Does a school look down on taking the SAT or ACT too many times, or do they not care, as long as you have a good score? I am particularly curious about Ivies;will they factor that in? I have taken the ACT 4 times now, but I feel that it is too much. I’ve heard of some people taking it 5 or 6 times.
4 is a bit too much. 5 or 6 times is going overboard.
However, if the college you’re applying to doesn’t require you to submit the scores of all the test dates, then it doesn’t matter. You can submit the best one.
Not sure about the Ivies, but at parent meetings we had at various other private colleges we were told they really do super score ( take the best from each test and really don’t care how many times you take it) The reason being that they want to see what you are capable of. Not what you are capable of on a given day because anyone can have a bad day. If you are better with Math on the 3rd time you take the test then they see that you are capable of achieving that higher score and will count that.
However, if you are going to take it again to try to get a “perfect” score and already have a good score then you probably don’t need to. If you seriously need to do better I would suggest a private tutor that your school recommends or that someone you know has used. Also, you don’t have to send it to them each time you take it. We actually waited til later. Daughter took it 4 times. We went in later and sent the ones that made sense to send. This way does cost extra but I don’t think it was a lot. All 3 of my children took the tests a few times. One didn’t have a tutor or class, second had a class, and 3rd had a private tutor. The one who had the private tutor brought her ACT up 3 points, but the other two made almost the same score each time If you can’t afford a tutor there are lots of practice tests online and some great books out there. Best of luck!
@DarkEclipse Do Ivies require you to submit your full testing history? Also, do you think they would look down on 4 times??
I don’t know, check their webpages and contact the admissions department. They’ll give you accurate information.
I don’t think any school requires that you send every test score. We took the ones that (when we super scored) added up to the best score and sent those two.
@tdh3K That’s incorrect. Cornell requires all scores. So does Stanford, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, all of the UCs, and a bunch of other schools.
Consider what Jeff Brenzel, former Admissions Dean of Yale said:
“At the same time, we are not particularly drawn to one-dimensional students who have made their sole or primary objective in life amassing the largest number of honors or AP courses conceivable, accompanied by multiple efforts to achieve the world’s highest test scores.”
http://questions.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/qa-college-admissions/?_r=0 And this is why Yale requires you to send all scores….
I rest my case.
In our HS I have noticed an increase in the number of times the SAT or ACT has been taken. Two years back my daughter and her friends took it two times, this year my other daughter and everyone she knows has taken it three times!
Let me be honest if you have to take it that many times the first thing you should be worrying about it your studying plan. Instead of taking it one month is succession, why not wait a couple months to study really hard and take it instead. I took in June junior year without studying and got a 30. Then look it September senior year with a solid summer of studying and got a 35. Sure everybody says junior year is the best year, but being overwhelmed unable to take it during the school year, I realized summer was my best time and kicked butt.
I think if you take either test 4-6 times and you are not satisfied with the result it might be worth taking a break and investigating score-optional schools, many of which are prestigious and well-respected. After a certain point it’s almost like you’re throwing away money by taking the same test over and over again and not making any progress with it.
(If you think about it – let’s say you take the ACT 6 times and you get between a 27 and a 29 each time. Does it make sense to keep retaking it? Especially if you’re looking at an Ivy League school – if you are spending that much time on the ACT, you might be taking away time from other aspects of your application that are almost as important or even more important. It’s kind of like if you had a quiz with 10 questions on it and an hour to complete so you decide to spend the first 58 minutes on one question and didn’t leave yourself enough time to complete the other 9…)
I’m not saying give up though, but just make sure that you are being efficient with your time.
@DmitriR The test analogy is actually really helpful. A lot of the time I wasted focusing on the test could have been put toward something more worthwhile, to be honest. And yeah, @dancelance, I think I rushed it and I did not study hard enough. Too late now, I guess, I’ll just have to focus on strengthening other parts of my app. Thanks for the input everyone!
@tdh3K Stanford also wants all scores on both SAT and ACT.
I took ACT once before college.
Personally, I think two to three times is optimal.
Anything over that is just a huge waste of time. It’s better of having fun in high school than killing yourself with useless standardized tests just to realize that nothing you ever achieved in high school with those test scores mean anything in life… xD