Does higher SAT score = higher chance of admission at Ivies?

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
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<p>At schools like Harvard is it true that higher scores mean better chances, or do scores stop mattering as much after a while? Are there any official statements about this from admissions officers as to how scores are viewed at their upper thresholds?</p>

<p>I understand admissions is holistic, but I am curious why admit rates seem to be higher for people with higher scores. I figure people with higher scores tend to have solid credentials everywhere else in their application, but I can’t find any official statements explaining that this is the case.</p>

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<p>The higher the score, the better. Common sense. </p>

<p>Higher Scores + Amazing EC’s = Acceptance</p>

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<p>Well my point is do they really split hairs over 750 vs 800, etc?</p>

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<p>The short answer is no. 650 vs. 750, yes, but 750 vs. 800, not so much.</p>

<p>For more insight, read this thread, especially post #13: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1193457-esse-quam-videri-how-do-college-applications.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1193457-esse-quam-videri-how-do-college-applications.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>There are finer distinctions in how Ivys treat the SAT scores. Some like Yale are more “meritocratic” as there is a correlation between the rank of SAT scores and the chances of admission. Others, such as Harvard, actually show a negative trend for the extreme high end of SAT scores.</p>

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<p>Having higher SAT scores does not always increase your chances.See: [A</a> Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them - New York Times](<a href=“A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them - The New York Times”>A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them - The New York Times)</p>

<p>“Harvard turned down 1,100 student applicants with perfect 800 scores on the SAT math exam. Yale rejected several applicants with perfect 2400 scores on the three-part SAT, and Princeton turned away thousands of high school applicants with 4.0 grade point averages. Needless to say, high school valedictorians were a dime a dozen.”</p>

<p>. . . And that was 5 years ago, in 2007!</p>

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<p>Years ago, a senior Yale admissions staffer used the following line: “How much do we care about SATs? A lot less than you think, but a little more than we admit.”</p>

<p>I don’t believe what HarvardParent says at all. Both because it doesn’t correspond to what I have seen anecdotally, and because I haven’t seen anything like data that would support that. Years ago, under a former admissions regime, Princeton did seem to have a negative correlation, not for tip-top scores, but for the zone between 760 and 790, i.e., a person with 750 scores seemed to have a better chance than one with 780s. But I don’t think you could support that now. Things have also been distorted somewhat by the fashion for multiple re-takes, for score-choice reporting, and for colleges using the highest score of multiple tests in their process because that lets them report higher stats for their entering class. (Their willingness to embrace practices that reduce the usefulness of the scores lets you know how little use is actually being made of the scores.)</p>

<p>In any event, it seems beyond question that at Harvard and everywhere like it, SATs hardly factor into ultimate decisions at all. They are probably important at getting people past the initial screen. They are probably somewhat important for students coming from high schools with which the admissions personnel are not familiar, because they help confirm that the student’s superior academic performance there is equivalent to others’ superior academic performance elsewhere. Anomalies may raise red flags – someone with perfect math grades and a 630 math SAT. They also probably matter for URMs and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, where high SATs really help them stand out.</p>

<p>But I think once they are in the final decision pool, the SATs hardly matter. Maybe they matter a little, as a small positive or negative, but they can be easily offset by larger factors from elsewhere in the application. That is why, notwithstanding that in general high SATs are correlated with a higher chance of admission, the actual admission rate for people with high SATs is pretty low. Sure, if an applicant has 800s, he or she may have a 40% chance of admission, which is way better than 6%. But over half of the 800-scorers are still being rejected.</p>

<p>And, really, I think what correlation there is comes from the fact that students who are intellectually amazing tend to have relatively high SATs, not that students with relatively high SATs – a much larger group – tend to be intellectually amazing. Not everyone admitted to Harvard is intellectually amazing, but lots of them are, and their SAT scores have a big impact on the reported statistics. Other applicants are admitted for being amazing in other ways – sports, arts, leadership, social improvement. All of their SATs will be good enough, and lots will be better than that, even great in some cases. And maybe, just maybe, as between two artists, or two likely bench-warming linebackers, a major difference in SATs (50 points plus per test) will make a difference in the admission outcome.</p>

<p>Anyway, the MIT admission blog has (or had, they were a long time ago) a number of essays by admissions staffers talking about test scores, and saying they use them even less than I am suggesting here. (I.e., a glance to confirm, “Yeah, those are OK,” and no further consideration, unless they are not OK.)</p>

