Anonymous wrote:25% for SAT math is 760 at Princeton. that's the lowest 25% people.

if you are not a hooked applicant, do not send 1500 to Princeton.

this is especially true if you're coming from a HS with known grade inflation (and Princeton knows if you don't) or an unknown high school. GPA is nearly meaningless at many of these colleges now. That's a box to be checked. Since covid, there are just way too many kids with a 3.95

This is horrible advice. Send a 1500 everywhere.

25% for SAT math is 760 at Princeton. that's the lowest 25% people.

if you are not a hooked applicant, do not send 1500 to Princeton.

this is especially true if you're coming from a HS with known grade inflation (and Princeton knows if you don't) or an unknown high school. GPA is nearly meaningless at many of these colleges now. That's a box to be checked. Since covid, there are just way too many kids with a 3.95

Anonymous wrote:you want to be at 50%. for Princeton that's 1550. it all depends how highly selective you mean.

would I send a 1540 to Princeton? Sure, okay. Would I send a 1500? No, not unless your student is a recruited athlete and even then I'd tell the coach and then probably leave off. 1520 is 25% so I wouldn't send anything below that.

There is no way you actually think this? You are telling kids who have 99th percentile scores that they still probably aren't good enough?

Anonymous wrote:you want to be at 50%. for Princeton that's 1550. it all depends how highly selective you mean.

would I send a 1540 to Princeton? Sure, okay. Would I send a 1500? No, not unless your student is a recruited athlete and even then I'd tell the coach and then probably leave off. 1520 is 25% so I wouldn't send anything below that.

This is terrible advice. Absolutely send a 1500 to Princeton…recruited athletes are fine with a 1400 depending on the sport (yes, you can be lower for football vs squash).

Again, Princeton is not accepting a kid with a 1540 vs a 1500 because of the 40 point SAT score. The 1500 absolutely meets a minimum threshold and now all the other aspects of your application are more important. 1500 just reinforces that yes your intellect is more than capable of doing well…now the rest of your application tells us if you have all the other attributes they need in addition to intellect (whatever those may be) to do well.

You think that Princeton is only advancing 1540+ into the further review pile but you are wrong. They are advancing many more into that pile with lower scores, making acceptance decisions and then determine what the mean/median scores are for the accepted group.

It is no surprise that kids with these really high scores are also very accomplished on a whole range of other metrics. In the rare instance of a kid I knew with a 1600 that had little else to show…that kid was rejected everywhere.

Legacy admits. The end.

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Anonymous wrote:NP- OP you are wasting time to get a perfect score. Once you hit 750 on each part you are good to go. BTW. My 2020 hs graduate got a 1580 first time sitting but did not get into every school. High test scores are not everything in college admissions.

I disagree. A 1500 does not make you "good to go". Example: last year's incoming UVA class had a 1520 at the 75th percentile. That means 25% had higher.

So?

It doesn't matter that 25% have higher scores. It matters if the admit rate of 1500-1550 applicants is lower than the admit rate of 1550-1600.

Once you are above 75% ile, a higher score isn't needed to boost the CDS metric.


Top 25% of the admit group is rank-boosting "merit scholarship" territory, not "stretch admit" territory.

This is especially true since the "true" percentile of that score is even higher under test-optional.

This doesn't mean that 75%ile score is guaranteed admit, but it means that scoring even higher isn't necessary meaningful.

Anyone in the 1500+ SAT range should be expected to make measurable academic achievements that far exceed SAT, like many high AP scores or math contests or published writing.

Agree with the last paragraph except the "anyone in the 1500+ range"... the cutoff for this group of high achievers vary by college. At UVA, it's probably 1500ish, which means a 1550 applicant should worry about retaking the SAT. At Harvard, an unspiked 1550 applicant should try probably try again. But I agree with PPs that say that 1580 is the same tier as 1600.

many of the 50%tile and under applicants are hooked or spiked, so they don't need the same quantifiables as the general applicant pool.

I know people have trouble believing this…but Harvard is not accepting student X over student Y because of a 1580 vs a 1550 score.

The fact of the matter is there tends to be a ton of correlation that a kid scoring a 1580 also is a debate champ or a Regeneron science winner.

This.

If your kid is scoring 1500 or more, there is no reason to take the test again.

