<p>“A high schooler who is smart enough to thrive at Caltech is smart enough to learn how to turn out an SAT I score within the range of scores found among admitted students each year. An applicant who submits solely SAT I scores that are below the level of any student recently admitted to Caltech has a very meager chance of admission, and that doesn’t bother me. There are hundreds of colleges in the United States that offer major programs in math, science, or engineering.”</p>
<p>“The very most selective colleges have sufficiently many applicants with high SAT I or ACT scores that they can afford to be quite selective on the basis of those scores. But each of those colleges will occasionally pass over an applicant with peak scores on those tests to admit applicants with slightly lower scores who have other desirable characteristics.”</p>
<p>Excellent points, tokenadult. And to continue on a little bit further and also answer phuriku’s question, some of those things are things like participation in one of the international Olympiads, excellent research experience (at Caltech especially that will be received very well), and anything that shows the student’s desire in general to push the envelope (or at least take full advantage) on the opportunities his or her high school offered in an exceptional way (which is why a long list of AP classes from a magnet school isn’t necessarily more impressive than the kid with only 2 APs, and maybe diffeq at the local community college, whose high school only offered 2 APs in the first place).</p>
<p>It should be said, as tokenadult alluded above, that most students who have those attributes also have good SAT scores, or at least scores “in the range”. Caltech’s average is somewhere above 1500. In that context, a 1400 is one thing; a 1200 is another.</p>