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<p>There are very little hard data out there on Ivy admission and the most recent academic study I saw was from a couple years back (6-7?). I cannot find the original source right now but I do have the plot of admission rates against SAT score (as a percentile) from that study in my files. The bell shaped curve for Harvard and Princeton is the most striking thing in the graph. However, since the SAT score is plotted as percentiles, it is not really good to differentiate the very best SAT scores (a 780 is still probably 99% just as a 800). However, the peak is approximateby between 90 to 95 percentiles, and the admission rates declined approximately 50% toward the higher percentile range. For MIT, the admission rates actually increased toward the upper range (at least doubled). So it is interesting to see a MIT adcom officer claims that the SAT scores do not matter very much for them :-).</p>

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<p>Again though how much of those increases/decreases are directly attributable to scores? I could imagine a scenario where more 2400’s get rejected than 2340’s because there are a greater number of number-gunners who won’t stop until they get perfect scores. These gunners likely lack finesse on the more human side of the application. Meanwhile the 2340’s are the kinds of people who are content with a little imperfection here and there and care more about other things that matter (that is, they already know they have good scores and don’t lose sleep over increasing a few measly points).</p>

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<p>The dean of admissions is clearly a wise and experienced man. When you read his comments over time you find things that suggest that excellence is the standard, not high SAT scores per say. In fact the college’s minority outreach is premised on the hope of finding excellence wherever it may be, and in many forms. On test scores, he is quoted one place as saying that SAT IIs and AP scores are more reliable indicators of college performance than the aptitude test. However it is clear as HarvardParent suggests that clusters of high SAT performance inevitably turn up in the admission rates. One thing outsiders will never be able to guage is whether those bleary-eyed committee members who spend months of review before voting end up tilting on SAT at the end of the day.</p>

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<p>I found the original source from 2005 and here is what it states:
“Now examine Harvard admissions. The probability of admission rises from close to zero at the 88th percentile to about 10 percent at the 93rd percentile. It then increases very gradually to the 98th percentile, and finally rises steeply to 20 percent. In other words, if every student admitted to Harvard matriculated, then Harvard would have a class in which 35 percent of students came from the 99th percentile and above, about 55 percent of students came from the 94th through the 98th percentile, and the remaining 10 percent of students came from the 93rd percentile and below. Now examine Yale, which displays a very slight non-monotonicity: the probability of admission rises up through the 93rd percentile, then falls just a bit, and finally rises steeply above the 97th percentile. Finally, examine Princeton, which displays more non-monotonicity. Its probability of admission rises to 20 percent at the 93 percentile, falls to 10 percent at the 98 percentile, and then rises steeply in the top 2 percentiles.”
So it really is a N-shaped curve, not a bell shaped curve. Somehow the dip in the middle left a stronger impression in my mind than the uptick at the very end of the curve.</p>

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<p>The direct answer to the OP question is YES, in case that all the other conditions/factors are considered as the same or very similar. There would always be exceptions, but we are talking about the majority of cases, not exceptions.</p>

<p>Although H and other high end colleges have turned down and will continue to turn down many of the 2400 scorers, the same applicant would still have a significantly better chance to be admitted if s/he scores 2400 (3x800) or close to it than if s/he scores 2250 (3x750) or less. Please note here we are talking about the same applicant with all his/her other qualifications unchanged – I’d assume that was what the OP really asked about.</p>

<p>Of course the same score could have a quite different “applicable value” in the admission equation under different conditions and/or to different applicants - URM, athletic, legacy and/or any other “highly desirable” applicants with a score of 2250 would have a very good chance and those who score more than 2300 are very likely to be admitted among these groups, whereas a non-hooked Asian (especially an Asian boy) with less than 2300 would have an extremely slim chance, if any…</p>

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<p>A Southeast Asian with a 2100 SAT score who immigrated to the US around 4 years ago and lives in an extremely disadvantaged background would have an extremely slim chance? I don’t think so.</p>

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<p>I agree, but again, we are talking about the more common cases. And, “Asian” here is used for describing a “more commonly represented Asian”… Exceptions are only exceptions.</p>

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<p>NexusOne said:

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<p>To which I said:

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<p>Subsequently, Hparent said:

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<p>Perhaps this all goes to show that this is one more of those questions where we all think we know something, but because the decision-making goes on behind closed doors, the truth is that almost nobody really knows. Despite all the forensic analysis that goes on.</p>

