<p>My daughter plans to apply for top schools next fall and it looks like Stanford is her top choice. She has great overall numbers:</p>
<p>Asian Female going to a public school (Junior this year)
4.0 UW GPA (taking all the toughest available regular and AP courses),
good-to-greatgreat EC and evidence of commitment to local community
SAT II Math 750 Sat II French 800
780 SAT I Math and 770 SAT Reading</p>
<p>However, her SAT writing score is only 640 (89th percentile) bringing her overall SAT score down to 2190.</p>
<p>Would you advise her to take SAT again to bring her total to > 2200 (I read in another thread that they tend to view 2200 and above as a group)? Would her weak SAT writing score have a major negative impact? She is confident of improving her score is she takes it again, but is it worth it (She plans to take Physics and Math II Subject tests in October.</p>
<p>to be honest, it is kind of odd that she managed a 770 on reading but only a 640 on writing. That would raise some eyebrows in my opinion. I got a 690 on verbal and a 730 on writing. That is a 40 pt differential. In your case, we are talking about a 130 differential...</p>
<p>I got into Columbia with that score this year. And CU doesn't seem to care so much about writing.</p>
<p>Honestly, it would be more useful to your daughter to spend time working on her schoolwork and her applications than retaking the SATs. Unless she feels that she will achieve a SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER score, then don't bother.</p>
<p>And unless she's got some wicked ECs. Stanford is a HUGE reach (but it is for anyone, to be fair). That 640 won't really matter.</p>
<p>I would absolutely encourage a retake of the SAT for the simple reason that she's a junior. A retake in Oct of senior year is pretty normal. Most schools take the highest mix of scores, so it doesn't hurt you.</p>
<p>My D received a 760 CR score the first time she took the SATI and a 630 W score (although she scored an 11 on the essay). It seemed a bit odd at the time. It will be interesting to see if the pattern holds up when she gets around to sharing the results from the June SAT exam.</p>
<p>After discussing about it, my D has decided to retake in October. She thinks she can significantly increase the writing score while keeping the other two scores within the same range (Her June '07 numbers are 780, 770 and 640 ). Assuming that she gets 780, 770 and 750 in October, not only will she have good all-around scores, but she'd have also demonstrated that she has worked on the writing section during summer.</p>
<p>On this note, does anyone know if schools look at SAT score trends? In other words, would a school prefer candidate A, scoring 780, 770 and 640 on first attempt and 780, 770 and 750 in second attempt over candidate B who took the test only once and scored 780, 770 and 750? One could argue that, with so many top applicants, these top level-schools would try and infer as much info as possible about applicants. In the scenario above, candidate A has had an opportunity to show that he/she works on his/her problems and limitations, whereas candidate B's SAT score does not provide any information other than the absolute score.</p>
<p>Haha, no, that is definitely not the case. Usually, only one superscored SAT composite is considered in an application.</p>
<p>It would be ridiculous for an "upward" trend to apply to the SAT - students would just bomb the test once and then try hard the second time, to abuse this system if it did exist.</p>
<p>On the PSATs I got 80 in reading and 66 on writing. Does it raise eyebrows? Yes, a bit. However, it's the least important part of the SATs. If possible, have your daughter retake. Still 1550 M+V is impressive.</p>
<p>I know this post has been dead for a while but I had to post because I got the exact same scores: M-780, V-770, W-640. WEIRD. However, I am a little different in that this is my second time taking them and I got a 760 in writing the first time. I am not sure if such a decrease will hurt me, despite the fact that my superscore is still a 2310??? Anyways just thought is was weird that we got the same scores.</p>
<p>Damn, I'm in the same boat M=800 CR=750 W=650. Guess what, I'm not retaking on principle. I just think it's ridiculous to get so caught up in the #s game. I'll have excellent recommendation, just won a cash award & trophy for creative writing that I recieved at the Kennedy Center and am #1 in my class.</p>
<p>definitely retake. stanford applicants are top notch. Although your D's Math and verbal scores are excellent, there will be plenty of applicants who have excellent math, verbal, AND writing scores.</p>