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I second this. Summers should not be spent studying for the SAT. Also, a good internship will look much better on a college app than a few extra points.
by vineel 13y ago
I second this. Summers should not be spent studying for the SAT.
Also, a good internship will look much better on a college app than a few extra points.
- iyulaev 13y agoAlso, a good internship will look much better on a college app than a few extra points. Sadly, nope, unless you're applying to a high-end private school. I know the UC system doesn't care at all about your work experience, and even if you founded a company when you were in HS, that would at best be worth 150-300 SAT points. Now that I think about it, it's scary that I still remember this.
- flylib 13y agoit will look better on a resume for jobs/further internships down the road though which is just as important anyway
- philangist 13y agoProbably more important. Going to a good school is great, working on cool projects and gaining work experience is awesome.
- adamzerner 13y agonot only that... but it'll be better for finding your passion, for being better at what you do, for networking etc.
- iyulaev 13y agoAgree that it will look better, and is probably a better experience. Sadly college admissions is a game, and it is risky to ignore it.
- vineel 13y agoI'm guessing Shalin is aiming for MIT, Stanford, and schools of their ilk. These fall under "high-end private schools".
- argonaut 13y agoCompletely disagree. I too went through the college admissions process. Yes, public schools care more about standardized numbers (SAT/GPA), but you don't need a very high SAT score (in strictly relative terms to private schools) to get into a top public school, even the top UCs. Put it this way: An elite public school might weight SATs 40%, but the median SAT will only be 2000 anyway. Whereas an elite private might have a median of 2150 with a weighting of 20%. The fact is that public schools will give more weight to SATs, but the threshold for what above average for admission is already lower.
- shainvs 13y agoI think I should study for the SAT, because I'll only be giving up one of my summers (I can intern during my Freshman, Junior and Senior summers)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Asterick6 13y agoDoesn't matter. Having a good to decent SAT score enables one to get into a better college/university. As long as you don't spend more than 1 summer prepping for it, it's worth the time investment.
- L_Rahman 13y agoAs someone who's had a reasonable amount of success with the SAT (a 2360 in the October 2009 SAT) and now spends a bit of time tutoring students for the SAT, I'd argue that for you a whole summer is overkill for the SAT. If you're a fast learner with a knack for pattern recognition, which your internship experience suggests to me that you are, mastering the SAT for you should be as simple as taking the 10 tests in the Official SAT book and going over answers and explanations with someone. That's easily achieved over a few weeks of focused work. It seems crazy when you consider how much people freak out over it, but I'm confident this works and I encourage you to try it out. If you have any specific questions about the SAT or the college applications process in general (something I also had a reasonable amount of success with in that I got into all 4 of the Ivies I applied to) feel free to email me.
- krrishd 13y agoI'm looking to go to Stanford upon graduating high school (like you also expressed an interest to do), and from what I have heard, they definitely value SAT scores very high, but if there isn't anything besides that (like your development/internship experience), they honestly don't care much about your scores. And also, I'm pretty sure the SAT takes place senior year, unless of course you are going to be using your genius capacities to do it earlier :)