<p>My daughter scored a 32 on her ACT. She did not do nearly as well on her SATs. She attends a very competitive private college prep school, has been on A honor roll all semsters, spent a semster away in a foreign country for 10th grade. Is not interested in the "ivies" What advice about retakes for both ACT and SAT</p>
<p>Dont take the SAT at all, her ACT should make her very competitive for many fine schools</p>
<p>I am all about boycotting the College Board given their recent problems with grading tests, the lack of score choice and their undue influence on the college application process.</p>
<p>Thanks Momofaknight. I thought the same thing. You don't think, however, that the absence of SATs will be a negative. What about retake of ACTs</p>
<p>We have been advised by my son's college counselor (at one of the top preps on the east coast) to take both the SAT and ACT and that if his ACT scores are better go with those. The counselor feels that even the most highly selective colleges and universities (yes, ivies) will accept the ACTs as readily as the SATs. Absence of SATs is not a negative.</p>
<p>Your daughter has nothing to lose by retaking the ACT since she can choose which scores are sent to her colleges. With the SAT you cannot choose specific scores, so colleges will see her entire SAT history--they say they only look at the highest scores, but they will see all</p>
<p>Almost all colleges accept either the ACT or SAT. There are still those who believe that the SAT is needed for high ranked eastern or western colleges. With a couple exceptions, that has not been true for many years. Princeton still has a preference for the SAT. Wake Forest and Harvey Mudd do not take the ACT. That is about it. All other higher ranked (top 200) schools take either except that Brigham Young requires the ACT and does not accept the SAT.</p>
<p>Whether a 32 is good enough depends on where she intends to apply. For MIT and Caltech, that is a low score. For ivies and some others, it may put you in the 50% range but not any better than that. For most state public universities it is high 25%. If you are looking for scholarships, very high ranked schools like the ivies usually don't give them but there are many others that provide partial tuition scholarships, ranging from 25% to 75% of tuition, based on test score and class rank (or GPA) and the higher you have the more you get. Thus, whether a retake of the ACT or the SAT should be considered really depends on where she intends to apply and how important scholarship money may be.</p>