

This is why they consider percentile scores.

Ivy League colleges don’t just want to see that you did well on the SAT, they want to see a score that distinguishes you from other applicants. If your score is in the 75th percentile, it means that you outperformed 75% of other students. For instance, if your score is in the 50th percentile, it means that you scored higher than 50% of other students. The higher your percentile rank, the greater the number of students you outperformed on the test. What is a percentile score?Ī percentile score is a way for you to see how your SAT score stacks up when compared to other students who took the test. However, there is an objective way to determine whether or not an SAT score is good enough to get into an Ivy League school: looking at your percentile score. After all, a score that might look great to an admissions board for a less selective college could be seen as low to an admissions board at Yale or Cornell. When it comes to SAT scores, a “good” score might seem a bit subjective. A good SAT score can also make other parts of your application have less weight, so if your volunteer activities or leadership activities are lacking, they won’t be as detrimental to your chances of admission.īut what constitutes a good SAT score for an Ivy League school? While many of these schools are not requiring the SAT, taking the test and doing extremely well on it is a good way to help push your application to the next level. If your grades, essays, recommendation letters, and test scores don’t stand out, neither will your application. These schools have notoriously low acceptance rates, and their admissions officers are only looking to accept the best of the best each year.

If you have your heart set on one of the eight Ivy League schools, you will want to have an impressive SAT score.