<p>I will say, with no disrespect intended to Hparent, that I still think my original answer is more right than wrong. I think Harvard and its peers look for applicants to exceed a minimum standard in their SATs or ACTs, but beyond that, they don’t get too worked up about the difference between 760 and 800, or 34 and 35. I base my conclusions partly on my own knowledge of Harvard, and partly on what MITChris had to say about standardized testing in the thread I linked to in Post #4, above.</p>

<p>Of course, I admit I could be wrong. And MITChris could be falling into the “a lot less than you think, but a little more than we admit” trap that JHS mentions. But, you know, if I thought I was wrong, I’d change my position to something I thought was right.</p>

<p>Finally, JHS, I suspect this is an excerpt from the MIT blog post you were talking about:</p>

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<p>[What’s</a> the big deal about 40^2? | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/whats_the_big_deal_about_402]What’s”>What’s the big deal about 40^2? | MIT Admissions)</p>

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<p>There are various journalistic and memoir-type descriptions of actual admissions decisions out there. And I challenge you to find one where, in making the difficult last round of decisions, anyone even mentions SAT scores as playing into the decision. Grades, recommendations, background, passions, yes; SATs, no. SAT scores probably play a part in getting candidates to that point – and at that point many decisions have already been made, and SATs may have played some role there, too. But when the chips are down and the most important choices are being made, SATs are close to irrelevant.</p>

<p>That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a correlation between SAT scores and admission chances. SATs measure SOMETHING, and whatever it is the SATs are measuring, it has a lot to do with some of the qualities colleges are looking for. But when the best SAT scores translate to no better than a 1-in-5 chance of admission, and scores that are meaningfully lower mean no worse than 1-in-8, it’s difficult to conclude that SATs themselves are making a difference at all. Sure, among the various numbers that qualify as objective data, there is a relatively high correlation between SATs and admissions, but that just means that none of the objective data is anything close to determinative in elite college admission.</p>

<p>By the way, I believe the study HarvardParent is referring to deals with data that is around 15 years old now, or older – almost a different generation in college admissions. That Princeton N-curve was what I was mentioning in my earlier post, but I doubt it’s still there.</p>

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<p>This is an old article about Stanford admissions, but I think it’s still generally true:</p>

<p>[The</a> Sink or Swim Round](<a href=“http://news.stanford.edu/stanfordtoday/ed/9801/9801fea501.shtml]The”>http://news.stanford.edu/stanfordtoday/ed/9801/9801fea501.shtml)</p>

<p>As implied in the article, numbers like SAT score only “get your foot in the door.” As JHS indicated, SAT score is not mentioned in the “final round” of decisions - only in the initial “is this person capable?” part.</p>

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<p>On a car ride with my HYP regional rep to an info session, he mentioned to me how he was championing an idea where applicants were color coded depending on a test score range. This was to elminate the bias one might get if there was someone with a 2400 vs someone with a 2360 – statistically insignificant – but could play a subtle role in some reader’s mind. Don’t know if his plan got put into place however…</p>

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<p>I agree that the difference between 2400 and 2350 or even 2300 could be relatively insignificant, and that 800 vs. 750 might also likely be insignificant. But, what about the difference between 2400 (3x800) and 2250 (3x750)? Still insignificant? Probably not - especially in the cases of Asians.</p>

<p>I also agree that the SAT scores (and GPA and APs) only play a bigger role in the early stage for initial screening. However, what if (assumingly) in the final round, or when selecting from the wait list, there are still too many candidates “with the same or very similar qualifications otherwise”, a lot more than the available spaces as always? Can’t the SAT scores play some role at all? </p>

<p>I’d assume (again) that nobody here considers the SAT scores (or GPA or APs or all of them) as the most important factor in college admission, so we don’t have to argue about it back and forth. What I’m trying to say - and what I believe the OP was asking - is that when ALL THINGS ARE CONSIDERED and EVERYTHING ELSE IS THE SAME (or comparably similar enough), those who score higher in SAT would more likely have a (little) better chance.</p>

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<p>I don’t think anyone here can answer authoritatively but I would guess that SAT score is positively correlated with admissions chances, but after a certain point (2300? who knows) the coefficient gets smaller and smaller. Meaning that points matter less and less relative to ECs the higher you go, and the difference between a 2350 and a 2400 is virtually nil. </p>

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<p>This is very interesting.</p>