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But I didn't think taking the SAT again will look good since I heard from various sources that admission officers frown upon multiple scores or something like that
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<p>Good luck to you. It's really regrettable that something you "heard from various sources" wasn't from the best informed sources. It's very routine for applicants to Ivy-peer colleges to take the SAT I more than once. Most young people who are in high school are still growing intellectually, and they will tend to do better each time they take the SAT I just from being older and having somewhat more reading experience. Whatever was shown on your last SAT I score report gives a most-probable score on retesting--for someone who scored as high as you did the last time, there isn't a lot of room to grow, and now you'll just have to be happy with the score you obtained in your one instance of SAT I testing, which certainly was a good score. </p>
<p>But I post in a lot of threads in which young people say, "I heard from various sources that admission officers frown upon multiple scores" to disagree with that kind of statement, because that overstates the issue. Do your best to make sure your personal best shows up on your record of scores, and then go on to do other worthwhile things on your weekend mornings. A few rare people get a 2400 on the first instance of testing. Most admitted applicants to Harvard test two or three times to reach their highest reported score (which will indeed be made up of the best scores from each section, if some section scores go down from one sitting to the next). It's too late to worry about it now, but I will keep trying to dispel this misimpression for future cohorts of applicants.</p>
But I didn't think taking the SAT again will look good since I heard from various sources that admission officers frown upon multiple scores
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It's really regrettable that something you "heard from various sources" wasn't from the best informed sources.
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<p>Admissions officers at Harvard, Princeton, etc have said so in print and in person. Are they not well-informed enough for your purposes?</p>
<p>What you are perhaps objecting to is garbled versions of, or extrapolations from, the commonsensical statements by the admissions officers. But it defies logic and is indeed contradicted by admissions officers, that the schools just mechanically "superscore" and that's it.</p>
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Admissions officers at Harvard, Princeton, etc have said so in print and in person.
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<p>Where are the citations? What exactly did they say? I have heard admissions officers from Harvard specifically address the point more than once in public meetings in the largest city in my state. This is a Frequently Asked Question, and it has the repeated answer that there is no problem in taking the SAT I a second time, or perhaps a third time, to attempt to get a higher score than the first time.</p>
<p>100% does not matter at all. End of story. I took it four times and I got in. When they say they take the highest, it's 100% true. Adcoms have no idea how many times you've taken it; they get a piece of paper with your highest numbers. When you go to take the placement exams in the fall, your SATs pop up on the score sheet and only your highest three MVW are shown. End this thread.</p>
<p><a href="tokenadult%20wrote:">quote</a>
Where are the citations? What exactly did they say? I have heard admissions officers from Harvard specifically address the point more than once in public meetings in the largest city in my state.
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<p>Before I perform unpaid library research I would like to see an unambigous statement of what the specific addressable point is that you would like to see confirmed or refuted. Above and in other threads you talk about "multiple scores" and taking the exam an unspecified number of times with an unspecified pattern of scores, but now when challenging some statements you appear to be changing the assertion to a much less controversial "no problem taking SAT a second time". When I know what, if anything, you are claiming I can comment further.</p>
<p><a href="d3ity%20writes:">quote</a> I took it four times and I got in.
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<p>Which means that taking it 4 times could have helped, hurt, or not mattered in your case. I haven't heard anybody arguing that, in and of itself, taking SAT any given number of times will cause immediate rejection, so your data point is not addressing anything.</p>
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When they say they take the highest, it's 100% true. Adcoms have no idea how many times you've taken it; they get a piece of paper with your highest numbers.
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<p>That's misleading, because most applications don't reach the AdCom. The readers who go through the whole file prior to AdCom stage can see all the scores. (Harvard admissions people confirm this again and again.) What they make of those scores is up to them. For most plausible candidates, the scores will be uniformly high, not too many in number and with no extreme patterns, so there is no issue. But that's quite different from declaring that nobody will ever see the additional scores or do anything with them.</p>
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When you go to take the placement exams in the fall, your SATs pop up on the score sheet and only your highest three MVW are shown.
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<p>For placement exams (which Harvard is quite permissive with) it doesn't matter so of course they just take whatever the standard formula is (in this case, highest-of-three). What does that have to do with admissions?</p>
<p>Question #23 is a waste of everyone's time, as the questioner's position keeps shifting. When there is a clear answer to question #27 that eliminates the quicksand, it will become worthwhile to answer 23.</p>
<p>I went to SSP this summer and an admissions officer said that "if you take it 15 times, it starts to look a little freaky." Other than that though, I was pretty sure that they always just take the highest. In fact, I remember being told that the office workers who create our files compile our score lists, so the readers never have any idea at all how many times you take it.</p>
<p>However, the admissions officer and my understanding are a little paradoxical...I'm really not sure why it would matter if you took it 15 times at all. I personally took it 4 times and came out with a 2360 (800CR, 800Writing (4 12s on essays and got an 800 twice, and 760 Math)</p>
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In fact, I remember being told that the office workers who create our files compile our score lists, so the readers never have any idea at all how many times you take it.
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<p>This version is contradicted by what ex-Harvard senior admissions officer Chuck Hughes writes in his recent book detailing the process at Harvard.
Contrary to the anecdotes in this thread, he specifically warns against
taking the SAT more than 3 times (because of potential adverse effect on
admission, not because it's an ineffective use of one's Saturdays).
I think your source was referring to what the <em>formal committee</em> sees at the later stages of admissions process, not what the first few readers see.</p>
<p>Now, it is possible that these things evolve over time even in the couple of years since Hughes' book came out, and I think the general direction has been less SAT emphasis nationwide, so it's not out of the question that Hughes' information is out of date. But I would take his version as the default assumption pending more precise information.</p>
<p>The anecdotes are quite pointless, because even if Harvard published tomorrow that for years it's been halving the admission rate of people who take 4 or more SATs (by flipping a coin), there would still be hundreds of such people who got in and lived to tell the tale on CC.</p>
<p>It's abundantly clear that Harvard doesn't systematically make more adverse admission decisions for students who submit more than one SAT I score than it makes for students who submit only one, which was the thrust of the OP's question.</p>
<p>I took it once because it is $$$ to keep retaking it and it wasn't offered in my city - which then involved a hotel stay etc. My high school also offers zero SAT assistance or prep. In fact - they discourage any practice testing whatsoever - which is also naive. </p>
<p>At the time, it was a point of pride to only take it once- but that was before I realized how many kids get 800's because they do "play the game" and retake it. And since top tier colleges encourage this insanity by accepting highest compoiste scores, my advice to future applicants would be to play to win - and retake it until you have a 2350. But even though I know it now, it is still such a distasteful thought, I personally would not do it again - even if offered the chance. There are other more interesting ways to spend a Saturday.</p>
<p>I wish colleges would take a stand and say "enough" - "stop wasting your money and your time because retaking the SAT and improving your scores just proves you've gotten better at retaking the SAT." But it's obviously not going to happen. If anything, things seem to becoming more frenzied in the pursuit of the perfect 2400.</p>