<p>Just as the title says, please post you responses. thx</p>
<p>I've asked Harvard representatives this question repeatedly, most recently at the Exploring College Options program in Minnesota in May 2007 and the Minnesota National College Fair in October 2007. Both of the Harvard admission officers, one a very senior officer, whom I spoke to in the last year said that Harvard considers a student's highest scores, period. Note that this is consistent with what is said in the Harvard viewbook,</p>
<p>"If you submit more than one set of scores for any of the required tests, the Admissions Committee considers only your best scores—even if your strongest SAT Subject Tests or portions of the SAT Reasoning Test were taken on different dates." The Harvard viewbook has said something like this for several years, and its wording is presumably reviewed by the top officials in the Harvard admission office. </p>
<p>You can look up the answer for the majority of the other seven Ivy League schools on their websites. The common practice is that those schools consider an applicant's best scores. </p>
<p>Is it that they only see an applicant's highest scores or only consider an applicant's highest scores? Basically what I'm asking is how much more weight (if any) is placed on first attempt single sitting scores versus fifth attempt superscores. Also, does a sophomore's score carry more weight than a senior's (assuming both have the same score)?</p>
<p>The score reports include all the scores from ninth grade on. (A lot of test-takers applying to the most elite colleges would have tested first at middle school age </p>
<p>and those scores, by default, wouldn't necessarily appear on a test-taker's score report.) </p>
<p>Colleges have given up trying to distinguish one-time test-takers from two-time or three-time or even four-time test-takers, because that wasn't useful information to the colleges. There are a number of reasons for that. </p>
<p>1) The colleges have utterly no way of knowing who spends all his free time practicing taking standardized tests and who takes them "cold." </p>
<p>2) The colleges are well aware that students who have actually taken the tests sometimes cancel scores, so they have little incentive to give students bonus consideration if the students submit only one test score. </p>
<p>3) The colleges are aware that students who take the admission tests at middle-school age, who are numerous, do not have their earlier test scores submitted by default. </p>
<p>SAT</a> Younger than 13 </p>
<p>Hoagies</a>' Gifted: Talent Search Programs </p>
<p>Duke</a> TIP - Interpreting SAT and ACT Scores for 7th Grade Students </p>
<p>4) Colleges are aware that the majority of students who take the SAT at all take it more than once. </p>
<p>5) Colleges are in the business of helping students learn, and they don't mind students taking efforts to improve their scores. They know that students prepare for tests. </p>
<p>
<p>These arguments make sense to Mr. Fitzsimmons [dean of admission at Harvard], who said, “People are going to prepare anyway, so they might as well study chemistry or biology.” He added that “the idea of putting more emphasis on the subject tests is of great interest” to his group.
</p>
<p>Colleges treat applicants uniformly now by considering their highest scores, period. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>To my mind, at least, a 2400 obtained the first time is infinitely more impressive than a superscored 2400 obtained only after the fifth time. I assume that to the minds of many college admissions officials this is the same, if only subconsciously. Were I an admissions officer, I would likely be psychologically influenced by this, even if given explicit instructions to superscore. Yale, for example, says this:</p>
<p>
[quote=<a href="http://www.yale.edu/admit/faq/applying.html#3%5D%5Bb%5DIn">http://www.yale.edu/admit/faq/applying.html#3]
In</a> evaluating SAT or ACT results, does Yale consider scores from previous test dates?
Yes, in the sense that readers of the application will see all of the test results that are in your file, since you are asked to self-report your scores from all test dates. The formal admissions committee that meets to vote on applications, however, will see only the highest score you received on any individual test, if you have repeated any of the tests. For the SAT I, the admissions committee will consider the highest score from each of the test's three sections. For the ACT, the admissions committee will consider the highest composite score.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So, though the admissions committee only sees one's highest SAT II scores on multiple iterations of the same test, it sees (but is not supposed to "consider") all SAT I subsections taken (though this is only my interpretation of this slightly confusing passage). I think that this is the same at most colleges. Whatever they tell you, I am certain that they would regard:</p>
<p>May 2007: 800 CR 800 MA 800 WR</p>
<p>as superior to:</p>
<p>May 2007: 800 CR 610 MA 700 WR
June 2007: 750 CR 670 MA 710 WR
September 2007: 690 CR 800 MA 630 WR
October 2007: 730 CR 790 MA 760 WR
December 2007: 710 CR 650 MA 800 WR</p>
<p>Though the cumulative 2400 is the same, the psychological effect on application viewers is not. In the former case, the committee immediately thinks and (perhaps) says: "Wow. A 2400 cold turkey? That's pretty impressive," while in the latter, it thinks and (perhaps) says "Wait...what is this? This kid took the SAT I five times? Huh. Wait a minute...there's an 800 here...oh wait, here's another one...oh wait, and another...that's 2400. Not bad." Obviously, there are quite important differences between these two first impressions. Everything else will undoubtedly be colored by them.</p>
<p>
[quote]
To my mind, at least, a 2400 obtained the first time is infinitely more impressive than a superscored 2400 obtained only after the fifth time.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So you are suggesting that your opinion is universal among college admission officers? What is the evidence for that in view of the contrary statements (not to mention contrary practice) of college admission offices?</p>
