<p>How do colleges know how many times you've taken it. I'm not naturally smart and a really bad test taker do I'll probably end up taking it 3 times.</p>
<p>3 times is common. 3 times is also considered the max attempts advisable. You are not likely to improve your score after 3 tries and so it doesn’t look wise to keep trying.</p>
<p>Most students take it twice.</p>
<p>Being “naturally smart” or “not a good test taker” has nothing to do with the SAT. If you work smart and hard you’ll do great! Generally speaking, take the SAT again if you think you’ve REALLY improved. At least a 100 points. But if you want a number, I’d say 3.</p>
<p>Im taking it a third time 
but i feel i can improve. And colleges require u to send all ur SAT scores. Well some do. Others use score selection. Meaning u send highest scores from each section from all test dates. The score selection ones will not know how many times youve take the SAT. But the ones which reuqire u to submit all scores will</p>
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<p>A few different issues in play here. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>There is a law of diminishing returns. Taking the test over and over again WITHOUT adequate preparation is silly. However, this rule does not apply if you keep seeing improvements. And, the latter is the only relevant element.</p></li>
<li><p>The number of tests taken is utterly irrelevant. Schools want to see the highest scores —and so do you-- and will gladly overlook the number of trials. Most scores are simply collated and many adcoms never see anything but the highest composite scores.</p></li>
<li><p>Here is the bottom line: no school will give you a brownie for a test … not taken. No school will supersize your score because you took it once or twice. And … no school will penalize you because you reached your natural limit after 4 or 5 tries. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>The rest is complete BS!</p>