<p>My son is a Junior student, he took SAT Biology in 9th grade, SAT Chinese, Chemistry and World History in 10th grade. All of 4 's score>=750. He is planning to take SAT English Literature and Math II in Junior year. Do you think it will be hurt his college application? His dream school is Columbia College. Thanks.</p>
<p>No, I don’t understand why that would hurt. Most top colleges only look at your top 2 or 3 scores, anyway. If he scores higher on English Literature or Math II, it will probably just help his application.</p>
<p>It depends. If your son is confident he will receive acceptable scores for each then he should go for it. He should check if the schools he applies to allow score choice - because the only risk in going for the “shotgun” approach is that if he has a bad day for a test it will stand out as weak compared to the 3 others.
Either way I have spoken to lots of people about this because I took 5 Sat II’s myself.</p>
<p>Advantages:
For schools that only look at the top 1,2,3 ect. SAT II scores he has the liberty of choice.
If the tests he is taking are academically varied he is showing to colleges that he is well rounded.
If he scores well on a test on a subject he has had ups and downs at school it can alleviate any doubts when they look at transcripts. </p>
<p>Disadvantages
it is that much more studying - he needs to decide whether he will be sacrificing quality by choosing quantity. 3 scores of 650 are worth more than 4 of 600. If he feels he can preform his best on each then by all means he should.
As I said before, colleges that require all the scores will look at the weakest as well.</p>
<p>Columbia College does not accept Score Choice. If I were the applicant, I would not take any more subject exams. As Barty13 correctly states, if he has a bad day, his stellar record will be besmirched. Moreover, I believe Columbia would like to see your son using his Saturday mornings for activities other than taking unnecessary standardized exams.</p>
<p>Actually columbia college does not accept score choice for SAT 1. It does for SAT II - I just sent mine to Columbia 5 days ago…</p>
<p>Thanks for all of your advices!!! My son wants to take 2 more diferrent SAT II’s just because he wants get a 1-2 full scores for subject test.</p>
<p>The more subject tests the better
some</p>
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<p>Um, definitely not. I agree with pbr that colleges don’t want student to focus all of their energy on standardized exams. Don’t take too many SATIIs or take the SATI too many times.</p>
<p>If your son can handle it. I would say the more the better.</p>
<p>It’s not big deal to take SAT II to my son and also the taking test is always a good way to review the subject. So that he also always got the best score for the same subject of the Reagent Exams.</p>
<p>Now I am worrying that if my son take too many SAT II’s will negative his college application(just like what’s “pbr” and “xrCalico23” said even though my son can get in full scores?</p>
<p>Could you please let me know what’s the negative samples because the too many SAT II’s?</p>
<p>My son has applied to schools that did not allow Score Choice, and we were still able to select which SAT2’s to send. When you use the Score Choice option for those schools, your SAT1’s are preselected and you can’t remove any. You can, however un-select any SAT2’s. If anybody’s seen anything different, please post!</p>
<p>I see no down side to more SAT2’s, as long as his grades and EC’s don’t suffer.</p>
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<p>There’re countless discussions about this in other forums. Let’s me see if I can find you one…</p>
<p>AVHS Dad, if your son picked which SATIIs to send, isn’t that considering using Score Choice?</p>
<p>^AVHSDad, I don’t think that’s true. You can always use Score Choice whether it be SAT1 or SAT2 scores. At least, that is what I saw when we sent our scores. It is an honor system and I would be careful when you read the school policy when it comes to Score Choice. They usually say they want all the scores and do not mention they want all scores only for SAT1s. People can interpret this the way they like but it might not be what the school is intended.</p>
<p>Barty13, here’s the words from Columbia website on standardized testing, I am not sure how you can interpret that as all scores for SAT1s only.</p>
<p>Standardized tests are required for admission according to the following guidelines; all test scores must be submitted directly to Columbia by the testing agency. Please note that Columbia requires that students submit scores from all test dates.</p>
<p>One other thought is that if you already have 2-3 SAT2s with high 700s, what is the upside for having more SAT2 scores? I am more inclined to think that none of these very competitive schools are going to be standardized tests obsessed after already getting all of your SAT1 and other 2-3 SAT2s scores.</p>
<p>I found the following in an article in The Cornell Daily Sun (1/20/09):</p>
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According to the website,“When a student selects a particular institution for score reporting, not only will that institution’s practice be prominently displayed, but the scores corresponding to that practice will be highlighted for the student.”</p>
<h1>If a student attempts to deselect a score requested by the college, “they will receive a warning message that they are deselecting a requested score.” Despite the warning, the web site said, “Colleges and universities will only receive the scores that students send them. The College Board will not provide scores to colleges against students’ wishes.”</h1>
<p>From what I saw, the “no score choice” schools highligted all the SAT1 scores. Obviously I didn’t attempt to remove any of those. However, there was no such highligting or warning message when I de-selected his lower SAT2 scores. I say if they wanted all the SAT2’s they should have had the same highlighting and warnings.</p>
<p>Again, AVHS Dad, read the disclaimer by College Board. College Board provides this service to you, but maybe contrary to what the school that you apply to. Those are two separate entities. When you apply to the college, you are obligated at least ethically to abide by the requirements and the policies of the college not the College Board.</p>
<p>So when you send the scores, I remember you can choose to remove SAT1 scores, there was a big warning pop up, but you can always remove the scores when I did it.</p>
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<p>On the other hand, taking too many tests, especially retaking the SATI too many times, may make you seem a little too “test-focused” and may slightly dilute the value of high scores because it would seem that you were spending too much time and effort reaching for those perfect scores. That’s just my perception. Again, I’m not sure about SATIIs, but I distinctively remember that once, at an informational session at Cornell, I think it was the assistant director of admissions who said that “taking the SAT three times is one time too many”, etc. That statement is probably somewhat extreme, but you get the idea. I would just be careful about taking too many standardized tests. You want to plan it out so that the tests that your son ultimately takes are the ones that he will definitely do well on.</p>
<p>doing the sat math II is probably a good idea from what i’ve seen on other threads, just because a lot of schools require it.</p>
<p>^that’s true, most science-oriented schools do require one of the math tests and a science subject test. And people generally tend to do very well on the mathII because there’s a generous curve.</p>