Last year, this was the analogy in this forum. If you kid is scoring 1500, has a super high grade point ans fantastic extracurriculars, then congratualtions, they get a ticket into the 95,000 seat stadium. But whether they get the highly coveted floor seat or not is almost purely a lottery.

I agree you don't need to be fretting over 1550 versus 1580, but I think the ticket threshold you have at 1500 is too low these days, and too low for a test optional world.

you want to be at 50%. for Princeton that's 1550. it all depends how highly selective you mean.

would I send a 1540 to Princeton? Sure, okay. Would I send a 1500? No, not unless your student is a recruited athlete and even then I'd tell the coach and then probably leave off. 1520 is 25% so I wouldn't send anything below that.

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Anonymous wrote:NP- OP you are wasting time to get a perfect score. Once you hit 750 on each part you are good to go. BTW. My 2020 hs graduate got a 1580 first time sitting but did not get into every school. High test scores are not everything in college admissions.

I disagree. A 1500 does not make you "good to go". Example: last year's incoming UVA class had a 1520 at the 75th percentile. That means 25% had higher.

So?

It doesn't matter that 25% have higher scores. It matters if the admit rate of 1500-1550 applicants is lower than the admit rate of 1550-1600.

Once you are above 75% ile, a higher score isn't needed to boost the CDS metric.


Top 25% of the admit group is rank-boosting "merit scholarship" territory, not "stretch admit" territory.

This is especially true since the "true" percentile of that score is even higher under test-optional.

This doesn't mean that 75%ile score is guaranteed admit, but it means that scoring even higher isn't necessary meaningful.

Anyone in the 1500+ SAT range should be expected to make measurable academic achievements that far exceed SAT, like many high AP scores or math contests or published writing.

Agree with the last paragraph except the "anyone in the 1500+ range"... the cutoff for this group of high achievers vary by college. At UVA, it's probably 1500ish, which means a 1550 applicant should worry about retaking the SAT. At Harvard, an unspiked 1550 applicant should try probably try again. But I agree with PPs that say that 1580 is the same tier as 1600.

many of the 50%tile and under applicants are hooked or spiked, so they don't need the same quantifiables as the general applicant pool.

I know people have trouble believing this…but Harvard is not accepting student X over student Y because of a 1580 vs a 1550 score.

The fact of the matter is there tends to be a ton of correlation that a kid scoring a 1580 also is a debate champ or a Regeneron science winner.

This.

If your kid is scoring 1500 or more, there is no reason to take the test again.

Last year, this was the analogy in this forum. If you kid is scoring 1500, has a super high grade point ans fantastic extracurriculars, then congratualtions, they get a ticket into the 95,000 seat stadium. But whether they get the highly coveted floor seat or not is almost purely a lottery.

Anonymous wrote:Not humble brag. Sorry it came out that way.

Child registered for December and scheduled a tutor to start from later this month.

I used to think 1500 is pretty much all you need. Then looking at stats recently 75% percentile is 1580 for some schools. My question is: Is 1600 pretty much what top schools expect?

I understand that students take SAT multiple times and it is just the best score that many of these schools consider, so does it make sense to try to improve on it?

When we are all growing up, before two rounds of changes to the SAT (ie pre mid 1990's) a score of 1500 or more was truly elite. But like grade inflation and everything else, the SAT score threshold has changed. Scores of 1440 and higher still truly elite, but the number of kids getting scores in the 1520+ range is far greater than it was back then.

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Anonymous wrote:NP- OP you are wasting time to get a perfect score. Once you hit 750 on each part you are good to go. BTW. My 2020 hs graduate got a 1580 first time sitting but did not get into every school. High test scores are not everything in college admissions.

I disagree. A 1500 does not make you "good to go". Example: last year's incoming UVA class had a 1520 at the 75th percentile. That means 25% had higher.

Of the kids that actually submitted scores. Which is not 75 percent of the class.

+100 Someone keeps posting this statistic without mentioning what percent even submitted test scores. Not that relevant if only 50% submitted scores.

+1 based on the CDS approximately 70% submitted scores

The CDS actually says 51 percent submitted SAT scores. The remaining 20 percent submitted ACT scores which would not have been included in calculating the SAT range for obvious reasons.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP- OP you are wasting time to get a perfect score. Once you hit 750 on each part you are good to go. BTW. My 2020 hs graduate got a 1580 first time sitting but did not get into every school. High test scores are not everything in college admissions.

