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How Important is the SAT to My College Application?
Expert Jay Brody goes behind the curtain to show the importance colleges give the SAT and ACT.
While there are no official guidelines for how colleges interpret the SAT, and each school takes its own approach, the vast majority of schools view the SAT as an important tool in evaluating incoming college students.
By requiring standardized tests such as the SAT or the ACT, colleges can compare students from different types of high schools and different parts of the country.
Also, the SAT tests some concepts that sometimes aren’t an official part of the high school curriculum. Grammar, vocabulary, certain types of math problem solving, and time-pressured reading comprehension are all areas tested on the SAT that students may not be explicitly tested on in high school.
Here’s a very rough estimate of how a more exclusive college might weight the various college admissions components:
■ High school record: 40 percent
■ Standardized test scores: 30 percent
■ Activities and extracurricular accomplishments: 10 to 20 percent
■ Essays 5 to 10 percent
■ Recommendations: 5 percent
■ Other factors: 0 to 10 percent
By the time junior year rolls around, a student can exert the most control over his or her application by focusing on the SAT.