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.
Also, 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.
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.
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.
Stanford, MIT, and the Ivies see the SAT as more of a threshold score. I.E. there's not much difference between a 2300 and a 2400. As long as you have above a certain range, you should be fine. The SAT doesn't make or break people.