If schools superscore, do they care if one section score went down significantly?

Applying to College
1

D took the SAT 3 times. Her highest total score was from last March and it was a good score overall, but since she is hoping for merit, she wanted to bring up her math score to match her verbal (there was a 50 point difference). Alas, the second time she took in in August, she studied pretty hard for the math but both Math and Verbal went down 30 points each from her March test. She decided to try one more time in October but this time she refused to study at all. She just got her October scores and math went down even more (now 70 points lower than the March score!) but verbal went UP by 10 compared to the March test.

Her schools do have both the March and August test results (we sent them as free score reports right after the August test since she felt she did really well – oops!) so they have already seen the 30 point drop. I did not send the October scores to any of her schools yet. She is applying to 5 schools, all of which say they superscore. So would it be a good idea to send the scores to get the 10 point increase in verbal, even though the college will also see that her math is down a total of 70 points?

I guess what I’m asking is if superscoring is just a computer that automatically takes the highest section score and plugs it in and no human will actually see the pattern of scores, then it seems like why not send them and get the extra 10 points. But if a human is going to see all the scores (especially when reviewing for competitive scholarship/merit), I’m not sure if 10 extra verbal points is worth having them notice a pretty significant slide in math score.

Any thoughts? She’s hoping to submit her apps to all these schools today so I guess she has to decide whether to include the higher verbal score? (None of them are you-must-report-all-tests schools so I assume she can just omit any mention of the October test if she wants?)

If it helps to put this in context, the total scores for her PSAT and the August and October tests are exactly the same. The March test is 60 points higher overall, but I worry that this will look like an outlier since the others are so consistent. I think we are both overthinking this, but we don’t want to do anything to hurt her merit chances.

2

I think it depends on the type of schools she is applying to and where her scores fall for each school. Most schools are going to look at the scores sent. They aren’t ‘not going to see’ the lower sections. Now they may only record the highest, but not sure a 10 point increase in one section, offsets them seeing a 70 point drop in the other, even if they don’t use the lower score for reporting purposes.

3

Agree. If she in range for her targets (usually toward the 75th percentile, at least,) then don’t worry. Superscore generally means what it says: they look at the best. Whatever she decides is fine.