I took my first sat in march and did no preparation, and to no surprise, got a bad score.
I took my second sat in april and my score jumped up 300 points!
I am going to take it again and try to raise my score another 100 points.
so here is my question, does one bad score really affect your chances into getting into selective colleges that require all sat scores?
also, is it bad to take the sat more than three times?
Well, it’s not going to look great, but you just have to do what they say. If you want to apply and they ask for all scores, you don’t have an option.
This is a great time to reiterate for the benefit of others: don’t use a standardized test as a practice run with no prep. Your case illustrates why.
I would never advise anyone to take it more than three times. One, you are probably going to peak and run the risk of getting worse scores. Two, you start to look like a test taking drone.
I will be cynical here and suggest that colleges ask for all your scores but only “count” your highest scores for a reason: they want their own statistics to look good for rankings, etc. They ask for all your scores so they can superscore and look even better than if you just submitted one score. So your highest scores will be the ones that matter.
On a less cynical note, if you have at least one set of strong scores, it shows you can handle the work at the college, which would be the main reason colleges look at a standardized score instead of just grades on transcripts which might vary widely high school to high school.
So, for either sincere reasons of wanting to know you can do the work, or cynical reasons of wanting to look good themselves, colleges will care most about your highest scores.
So do not worry too much. Anyway, you can’t change your old test now, so why stress over it?
And I would think that three times is enough.
^ OP is asking about ivy schools that they have plenty of high stat students to choose from. They do not need any tweak to make their stat look better.
ivies are always tweaking to make themselves look better, that’s why they send out brochures to people they know they’ll reject, so their apps are high and acceptance rate is low. In this case though I do think they give the benefit of the doubt and superscore. When I was applying there were no rankings and they superscored.
Definitely do not take it more than three times, three is also a little concerning, but as someone said, it’s done, and no need to worry about it.