This is very true. The Boston Globe recently had an article about schools like Dartmouth, Yale, Georgetown and others moving away from test optional going forward. One of the main reasons - rampant grade inflation in high schools that makes it almost impossible to differentiate between students. The article even quoted an SAT tutor who was shocked at the number of math students with straight A’s through high school who were struggling with the math SAT.
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same with my child… yet waitlisted at USC, direct admit at Kelley and High Merit at UTK… go figure!!!
My son in at USC with merit too but wants UTK
I tend to agree with this… it’s the one common thread… there has to be value there, right?!
just nutty… to be at one and not the other.
You’re so sweet, thank you for those kind and encouraging words. I will pass them along to her, along with the hug 
My son has a 36 and 1550. This has not helped him as much as you would think. UTK didn’t care about this as we were auto admits based on just the gpa. And seems most of the other schools haven’t cared about scores, as several kids admitted to his rejected schools had lower scores. So all of this, gpa/sat/act/ec’s- I’m just not convinced having those as good as they can be makes a diff at all. I honestly think sometimes the AO flips a coin. 
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Completely different story for OOS applicants.
Yield protection. That is the only answer. A perfect score on the ACT and a near perfect score on the SAT should open all doors.
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Sure, my point is that it may not have helped as much as one would think, based on our experience applying to OOS targets/likelies, as his scores didn’t seem to help secure those admissions. OOS applications is the most awful of wild cards at times, and I just don’t think any parent should worry that a better score could have been the deal breaker as it seems to be that all OOS admissions can be inconsistent.
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Let’s hope our kids get off the waitlist soon
It’s dependent on the school. SAT scores is what got DS accepted as some schools as his public high school has few AP classes and consequentially produces lower GPAs that are not understood outside of the region, from what I can tell. The kids I know OOS that got into UTK had both high SAT and high GPA.
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I believe that to be true. In my daughter’s private school they are handing out A’s faster to kids who have grown up there. My daughter, on the other hand, was new last year and, because it is an IB school (a completely different way of grading, teaching, writing, etc than she’s used to), it was a very difficult transition. And they did not care that she was new, they expected her to figure it all out on her own. Ruined her GPA in the first month. That being said, the kids that were getting A’s were not necessarily smarter, they were just more acclimated to that style of teaching (which isn’t really “teaching” at all if you understand the IB program).
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100% agree… this is definitely obvious in some cases and therefore I wonder, can you really even count on a safety school? I think NOPE!
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same experience and thoughts here!
Great article that uses UTK as an example of the issues and smoke and mirrors with admissions trends the last few years
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This article is great. Sums up what is happening this year. Thanks for sharing.
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Here’s a great very short podcast explaining the waitlist.
Will be interesting to see the yield rate this year. I also have totally unproven theory that the same 1k kids are being accepted to all these schools messing up the yield rates everywhere cause of common app. 
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Ultimately the yield rate for Tennessee will be quite revealing.
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