<p>My advice – submit if your scores are good, don’t if they aren’t. It’s hard to know whether your scores are “good,” but see if your college counselor can offer some advice in the matter. Did your counselor see your grades and your scores and say, “ok, that makes sense,” or did s/he say, “wow, you’re a bad test-taker”? Usually with some advice from school and some comparison with similar students you can get a good idea of whether the scores were an accurate, positive, or negative reflection of you. If accurate or positive, submit the scores. If you think you’re a bad test-taker, DO NOT SUBMIT THEM. </p>
<p>I’ve served on an admissions committee for an honors program, wherein I’ve read college applications with optional scores. Yes, I’m very slightly suspicious of people who don’t list their scores, but I also think that the SAT is quite problematic so I just shrug it off and ignore it. I’ll give those people a fair shake and judge based on the essays, grades, recommendations, etc instead. I’ve run into a few people who have done themselves in by submitting low scores. We tend to take people with around a 2200 on the SAT, and the ones who don’t submit scores look just like the ones who do in all other measures (very high GPAs, great writing, etc). Occasionally someone looks great in all other areas of the application, but they’ve submitted a bad score, like an 1800 or less. It somewhat sours you on the rest of the application. </p>
<p>So again, try to see whether your scores would normally be helping you or hurting you at a school that makes them mandatory. If they’d be hurting you, just leave them off!</p>