Chances for an international with unfortunate SATs?

inhabited_world
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:13:00 +0000

Thank you very much to everyone for responding. I KNOW no one can tell me whether or not I’ll get in, but the advice is extremely helpful (coming as it does from people who’ve “been there”).
@ stacy: I can’t quite tell. The College Board site says "If you choose to have your essay score verified, we determine whether there was an error made in the scanning or processing of the essay scores assigned by essay readers. In this circumstance, your adjusted score is automatically reported and your fee is refunded.

IMPORTANT: The verification of essay scores does not include re-reading the essay or an appeal of the essay score."

It WAS clearly a scanning issue…but how can they verify this if they never re-read the essay to judge how it scanned? I’m not super-concerned about it, though, since Smith will receive a print-out of the oddly scanned SAT essay in my official score report (and there’s probably enough in my app to demonstrate my writing ability). I’ve looked into the ACT (the same thought about the math percentage also struck me), but the closest test centre is fairly far from where I live and would cost a semi-substantial amount of money for transport, a place to stay, etc. So I guess I’ll have to stick with my scores, for better or for worse.

@ MeredithBelle: Yeah, I’m looking at the phenomenal English dept. (or possibly Comparative Lit). I definitely didn’t mean to make this seem like an “OMG chance me (hyperventilates softly in background)” thread, though, so I’m sorry if I came across that way. It’s just that many of the counselors and teachers at my current school don’t have a lot of experience with U.S. admissions. My friends and former teachers in the U.S. have been valuable resources, but I still feel like I’ve still got large gaps in my knowledge of how the system works. (For example, I didn’t find out how GPAs are calculated until this year.) To me, everything seems exceedingly useful.

@ overwhelmedma: I haven’t yet been officially tested, but plan on submitting documentation to colleges if the tests do turn out to be positive. All I know right now is that there’s a possibility I am ADHD.