Anonymous
Post 08/20/2025 11:04     Subject: Sat score first try - where would you stop?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:MIT dean of admission said don't bother to retake if over 1550.


Link/source? So if they have two identical students, one with 1560 and one with 1600, they roll a die? Or they take the 1600? Do they prescreen with a cutoff, and then drop the score from consideration?


I can’t easily find the quote — it was Stuart Schmuel (sp?) saying that some applicants become obsessed with scoring a 1600, wasting time, emery, and money taking the test over and over. He said any score above 1550 doesn’t make a difference so don’t bother.

He was NOT saying that admissions decisions were tied in a strict linear way to SAT score — rather, the opposite.
Anonymous
Post 08/20/2025 09:58     Subject: Sat score first try - where would you stop?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People post here about things they know nothing about.

NO school has cutoff at 1520. NONE.

And, when super-scoring, once you submit official scores, the AO will see all four scores - both scores in English and in Math. But when you self-report, they only see the best scores in English and Math, those that you report yourself.


I would guess that the apps are sorted based on test scores and gpa - pile A: strong look pile starts at 1550+ and 4.0 from known HS (for example) … and on from there. No one is tossing a 1520 but there are certainly “cutoffs”. Every school is using a sorting mechanism/algorithm. There are THOUSANDS of applications with 1500+ / 4.0 stats.

That being said, I wouldn’t retake with a 1520. That’s a great score! Congrats!

DP. I agree that there are algorithms and the algorithms may combine academic criteria. To the extent that there are cutoffs, for score alone, it would be <1400.



Maybe. But the 1400s are going in “pile c” not “pile a” at T10.



Yes, and are only considered if FGLI, recruited athlete, or have something very unique the school wants.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2025 12:35     Subject: Sat score first try - where would you stop?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People post here about things they know nothing about.

NO school has cutoff at 1520. NONE.

And, when super-scoring, once you submit official scores, the AO will see all four scores - both scores in English and in Math. But when you self-report, they only see the best scores in English and Math, those that you report yourself.


I would guess that the apps are sorted based on test scores and gpa - pile A: strong look pile starts at 1550+ and 4.0 from known HS (for example) … and on from there. No one is tossing a 1520 but there are certainly “cutoffs”. Every school is using a sorting mechanism/algorithm. There are THOUSANDS of applications with 1500+ / 4.0 stats.

That being said, I wouldn’t retake with a 1520. That’s a great score! Congrats!

DP. I agree that there are algorithms and the algorithms may combine academic criteria. To the extent that there are cutoffs, for score alone, it would be <1400.



Maybe. But the 1400s are going in “pile c” not “pile a” at T10.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2025 10:55     Subject: Sat score first try - where would you stop?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:People post here about things they know nothing about.

NO school has cutoff at 1520. NONE.

And, when super-scoring, once you submit official scores, the AO will see all four scores - both scores in English and in Math. But when you self-report, they only see the best scores in English and Math, those that you report yourself.


I would guess that the apps are sorted based on test scores and gpa - pile A: strong look pile starts at 1550+ and 4.0 from known HS (for example) … and on from there. No one is tossing a 1520 but there are certainly “cutoffs”. Every school is using a sorting mechanism/algorithm. There are THOUSANDS of applications with 1500+ / 4.0 stats.

That being said, I wouldn’t retake with a 1520. That’s a great score! Congrats!

DP. I agree that there are algorithms and the algorithms may combine academic criteria. To the extent that there are cutoffs, for score alone, it would be <1400.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2025 10:12     Subject: Sat score first try - where would you stop?
I’d leave it to them - whatever they want. A kid who’s aiming at those schools should be mature enough to have autonomy over those types of decisions.

Some kids would be stressed by the idea of taking it again. Others might find it a bit comforting - like they’re asserting a bit of extra “control” over a completely unpredictable process.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2025 07:26     Subject: Sat score first try - where would you stop?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:MIT dean of admission said don't bother to retake if over 1550.


Link/source? So if they have two identical students, one with 1560 and one with 1600, they roll a die? Or they take the 1600? Do they prescreen with a cutoff, and then drop the score from consideration?


It’s a threshold. Here’s the MIT director of admissions talking about it on that Dartmouth podcast:

we find that testing is helpful because we have found that at MIT it's predictive. Maybe that's because when students come to school here, they take tests and that's one of the ways that they get through our curriculum. And so we do find that it's helpful and we want to have confidence in every student we admit. I do think that even at a place like MIT where again we're going to be requiring tests again, that testing has an outsized view in most students' minds about how important it actually is. * * * It's one of the pieces of an application that gives us an indicator as to how well a student is going to do in our curriculum. And once we have confidence that a student is going to do fine and thrive in our curriculum, we don't use the tests to make decisions. So we don't make decisions by test score. So we don't say, hey, this student has a higher test score than that student, therefore we'll admit this student over that student. All of the other things that we might look at about a student's motivation, their interests, those things are how we ultimately make decisions, not based on your tests.


https://admissions.dartmouth.edu/https%3A/admissions.dartmouth.edu/follow/admissions-beat-podcast/admissions-beat-s2e3-transcript
Anonymous
Post 08/15/2025 22:42     Subject: Sat score first try - where would you stop?
Anonymous wrote:MIT dean of admission said don't bother to retake if over 1550.


Link/source? So if they have two identical students, one with 1560 and one with 1600, they roll a die? Or they take the 1600? Do they prescreen with a cutoff, and then drop the score from consideration?
Anonymous
Post 08/15/2025 22:16     Subject: Sat score first try - where would you stop?
Anonymous wrote:People post here about things they know nothing about.

NO school has cutoff at 1520. NONE.

And, when super-scoring, once you submit official scores, the AO will see all four scores - both scores in English and in Math. But when you self-report, they only see the best scores in English and Math, those that you report yourself.


I would guess that the apps are sorted based on test scores and gpa - pile A: strong look pile starts at 1550+ and 4.0 from known HS (for example) … and on from there. No one is tossing a 1520 but there are certainly “cutoffs”. Every school is using a sorting mechanism/algorithm. There are THOUSANDS of applications with 1500+ / 4.0 stats.

That being said, I wouldn’t retake with a 1520. That’s a great score! Congrats!
Anonymous
Post 08/15/2025 16:21     Subject: Sat score first try - where would you stop?
People post here about things they know nothing about.

NO school has cutoff at 1520. NONE.

And, when super-scoring, once you submit official scores, the AO will see all four scores - both scores in English and in Math. But when you self-report, they only see the best scores in English and Math, those that you report yourself.