As the other poster indicated, there are about 1200 people a year with 36s and like 20,000 freshmen at top schools, so getting a 36 is really important. The students at those top schools will be 99th percentile in everything. It won’t necessarily get you in, but there is a huge difference between a 33 and a 36.
^ Dude what are you talking about? Generally speaking, admission counselors stop caring about your score once you reach like a 33 or higher.
For pete’s sake there was someone on Business Insider who got a 36 ACT score and got rejected from EVERY IVY LEAGUE AND STANFORD except for UPenn. If adcoms really cared about his ACT score they would have accepted him.
BUT THEY DIDNT
There are so many things that factor into admission like essays, recs, Course rigor, grades, etc etc etc etc…
No one cares about a 36ACT or a 34 ACT - thats like saying 2400 SAT scores are always better than 2300+ SAT scores …
I know someone who got into Princeton with a 33 ACT score btw. no hooks or anything. White and not a first gen.
BTW the article on Business Insider is called “perfect ACT score couldn’t get this student into Yale, Princeton, or Stanford, and he says it’s because he’s Asian-American”
Obviously not because he is Asian because there are plenty of asians at all the ivies. Its because THEY DONT WANT ROBOTS. thats why they INTERVIEW applicants!!!
@AmericanPride Why would you imply that all Asians are robots? Believe it or not, we’re people too! We have interests and passions outside of college admissions. The fact that we may perform (as a whole) better on standardized tests has no bearing on our personalities.
10 print “No, not all of us think that Asians are robots!”
20 print “Personally, I think Asians are cool!”
30 end
Run
Lolz just kidding - a little computer science humor there… 
@Smargent I never implied that ALL asians are robots. what i was saying is that Ivy leagues don’t want a perfect score, they want a perfect person as a whole - which is why they interview applicants and look at applications holistically.
The student in the article assumed that just because he received a perfect score, he was entitled to admission to these schools. But a majority of the time, it takes a robot to achieve a perfect score (doesn’t matter WHAT race you are)
And I’m not saying anything about asians at all. Several of my best friends in high school are asian 
Caltech has 25th percentile of admitted students 34 ACT, so I would assume it would be difficult to get in there with a 33. If you don’t have a hook and particularly if you belong to certain ethnic groups, you usually need higher than the average SAT/ACTs for a school. You may need other things on your application, but I wouldn’t say the difference between 33 and 36 is insignificant for top schools.