What does "college readiness" mean?

SAT Scores for admission to popular colleges and universities

This is in response to the MCPS 7 Keys to College Readiness which culminates in a goal of SAT 1650, which is a 60th percentile score nationally. College Readiness as defined by MCPS merely means "no remediation" during the freshman year of college. Achieving the MCPS minimally "college ready" benchmarks does not mark you as a particularly distinguished student applicant.

Below is a series of charts showing SAT scores for the middle 50% of students accepted at the named schools, and you can see for yourself that the MCPS "college readiness" goal of SAT 1650 is not within any realistic range for admission to many of these schools. You might want to set your sights higher than SAT 1650 for your child to have a competitive score, depending upon where he/she wants to go to school.

This is a list of SAT scores achieved by the middle 50% of students accepted (25% to 75%) for 2007-08.

If you want to attend one of the private schools and you want to know what a reasonable, on-target SAT score is for admission, aim for a range of: 1900-2370.

If you want to attend one of the public schools, aim for a range of: 1790-2100 (aim at the higher end if the public school you want to attend is out of state; preference is generally given to in-state applicants).

SAT scores are only part of your application. Grades, for example, are weighted significantly. But this is a comparison of the MCPS SAT benchmark of 1650 with the expectations of colleges for their successful applicants.

Compare MCPS expectations for college readiness to what the college of your choice looks for in students actually admitted to the school. 1650 is within the range at highlighted schools below, but at the low end of the range for many of these schools. There are many schools which accept students with lower SAT scores. But if you want to attend a competitive school, aim higher than 1650.
College Readiness