<p>Actually, according to some of the college applications books out there, it’s clearly stated that colleges DO separate applications by a GPA/SAT combination. Many of those colleges categorize solely on SAT score.</p>
<p>^check the publishing date on those books. That practice was abandoned for the most part awhile ago.</p>
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<p>Colleges and universities do report high school GPA in bands this way–i.e., 3.75+, 3.50-3.74, 3.25-3.49, etc.–in their common data sets, and these data do turn up other places, such as the College Board’s web site. So in this way, an unweighted GPA of 3.75 may be more than just 0.01 better than an unweighted 3.74, because it looks the same as a 3.9 when it gets reported as 3.75+.</p>
<p>They don’t report *combined *SAT scores at all. But they report scores for each section–CR, M, W–in bands, and those bands are 700-800, 600-699, 500-599, etc. So, by a reasoning similar to that of the GPAs above, a 700 on math may be more than 10 points better than a 690 on math, because it looks just like a 780 when it gets reported, but there won’t be a public forum (that I know of) in which a 2300 “looks better” than a 2290.</p>
<p>While I guess it’s possible that, as Coco suggested, there’s some kind of internal procedure somewhere that involves this kind of stratification by combined score, I don’t know how we’d know about it. It would be, after all, internal. In addition, if we’re talking mostly about the large publics that are highly numbers driven, 2290 is likely to be way above most cut-offs anyway.</p>
<p>I retook a January 2290 and turned it into a 2340 after a month of psychotic prep. In my experience, it was worth it. My reasoning was that I thought I could do better. If you think that you can do better: retake. That’s just my outlook. </p>
<p>With all this college admissions hoopla, my idea is that I don’t want to have any regrets when the decisions start to come in a year from now. I don’t want to look at a rejection letter and wonder if working to increase my score a bit would have made the difference. It’s irrational, but I just want peace of mind/no regrets.</p>
<p>The more folks are obsessed about stats, the wilder the conjecture. And tunnel vision.</p>
<p>[What</a> Does Columbia Look For In a Candidate? | Columbia University Office of Undergraduate Admissions](<a href=“http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/admissions/applications/firstyear/overview]What”>http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/admissions/applications/firstyear/overview)</p>
<p>On the web sites of most of the top schools, there’s some section that says what that link does. It’s so much more than the difference between a 2250, 2300 and 2350.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t hurt. If you completely focus on math and CR and manage to score 800 on both, colleges will superscore and you’ll basically get 2400</p>
<p>You’re fine! 
I got into Penn with a 2010, and my sister was accepted to Cornell, UChicago, and waitlisted at Columbia with a 2060. I think your grades and extracurriculars are more important. Don’t stress out about retaking it.</p>
<p>I’d just do it to raise that math score. </p>
<p>Superscoring is a wonderful thing, you know. Reduces stress.</p>
<p>Thanks for everyone’s opinion and feedback. You guys all really helped me. I really appreciate it. :)</p>
<p>I’ve decided to focus more on other things, such as the SAT Subject Tests, for now. If I have time later in fall, I’ll consider retaking the SAT to raise my math score. But it’s not my number one priority. I’m still a little torn, but I’m definitely leaning more towards not retaking it. I really don’t think I want to put myself through the SAT study mania again.</p>