<p>Hello</p>
<p>I was just wondering, what is considered to be the Threshold SAT/ACT score, as far as top schools go, for a full Chinese (not exactly underrepresented…) male. So for like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, what is the score, SAT and ACT that you need for which your scores can no longer hurt your application?</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>Probably higher than a 2340, or a 36 on the ACT to be somewhat competitive</p>
<p>:/ Could anyone else give any information on this?</p>
<p>Id say that once you hit 2200 your score won’t hurt your application as long as everything is above 700.</p>
<p>1550+ combined CR and M</p>
<p>I would say 2300+, 34/35 ACT</p>
<p>How extreme are we talking here, particularly for those who say 2300+/or even more? At what point, then can the score significantly/noticeably hurt my chances? (With good grades, essays, and letter of recs)</p>
<p>Do you have any hooks? At less than 2100, there is pretty much no shot unless you are stellar at some EC or write great essays.</p>
<p>I would say the minimum to be at least 2200.</p>
<p>One way to think about this is to estimate the number of students who matriculate at the most selective colleges and to match that number to the number of students who get scores above a certain value. The assumption is that the top selective colleges have a strong preference for applicants with high scores, and they enforce some kind of threshold in their review of applicants.</p>
<p>It’s helpful to look at the College Board table:</p>
<p><a href=“http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-Composite-CR-M-W-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-Composite-CR-M-W-2012.pdf</a></p>
<p>Approximately 20,000 college bound students score 2210 or higher. This is the 99th percentile of SAT test takers. In practice a significant number of students with high SAT score matriculate at their State Universities. So the actual number of available high scoring candidates applying to selective private colleges is less than the estimate</p>
<p>Assuming an average class size of 1500 for each of the top 20 private colleges, the number of students who matriculate at these colleges is about 30,000.</p>
<p>These estimates don’t take superscoring into account into account, nor students who submit ACT scores. Because not all high scoring students matriculate at very selective private colleges, even taking superscoring and ACT into account the actual pool of available high scoring candidates is 20,000 and perhaps less.</p>
<p>The point is that there aren’t enough students with SAT scores above 2210 to fill the freshman classes of the most selective colleges. So claims that applicants must have scores of 2300 or above to be considered don’t make sense. There just aren’t enough test takers with such scores.</p>
<p>^fogcity: Realize that most selective schools superscore the SAT, although some programs/scholarships might not. It is these scores that adcoms use to evaluate applications and report on their school’s admissions profile/stats.</p>
<p>@fogcity THANK YOU! No matter how much I try to reason with people at school, they don’t believe me when I say that the top schools HAVE to accept students with scores under 2300 or even 2250 to fill their entering class.</p>