<p>“Your MA and CT example is wrong. Good public high school system doesn’t authomatically mean good public university (ies) and I never said it did. However, it is fact that most UC Berkeley people are from bad high schools, how else can they have such low SATI’s and such high GPAs/class rankings.” average SAT at Berkeley is 1300 which isn’t that bad. it might even be a little higher because princetonreview is usually wrong.</p>
<p>they do have good SAT IIs though, which shows they deserved their grades (Writing: 620-760; Math: 600-740) (<a href=“http://students.berkeley.edu/admissions/freshmen.asp)%5B/url%5D”>http://students.berkeley.edu/admissions/freshmen.asp)</a>.</p>
<p>how do you know they went to bad high schools? for all you know they went to the Stuy’s and the (insert elite public/private east coast school here)'s of the west. cali’s a big place and there are school districts outside of south central.</p>
<p>interestingly enough, the top quarter of SAT scores at both NYU and Berkeley is 1450. i’m sure that there are way more people with 1500+ at berkeley than NYU.</p>
<p>also, as i understand it, the AIME is a math knowledge test, not a reasoning test. it’s completely different from the SAT and not a valid comparison at all.</p>
<p>bowdoin doesn’t even require the SAT I (as they haven’t for the past 30 years or so) and they’re still ranked the #7 LAC, above all the maine colleges that do. it’s still an excellent school and based on the kids whom i’ve met who go there it’s filled with very intelligent workaholics.</p>
<p>while the SAT is usefull for comparing two applicants, it is not the be-all and end-all of tests.</p>