Hello,
I am a high school senior applying ED/EA for fall 2018. I am not very happy with my SAT score, but I have taken them 3 times and I am not planning to take them again because I would like to focus my energy elsewhere.
My first time, I scored my highest score, a 1440: 760 English, 680 Math. However, I only got an 18/24 on the essay (6/6/6). My second time, my composite went down by 20 points and I did not take the essay. The final time, I got a 760 English and a 590 Math (I had studied really hard but I had a bad day and accidentally bubbled wrong on the calculator free section and ran out of time). However, I got a perfect essay score my final time taking the test (8/8/8). Only one of my colleges requires that I release all my scores and all my colleges superscore. My question is, is the perfect essay score worth releasing my third score even with the extremely poor math result? Or should I send only my first score?
I think my first result should make it clear that I am capable of doing much better in math (I am also taking AP Calc right now). Still, I am scared that colleges will either think that I did not study for math the third time around if I do release my final score, or that I am not a competent writer if I do not release it because of my essay score. For context, I am much stronger in writing and the humanities and most of my ECs and future interests reflect that. I do not plan to focus on math or any STEM field at all.
In a nutshell, I am wondering: does the SAT essay really matter?