<p>Prismatic: It doesn’t seem reasonable that one low SAT score would affect your merit aid offer–but what do I know? I can see why you would worry.</p>
<p>Reading this thread, I am still confused about the impact of score choice vs. no score choice. For example, if a student takes the SAT only once and earns a high score, does that student somehow “look better” than someone who has to take the test multiple times? Is the number of times a student took the test relevant information to colleges?</p>
To me, it would look much more impressive if a student took it just once and received a high score. It would look less impressive to see someone figured out how to take it after multiple times.</p>
<p>Wonderfulworld, that list was very helpful. Thanks!</p>
<p>If you took two subject tests on the same date, but only want to send one of them, is this possible? Or will the college automatically see the scores you got on both dates?</p>
<p>This stuff is so confusing! I’m such a huge non-fan of the Collegeboard. And all the schools that say they “just want to see” your other scores, even when they “only consider the highest ones.” If they only wanted to level the playing field so-to-speak, then couldn’t they just ask how many times you’d taken it before but only have you submit the score you wanted?</p>
<p>Yes, it IS possible to select the individual Subject Test scores that you want to send. So if you want to send out scores for some of the Subject Tests from a single test date but not all, you can … at least to those colleges that honor Score Choice in the first place. </p>
<p>What you CAN’T do is to send out individual scores from the SAT I (the Reasoning Test). In other words, you can’t send just the Critical Reading score from May and the Math score from June, etc.</p>
This is fine and good–as long as the college also admits that it considers more than just the highest score across all sittings. To my knowledge, most of the non-Score-Choice colleges refuse to admit that ensuring parity means they MUST discriminate by number of sittings.</p>
<p>I, personally, did not retake any tests (SAT from 8th grade was automatically wiped) so the ethical issue never came into question.</p>
<p>One dilemma we had was that our state makes all juniors take the ACT (without writing). So when sending scores from ACT, they charge you $9.00 per test/school to send the score report. My D took the ACT w Writing twice and sent those scores to all of her schools. The ACT w/o writing which was state mandated–was mentioned in her common app and we made sure it was on the high school transcript. But since all of her schools wanted the ACT w writing we felt it was reasonable to NOT pay $9 for every school she applied to to receive a test she took that they don’t consider. Because of ACT’s policy, it cost us $18 for every school to send test scores. It would have cost me an additional $54 to send the ACT w/o writiing. I think for many families of kids who take a test like ACT multiple times, they simply may not be able to afford to send so many separate score reports to colleges especially if kids are applying to 10 or more colleges.</p>
<p>The SAT charges one fee for all scores to go to a college so that is a non issue with them–ACT should adopt this same system–I would have gladly sent the ACT w/o writing if it did not cost me additional money.</p>
<p>I also think that what is listed in the college board info is sometimes over simplified for a given school.</p>
<p>For example, Stanford shows that they want all test scores. When speaking to an ad comm there, she said they want all scores for a given test–so if a student took both ACT and SAT, they would only have to send all scores for either the ACT or the SAT. That is not what college board shows. It seems pointless to spend money to send tests to schools if they aren’t going to consider them or look at them–and request scores for one type of test. </p>
<p>I also think it was tough for students applying this year becuase the rules changed mid game for them. In previous years, applicants could choose what scores to send so there was no disadvantage in taking a test mulitiple times if one wanted to try to raise a score. I know some private middle school kids who started taking the SAT yearly in 7th grade for some academic programs. It seems weird to have to send all of those scores to a college in that case. That is quite different than a junior who turns testing into an extracurricular activity by taking multiple attempts at the tests.</p>
<p>From all of the ad comms that I talked to they state they only look at the best score. I have not heard of a negative result from someone sending all scores—but maybe we will never know for sure.</p>
<p>In the end, actions speak louder than words and honesty is the best policy.</p>
<p>“I know some private middle school kids who started taking the SAT yearly in 7th grade for some academic programs. It seems weird to have to send all of those scores to a college in that case.”</p>
<p>In regard to Stanford, I don’t think they require students to send those scores.</p>
<p>Drusba: I think the no-score-choice colleges are much more concerned with cheating on Subject Tests which was rampant (and easy) when CB used to offer score choice a decade ago. Google cheating-score choice and you’ll find all kinds are reports. Indeed, one unwritten reason why CB dropped score choice with the ST’s was due to cheating.</p>
<p>This makes perfect sense, but you wrote that in such absolute terms that I’m now curious about this. Is this a written or confirmed policy for all of the “all scores” colleges, or just an opinion? And does this statement mean that the schools don’t want them even if the student wishes to send them…or that they don’t require students to send them? If the answer is written in stone somewhere, fine. But when it comes to the question of how to handle 7th or 8th grade scores that were not automatically deleted, I think each college’s preference should be confirmed directly so that (a) people who don’t send those scores by using Score Choice are not later accused of failing to send all scores; and (b) people who do send those scores aren’t sending the colleges ancient data points from 7th or 8th grade that the Ad Coms may not want to be bothered with sifting through and weeding out.</p>
<p>HonorsCentaur, there have been several discussions in the past about the “all scores on the transcript” issue. College Board discourages this practice, in fact.</p>
<p>Sally, what do you recommend your clients do in regards to sending in all scores to colleges/universities that want to see all the scores?</p>
<p>My schools didn’t care which SATs/ACTs I sent (some were even SAT optional) so I just sent my highest ACT score to all my schools and called it a day.</p>
<p>Ironically, I didn’t submit any scores to two of my schools was accepted to both of them anyway (both require scores). I had filled out and submitted the applications to both of them, but then decided that I didn’t want to pay for the application fees or test fees. My GC said they must’ve used my “unofficial” scores for admission.</p>
<p>In regards to reporting scores on a transcript rather than having them sent directly from the collegeboard: </p>
<p>At my high school, when ordering transcripts, you can elect to have a “score card” sent with it or not. This includes SAT/SAT IIs, ACT, PSAT, and PLAN (state mandated in the 10th grade). There was an SAT II or two that was left off of my free score report but was on my score card that I sent in with my transcript by choice. I emailed someone in the admissions office at Tufts, Wash U in STL, U of Rochester, and Northwestern. They all told me that they consider scores on transcripts to be official and that I need not spend the college board’s fee to have my SAT IIs sent in.</p>
<p>I also contaced the University of Virginia and they told me the same thing. I did send test scores from both the college board and the ACT to Boston University and Penn.</p>