (if there were more) is quite a bit larger than the number of people who would score exactly 1590.

That said, it really doesn’t make a difference. There were about 370 people who scored 1600 last year on a single test. There may have been 650 or so who scored 1580 or more. You can multiply it by about 1.8 to estimate the number of people with equivalent credentials from the SAT and the ACT. That’s still a really small group of people. And no individual college gets applications from more than a fraction of them.

(People will sometimes say, “Harvard could fill its class twice over with applicants who have perfect SATs.” But that’s hyperbole. It can’t. It doesn’t want to, but even if it did want to, it couldn’t fill one whole class with people who had scored either 1600 on the SATs or 36 on the ACT and applied there. Not even close. And many of the ones who do apply are rejected or waitlisted in favor of people with somewhat lower test scores but other desirable qualities.)

(Superscoring of course increases the number of people who can say they got 1600 on their SATs, but not by a giant number. Instead of 370, maybe it’s 500 or 600; 1000-1100 with ACT equivalence. I saw a convincing analysis of this long ago on CC, but I can’t replicate it.)

18

@MohnGedachtnis - Calibration is a good point; we have no idea how well this new test is calibrated at the upper tail. What we do actually know - just from looking at the latest percentile chart for the underlying section tests, is that only a combined score of 1600 includes a combinations (800V/800M) that remain in the 99+ percentile. 1590, which includes combinations of 800 and 790, dips into the 99th percentile on the math side. From that information I’d conclude that fewer testers are at least expected to score perfect 800’s on both tests than score some combination of 800 and 790. For 1580, some combinations actually dip into the 98th percentile on the math. So - theoretically - it appears that 1600 is supposed to be a higher percentile than 1590 which is supposed to be a higher percentile than 1580. However, ALL are 99+% so some fraction under 1% - very hard to achieve.

OP’s specific combination of 800M 780V is in the 99+ percentile for both. However, the 99+ percentile actually begins at 780 for Verbal and it’s definitely possible that a few more testers score 800 every year than score a 780.

Another way to measure your test score is to look at the total and section scores on the CB/ACT concordance table. OP’s 1580C concords to a 36. The section scores concord to a 36 Math and 35 English+Reading. Clearly there’s going to be some wiggle room in using a concordance, but if every way you measure turns out to be something like the 99+ percentile, you are probably safe resting on that score :smile:

19

On one test my DS took (Dec 2018), it was impossible to get a 790 or 780 V EBWR score. 1 wrong dropped you to a 770.

20

^ I remember reading about that one! You truly have to wonder whether it was “easier” or whether it was just a bad test. I think either that one or another from earlier that year had weird scaling that would drop you several notches as well as several faulty questions that got eliminated. CB really got a black eye that year. Also, in very early 2016 when the first PSAT scores came out (my D was in contention for NM at the time), it was unbelievable how off CB’s percentile table was from reality. They didn’t calibrate the test very well at the tails. That’s by design - the new SAT is used to measure “college-readiness” rather than assessing high aptitude or achievement (or whatever you call great test-taking skills) so they were far more concerned with mean results and whether districts and states were hitting “benchmarks” that were pretty low in comparison with what the NM kids were scoring. Everyone ended up all bunched up at the high end and it has only gotten worse in the years since.