Are these good scores for the SAT subject tests?

[Werg22]

I got a 770 for Math Lvl 2 and 760 for physics. How good are these?

 

[^_^physicist]

What are those tests out of...like total points. I never had to take the subject tests when I took the SAT's (I am assuming SAT II). If its out of 800, well I would say those are great looking scores...but like I said eariler, I don't know what its out of.

 

[Doom of Doom]

What are those tests out of...like total points.

These tests are out of 800.

I got an 800 on both of them when I took them last year. I thought that they were ridiculously easy tests. I'm not sure how your scores fared against the average score, but I'd say that you did pretty well.

Interestingly, although I got an 800 on the math II subject test, I was never able to get an 800 on the SAT I after taking it four times.

 

[mr_coffee]

I got a 930 total w/ math and english, not bad!

 

[mathwonk]

look at the percentile ranking of those scores, which should be given along with the scores.

 

[moose]

The percentiles will tell you if they are good.

I will go on to say that they aren't bad. However, if you are applying to a school like MIT or Caltech, then those scores aren't that bad, but won't add much to your application or anything.Oh, and Doom of Doom, that's probably because on the SAT subject Math 2, you can miss something like 10 questions and still have an 800. The curve is insane. However, on the SAT I math, sometimes missing one question brings you down from an 800.

All I know is that these are the percentiles for 800s
Math IIC 800 is 90 percentile
Physics 800 is 92 percentile

 

[mathwonk]

talk about grade inflation, when an 800 is only 90th percentile.

 

[Werg22]

I was hoping to do a lot better, really. There goes MIT, Princeton etc.

 

[moose]

Are you a junior or a senior?Mathwonk, yeah
On the SAT I, an 800 on Math is in the 99+ percentile... I really don't know why it's that way. I know that the chinese SAT subject test has an average of somewhere around 750 or 760. That I almost understand, considering that I expect everyone who takes the test to be Chinese and be fluent...

 

[marcusl]

yeah, I heard that most Harvard physics grad students enter with 800 scores. Still those are good scores and should get you to a good school.

 

[^_^physicist]

Posted by Werg22:I was hoping to do a lot better, really. There goes MIT, Princeton etc.

I wouldn't count yourself out yet. I didn't take either of those, failed my AP tests (except Bio), and got an 1130 on my SAT's and still managed to get into Reed College (couldn't go do to fiance's but still, its proves the point).

The SAT's are a horrible gauge, and schools recognize this. A decent portion of your application at a majority of universities depends on your transcript and your personal statement. Additionally having research or other extra-cirrculuars or merely independent studies can also give you a nice boost.

Don't count out MIT or Princeton just yet...just don't count on them as your only choices.

 

[CPL.Luke]

don't give up yet, what will matter a lot more than the scores is going to be your extra curriculars GPA etc.

do you honestly think that they will care that much whether you got a 760 or an 800? 500 is the average as I recall.

 

[leon1127]

If I can recall it correctly, the percentile for prefect score on Chinese SATII was 80+... The lowest of all tests, lol

 

[0rthodontist]

If I can recall it correctly, the percentile for prefect score on Chinese SATII was 80+... The lowest of all tests, lol

I remember noticing that a while ago, but I think you mean about 20- and not 80+, i.e. 80% of those taking the test scored 800.

 

[mr_coffee]

I know at state college high school, A professor was talking about if you have a 4.0 your not at the top of your class, you need at 5.0, and even at that your still not at the top of your class.

Because others have 5.0's from taking AP courses starting in 7th grade and got A's in all of them all the way up to their Senior year. Its crazy, my high school didn't even offer AP courses.

So these kids are your competition.

 

[^_^physicist]

I know at state college high school, A professor was talking about if you have a 4.0 your not at the top of your class, you need at 5.0, and even at that your still not at the top of your class.

Because others have 5.0's from taking AP courses starting in 7th grade and got A's in all of them all the way up to their Senior year. Its crazy, my high school didn't even offer AP courses.

