SAT Scores

Answered

Colleges consider both scores in tandem and separately because there is a lot of context to consider when evaluating SAT scores. For example, if English is not your first language and you still manage to get a 700 EBRW score that is impressive. But if you get a 700 MATH score and come from S.Korea, China, or India, that is not really a great score since many Asians score well on standardized math tests.

While the norm for most test takers is to have someone a lopsided composite score with a higher MATH vs EBRW score, ideally it's best to aim for a composite score that puts your MATH on parity with your EBRW like a 750/750. That always looks more impressive than a 700/800 (the caveat being unless you come from a non-English speaking country).

Honestly, I do NOT think having a lop-side SAT score benefits anyone that much these days because very competitive out there. For example, if you apply to Columbia FU School of Engineering for CS, you are still required to complete the Core Curriculum at Columbia College which is a minimum of 32 credits of very hard humanities courses that require a lot of reading. Literature Humanities (LitHum for short is a mandatory 2-semester course in that you have to read a minimum of 30 difficult books. I found the reading list for this year.

LITERATURE HUMANITIES READING LIST

HUMA 1001, FALL 2023

Homer, Iliad (Chicago, tr. Lattimore)

Enheduanna, “The Exaltation of Inana” (Yale, tr. Helle)

Enuma Elish (tr. Lambert)

Genesis, in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (Oxford, ed. Coogan)

Homer, Odyssey (Norton, tr. Wilson)

Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (Vintage, tr. Carson)

Song of Songs, in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (Oxford, ed. Coogan)

Job, in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (Oxford, ed. Coogan)

Aeschylus, The Oresteia, in Aeschylus II (Chicago, tr. Lattimore)

Parks, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Theater Communications Group)

Plato, Symposium (Hackett, trs. Nehamas and Woodruff)

Virgil, Aeneid (Bantam, tr. Mandelbaum)

Life of Aesop, from Anthology of Ancient Greek Popular Literature (Indiana, tr. Daly)

Gospel of Luke, in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (Oxford, ed. Coogan)

Gospel of John, in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (Oxford, ed. Coogan)

Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Yale, tr. Ruden)

Readings marked with an asterisk () are available online in the Lit Hum Reader

LITERATURE HUMANITIES READING LIST

HUMA 1002, SPRING 2024

Augustine, Confessions (Oxford, tr. Chadwick)

Ibn ‘Arabi, The Translator of Desires: Poems (Princeton, tr. Sells)

Marie de France, The Lais of Marie de France (Penguin, trs. Burgess and Busby)

Dante, Inferno (Bantam, tr. Mandelbaum)

Montaigne, selections from The Complete Essays of Montaigne (Stanford, tr. Frame)

Recommended: “Epistle to the Reader,” “On Idleness,” “On the Power of the Imagination,” “On

Democritus and Heraclitus,” “Of Repentance,” and “On Experience”

Optional: “On Cannibals” and “Of Coaches”

Shakespeare, Othello (Oxford, ed. Neill)

Cervantes, selections from Don Quixote (Harper Collins, tr. Grossman)

First part, chs. 1-32

Second part, chs. 1-3, 8-10, 30, 45, 72-74

Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Oxford, ed. Kinsley)

Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubás (Penguin, tr. Thomson-DeVeaux)

Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (Vintage, trs. Pevear and Volokhonsky)

Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Mariner)

Morrison, Song of Solomon (Vintage)

Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf)

Instructor’s Choice

Readings marked with an asterisk () are available online in the Lit Hum Reader

So, if you are not a great reader/writer/thinker, applying to SEAS at CC is not really a good option for you.

I hope this was helpful to you. Good luck.