<p>To get this thread back on track though . . . if you have a low GPA or low test scores, the doors of high-end colleges are pretty much closed to you – unless you are a recruited athlete, legacy, URM, or are closely related to the Kennedy’s, Clinton’s, Bush’s, or are the children of someone like Bill and Melinda Gates or Warren Buffett.</p>
<p>
If you mean an unweighted 4.0, most accepted students to selective colleges have less than a 4.0. It obviously wouldn’t make sense to eliminate a student because they got 1 B in a class in high school that has nothing to do with their planned field of study.</p>
<p>A 90th percentile SAT is more of a problem. 90th percentile corresponds to a 1930. Admit rate drops quite a bit at most highly selective schools with SATs below 90th percentile. It’s by no means impossible for unhooked applicants, but the ones that are accepted often excel in other areas of their app besides test scores such as LORs, essays, ECs, and awards. Some have accomplished amazing things out of the classroom that suggest they are likely to do amazing things in college and beyond. Some have overcome unique circumstances or fill a unique niche that adds to the campus. Some are simply specialists instead of all arounders. For example, I was accepted to Stanford, MIT, and ivies with a combined SAT below 90th percentile, but it was split up as 800 math/math II + low scores in non math/science areas. Being a prospective engineering major, I’d expect the math/science scores were considered more important for my field than verbal/writing. The same was probably true for my far from stellar HS grades.</p>
<p>GPA’s and test scores just don’t tell you everything about a person. Life happens. A move, parents divorcing, illness, depression, a bad teacher… all sorts of things can tank a perfectly capable kid’s GPA. All it takes is a bad semester to ruin your overall record even if you otherwise had all “A’s” in the hardest of classes. You shouldn’t assume a 3.8 kid was a poor student through high school. They might just have gone through a rough patch and admissions can see that on their transcript.</p>
<p>Standardized tests are just a snapshot of a kid and not all students test well. Some can have 99th percentile IQ’s and SAT scores only in the 90th percentile. It doesn’t mean these kids should go to State instead of Harvard. What they lack in testing ability they may make-up for in out-of-the-box and higher level theoretical thinking.</p>
<p>These competitive schools are looking for “fit” and it’s not automatic that a 4.0 36 ACT will be that fit.</p>
<p>Oh, and an average SAT score in the 50th percentile which I believe is somewhere in the 1500’s. You don’t really see Harvard accepting scores that low.</p>
<p>Sounds like a similar situation I had but family related and medically related. Usually these students also at times have low grade marks for a term but pull it back up to keep it around a 3.0</p>
<p>Someone bashed that I need to speak negatively how I constantly am a total screw up and failure in my bad grades and how the school, family and everything is so amazing.</p>
<p>Sounds plastic and kind of fake to me. If I was an admissions officer I’d notice what is sincere honesty versus someone trying to hide what happened.</p>
<p>hello! this is sid and i am from india
i am a national player (shot put , discus , cricket ) and i also play basket ball , volley ball , badminton for my school!
I scored a gpa of 3.9/4 (10th grade) 4/4 (11th grade)
i was the leader of my school (4000 students)
i have taken part in many social activities
i would probaly score 750+ ( chemistry, math , physics subject test )
but i am a little scared about my english skills (sat reasoning ) How much is the minimum marks i could get in sat reasoning test to get into harvard ??</p>
<p>hello! this is sid and i am from india
i am a national player (shot put , discus , cricket ) and i also play basket ball , volley ball , badminton for my school!
I scored a gpa of 3.9/4 (10th grade) 4/4 (11th grade)
i was the leader of my school (4000 students)
i have taken part in many social activities
i would probaly score 750+ ( chemistry, math , physics subject test )
but i am a little scared about my english skills (sat reasoning ) How much is the minimum marks i could get in sat reasoning test to get into harvard ??</p>
<p>hello! this is sid and i am from india
i am a national player (shot put , discus , cricket ) and i also play basket ball , volley ball , badminton for my school!
I scored a gpa of 3.9/4 (10th grade) 4/4 (11th grade)
i was the leader of my school (4000 students)
i have taken part in many social activities
i would probaly score 750+ ( chemistry, math , physics subject test )
but i am a little scared about my english skills (sat reasoning ) How much is the minimum marks i could get in sat reasoning test to get into harvard ??</p>
<p>Unlike other colleges, Harvard does not require the TOEFL (<a href=“The TOEFL Tests”>http://www.ets.org/toefl</a>), so I imagine they use the SAT Critical Reasoning and Writing scores as an indication of the English language skills of international students. My guess is that both your CR & WR scores would need to be in the 700 to 800 range. Any score below 700 would indicate that you would have difficulty reading and writing competitively at Harvard.</p>
<p>more than half the students at harvard have a 4.0. It cares a lot about perfect gpa. On the other hand, princeton seems to care little, the admit rate for 4.0’s is 9.9% and for 3.9-3.99 is 9.8% and is till like 7 percent or something for 3.8-3.89. Not so for harvard. </p>
<p>@theanaconda I can’t tell whether or not you are being serious in this post when you say Princeton cares little… </p>
<p>P.S. The 4.0 GPA scale is a joke to me. There are so many different scales out there. In my daughters school 85-90% was some how the equivalent of 3.0-3.3. And 90-93 was a 3.31- 3.5. When you continue on the scale, to have a 4.0, you needed 100%. It really just depends. They should really stick to letter grading or percent grading.</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats
I meant that they care littel about perfect gpa vs some mistakes. see the 9.9% rate for 4.0’s and 9.8% rate for 3.9-3.99. That’s statistically 0 difference. </p>
ohh, i see.
I got into the CMU Governor’s School (incoming 12th grade summer program) with only a 2130 PSAT, and am not a urm/athlete, legacy. Their acceptance rate was only 11% this year. (I know CMU is not ivy league, but the governor’s school is almost as hard, and is basically a pre-application for the actual application next year). Everybody I know who got accepted had >2200 PSAT.
But my GPA was a 4.0UW, Rank = 4/800, and have won various state and national science competitions.