More important-grade or SAT II score in the subject?

system
Tue, 29 May 2007 04:48:48 +0000

I faintly recall looking at the regular decision admission thread for Caltech this year and noticing only one or two posts (from both admits and rejects) where anybody had anything other than an 800 on the Math IIC. This doesn’t necessarily indicate anything about how the score is used in the admissions process, but it renders unlikely the possibility that the score can compensate much for subpar grades in math, since it seems to be so common in the applicant pool.

Now, if you only have one bad grade in math, 5s on the relevant AP tests, and seem to be good at quantitative sciences in general, you’ll start to amass more mitigating factors. But in reality all these things are very common among the applicant pool, and the unfortunate truth is that a B in math/science can cause some real damage. (Although certainly not to the point where it dooms an application)