<p>I heard you can take it as many times as your want.</p>
<p>I also heard you should only take 3 and after 3 you look desperate.</p>
<p>Which one is it?</p>
<p>Most colleges don't care how many times you take it and will use highest score (either highest subscores or that one with highest composite). A few, Harvard and Yale come to mind, provide the cryptic advice that they think it is unwise to take it more than twice. They don't say one way or the other whether that means they will use your taking it more than twice against you.</p>
<p>The ad rep from Yale said "If you take it more than three times we MIGHT wonder why you didn't have better ways to spend your Saturday mornings." My interpretation is that you can take it more often, but you run the danger of looking a little OCD. So if there's anything else in your application that hints at grade grubbing tendencies taking the SAT too many times with add fuel to the fire. But the main reason is that at a certain point gains are minimal and the schools really, really don't care if you got a 770 or a 790 or an 800. It's much more likely that an extra four hours improving your essay will make a difference. I think three times is okay. Say twice as a junior and once as a senior. There are times when it makes sense to take it again - for example my son got a 690 on W. If he'd gotten over 700 he'd have been eligible for a full scholarship at Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>It's just that you need to be active in activities other than taking tests. Below is the long version of my FAQ. Follow the links: </p>
<p>ONE-TIME TEST-TAKING </p>
<p>Colleges have given up trying to distinguish one-time test-takers from two-time or three-time or even four-time test-takers, because that wasn't useful information to the colleges. There are a number of reasons for that. </p>
<p>1) The colleges have utterly no way of knowing who spends all his free time practicing taking standardized tests and who takes them "cold." </p>
<p>2) The colleges are well aware that students who have actually taken the tests sometimes cancel scores, so they have little incentive to give students bonus consideration if the students submit only one test score. </p>
<p>3) The colleges are aware that students who take the admission tests at middle-school age, who are numerous, do not have their earlier test scores submitted by default. </p>
<p>SAT</a> Younger than 13 </p>
<p>Hoagies</a>' Gifted: Talent Search Programs </p>
<p>Duke</a> TIP - Interpreting SAT and ACT Scores for 7th Grade Students </p>
<p>4) Colleges are aware that the majority of students who take the SAT at all take it more than once. </p>
<p>5) Colleges are in the business of helping students learn, and they don't mind students taking efforts to improve their scores. They know that students prepare for tests. </p>
<p>From the New York Times: "Although coaching would no doubt continue if subject tests replaced the SAT, at least students would be focused on content as much as test-taking strategies, Mr. Murray said. There would also be pressure to improve local high school curriculums so that students were prepared, he wrote.</p>
<p>"These arguments make sense to Mr. Fitzsimmons [dean of admission at Harvard], who said, 'People are going to prepare anyway, so they might as well study chemistry or biology.' He added that 'the idea of putting more emphasis on the subject tests is of great interest' to his group." </p>
<p>6) And now the College Board is back in the business of letting students choose which test scores to send into colleges, </p>
<p>Score</a> Choice - New SAT Score-Reporting Policy </p>
<p>so now there is less reason than ever to suppose that colleges care how many times you take the test, because the colleges have no way to know how many times you took the test officially. </p>
<p>Colleges treat applicants uniformly now by considering their highest scores, period. </p>
<p>From the Harvard admission office: "If you submit more than one set of scores for any of the required tests, the Admissions Committee considers only your best scores—even if your strongest SAT Subject Tests or portions of the SAT Reasoning Test were taken on different dates." </p>
<p>See also a Newsweek article about the renewed score choice policy adopted by College Board. </p>
<p>Reactions</a> to College Board's SAT Score Choice | Newsweek Education | Newsweek.com </p>
<p>Some colleges want to see all scores a student has ever obtained, period, but as one admission officer asks, if "a student submits a single best sitting of 2320," does anyone really care "how low were her other score sets?" </p>
<p>Good luck in your applications.</p>
<p>I don't really recommend taking SAT Reasoning more than 3 times
1st for a try-out
2nd for the score
3rd if your certain u made some mistake at 2nd shot and u will score much higher</p>
<p>Alright, cool. Thanks everyone.</p>
<p>Two more questions:</p>
<p>On one of those URLs it said score reporting change service would start March 09. I signed up for Jan 09 SAT to be my first SAT. I am taking it more as a practice and will probably not do to good. Can I use the score report to not show those results when I eventually send them in? Or does that only start for the March 09 one.</p>
<p>Second question:</p>
<p>Let's say I take two SAT II just so I can apply to a UC, but I do poorly. Do I have to submit those scores to a private school that doesn't require SAT IIs. Or can I send one of them, but not the other?</p>
<p>I think you can find your answer in one of the past threads. It called "new sat score policy: tiny loophole, big shock" or something like that. Sry, I would post a hyper-link, but I don't know how...</p>
<p>The Newsweek article is already linked above.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <blockquote> <p>It's much more likely that an extra four hours improving your essay will make a difference.>>></p> </blockquote> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Great advice.</p>