Score Inflation Phenomenon

An increasing number of students would like to pursue their further studies in the U.S. Colleges. However, do you know what is your “chancing”?

The first thing the U.S. colleges consider will be the school GPA and the score of the standardized test, i.e. SAT or ACT. For the ACT, there were just 0.008% of the students getting perfect score of 36 in 2007and incredibly 0.14% in 2017. It is more likely a student can get a perfect score nowadays.

For the SAT, 90th percentile was just 1280 in 2016 while it was 1320 in 2017. And it just required the students to have 1400 for applying Early Decision (ED) for the highly selective colleges in 2017 but 1500 in 2018.

We are expecting this trend to continue and the admissions to selective colleges will be more intense. What students need to do is to “prep early”!

(Statistics Source: prepscholar.com, applerouth.com,insidehighered.com)

Mr. Hubert Ho
Head of Admissions Consulting Services, Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions
Associate Member of IECA, Member of NACAC and AEE
MCom (Finance), UNSW
BCom (Management & Marketing), University of Wollongong

• 10 years+ of experience in education industry
• Proven track record helping students gain admission to US prestigious colleges including Yale University, Stanford University, Cornell University, UCLA, UC-Berkeley, New York University, Boston University