<p>that admissions officer was right in one sense but he was totally wrong in another. of course it's not gonna hurt your composite score. they just add ur highest score. what he failed to mention though was the time and money that you spent on that test that you could have used to writing your essay, studying for a class, or paying for an application. like some people have already said don't take it again. the difference between a 1570 and 1600 is marginal at best.</p>
<p>Don't you mean "How good is a 2290?"</p>
<p>I really think you'd be wasting your time if you retested.</p>
<p>While I don't think the 5 hours you'll be spending on taking the SAT will necessarily be better spent elsewhere, do you really want to take it again?</p>
<p>Ask yourself that question. If it's worth paying $42 and spending your Saturday morning doing another one of the SAT tests (where you MIGHT do worse), then go for it. If not, know that 2290 is a great score.</p>
<p>ok sorry you just shoulda worded it....how good is it cause when your as high as that is its a matter of how much it can help you NOT how much it can hurt</p>
<p>
[quote]
don't take the SAT more than 2 times.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Taking it more than THREE times is bad, not TWO.</p>
<p>idk, i have a friend who got a 2400 this year, and he was in academic decathlong and ohter volunteer stuff, which i thought was great for ECs, andhe was put on the waiting list....im not sure about this, lol, nobody get mad at me, i really dont kno much, im j sayin</p>
<p>token, you know they see a difference between a person who scored a 2400 his first time and between another who took the test 10 times and used a superscore........no matter WHAT they say...</p>
<p>Scores aren't everything. I can understand, if a person with a 2400 got put on the waiting list. Maybe he just didn't stand out enough in the other parts of his app.</p>
<p>
[quote]
you know they see a difference between a person who scored a 2400 his first time and between another who took the test 10 times and used a superscore
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Admission officers even at Harvard see few of either such case in the applicant pool, and they reject students who fit either case in some instances. And mostly, no matter what you say, they don't care about this issue. Harvard, and every college, has a blanket policy about how to consider scores of students who submit however many different scores on their College Board score reports. Harvard describes its blanked policy as "You may take tests more than once; we consider only your highest scores" in an admission office publication, the Official Register of Harvard University. </p>
<p>The admission officers are more aware than many people who post on CC that </p>
<p>a) a fairly large number of students who report just one score are NOT first-time test takers, because they took the test as middle-school-age students for Talent Search (and those scores disappear from the permanent record of scores by default) or because they cancelled a score from an earlier administration (there are threads about canceling scores here on CC after each SAT test date), </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>b) exactly how much test scores are really meaningful in the context of the overall application. </p>
<p>The admission officers care about test retakes a LOT less than most students (and many parents) guess they do, in large part because they have a more nuanced way of considering test scores in the admission process. This is especially hard to understand for some students whose parents grew up in other countries (where test scores are sometimes the sole criterion for deciding who gets into universities), but I've been to lots and lots of college information meetings, including three of Harvard's, in the last four years, and have read a large number of the current books on these issues, and have specifically asked Harvard's and other admission officers about this, </p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=4198038&postcount=1%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=4198038&postcount=1</a> </p>
<p>and can confidently say that if you can clearly explain why you did it on your application (why did you?), then you shouldn't have to worry about test retakes.</p>
<p>Warning: Real Advice on the topic</p>
<p>Since you've done good at BOTH parts of the writing in the past, then I guess just keep going over the grammar rules that helped you get a 75/80 and the day(s) before the SAT just think about what you can write about on the essay portion... </p>
<p>Someone named Laurel wrote this somewhere and I copied and pasted it to Word:</p>
<p>First rule--carefully read the question, not the quotation that's in the box. The quotation they use is only to introduce the topic. The question is printed AFTER the quotation, in smaller type. If you write on the topic, but do not answer the question that follows directly, you will lose points.</p>
<p>You have 25 minutes for the essay. Spend the first five thinking and writing an outline that looks like this:</p>
<p>I. Introduction and Thesis Statement</p>
<p>II. Explanation of your position
A. How you logically arrive at your position
B. Supporting example(s) from history
C. Supporting example(s) from literature
D. Supporting example(s) from your experience</p>
<p>III. Summary statement to conclude</p>
<p>The outline should only take you 5 minutes because you are not going to write out the sentences, you are just going jot down your ideas as key words organized in this format. Use a blank page in the exam book.</p>
<p>Write for 15-18 minutes. When you start to write, use the outline to keep yourself organized, and so you don't forget your main points that occurred to you as soon as you read the question. This will result in a 5 or 6 paragraph essay (you might not have anything for D, for example, so just leave that out). Resist the impulse to add later thoughts--stick to the outline. This is because organization ALWAYS makes anything you write more understandable to the reader, and therefore leaves a more favorable impression. It is at least as important than content, IMO.</p>
<p>Spend the last 3-5 minutes proofreading for spelling, punctuation, legibility & so forth.</p>
<p>Watch your handwriting--print if you have to. If your handwriting is not legible, your argument will not be understood (at best) or you may receive an essay grade of zero (at worst).</p>
<p>Finer points: don't rely heavily on personal experience, because as a teenager you have very little of it that the readers will understand. Show you are ready for a broader perspective than high school. Don't use slang--ever. Try not to use writer's cliches. Longer is NOT better, unless you really have something important to say. NEVER use "etc." Use metaphor sparingly.</p>
<p>If you are not used to doing these sorts of impromptu writing assignments in class, I think you should practice. Here's how:</p>
<p>At first, just practice writing outlines, giving 5 minutes. In our Saturday sessions, we did 2-3 of these every week, and didn't actually practice writing the entire essay until the last 2 weeks. At the beginning, start with the outline guide above in front of you; the more you practice the more at ease you will be with the process. </p>
<p>In order to judge if you are on the right track, you have to see how well you're doing. If you cannot get the basic outline done with all your ideas plugged in within the 5 minutes, you are writing too much down. Use key words and phrases that will remind you. Do not use whole sentences. To judge if you are making the outline detailed enough, set the outline aside for a day, then go back and look at it. Is it still usable, or have you forgotton what the point was you wanted to make with that key phrase?
