<p>I'm thinking of applying to an Ivy school, perhaps a Yale or a Columbia. I just got back a 610 on the Literature subject test, and I'm not happy with this score. Yale requires all scores to be sent, so I'm guessing they would see this subject test. Would it help to take that test again? I could certainly do better... not sure what happened. The bigger question is... will a higher Lit score show that I mean business, or would an Ivy still frown upon getting that lower score? Would it help me to take again?</p>
<p>See it this way. If you’re really going to send in that 610, it looks better if you have another, higher score than if you don’t have anything else to show that you can do better than that.</p>
<p>True. I just feel like this one stupid test has ruined any chance I might have in an Ivy school. It’s really pathetic that one subject test could do that, but I feel that someone would see that score and just immediately write me off. I’ve got an 800 on the SAT CR, and I thought I could get a good Literature score. Apparently, it’s not that easy. I am just bummed about this…</p>
<p>If you retake and get a significantly higher score (I would shoot for 750+ considering your CR score. I probably wouldn’t retake if you can’t score higher than ~750. In that case, I would just try to shrug off literature as a weak point), it will come close to negating your 610. It won’t put it away completely, but it adcoms certainly wouldn’t care about it nearly as much.</p>
<p>An 800 on the CR? Nice. I’m gonna guess it was the poetry that gave you a hard time then. I would retake it and study poetry (or whichever part hurt your score). I know for me poetry was the worst part. I had my brother, and English major, come home and tutor me a bit on the poetry and the reading part. I really think it helped a lot. On a practice test I missed A LOT, but on the real thing I got a 690. I recommend you take it again and have somebody really knowledgeable help you out while taking a practice test.</p>
<p>I’m not even sure it’s the poetry! If you’ve taken it, you would know that every question is asked in such a manner that every answer appears to be practicable, even correct. I just had trouble picking answers, because I felt each question had more than one right answer, and choosing the “most right” answer is a thorn in my side. It’s just a bad test… I should have known what I was getting into before I took it!</p>
<p>Yeah it’s rough, I took it in May without having AP Lit under my belt. I just stick with the general rule of thumb on not second guessing myself. I was just guessing it was the poetry because you managed to get an 800 on the CR (which kills my score of 690 lol) yet didn’t do as well on the Lit test which I think of as basically the CR on steroids plus poetry</p>