<p>I am an international student with 4.0 GPA and good ECs. I have a SAT score of 2310. My dream is to study Engineering at Stanford. I have been hearing that the top notch schools give a slight advantage if the student has done well in both the SAT and ACT. Is there any merit in this? Should I look at taking the ACT? I plan to apply EA in Stanford in Oct 2014.
(I will take SAT subject tests in Physics and Maths in June and I expect 800 in both)</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>For Stanford, I don’t think it really will matter. Everyone has high test scores there so they probably only use it as an initial cutoff of the applicant pool. Focus on your ECs and make yourself unique. </p>
<p>With SAT at 2310, there is really little advantage to take ACT. The main advantage would be waiving the requirement of SAT2 for some schools. However, taking 2+ SAT2 instead of ACT would give you even more opportunity.</p>
<p>It appears that Stanford favors the SAT even if they don’t come right out and say that. There were some admissions videos floating around that showed a Stanford admissions person going over apps. When she would come upon apps of students with an ACT of 35 she would say “good”, then when she saw an SAT of 2300, she exclaims “Even better!”. </p>
<p>^ I would not over-interpret this observation. Unlike decades ago, there is little preference in SAT or ACT according to the admission stats these days. </p>
<p>Look at the common data sets for the individual schools and you can observe how many applicants submitted ACT or SAT .</p>
<p>^ That is still irrelevant. It reflects mostly geographic distribution of applicants rather than test preference by school. Nevertheless, one can compare the admission stat between SAT and ACT scores of the same school. You can see they are pretty much corresponding to each other.</p>
<p>I certainly hope you are correct but it still “feels” like some schools show a preference for SAT. </p>