Its called weighted grading. It inflates your grades in high school; however, when you apply to very competive colleges that may referance this scale make sure you note it when you send in your application that you are from a 4.0 top level school that will not weigh the grades. This was the advice given to me when I applied to college, and I assume it worked pretty well.

On a side note: Colleges know its unfair to look at people from one high school with a 5.0 max and others from another high school with a 4.0 max, so in some applications they will actually ask that you do not put in your weighted GPA, and this evens out the competitition for you a little bit.----Cal tech unfortunantly does not do this, according to my friends' run through their application process.

 

[colin.mcenroe]

It's funny how B's are the new C.

 

[mr_coffee]

until you get to college and a 60 can end up being a C. As long as the scholarships keep coming I'm not complaining.

 

[colin.mcenroe]

What I was referring to is the fact that the GPA spread of high school students is very small. Everyone has a 4.0 (leading to the institution of "weighted" GPA). Now at the local community college I attend, if a student receives a C it is not seen as average, but as poor, wheras the B is seen as average. In other words, everyone has A's, B's, maybe one C instead of a few A's, lots of B's and C's and hopefully no D's/F's. Just takes away the variability in grading and makes the GPA a less powerful indicator of a student's performance.

Of course one might argue that GPA was never a good indicator regardless of grade inflation.

 

[^_^physicist]

everyone has a 4.0 (leading to the institution of "weighted" GPA)

Whats horrible though is I, and many people in my reigion, went to schools that had exceedingly high grading standards, and did not "weigh" their GPA's for students, thus resulting in a fairly even spread by traditional standards. We had one 4.0 student, and that was it, and the district I came from removed the val-victorian standing (which was total crap...but whatever). The rest of us that were close were normally in AP or Honors courses and we normally had GPA's between 3.96-3.79.

When we applied to colleges, our GPA's hurt us quite a bit. It wasn't unless we were allowed to explain our education standards, which had been compared in difficulty to top prep-schools in the state (dispite us only being a public school) for our GPA's to make sense.

GPA inflation is a problem and it needs to stop, as it weakens the gauge of the GPA by uncalled for amounts.

 

[colin.mcenroe]

When I was in HS the school did not start using the system until my senior year. I remember seeing my first report card and thinking, "Wow, good work a 4.2... hey wait, is that a B?" It made me feel good. But it didn't really mean much. To a certain extent it makes sense. I got an extra boost for taking classes designated as AP or Honors. But when the UC applications rolled through my classes like a steamroller, people had to apply using an unweighted GPA. It isn't as if the school doesn't already look for AP courses, AP tests, and AP scores as well as extracurriculars, so I can't imagine that the GPA would hurt that much.

I mean, think about it. There are admissions officers that read application after application after application. And I am sure that if a student is aware of GPA inflation that these people are even more so.

Hell, one year the school had 8 valedictorians. My class had 4. I'll just say that the speeches were very boring. But if 8 students out of a 250 student class are hitting the ceiling, something is wrong.

 

[mr_coffee]

Now at the local community college I attend, if a student receives a C it is not seen as average, but as poor, wheras the B is seen as average. In other words, everyone has A's, B's, maybe one C instead of a few A's, lots of B's and C's and hopefully no D's/F's. Just takes away the variability in grading and makes the GPA a less powerful indicator of a student's performance.

When i went to a branch campus of penn state it was the same way, grades were quite high but now that im' at main campus, i see averages of 40-50% and the professor says that's about right. Or oh, its alittle higher than last semester and I'm stressing out thinking I'm going to fail, when I get a 66% on somthing but everyone is like don't sweat it, you'lll end up with a B in the class after the curve.

It seemed like professors actually cared if the students understood the mateiral or not when i was at the branch campus but at main campus they don't seem like they have any passion to teach but rather it be a burden on their research time.

 

[J77]

Have the US not introduced A*'s yet

Grade threads depress me

 

[Werg22]

I will be graduating from High School with a IB diploma. Do big universities reckonize it? Does it give an advantage?

 

[mr_coffee]

whats an IB?

 

[moose]

whats an IB?

International Baccalaureate

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=international+baccalaureate&btnG=Google+Search