<p>you should assume that nearly all published scores for the SAT are superscored. </p>
<p>Hunt: I understand the psychological aspect of your pov, but I really believe that once all of the scores are above 750 adcoms really don't care (ignoring the tech-science schools where 800 Math is de rigeur). While an 800 is impressive, statistically, it is the same as a 770; the difference between an 800 math and a 770 is one stinkin' bubble, which could just be that the solution was correct but the bubble was filled-in incorrectlyto be read by the machine. Also, a significant score the second time around could just mean that the student had a bad day on the first sitting -- prom night and/or football game night prior, family illness, parent's divorce, all kinds of reasons. OTOH, a 240/2400 Sophomore fall would impress the heck out of me.</p>
<p>I suspect that adcoms think all sorts of things, often very different one from another. My point is that if their decisions are subjective ("I just feel candidate A is stronger than candidate B"), any information they have can go into the mix that leads to that impression. Again in my probably cynical opinion, an adcom will take notice if some of the scores are significantly lower.</p>
<p>I think Brown makes its point to show that it isn't a pushover college to get into. But we really don't know, for example, what the math section scores or high school grades were of the applicants with 800s in critical reading who were nonetheless not admitted.</p>
<p>now i have a different question. When self-reporting your score on an app (&/or scholarship or program) do you put down your superscore or highest. assuming it doesn't say most recent.</p>
<p>good point, wesdad. However, the Brown table also shows that the largest contingent of applicants and matriculants is the 700-740 SAT group (M & CR), or 29-32 for ACT testers.</p>
<p>Amherst has a similar report which shows that the 750+ crowd is accepted at twice the rate of the 700-740 group. But, as tokenadult notes, we know nothing else about these applicants. Perhaps the higher scoring accepted students had higher gpa's, and/or "better" ECs?</p>
<p>
[quote]
When self-reporting your score on an app (&/or scholarship or program) do you put down your superscore or highest.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Look at what each form says. The Common Application, for example, gives spaces (three spaces) for recording SAT scores, with a date by each space and blanks for a set of section scores. My reading of the that form is that you record for each sitting what its date was and your section scores were for that sitting. Then the college can "superscore" if that is the college's practice, as it often is for Common Application colleges.</p>
<p>So how much does a good score really matter? I know it won't in any way guarantee an automatic admission, but will having a perfect score make up for lousy ECs? I ask because I have a 2400 on the SAT I (not superscored), and a 36 for my ACT composite score, but my ECs suck so much I might as well leave that section of the app blank...</p>
<p>So to reiterate, to what extent can good standardized test scores compensate for seriously sucky ECs?</p>
<p>I agree that superscoring often significantly raises SAT I scores. I took the test twice; my superscored score is 70 points higher than my best single-sitting score.</p>
[/quote]
Correlation doesn't imply causation. Those students who got 800s might have consistently retaken the SAT I to have done so, and are hence perfectionists who would otherwise be more likely to be admitted.</p>
<p>Correlation does not preclude causation, but these data do not by themselves constitute evidence of 800s being well received.</p>
<p>The more relevant question is which schools do NOT superscore.</p>
<p>University of California (9 campuses)</p>
<p>did I hear Univerisity of Michigan?</p>
<p>Anyway, tokenadult gave a link that shows that applicants taking a test multiple times improve, on average, from 10-15 points each time on each section.</p>
<p>I find it hard to comprehend how a prior score in CR will be higher on average than a later taken CR section, when on average the scores of later sittings are higher on every section.</p>
<p>Anyway, I intuit that the superscoring advantage is probably about 20 points for the combined CR and M sections. Nobody cares about the silly writing section so I never even consider it.</p>
<p>The advantage of taking the test multiple times is about 8-11 points of improvement on each section on each successive take.</p>
<p>The link token adult gave shows imporement of 26 and 27 points respectively between 1st take and 3rd take on both CR and Math. That's 53 points of improvement on the combined 2-part score.</p>
<p>A four time taker improves 40 pts. on each of CR and M, for an 80 point combined improvement.</p>
<p>The moral of the story is take the test multiple times, superscored or not!</p>
<p>I spoke with a Harvard admissions officer last year, and she told me that their computer system automatically converted all ACT scores to SAT scores and would only show them the best scores (whether originally from the SAT or the ACT) for each section of the SAT.</p>
<p>I know all the colleges say that they will look at your highest scores in each section of the SAT. However, I can't help but think that this is not true. I think it is in their best interest to officially record your superscore (it makes their standards a lot higher) but I think they still will hold it against you if your scores fluctuate by at least + or - 30 pts. At the very least, somebody who does it best in one sitting will have a notch higher than the guy who superscored the same total. Does anybody agree or disagree? This is important to me because I lost 30 points on math the second time around but improved my superscore by 40 points.</p>
<p>But what does that mean to consider though? It's not like they take a black marker and block out all the poor scores and highlight the good ones.</p>
<p>some schools like Yale have a program that only distributes your highest scores per section to people considering your application. The only reason they would look at everything is if you took the test 4+ times. I am sure plenty of other schools function like this.</p>
<p>When i visited Upenn, the admissions officer there said that they superscore so that on US News rankings and stuff like that they can say that their incoming class has a higher average SAT score and therefore obtain a higher ranking. Im sure that a score taken in one sitting will be viewed differently by an admissions officer than an equal superscore from 5 sittings. I mean, the readers are human beings and can recognize that a single sitting 2400 means more than a 2400 that is pieced together from many tests (although it is also an amazing score).</p>
<p>Yes, and the readers are human beings who are informed about the admission process, so they don't make inferences about the number of times you take the test in the manner described just above. Here's my FAQ on the subject, newly revised with the news that came in overnight. </p>
<p>ONE-TIME TEST-TAKING </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>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>so now there is less reason than ever to suppose that colleges care how many times you take the test, because the colleges have no way to know how many times you took the test officially. </p>
<p>Colleges treat applicants uniformly now by considering their highest scores, period. </p>