One of the most common questions parents ask us at Revolution Prep is, “what is a good SAT®/ACT® score?” Like with many things in life, the answer is, “it depends.” Trying to understand where a student needs to score to get into his top choice school can be a bit tricky, as there are a lot of factors that go into college admission.
There are no “guaranteed” scores that will have a student instantly on their way to Harvard or Hogwarts. Transcripts are still the most important consideration when it comes to admissions, which is why they should remain a student’s primary focus throughout their high school career. In fact, we make our tutors take an oath that no test preparation will do anything to hurt a student’s GPA. Aside from GPA, there are other very significant factors that can have a big influence on admission, such as strong family connections at a school. If you are a recruited athlete or underrepresented minority, these can also be significant factors that influence admission.
There are many things that can impact college admissions, but second to GPA are a student’s SAT®/ACT® test scores. As a rule of thumb, a student wants to be at the higher end of the interquartile score for his top choice school. The interquartile score shows us what the range is in the middle of a set of scores and eliminates any outliers which could skew the data based on an individual high or low score.