<p>Reading:700
Math:710
Writing:720</p>
<p>I'm a rising senior, what should I take this fall: Retake SAT I and/or SAT II and/or ACT?</p>
<p>I'm looking at Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury, Colgate, WSU Honors, WWU Honors, UPS, and Gonzaga.</p>
<p>Yes, for those schools, definitely retake the SAT I (and take the ACT this fall if you can because you may find it easier).</p>
<p>And Dartmouth requires 2 SAT IIs, so you don’t have much of a choice regarding taking them or not…</p>
<p>Your SAT scores are easily in the middle 50% range of all the schools to which you plan to apply. At Colby, they are high in the range (75th percentile), at Middlebury and Colgate they are on the higher end, and the other schools are somewhat safe for you. I don’t think that you definitely have to retake the SAT I – you’ll be fine as it is – but if you want to retake it to attempt to raise your scores, that’s fine. I just wouldn’t stress over it because your scores match or exceed the average scores of the average admitted students at the schools you want to attend.</p>
<p>You also don’t need to take the ACT, because as I already said, your SAT general test scores are already in the range you need them to be.</p>
<p>And for SAT IIs, as was mentioned, Dartmouth requires 2 so you will have to take at least 2.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>I though I read that you take the ACT in lieu of the subject tests, or was that some other school? If thats the case which should i do?</p>
<p>In general, you should never feel the need to retake a 700+ SAT score, even for top schools (HYPSM). SATs will never get you into a good school by themselves, they get you past the first screening (which a 700 will). Now you need to provide them with a real reason to admit you, and an 800 isn’t going to be that reason. Don’t waste your time retaking the test, instead do something more useful with your time (write a great essay, spend some extra time on your favorite EC, have some fun!).</p>
<p>^ The bar for not retaking an SAT score is a lot higher than 700. For HYPSM I think the reasonable bar is a 780 on each section if the applicant is clearly capable of a 2400. 750 on each section will also suffice but it’s not quite as strong. A 2130 won’t cut it for the very top schools without something seriously special.</p>
<p>RETAKE it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s simply not true (at least for MIT, which is the only school I really know details about). Admissions officers emphasize that they will never use SATs as a reason to admit someone. The look at the SATs to see if a student is competent, that is it. A score of 700 shows competence. They then forget about the scores and look at the more important aspects of the application, just like they would if the student had an 800 on every section.</p>
<p>A quote taken from the MIT admissions site (Note, Ben Jones was an admissions officer at MIT at the time):
</p>
<p>Mostor=Monster.</p>
<p>Because your sections are so evenly balanced out, I don’t think it would ABSOLUTELY necessary. Your scores are fine the way they are so only retake if you think they’re going to get better.</p>
<p>
It’s an adcom’s way of encouraging more applicants and thus lower acceptance rates. It’s part of their jobs.</p>
<p>Maybe, but I doubt it. I honestly don’t think they can learn anything from an 800 that they can’t from a 700 (except that you didn’t catch a few careless mistakes). The difference between a 600 and a 700 is <em>much</em> more significant.</p>
<p>I guess you wont lose anything by retaking (except your time and money), but I got into almost every top school I applied to with far from perfect SATs (CR was even in the 600s).</p>
<p>There is a big difference between a score of, say, 710, and a score of an 800 on one section (especially on CR)…</p>
<p>people need to chill about scores.</p>
<p>Honestly, let’s cut the feel-good propaganda here. Everything else being equal, who do you think is going to be admitted, the applicant with the 2130 or the one with the 2400? Unless you are 100% certain that your SAT scores are completely removed from your file once they are used to sort you into a certain classification, how can you say that an improvement doesn’t make a difference? That being said, having all 700+ scores is good. Once you get to 750, I think that’s probably the point past which improvements don’t make much difference, mainly because everything else is never going to be equal and admissions officers aren’t going to give much significance to a difference of only 100-200 points combined.</p>
<p>
It’s hard to settle down when lies are being fed on these forums. A 2400 is not equal to a 2130, period.</p>
<p>yes, but honestly, why waste the money to take it again if the scores are higher than average at some of the schools? there’s no point in perfecting numbers just to get into an ivy league. if a school is so shallow as to look that highly at numbers, I wouldn’t want to be there in the first place.</p>
<p>^The problem is being in the middle 50 is not enough alone to get you into college. Depending on how the rest of his app, it may be beneficial to go higher above that middle 50 in order to strengthen the app.</p>
<p>A 2130 is good enough for most of the schools you listed. Taking it again doesn’t harm anything, but 700+ in each score is very impressive already.</p>
<p>
It depends on what the OP is capable of and what he/she is aiming for. If OP is really looking at Dartmouth, Bowdoin, and Middlebury, he/she should strongly consider retaking those SATs.</p>
<p>I would not want to go to a school that thinks it is capable of determining a student’s intelligence and character through unsubstantiated measures. And guess what? No schools are that foolish. The general trend is that the higher the grades and SAT score, the less fantastic an applicant’s subjective factors have to be in order to gain admissions. Those 2100 SAT scorers that get into Ivy League schools without a hook are rare exceptions and have truly extraordinary circumstances.</p>
<p>$45 is a small price to pay for a significant difference in admissions outcome. With that said, it IS a waste of time if OP isn’t capable of raising that SAT score past the 2200 mark.</p>