Chances for an international with unfortunate SATs?

foolishpleasure
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:49:08 +0000

Admission, especially with a merit award, for a candidate with 440ish Math SAT is so unusual that referencing it on a “chances” thread is probably overly-optimistic, as LiT warned in her earlier post. Still, every year, students are admitted to schools where no one thought that had a shot - - it’s like a lottery ticket: unlikely, but you never know.

As for the common data set (2008-09):

Critical Reading
700-800 30.62%
600-699 45.16%
500-599 20.76%
400-499 3.29%
300-399 0.17%

Math
700-800 17.99%
600-699 48.62%
500-599 27.85%
400-499 4.67%
300-399 0.87%

I am surprised that students were admitted with such low scores, but I wasn’t sitting on the committee, so I don’t know what else those students brought to the table.

(Just out of curiosity - - is either OP or LiT’s D urm? Common mythology on these boards and, according to D, even at Smith, is that the only successful applicants w/ low numbers are urm.)