<p>The OP asked about using SAT scores of colleges to “help” in a college search. For reasons well described in some of the replies posted since I last posted, I think that is a good idea. However, I don’t advocate just going down the list of colleges by SAT interquartile ranges and choosing all of the top colleges and no other colleges to apply to. My oldest son is gradually developing his college application list. (He has two years yet to finalize it.) He will surely skip over some colleges at the top of the list (by ANY criterion) to add in other colleges that HE likes to his application list. Most applicants do the same. He takes note of where other high school students he knows are applying.</p>