<p>Do standardized tests matter more if your high school doesn’t rank?</p>
<p>Not really.</p>
<p>I vote for yes. (except for auto acceptance schools). It’s too hard for Adcom to compare schools. An unranked student at one school just might be able to mop the floor with a 1/100 from another school as far as curriculum and grades are concerned.</p>
<p>I’d like to think it does, but I don’t think colleges would take the weight of the SAT more seriously if they dont rank. I think the reason behind that is the SAT doesn’t really represent your overall stature of how academically talented you are. Questions on the SAT are technically pickings if you think about it. Math is middle school level, reading is simply plucking out answers from the text with small hints of critical anylasis, and writing is pretty elementary at its best with the essay just showing essentially how fast you can BS 2 pages. There isn’t as much material as people make out to be and I belive most of the time a 95 percentile score is definitely achievable for the majority of students. Obviously this can’t be the case since the average score is 1500, but really your SAT score doesn’t represent the high schools rigor; its like comparing apples to oranges. </p>
<p>It is unfair to those in unranked schools who achieve high SAT scores if this is the case. What good is excellence if you cant be differentiated from others.</p>
<p>I’d wish for SAT to be an equal comparison of academic performance as to GPA. (Data supports it does, if the SAT was too “elementary”, many more people would score higher) I’m in a school that doesn’t rank, but according to collegeboard, 2170 is the 50 percentile, which is a 98 percentile score, probably doesnt give weight to how academically rigorous it is when the average GPA is 3.8 unweighted as compared to other schools who have an average of 4.0’s. We’re distinguished in other ways, but its unfair to use the SAT as a point of reference for students, but not for schools.</p>
<p>(Take ALL of this with a grain of salt, my personal opinion and guesses on the SAT program)</p>