If I take the SAT a 3rd time and my score goes down from my personal best (I got on my second time), will that look bad (like declining trend) to admission officers? My high school counselor said flat out no, but I’m a little skeptical.
Most likely no. Many schools “superscore” the SAT sub sections and they will take your highest section score from among the tests. You do need to check in the admissions web site to see if the superscore. If the school you are looking at does not then you can select to send a specific test date score.
Personally two times is enough. If you care to share your score maybe that will be illuminating. It is actually hard to move your score much after a certain for a variety of reasons-- the higher you get, the fewer you can miss to make a difference and because of the ranges you could miss fewer and still go down.
Current best is a 1410, 730 English 680 math (one sitting). My goal is to get a better score on one of the sections to bump my overall superscore up to the mid-1400 range. Not sure if that would really make a difference in the admissions process…
Won’t hurt. Even schools that claim not to “superscore” use software that shows best sections–they could click through to see the rest, but they generally don’t bother. And the idea that there’s a downside (other than wasting time and money) to taking it more times is a myth.