While I vented a wee bit earlier on this thread. . . I think “perfect test” scores are only achieved by “perfect test takers.” That said, I have a 7 figure proposal I need to wrap up yet this evening . . . . whether I achieved a 1390 or 1170 (while “high” 14 years ago) on my SATs does not guarantee (or even begin to assure) my current and future succes.
I hope everyone replying to this post is making 6 figures . . . or will be promoted soon!! Not that money is everything!!!
IUchem, did you think a thread titled “In honor of ‘The Perfect Score’: list your SAT scores!” would attract a lot of people who didn’t do well on the tests?
Hmmm. I didn’t get hassled on this, and I was in the same situation, with a 1563 SAT (35 years ago) and an average of about 93. I’m sure colleges did and do look at the classes you take. My low grade was in Spanish, which I’m sure got discounted. If you get mediocre grades in easy classes, I bet it will hurt, but if you take hard classes it won’t.
SAT: 1570 (800 math / 770 verbal)
ACT: 36 (I don’t have the breakdown handy at the moment)
What was disappointing was that everybody told me, “With your scores, and you being valedictorian, (Harvard / Yale / MIT / whoever) will come after YOU!” but none of them ever did. Apparently they still wanted you to “apply” and all that. Can you believe the nerve of those people?!
1420 on the SAT model of the late 70s, I don’t know what that would translate to today. I can’t remember what my exact PSAT score was, but I was also a National Merit Scholar. That, in turn, funded a big chunk of college, and that mattered a lot more than the 1420 ever could.
SAT 1 (7th grade)
720 Math
620 Verbal
= 1340. Interestingly, my verbal score soared in 4 years; I remember having to learn what a ‘slope’ was for the math section, though.
PSAT: 233. 80 math, 73 verbal, 80 writing. (99th %ile in all three)
The discrepancy between my PSAT verbal score and my SAT I verbal score is strange.
SAT IIs
770 Math Ic
760 Writing
770 Chemistry
I’m taking the IIc next month. Hopefully it won’t be lower than my Ic; then I won’t be sure which math score to use for college apps.
SAT: 660 Math, 710 English in 1977. (In my defense, I was sick at the time; my PSAT was better; I don’t remember the score, but it was in the top half of a percent, the best my hick school had ever seen.) Been a failure at pretty much everything since then, due to laziness and lack of ambition.
My mother encouraged me to take the SAT my sophomore year in high school “for practice”. I scored a 1470, figured that was good enough, and never took it again. I can’t remember my scores for each section, but my verbal was significantly higher. I might have scored higher had I retaken it once I had more math classes under my belt…but like I said, I figured a 1470 was plenty good enough. It was, too. I landed a full-tuition merit scholarship to the #1 college on my list, so I can’t imagine that I’d have been better off with a few extra SAT points.
My ACT composite (junior year in high school) was 33. I got all the questions right on the reading section so that score must have been a 36. I remember math was my worst one but that all of my scores were in the 30s, so I think I had something like a 35 English, 32 science, and 30 math.
