<p>My son took March 10th SAT and today we both were shocked by his Math score. Last year, as an 8th grader, he got 700. However, this year as a freshman taking Honors Calculus I at our flagship, he got 660. On practice tests he usually got all questions correctly (sometimes he got just 1 incorrect). He expected his score to be above 700 this time around.</p>
<p>The thing is that after the test he told me that he was worried about eraser marks on his Math section. He said that Math section was harder than he expected and he panicked. As a result, he repeatedly erase many answers to put a different answer. He was worried that eraser marks were not erased completely. </p>
<p>I looked at the rules of hand score verification and they only talk about incorrectly filling the circles being ineligible for change of the score. College board does not mention not entirely erasing the circles. Will hand score verification help in my son's case?</p>
<p>He did not have the same problem on other sections and the scores are in the range what we expected. </p>
<p>My son is a freshman and I am not even sure if it matters at this stage, but it would have been nice to have an accurate picture of his performance. So if anyone has insight into this situation, please let me know.</p>
<p>It sounds like hand score verification could help you, but if he is a freshman I truly wouldn’t worry about it at this point. He is certainly on track to for the National Merit Scholarship as a junior and I’m sure he will have close to a perfect score by then if he is already achieving these score ranges as a freshman.</p>
<p>Relax…this is a good problem to have…my son scored about the same as yours as a freshman and this year he is graduating from Yale…</p>
<p>I know your concerned about your son, but there is a slim chance that the scantron machine made a mistake. I erased a TON on the March SAT Math section, and there were stray marks everywhere. Yet, I only missed 1, and that was a question I was positive I had no stray marks.
The bottom line- It’s very unlikely that the scantron machine made a mistake. Look at his score breakdown. Did he omit any questions he did not mean to omit? Did he answer ever question? Is there a section/area where he missed a lot of questions that strikes you as unusual?</p>
<p>To sum it up, it’s really common to score around there when panicking. I recommend not making a big deal out of it and retaking the SAT next year or the year after. I am sure your son has a lot of potential.</p>
<p>We decided not to worry about score verification now. He did not have any questions omitted and unfortunately because it is March test, answer and question service is not available (so no going back and at least seeing for yourself what has gone wrong). </p>
<p>He has a problem sometimes when he gets overconfident and “blows” it. I think it is a good thing that it happened to him now and “brought him down to earth” a little bit. It is better to happen now, than during junior year.</p>