I have a 2310 and considering taking the ACT, is that unneccessary to get into ivies?
There is no cutoff for the Ivies. A 2310 alone will not get you in.
Here are the average SAT scores:
Brown University: 2000 – 2330
Columbia University: 2090 – 2350
Dartmouth College: 2050 – 2340
Harvard University: 2130 – 2400
Princeton University: 2100 – 2400
University of Pennsylvania: 2050 – 2330
Yale University: 2120 – 2390
The Ivies will probably only see one of either your SAT score or ACT score (the higher one), so you don’t really need to take the ACT also. Your SAT score is pretty high; I’d say that if you have great GPA and extracurricular, you wouldn’t have to aim for a perfect score on SAT unless you really want to.
A 2310 is fine. Don’t waste your time on the ACT unless you regularly get perfect scores on practice tests.
You can get a rough idea from a school’s Common Data Set section C9 showing test scores of the last admitted freshman class; extrapolate from 25th and 75th percentiles. Rough and likely non-linear!
Your score is plenty high enough. Don’t bother with more tests - work on other ways to make yourself stand out.
Your score won’t hurt your chances and may actually help bc it’s decent. I just helped a friend’s son this past year with his application. He was deferred and then admitted to Yale RD with a 2180 (720 Cr, 680 m, 770 w…so in the bottom 25% for cr & m), 96 UW GPA, no wow factor & unhooked. His ECs were all school based…runner but not recruitable, co editor in chief of newspaper, model UN, orchestra but not outstanding musician. No out of school awards…nothing state or national level.
I think he got in bc he had decent grades, was a boy applying as a dual English & physics major (though I told him that his math SAT score combined with non honors math classes that fed into AP cal AB might hurt him), wrote a nice application (& got lucky bc it apparently touched a chord w his admission reader), and had excellent teacher recommendations. Frankly, we were all shocked bc it was a Hail Mary application. He was rejected from Georgetown and Columbia. Also accepted to Cornell, tufts, bowdoin (didn’t send his scores), JHU.
He did have decent sat 2s in biology, physics & history ranging from 730-750.
Don’t take it again. Spend your time and resources on the other parts of your application. Trust me, 90 points (3-4 questions basically) will not make a difference. Truthfully, people who get 2300+ on their SATs (and I guess 1500+ on the new one) and don’t get into a top tier school aren’t denied because of their SAT.
You could have a 2400 sat score for real and still get rejected from every school in that athletic conference. That being said those schools are so different from each other. Some much harder to be admitted to than others…
Do Ivy League colleges prefer the SAT over the ACT?
^ @PrimeMeridian No. ALL schools take both tests and only one school in CA states they prefer one test (in that case the ACT!).
Thank you
There is no set rule, but if you aren’t hooked, I would shoot for:
HYP/Wharton - 2220+/33+
The rest - 2180+/32+
I think if you hit those marks, you’ll clear the “scores hurdle”. In other words, they won’t likely scrap your app due to insufficient test scores.
So, yes, a 2310 should be fine for the “test score” part of your app.