[Ralath]

So if I was to write the SAT, they would look at those marks, then they would look at the courses I took in my school, and depending on my score, and how I did in my school, they would decide whether or not to admit me. Is that it?

It depends on the school you're applying to. Some schools might just look at those factors. I just looked at the criteria for international applicants for my school and its not that different from normal applicants. They require a personal essay as well one teacher evaluation (funny, I remember it being two). They also require a description of the grading system (which is actually a pain to get if your school doesn't have a ready-made one).

A lot of people say that applying to very selective colleges is a very hard to determine if you're not one of the "must-haves." And I think that's partially true. For example, last year, my best friend got into 2 very good schools and rejected from another very good school. No idea why except maybe that third school didn't put as much weight on his "qualities" as the other two.

Colleges always say that they're building a "class" and not necessarily determining it on individual students alone. So (and this is a commonly given example--no idea if it is actually true or not), if the professor in charge of the orchestra says that he has to have a euphonium, and you just happen to be an amazing euphonist, then you might get picked over someone with better scores, etc.

Umm... In England we have SATs in Year 9 (9th grade over there I think.. dunno) but they've been stopped now =D

For British people, I know that my schools (and other schools) look at your A-levels.

Again, it's different for different colleges and universities and it's a very convoluted process.

The less selective state schools tend to be a lot more numbers based. They'll say something like, "We'll admit you if you get a 24 on your ACT, a 3.5 GPA, or a 1200 on your SATs." (random numbers). For some of the more selective state schools (UC-Berkeley, UMich, UVA, etc.), I've heard competition has been really intense at those schools so they have a better student pool to select from so their score averages will be higher and they don't/can't necessarily guarantee admission to people who get the minimum score. State schools also heavily favor in-state residents. In-state residents get a cheaper tuition as well as a higher acceptance rate.

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