GC Letter for SAT scores?

siserune
Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:34:57 +0000

Some schools assume that high SAT scores involved prep classes.



High scores following much lower scores, or inconsistent with the rest of the file, or a moderately large jump in score after a series of retakings with no jumps, are suggestive of test prep. If such a pattern were seen in an applicant from a university-obsessed demographic such as affluent children of yuppies, private school students, or suburban Asians, it would strongly suggest test prep. High scores per se don’t necessarily indicate anything.



Many schools superscore as an administrative function before presenting a student’s file to the ad comm – so the actual admissions committee would not see if a 2400, 2350, 2280 was earned in one sitting, is a superscore, or is the single highest result of several diligent attempts. How do schools distinguish between these different levels of achievement? Should they?



It is known both as common sense and the result of calculations (under various assumptions) that superscoring introduces a positive bias, on the order of 10-15 extra points per section per retaking. Admissions officers know this in some form. If and where it is important to them, I’m sure they can take it into account.

As has been covered and referenced on CC many times, for the schools at which a 2400 is not uncommon in the applicant pool, the clerical function of computing superscores applies only to formal aspects of admission, i.e., as part of the Academic Index formula, as an item for the AdCom summary sheets, for determining eligibility for scholarships based on SAT cutoffs, etc.
It would be very surprising if universities do anything but mechanically follow the formula for all applicants for those objective aspects of the process.

However, in addition to the formal aspect, at the most selective schools, between one and three readers examine and annotate the entire application, assigning qualitative ratings for academics, EC and other factors. These readers have access to the whole score report and the option to consider it in their ratings, whether or not the score report is present at AdCom meetings. In particular, if the reader sees a single sitting of 2400 and no other scores, probably that would make a better first impression than a 2400 composed from several scores. Whether it’s marginally, significantly, irrelevantly or decisively better would, one assumes, depend on the score report and the rest of the application.