My son is planning on taking the SAT in June for the first time. He read an article that said Ivey Schools require all your SAT scores and use all the scores in their evaluation. Hence, if you don’t do well on one it will in a sense be counted against you as opposed to schools which super score. This is making him hesitate taking the SAT this year (he is a sophomore). Does anyone have any insight as to how Ivey schools use SAT scores? He is looking at Yale, Northeastern and Brown.
Ivy. No “e.” And Northeastern is not an Ivy League School.
Different schools have different policies. You really need to look at each school’s requirements. Some require all scores; some don’t. Regardless, they will generally still look at the best scores, so I would not be too concerned about it. Personally, however, I see no purpose in him taking the SATs as a soph anyway. The PSAT would have given him the real-life testing environment, and he can do practice tests on his own.
Thanks for the reply and oops for the spelling. Good I’m not applying!
What is the purpose of taking the SAT in June as a sophomore? Yes, the colleges will see the scores.
This may not be 100% accurate, so double check the websites of the schools you’re interested in, but it’s a good starting point:
[url=<a href=“https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/professionals/sat-score-use-practices-participating-institutions.pdf%5DScore-Use”>https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/professionals/sat-score-use-practices-participating-institutions.pdf]Score-Use Practices by Participating Institutions/url
@Surfer4
I believe Northeastern and Brown have a score choice (which means students don’t have to report every test score) policy. Yale definitely does not. I think your son should take the PSAT rather than the SAT sophomore year, as schools don’t mandate you report that.
It won’t be counted “against” you. If you take the SAT again and do well, they will use your higher score. If you take it six times, some admissions officers might count that “against” you - because they will wonder why you couldn’t find something more interesting to do on a few of those Saturdays.
Yale for certain wants everything.
http://blog.prepscholar.com/colleges-requiring-all-sat-scores-complete-list
I find it suspect that they say way everything but will only the count the higher score. I imagine that they use those lower scores in tie breaker situations.
Go here and see my post which lists colleges that actually have a rule requiring that you provide all scores: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/1828724-can-you-pick-which-sat-scores-you-want-to-send-to-college-p1.html. Yale, Cornell and Penn are the only ivies with an all scores rule. Brown and non-ivy Northeastern allow to send whatever SAT tests you want to send. As to impact on the decision to admit, all of those “all scores” colleges claim that they do not use the lower scores against you either because they superscore SAT tests or because they claim the reason they want all tests is to see how many you took to get the scores you have, a factor they can consider in determining admission. Also note that all the ivies and Northeastern superscore SATs.