Getting into MIT is impossible

[Rich Graves]

ichudov at algebra.com wrote:
> 
> can any kind soul tell me, what are the SAT scores needed to be in
> the top 10%, top 1%, and top 0.1% of all the students who take these
> tests?

I'm not sure what this has to do with, well, anything, but here goes.

Scores from before April 1995 are not comparable to scores today because 
the method of scoring has changed to recenter the distribution. The 99th 
percentile starts at 1440 for women and 1490 for men. Full stats at
http://www.collegeboard.org/sat/html/topsrs29.html

Please note that this is for "college-bound seniors." It's not a stat 
that applies to the general population (i.e., 1490+ is the top 1% of the 
elite 30% or so that go to college), and it doesn't include people who 
were satisfied with the score they got the beginning of their junior 
year, and didn't take it again (i.e., me).

I don't know about MIT, but I'd think that their numbers would be even 
higher than those for Stanford, because MIT doesn't recruit football 
players. Some of Stanford's numbers are at 
http://www-portfolio.stanford.edu/105549

MIT and the like aren't impossible. Fucking elitist, yes. Worth it? 
Probably, though two of my closest and most intelligent friends have no 
college degrees at all. Of course, they had to earn people's respect, 
whereas I had people recruiting me based largely on the fact that I 
still had a pulse five years after taking the SAT. What counts is what 
people want you to do five years after that.

-rich