I am not sure what the range in the guide book is. Some of them list the middle 50%. So the range is from 25 percentile to 75 percentile. For example, you can get the range for UC Berkeley from college board:
SAT Critical Reading: 590 - 710
SAT Math: 640 - 760
SAT Writing: 610 - 720
If your son is not URM (under represented minorities), athlete, or with the last name Obama. Probably he needs to aim for 75% percentile score. If he achieve 710+760+720 = 2190, he has reasonable confidence that Berkeley will admit him (with reasonable GPA, class ranking, ECs, etc). Actually Berkeley is a bad example, out of state students used be difficult to get in Berkeley. But that started to change as it became more desperate about its financial situation. OOS student pays more in tuition.
