High SAT scores and good grades don’t guarantee admission into elite schools.
- Harvard rejects 1 in 4 students with perfect SAT scores
- UPenn and Duke reject 3 out of 5 high school valedictorians
- Harvard could fill its incoming class twice over with high school valedictorians
- At Princeton, more than 50 percent of applicants with perfect SAT scores were rejected, as were 82 percent of valedictorians
At most, SAT scores and grades serve as a minimum threshold for admission. Beyond that threshold, there are so many overqualified applicants that admissions decisions may as well be a lottery.
Recently released documents in the Harvard case provide a unique window into a process that is typically opaque. According to a 2014-15 Alumni Interviewer Handbook:
- “Few successful candidates rank below the top 10 to 15 percent of their high school classes” and “the overall pattern of the students’ academic performance and quality of their courses are far more important than their rank.”
- “Students admitted to the College represent a range of scores from roughly 600 to 800 on each section of the SAT and on the SAT Subject Tests. Candidates with scores lower than 600 are less likely to be offered admission unless they provide compelling evidence of other unusual talents or accomplishments. At the same time, the Committee does not admit hundreds of applicants who have 700+ scores … because other candidates appeared stronger in other important ways.”
- “Once the Committee determines that an individual is capable of thriving academically at Harvard, a judgment made considering test scores, grades, and recommendations, we are most interested in the person behind the scores.”
