Do Grades Matter Over SAT Scores?

When reviewing applications, colleges look at both your grades and your SAT scores to determine your academic ability. Therefore, understanding what both signify and which is better is important for you to know how to give your college application a boost.

Do Grades Matter Over SAT Scores?

Both school grades and SAT scores matter for colleges. Your SAT score measures your aptitude as well as your basic mathematical and comprehension abilities. Your transcripts, however, measure your overall motivation, persistence as well as your ability to do consistently well, in both easier and harder classes. Therefore, grades generally tend to be a better indicator of how well you do in college, but this might not always be true.

What is a Better Predictor of College Success – GPA or SAT?

Your high school GPA is essentially your average performance in all your classes and subjects. It measures how you have done across all your assignments, quizzes and exams during the entirety of your course as well as your schooling period. Therefore, it is a long term measure of how hard you are willing to work to maintain your academic record, as well as whether or not you can maintain consistency and your quality of work over a period of time. Thus, by looking at your GPA, colleges can know whether you are equipped to handle difficult and challenging work over a period of time and whether you can stay motivated through it. 

However, the SAT is simply a test across a few hours which measures your basic aptitude but says nothing of how you can perform given a longer period of time and a more draining course load. Since college work itself tends to mirror your high school course work, transcripts tend to be a better record of how you will perform in college.

What Does Your Transcript Say About You?

Your transcript’s importance depends a lot upon the type of classes you take in high school. If you take easy classes and end up getting good grades in them, it might not say a lot about whether you can handle college-level classes that are bound to be harder and challenging. However, taking AP and Honors classes can give a good look to your application, provided you earn good grades. Taking difficult courses, if you can’t maintain a positive academic record, can show an inability to handle colleges. Therefore, it isn’t recommended to choose difficult classes with no regard for how your transcript will look like.

Are Bad SAT Scores Acceptable?

Depending on the college you choose to apply to, a bad SAT score can be made up for with a high GPA. However, while applying to top colleges and Ivies, your SAT score can make or break your application. While one bad grade in your report card can be explained by family circumstances, ill health and the like, a below average SAT score cannot be excused in the same way. This is because the SAT is a standardized test. It allows the colleges to compare students who might have had different schools, grading systems as well as difficulty levels for similar classes more easily.

When is a Below Average Transcript Acceptable?

  1. Extenuating Circumstances: If you had certain extenuating or difficult circumstances that could not allow you to focus on your school work and maintain your grades, colleges will factor that into your application and review it accordingly. If your situation was a learning experience for you, you can also include it in your college application through your personal essays and statements to give the college recruiter more insight into your life and personal journey and how you learnt from it.
  2. High Levels of Engagement in Extracurriculars: If you are extremely proficient and skilled at a certain instrument, or maybe have tons and tons of important volunteering experience, it is understandable if instead your academic profile has a few bad grades unaccounted for.  Colleges also look for talented individuals who have a lot of drive and passion for a certain activity. If you can prove the same through your application, then your transcript can be positively supplemented.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Should I take the SAT over the ACT or vice versa?

Most colleges do not have a preference between the 2. Students, depending on their own personal abilities, can also tend to perform better on one test as opposed to the other. Therefore, its best to do your own research, figure out which test suits your capabilities by reviewing the pattern of the test and kinds of questions that are asked and then choose which one to give.

Is the SAT irrelevant for college applications? / Should I not give the SAT if my college application is test-optional? / Do SAT scores matter for college applications for the class of 2022?

During the COVID pandemic, most colleges, on realising that students were unable to give tests due to their own or their family’s condition, made their applications either test-optional or test-blind. Due to certain controversies with the SAT as well as standardized testing in general, a great majority of American colleges have made applications test-optional. However,

  1. This does not mean that the SAT or the ACT for that matter do not factor into your application. For test optional colleges, if you submit good standardized testing scores, your application will be favourably looked upon.
  2. All a test optional application means is that if you do not submit scores, your application won’t be penalised. Thus, if it is within your means, you should ideally give the test and submit whatever good scores you earn on it. 
  3. However, if you are planning to only apply to test-blind colleges, there is no compulsion to give the SAT as scores do not matter at all for test-blind colleges, be they good or bad.

What are good grades and SAT scores range?

Technically, any score above the 50th percentile could be considered decent as it is above the average score most participants scored while sitting for the same test. However, for a good chance at better colleges, especially highly selective colleges, ensuring a score above 1400 and above 1500 for Ivy leagues would be a good policy

Conclusion

In summary, we can conclude that while the SAT has its advantages, your high school GPA can better reflect (in most cases) your motivation and ability to stick through college and perform well on your coursework. It is also recommended that your transcript reflects your enthusiasm to take on challenging courses through AP and Honors classes, although you should be able to ensure a better than average performance on those classes and tests as well. That is also not to say that a bad SAT score is acceptable for most colleges. One should try to ensure a good percentile, depending on the kind of college they wish to go to. For competitive colleges, a score above 1400 would boost your application positively but grades and SAT scores both matter for colleges.