Thoughts on this?

Pre-College Topics High School Cafe
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<p>AP Literature teacher said this about SATs since the whole class is taking them tomorrow;</p>

<p>“The importance of SAT scores are greatly exaggerated in college admissions. With the exception of schools on the tippy top, a decent score (1700+) along with good grades and extracurriculars will be fine for college.”</p>

<p>Kind of contradicts the whole CC mentality of 2000+ to be competitive - what are your thoughts?</p>

<p>-AP Literature teacher is an AP grader and has worked with CollegeBoard in the past, as well as worked in admissions at Amherst, I believe - not completely sure. Maybe her husband currently works in admissions at Amherst. She is somehow connected to admissions at Amherst, LOL.</p>

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<p>More like 2300+.</p>

<p>Back in the day people used to get away with getting accepted into top colleges with lower SAT scores, but today it’s more competitive.</p>

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<p>I feel like this includes way more schools than people on CC think it does, though. “Tippy top” to most people is like top 50, maybe even top 100 if you’re really from the middle of nowhere (like me). In the grand scheme of things almost everyone goes to random state schools and community colleges.</p>

<p>IMO, you can see that SAT scores matter quite a lot just by looking at the average SAT scores at top schools. I guess you could argue that these people are accomplished in other ways and that’s why they got admitted, but if there’s a strong correlation between accomplishment and high test scores, then lower-scoring people probably haven’t accomplished enough to get in.</p>

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<p>Guess it depends on what schools she consider to be “tippy top” and which she consider to be “decent”.</p>

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<p>I think by tippy top, she means Ivy League and Premier LAC.</p>

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<p>So Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Duke, etc. are not “tippy top” and don’t care much about SAT scores?</p>

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<p>Apparently not to her - I have no idea. She might’ve been telling us this simply to diffuse the stress we might’ve been under and assumed that if we were preparing rigorously and she could manage to calm us down, we’d perform well, even if we believed it wasn’t crucial. </p>

<p>She added: “A 2400 with a 2.7 is gonna have a lot harder time getting into college than a 3.9 with an 1850.”</p>

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<p>Testing is just another way that colleges have information on you. Some schools can use them as a way to begin to sort possible applicants. For the most part, top schools recruit top students.</p>

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<p>they were probably trying to not stress you out. The thing is, most of the CC users are aiming for top schools, so it doesn’t really apply.</p>

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<p>I don’t think I’ll be aiming so high anymore. I’m completely demoralized, I hate my school and I hate everything. Yes, this is because if a bad grade and I now question society and what the hell goes on in their head. No, Im just gonna become a super quiet awkward anti-social try hard who just doesn’t understand why life is so cruel. Yeah, it happens to everyone believe it or not.</p>

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<p>dude its a C because you messed up on something there is more time to fix that. personally if it is a hard class i would be satisfied with a b :)</p>