I disagree. A 1500 does not make you "good to go". Example: last year's incoming UVA class had a 1520 at the 75th percentile. That means 25% had higher.

Of the kids that actually submitted scores. Which is not 75 percent of the class.

+100 Someone keeps posting this statistic without mentioning what percent even submitted test scores. Not that relevant if only 50% submitted scores.

+1 based on the CDS approximately 70% submitted scores

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP- OP you are wasting time to get a perfect score. Once you hit 750 on each part you are good to go. BTW. My 2020 hs graduate got a 1580 first time sitting but did not get into every school. High test scores are not everything in college admissions.

I disagree. A 1500 does not make you "good to go". Example: last year's incoming UVA class had a 1520 at the 75th percentile. That means 25% had higher.

Of the kids that actually submitted scores. Which is not 75 percent of the class.

+100 Someone keeps posting this statistic without mentioning what percent even submitted test scores. Not that relevant if only 50% submitted scores.

Highly rejective


Not highly selective

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Anonymous wrote:I don't think any AO differentiates between applicants with scores >1550 - they are get a ✓++ on that... Then all 1500-1550 are ✓+, 1400-1500 are ✓, etc...

AP scores, GPAs, recognitions, etc.. are what differentiates those 1550-1600 kids.

The statements that start "I don't think" are the ones that give me pause here...
Have AOs discussed this openly?
I do agree that most of the differentiation occurs beyond the test scores, especially at and above the 75th percentile for a school.

Agree. The differentiation (a 36 or 35 ACT, for example, or a 1580 or 1600) is important to colleges because statistically, it is a fact reportable to most ranking services and one of those factors reported to alumni every year ("once again, X college had a record number of applications and our selectivity rate has gone down even more" (OK that result was actually due to marketing but a lot of alums don't understand that) "We have a record no. of 16 students with perfect SAT scores", etc.). The top scores are so important, in fact, that many second-tier SLACs have scholarships just to nab those students. My DC was offered large scholarships at three of these. When DC scored a 34 the amount offered went up from that offered at 32, and then went up again when DC hit 36. So it does matter.

My thinking is that 1590 is actually the best score. There is a possibility that 1600 would be viewed either

1) Negatively as a sign of extreme test prep
2) Turning down 1600's because they can say "We turned down a record 20 students with perfect 1600 scores

Just wild guesses.

None of which make sense. You are way overthinking this.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP- OP you are wasting time to get a perfect score. Once you hit 750 on each part you are good to go. BTW. My 2020 hs graduate got a 1580 first time sitting but did not get into every school. High test scores are not everything in college admissions.

I disagree. A 1500 does not make you "good to go". Example: last year's incoming UVA class had a 1520 at the 75th percentile. That means 25% had higher.

So?

It doesn't matter that 25% have higher scores. It matters if the admit rate of 1500-1550 applicants is lower than the admit rate of 1550-1600.

Once you are above 75% ile, a higher score isn't needed to boost the CDS metric.


Top 25% of the admit group is rank-boosting "merit scholarship" territory, not "stretch admit" territory.

This is especially true since the "true" percentile of that score is even higher under test-optional.

This doesn't mean that 75%ile score is guaranteed admit, but it means that scoring even higher isn't necessary meaningful.

Anyone in the 1500+ SAT range should be expected to make measurable academic achievements that far exceed SAT, like many high AP scores or math contests or published writing.

Agree with the last paragraph except the "anyone in the 1500+ range"... the cutoff for this group of high achievers vary by college. At UVA, it's probably 1500ish, which means a 1550 applicant should worry about retaking the SAT. At Harvard, an unspiked 1550 applicant should try probably try again. But I agree with PPs that say that 1580 is the same tier as 1600.

many of the 50%tile and under applicants are hooked or spiked, so they don't need the same quantifiables as the general applicant pool.

I know people have trouble believing this…but Harvard is not accepting student X over student Y because of a 1580 vs a 1550 score.

The fact of the matter is there tends to be a ton of correlation that a kid scoring a 1580 also is a debate champ or a Regeneron science winner.