The importance of your SAT score depends heavily on what type of school you apply to.

• Community college? Yes.
• State school? Yes.
• Selective College? A fair amount
• Ivies? Not much.

The more selective the college, the less your academic qualifications matter in deciding whether you’ll be admitted.

Having a high SAT score is just the first step in getting into a selective institution. It won’t be what tips the admissions decision in your favor. (Image Source)

Why is that?

Well, once you get to the level of applying to Yale/Princeton/Stanford/Harvard, almost every applicant has a high SAT score, high GPA, and high AP/IB scores.

For example, in 2018 over 28,000 students scored a 2200+ on the SAT, which is equivalent to a 1520 on the new SAT.

There are roughly 2,000 acceptances at each Ivy League university. Thus, there wouldn’t even be enough space for all students who scored a 2200+ on their SAT even if Ivy League colleges only considered applicants with at least that score.

Average SAT score of enrolled students at America’s top universities. (Image Source)

Selective colleges don’t want to admit a class of academic grinds. They want students who are capable of excelling intellectually, sure.

But, more importantly, they want to admit students who will change the world and become the leaders of tomorrow.

Scoring highly on your SAT checks the first box — it’s a great start.

But it’s just a start. 10,000’s of other students have also checked that box.

You won’t be admitted to a selective college based solely on a list of numbers. Otherwise, there would be no point to applying to college — if that were the case, they could just run a computer program that instantly sorted students based on their SAT/GPA numbers and not bother with the whole process of applying to college.

But they don’t.

You won't be accepted to an elite college because of your standardized test scores. (Image Source)

And that’s because test scores only tell part of your story.

Test scores are a reason to reject a candidate, not a reason to accept a student.

What will differentiate your application is everything besides the numbers: the essays, the teacher recommendations, the extracurriculars.

As a friend of mine who’s worked in the Harvard’s Admissions Office told me, an applicant’s "Personal Qualities" rating is the single most under-rated aspect of the Harvard application.

Yes, the ranking of activities is incredibly important.

I learned this the hard way by viewing my Harvard Admissions file, and seeing just how lucky I had gotten.

In the box at the very top of the “Activities Section” of the Common App, you are told to

“Please list your activities in the order of their importance to you.”

Many people miss this, or don’t properly rank their activities.

Screenshot of the Activities Section of the Common App (Source: Common App)

However, it is essential that you spend time critically thinking about which activities are most important, and ranking them in the order you want the admissions officers to read them.

That’s because some schools will automatically filter out the last 5 activities listed (as these tend to be much less informative/substantial for most applicants).

I didn’t know this when I applied to Harvard, and I got very lucky that the right activities happened to make it onto my admissions summary sheet by chance.

A screenshot of my Harvard summary sheet is above (personally identifying information has been removed). Harvard automatically generates a one-page summary sheet for every applicant so that files can be quickly and fairly reviewed, and I was able to access this information through a Student Records Request.

Note that only 5 activity spots are occupied on the sheet, despite my putting 10 activities down on my Common App.

The 5 activities that made it onto my summary sheet were simply the first 5 activities I listed in my Activities Section. This isn't true for every application (I've seen applications with more and less than 5 activities copied over), but it is something to be aware of since this might be a factor out of your control.

Additionally, note that only the Activity Type (e.g. “Theater/Drama” or “Debate” or “Science/Math”) and Position/Leadership Description (e.g. “Debate Team Captain” or “Intern at Company X”) were copied over onto my summary sheet.

Thus, it is extremely important that you make your 50-character Position/Leadership Description as informative as possible, since this is all the information that the admissions office will see (at least if you’re applying to Harvard).

The majority of college applicants apply to universities during the Regular Decision (RD) round. Schools often close their RD rounds during January, with a notable exception being the University of California system, which requires applications to be in by November 30th. RD applicants tend to hear back in March or April, and unlike the Early Decision round, there are no restrictions on the number of RD applications one can submit.

Whether you’re interested in Harvard, NYU, or Stanford, be sure to check out the Regular Decision deadlines below and our essay revision services!