The importance of the SAT for the Class of 2013 and 2014
By Mark Greenstein, President, Ivy Bound Test Prep
Every round of reported SAT scores brings questions from parents and
students about whether a 1700 / 1800 / 1900 / 2000 / 2100 / 2200 (the
child’s SAT score) is “good enough”.
This article cannot do full justice to the question since grades,
quality of the transcript, extracurricular activities, recommendations,
competitiveness of the high school, personal statement, and college
choice all contribute to a college’s acceptance decision.
On the ACT / SAT front, a student pining for a certain college should
not be considered “done” if s/he has yet to post an SAT (or ACT) score
that’s in the Top 25 percentile of the college’s last reported SAT
range. The August 2010
US News Survey gives the 25th and 75th
percentiles for the Class of 2009, and the colleges themselves give
median GPAs in their catalogs.
There are “special admit” exceptions.
These are narrow categories for recruitable athletes, diversity
candidates, and extraordinary circumstance families.
Many students wrongly presume they fall into one of these narrow
“special admit” categories.
Until a student athlete is contacted by colleges about playing for them,
s/he is not a “recruitable athlete”.
And a Vietnamese-American is not automatically “diverse” in the
eyes of most colleges.
Similarly, many parents over-include their families in the
“extraordinary” category.
“Legacy” is no longer extraordinary, and “knowing someone with
pull” is often illusory.
For admission to top tier colleges in this modern era, very few students
can feel an admission is highly likely until they have a GPA that’s WELL
above the median and an SAT score that’s 50 points above the “Top 25%”
mark. (Yes, this math means
that even a 1600 SAT score can’t generate a “highly likely” feeling for
an applicant to a college where the Top 25% mark is 1560.
Absent a “special admit”, no applicant to Cal Tech, MIT, or the
Ivy League can ever feel highly likely about a given college).
At Ivy Bound Test Prep, we know of too many stories recently of students
who would have been accepted had they reached a higher SAT threshold.
We often have parents whose students earned very good scores ask
whether taking an additional test is "too much" / "overkill". My answer
is:
If a student is eager, or at least neutral about SAT study, more study
and practice testing is an opportunity to do great for him/her self. The
extra study is the right thing to do so long as the student and parent
realize:
A) falling short of a high goal is not a failure -- even a 100 point
improvement significantly expands college opportunities
B) the extra study should not come at the expense of grades, good
extra-curricular activities, and healthfulness.
C) extra tutoring and extra practice testing help only incrementally;
the bulk of the improvement comes in the time we cover the Lessons and
the first three Practice Tests.
Parents and students who recognize this have a prescription for
maximizing the student's score with a healthy attitude.
Our clients already appreciate that
D) the SAT / ACT is the most important single test in most high school
students' careers
and many surmise that
E) attending a name college is a higher predictor of postgraduate
success (including household income) than ever before.
Now to what few parents recognize:
the overlooked reasons why 2013 and 2014 grads may want to push
hard:
F) More students want to attend
4-year colleges than ever.
Yet no new colleges are being built, and few have increased their class
sizes. Though the American
college-age population may decline after 2011, the college-BOUND
population will not. The
value of the 4-year degree from a competitive college is higher than
ever, so more students will continue to seek it.
G) The competitive pinch will continue beyond 2011.
That’s due to the stratification of colleges – top ones being
pathways to BETTER grad schools and/or better post-graduate jobs.
Top tier firms can only recruit in so-many places; more and more
they are cherry-picking from the cream of the (perceived) best colleges.
H)
The top tier competitiveness will continue also because top American
colleges remain a beacon to FOREIGN applicants.
These colleges LOVE strong foreign applicants because accepting
them adds “diversity”, a trait colleges like to tout, and because
foreign applicants pay full tuition.
The best chance to avoid disappointment on the college front is to put
yourself in the hands of a good college counselor, and take reasonable
measures to maximize your SAT or ACT score. For three weeks in the
summer, (or a few weeks over a long winter school break, 5 - 6 hours of
tutoring a week and 5 - 8 hours a week of study is a mild sacrifice that
yields big gains. The
student can consider it a part time summer job. Once school resumes, I
believe in tapering to just 1.5 - 3 hours of weekly study, including
practice testing and a QUALITATIVE review of those tests. That review
can include "mastery mode": a student who can teach her study partner or
her tutor why the wrong answers are wrong and where the source for the
right answers is, is a student who is unlikely to get beat on test day.
Students who do serious study in the spring can take the summer off, but
they should then do the 1.5 - 3 weekly hours ramp-up when school
resumes.
So to end where I began: overkill. I'll qualify my remark slightly.
Getting a perfect 36 ACT and then trying to get 2400 on the SAT may be
overkill in the eyes of some peers.
Getting 2350 and taking the SAT again to prove something to
yourself or someone may also be overkill in the eyes of some peers.
But no COLLEGE that requires SAT scores will shoot you down on
grounds of overkill.
Colleges love excellence, and college Trustees, admissions officers, and
faculty love displaying excellence.
Even if you don’t want to gratify some college with a great SAT
score, consider that there could be value beyond college -- investment
banks, hedge funds, and certain top laboratories will continue to be
impressed by a "perfect" 2400. (Ivy Bound itself gives teachers with
2400 higher pay). Don’t
sacrifice grades, good sports, sleep or wholesome fun to pile on extra
points. But for a few more
weeks, you might jettison:
Short of 2300, there's room to improve in the eyes of many top colleges.
At those colleges, a 50 point improvement CAN make a difference.
When assessing your score against a college's reported percentiles,
please note that those percentiles will be three years old for the Class
of 2013 and given the trends, for competitive colleges the percentiles
for 2013s will be higher (my estimation is by 10 - 15 points on the 1600
scale, higher if compared on the 2400 point scale).
The good news in all this ratcheting upward is not stated enough: 1) the
rewards for college success are higher than ever, as top graduates now
receive starting salaries that were unheard-of 20 years ago, even
adjusted for inflation.
2) Less-recognized colleges are better than ever.
The quality of education at a “third tier” college may now be
equivalent to the quality that "top tier" colleges provided 25 years
ago. The student who knows
he wants aeronautics may flourish more at Embry-Riddle University than
Harvard. The student who is
interested in mineralogy/oil exploration may be better set for a career
by attending the Colorado School of Mines than attending Princeton.
It is for the undecided student, or the decidedly
liberal-arts-focused student that the “elite” colleges provide an
automatic advantage.
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