<p>Calm down, I simply asked a question and I have no clue why you are irritated as many people ask questions on this CC. I think you have made some valid points and exchange of information is never a bad idea.</p>
<p>Yes my daughter has perfect 4000 and I am proud of her accomplishments. However she is not a mere 4000 person, she is a president of many clubs and put very substantial time towards pursuing the passions through extracurricular activities. She has received national level awards in many extracurricular activities. These awards were received based on her passions and working ethics that come from inner drive. </p>
<p>I am sure like me you have curiosity to ask questions and many people may think your questions stupid. But at the end of the day it is better to ask a stupid question than carry out a stupid act. I am sure you and I have no problems on this issue. I am interested in your valuable opinions as you shed a light which I may not think. Thanks for that.</p>
<p>I have heard this from so many counselors and I do agree with that school needs to build a class having kids with different traits and passions. After all what is the use of bookish knowledge if one can not carry out conversation or motivate other people or lead fellow student in whatever cause they believe in them.</p>
<p>I am in total agreement what MIT counselors is saying. However, I raised this question for curiosity sake. I was not trying to offend any one.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, I did not mean to offend you at all. Believe me, I understand your pride at all your daughter’s accomplishments. My earlier comments stand: She is doubtless a strong candidate for any college she would like to attend. If she approaches her applications with the intelligence, care, and energy she brings to other activities, she will probably be accepted at many, or even all, of the schools to which she applies. I wouldn’t worry much about that if I were you. </p>
<p>If you haven’t picked up on it already, one of the things you and she should be thinking about is applying Early Decision or Early Action to her first-choice school, if it is a private university or liberal arts college. I remain suspicious of stockmarket’s data, but I do believe that there is probably a lot of truth to the basic story it tells: Strong applicants like your daughter maximize their chances of being accepted at a particular college by applying ED or EA. (The difference between ED and EA is that with ED your daughter would have to agree in advance to attend the school if she is accepted, thus precluding her from comparing financial aid offers from multiple schools. With EA, the student can apply on a regular basis to other colleges, and is not contractually obligated to attend the EA school if accepted. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT are all “Single Choice EA” schools, meaning that she can apply EA to one of them, but cannot simultaneously apply EA or ED to any other school. Most other top private colleges (the rest of the Ivy League, Duke, Northwestern, all of the top liberal arts colleges) are ED schools; the University of Chicago and Cal Tech are EA schools that do not forbid applying to other schools ED or EA at the same time (but some of the ED schools would prohibit applying to Chicago or Cal Tech EA at the same time, and if she were accepted both at one or both of them and an ED school she would be obligated to attend the ED school in any event).)</p>
<p>No I am not offended. I have very little influence where kid would be applying. I did my part by taking her to visit the schools which she has interest. I have to trust her decisions as honestly I would be happy in whatever she chooses to do. I am sure she will do fine but I would be wrong to say that I am not anxious. However at this point, I can not do much except maybe pray for her. Like any loving parents, I would love her no matter if she has accomplishments or not. Thanks for your wishes. </p>
<p>Honestly posters on CC have educated me. They have wonderful and extensive knowledge. I did not know many things that I have come to know through CC. Whenever I have a curiosity about college admissions; I just look the answers on CC or ask sometimes a stupid question.</p>
<p>I heard repeatedly from admissions officers at info sessions of the “most selective” schools: “We reject 50% of applicants with perfect SAT scores”. I am not sure how accurate the actual percentage is, and this was 5 or so years ago, but if this is still the case, I guess you can say that having perfect scores raises your chances from 10% to 50% or so…</p>
<p>I guess the class of 2006 SAT I figures may be of interest to readers of this thread. 238 distinct individuals attained (single-sitting) scores of 2400 in that graduating class. </p>
<p>Wow. It’s very interesting that, unlike with the 1600-scale test, there’s no bulge at the end of the curve. For the class of 2005, there were 900+ kids with 1600 on a single test date, and only about 300 with 1580 or 1590. But last year about the same number of kids got 2400, 2390, and 2370.</p>
<p>With many schools in the country superscoring, I wonder how valuable a one sitting 2400 is. Many more kids than the college board shows in their statistics can claim a 1600 or 2400 score based on mixing and matching test dates.</p>
<p>It’s an interesting factual question, for which I have no data that could resolve it, just how many more students can claim a 2400 by submitting their best section scores from different sittings than can by submitting a single-sitting score (which may or may not be a score after a retake). I suspect that scores of 2400 are rare, period, because usually students have a section on the test that they fare best on, and it is a rare student who can, even over multiple sittings, post section scores of 800 on all three sections.</p>
<p>In addition, beyond a certain point, there will be kids at the higher end of the tail who will (wisely, IMHO) decide that a 23XX-ish is JUST FINE and not attempt to superscore to a 2400, even if a PSAT score indicates that one has a great shot at a 2400 superscore.</p>
<p>My son got 2310/4700 in one sitting (well, taking SAT 1 one day and the SAT 2s another day). It’s nice because as he puts it, he is done with the SAT forever! :-)</p>
<p>A few months ago, someone (oldolddad? I’m not sure) wrote a very cogent post about estimating the effect of superscoring. I don’t remember the precise reasoning, but the bottom line of which was that it was highly unlikely that the number of superscored scores of 2250 and above was greater than the number of single-test scores of 2200 and above. Anyway, I was convinced.</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting way to look at these numbers, though. On the pre-2006 test, the number of 1600 single-test scores usually hovered around 1,000. So about 25% of those people were also getting 800 on the Writing section. On the one hand, that’s pretty high; on the other, I would have expected it to be quite a bit higher because (a) the tests don’t test anyone’s maximum capacity, so a lot of those 1600 kids might have scored higher on a tougher test, and (b) the Writing and Critical Reasoning sections aren’t completely testing different things. The number of people scoring 2390 is about twice the number scoring 1590 before.</p>
<p>Under the old SAT, it must have made a difference which SAT IIS to take. Some schools left the choice to students; others insisted on a spread; still others demanded the SATII-Writing.</p>
<p>It’s interesting that within the college community no one recognizes that there actually could be is a very big difference between an 800 and a 790 on one of these tests. Getting an 800 means that you have maxed out. The test cannot “test” your true ability in the subject. Perhaps you would have gotten 1000 or 1600 if they had made the test that much harder. People who max out on 5 or 6 of these tests are truly remarkable and there really is a difference between them and people who get high 700s on all the tests. This is also why there are more people who get 800 usually than 780 or 790.</p>