When you're comfortable with the outline process, practice writing a whole essay in order to get the timing down (see above). ALWAYS allow time for proofreading.</p>
<p>How can you practice without questions? Make your own up. Go to your bookshelf & choose some non-fiction. From the introduction, forward, back-cover reviews, first paragraphs of chapters you should be able to lift a quotation as a topic. Then write a simple question which basically comes down to "Do you agree and why?" Another good source for topics is the Book of Proverbs, in the Bible. Also, make use of thoughtful magazines, such as Atlantic Monthly, the Economist, the New Yorker, Human Events, Harper's (political slant doesn't matter)-- anything with some meat to it, not Time, Newsweak, and so forth.</p>
<p>I know that this is hard to believe, but when my guys in the study group took the test in March 2005, the essay topic happened to be one we had practiced 2 weeks before. I had pulled the first sentence out of a chapter in a book by James Bovard, a libertarian writer on current events.</p>
<p>Its more than enough, you need at least a 2140 to have ivies look at you, I would concentrate on bumping those extracurriculars and grades, cause Harvards admissions are extremely selective and you need things to standout, and for a fact if you had a 2300, there would be others with a 2300 much better than you are, getting into Harvard is like rolling a dice, your probability is not very good.</p>
<p>I'd like to say thank you for the specific advice in post #30, which looks like it will be helpful to many students.</p>
<p>I realized I forgot to mention this earlier...does it make a difference that the first two times I took it I didn't study and I (probably) would study before taking it a third time?</p>
<p>
[quote]
does it make a difference that the first two times I took it I didn't study and I (probably) would study before taking it a third time?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's an issue any test-taker has to look at when deciding whether or not to retake. A test-taker who gets the score report and says, "Whew! I sure got lucky that time" may not want to retake. A test-taker who knows that the previous score was from a day when the test-taker was sick, or ill-prepared, or too busy with ECs to get enough rest, may have a reasonable expectation of beating the College Board's statistics about what scores might be expected on a retake. So, yes, it makes a difference to YOU, in deciding what to do next, to know how prepared you were the last time. </p>
<p>But, on the other hand, there is really no way for a college admission officer to know who was well prepared on the previous occasion and who was not. That is, the college admission officers are largely going to ignore any possible inferences about who has the most "natural" or "unpracticed" ability to score well on the SAT. The colleges establish a blanket rule for how to treat multiple SAT scores for consistency and efficiency in evaluating applicants. As Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote about rule-making in general, "The life of the law has not been logic but experience." Harvard's experience has resulted in Harvard's rule of "You may take tests more than once; we consider only your highest scores." The rule treats the highest reported scores as authoritative, and sets aside speculation about why other, lower scores were reported. Most similarly selective colleges have exactly the same rule. </p>
<p>Good luck in your application. Because I note your interest in Harvard, I invite you to post in the thread, "What</a> is your favorite safety college?" over on the Harvard Forum.</p>
<p>no offense, but even if you retake it youre probably not getting into harvard... sorry, its just the probability...</p>
<p>"bad"? Get a life... find something fun to do instead of spending 5 hours at a test center.</p>
<p>Maybe people should actually read what I post. For those who didn't:</p>
<p>I KNOW IT ISN'T BAD. I WANTED PEOPLE TO READ THE THREAD. </p>
<p>I also know that the odds are against me getting into Harvard, but why not try and get a better SAT score to help my odds? That's why I posted this topic, to get an opinion on that. </p>
<p>tokenadult: What you said about admissions officers not knowing is what bugs me. I mean, maybe if I had studied I could have gotten a 2400, or even just higher than I did. They won't know the difference between someone who paid loads of money for a private tutor and someone who just plain took the stupid test without studying. That's one reason why the SAT is so unfair--test prep can make a huge difference in your score. So it's not really measuring how smart you are in some cases, just how prepared you are.</p>
<p>Well, turning that statement around, that's also why SAT scores are not the only factor considered in admission decisions. SAT scores are almost the only thing that is comparable among ALL applicants, who go to many different high schools in many countries with many grading standards taking various combinations of high school courses. Yes, the economic level of applicants varies enormously, and I am sure a genuinely poor applicant who performs at the level of a rich applicant is looked on very favorably in most highly selective college admission committees. But at the end of the day, all you can do is maximize your own potential, and show overt signs that YOU are ready to contribute to the college community and thrive there. The admission process is not wholly fair, but neither is any other aspect of life, so dealing with that is one lesson to learn from the college application process. </p>
<p>Again, good luck. Retake or not based on your best judgment of what will give you a strong application dossier. In your shoes, I might consider writing really, really, really good application essays and doing very well in your next high school English class (in time to ask that teacher for a recommendation letter) rather than retaking the SAT I just to boost the writing section score. But reasonable minds can differ, so feel confident in deciding what makes sense to you.</p>
<p>Thanks for all your good advice, tokenadult. I don't think I'll retake the SAT. It just bugs me that I've felt somewhat inadequate since joining CC because there are all these people with scores >2300, and I feel I really could have that score if I had studied a bit. I hate being a perfectionist. I hate that Harvard's probably going to reject me because all the crap I do is never enough.</p>
<p>Now that I've made this sound like a "pity me" thread, I guess I'm done. Ugh.</p>
<p>awwww don't cwy. itll be awwight. i pwomise.
maybe this'll make you feel better: acceptance for 2400's at harvard is only 50%. better than 9% but far from the 100% that most people think it is.</p>