<p>My goal is to get into Stanford University. I went on their website and it said "applicants may, electively submit whatever SAT Subject Test scores they choose, as those scores are not required for admission." For AP or IB tests, their policy is "since we do not require AP or IB examination scores, you may elect to self-report and submit whatever AP or IB examination scores you choose." Does that mean I can selectively choose which scores I want to show and which ones I don't want to send?</p>
<p>This depends. When you send a CollegeBoard score report (meaning APs and SATs I & II), by default it will send ALL scores to the indicated institutions without discrimination. For the ACT, it’s a little different. You can actually select your best scores and send them. With SAT, there is now a service called Score Choice which will allow you to select scores that you feel best represent your performance on the SAT. I’m pretty sure this applies only to the SAT tests. The cost to send these specialized reports may vary from that due with normal score reports.</p>
<p>Since Stanford has this policy, it would probably be wise to send your scores only if they will all be clearly to your advantage in the process. If you have MOSTLY good scores and a few average or poor scores, it could probably help you. </p>
<p>Honestly, I think if you can scrape scores that are generally high, it can only help you to send them. If they don’t require you to send test scores, it means they don’t care tremendously about them, and therefore they probably can’t hurt you that much unless you absolutely bomb.</p>
<p>Even though they don’t require scores, it would probably help you more than hurt you to send them along, anyway. Since it’s optional, what will they think if you don’t send them? That they hurt you? That you performed poorly? Not sending your scores gives the admissions committee room to make sometimes unfair assumptions about your performance.</p>