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First off, I'm a junior.

I just recently found out that my December ACT(my first test) scores were 35/32/33/36 with a composite of 34. I was pretty excited because the middle 50% of Yale ACT scores is 28-33.

My GPA is 3.99 and rank is currently 5/146. I've been taking my school's toughest courses and the only thing preventing me from having a 4.0 is a freshman year A- in PE. I've competed at the Knowledge Bowl MN State competition (our team scored 8th out of 24) and was in the MN All-State Choir.

The thing I'm mostly wondering is: should I also take the SATs to try to improve my chances for Yale? I was going to if I didn't get a high ACT, but now I'm kind of worried that my SAT score could bring my application down (I got a 206 on my PSAT-66 Verbal, 75 Math, and 65 writing). I'm planning on taking the SAT 2 Writing, US History, and one other.

Any advice/comments on my chances as it is? Also, should I retake the ACT and try for an even better score?

By Argilospsychi (Argilospsychi) on Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 03:03 am: Edit

They look at your top score

Take the SAT a couple times
Retake the ACT

You have much more to gain than you do to lose. Furthermore, you can keep certain scores on hold, i.e. not release them to colleges

By The_Elop (The_Elop) on Sunday, January 04, 2004 - 02:37 am: Edit

Thanks. That's what I'll do. I got a little nervous last night when reading about all the 1580 SAT, 4.5 weighted GPA people getting defferred or REJECTED EA from Yale...now I've decided that a 35 ACT at least is a MUST.

By Argilospsychi (Argilospsychi) on Sunday, January 04, 2004 - 01:06 pm: Edit

not necessarily. they don't reject people with 1580's because they don't have 35 on their act's. In fact, it's probably quite the contrary. They take the 1580 at face value. You don't need another comparable score on the ACT in order for them to think this person is smart because the have very good test scores because the SAT score already says that


The problem is probably something completely different, e.g. bad essay, bad interview, unintersting application, blah extra curriculars, etc. or maybe someone sneezed on their application.

Anyways, it's not a must