<p>If a student is a strong test taker, there shouldn't be too extreme a discrepancy, even if scores aren't super'd. Thus, it doesn't matter at all whether or not a college "superscores" your testing history. You'll still fall in the 2300-2400 range, the 2100-2290 range, the 1900-2090 range, etc.</p>
<p>It is in the interest of universities to superscore your SAT scores so they can boast of higher SAT scores--so they probably do.</p>
<p>It should be noted that while all the Ivies superscore, the practice is not universal for all colleges/universities. For example, the University of California system uses only the best single sitting score. Estimates are that "on average" this amounts to a 50 to 75 point difference in overall SAT scores.</p>
<p>I find this interesting since it is often argued by some Ivy and other "elite" school students that their school is so much better than UC Berkeley or UCLA because of the higher SAT average scores--while not taking into account the difference in how the averages are computed.</p>
<p>How about LACs like Oberlin and Reed?</p>
<p>There is a chart from the College Board about group averages on each SAT section among students who test various numbers of times </p>
<p>and there are tables of distinct individuals who achieved a given highest single-sitting score on the SAT </p>
<p>as well as tables of distinct individuals who received each possible section score as a highest individual score, </p>
<p>but what College Board has so far not published, even though I have asked for such figures, is what the "superscored" scores of all the distinct individuals who take the SAT are. That is still a matter that is discussed quite a lot here on CC, often as an excuse for low SAT ranges at some state universities as compared to some private universities. Note that Common Data Set reports of student score ranges are all done section by section, e.g., </p>
<p>College</a> Search - Harvard College - SAT®, AP®, CLEP® </p>
<p>College</a> Search - University of California: Berkeley - Cal - SAT®, AP®, CLEP® </p>
<p>But in the absence of published data on the issue, some of the suppositions about the effect size of "superscoring" are implausible to me. It seems to me likely that the typical student who takes the SAT more than once--and a majority of all SAT-takers take the test more than once--improves in all three sections or at worst declines only a little in no more than one section on the second try at the test. In other words, I think the effect of "superscoring" (considering each best section score separately) is minimal compared to single-sitting scoring (considering each student's section score to be the section score obtained in the single sitting with the highest composite score). Someone would need detailed data that have so far not been published to prove me wrong--which I would be glad to see, even if it did prove me wrong. One reason I don't think I will be proved wrong when I say superscoring makes minimal difference in comparing students within one applicant pool and minimal difference when comparing enrolled classes among different colleges is that I have asked about the former issue: </p>
<p>Reed superscores each section.</p>
<p>In my own experience, it was quite variable. My daughter went up 100 points from the high 600's to 790 on the math because she felt she was capable. She concentrated on studying the most difficult math problems and soared. My son scored a 2310 on one sitting in June of his junior year and we recommended he not take it again. We felt he would be best served by concentrating on his essays and applications come Fall of his senior year. Was that good advice? Could he have gone up further? Don't know. We felt it was clear that he was already in a certain range.</p>
<p>What find interesting is the colleges which superscore the SAT but not the ACT. What's the difference? I originally thought it might be because of some arcane formula used to generate the ACT "composite" score but it turns out it's just a simple average of the four ACT subscores. (In fact, you can generate a slightly more informative ACT score by adding the subscores instead of averaging them, a process which is used in some circumstances to compare ACTs with SAT's more precisely.) Ah, the mysterious ways of the Adcoms....</p>
<p>why are you questioning what universities say? why would they lie??</p>
<p>I think people are merely pointing out that:
Even if its technically the university policy that adcoms look at superscored tests...
It is human nature to be more impressed with a 2400 single sitting than with a 2400 superscored after 5 tests.</p>
<p>I certainly think it is more impressive.</p>
<p>I too have never understood ACT is not superscored. A few colleges do, but very few. This is in contrast to the majority that do superscore the SAT. When asked, their reply is that superscoring the ACT "is too difficult".</p>
<p>Why is superscoring the ACT any more difficult that superscoring the SAT? As Kluge stated, the ACT composite is an average of the 4 sections. The ACT could be superscored just as easily as the SAT. </p>
<p>In the last several years, the ACT has been accepted at just about every college in the country. At most of those, (not all), it is also accepted in lieu of SAT and subject tests. (i.e.-if the ACT is submitted, subject tests are not required). I see this, in addition to score choice, as a added incentive to using the ACT rather than the SAT.</p>
<p>As numbers of applicants submitted ACT increase, I will be curious to see if there is more push to superscore its results.</p>
<p>I find it funny that universities that are supposed to have the best and brightest students in the world are claiming that it's 'too difficult' for the university itself to superscore the ACT. I'd understand if they said it was too time consuming since they literally have tens of thousands of applications to go through. But I kind of have to wonder about the schools that say it's too difficult for them to do.</p>
<p>claiming that it's 'too difficult' for the university itself to superscore the ACT</p>
<p>I spent some time trying to Google (love that verb!) this, but could find no school making this claim. Can someone point me to it? Thanks.</p>
<p>Rules in organizations are frequently designed to give human beings incentives NOT to follow human nature but to follow what is good for the organization.</p>