<p>My son took the SAT the first time at the end of his sophomore year. His scores were 710 W, 760 CR and 790 M. Should he take them again and will all colleges even accept sophomore year scores?</p>
<p>From the website:
Official score reports that are sent to colleges five or more years after a test date are accompanied by a message explaining that they may be less valid predictors of college academic performance than more recent scores.
colleges will accept scores from sophomore year. Your son should not retake the test, it would only be a waste of money, time, and energy, unless he has no extracurricular activities he could present to the admissions officers.</p>
<p>If he could do that well sophomore year, there’s no reason he can’t score above a 2300 in his junior year. My take on this is that he should definitely retake it.</p>
<p>Web2094: That’s a great score, especially for a sophmore. Did he have any prep? Class or books? I’d encourage him to take it every year. At collegeboard.com he can sign up and have them sent him a Question of the Day via email, which can be a great free study tool. Most colleges only consider the highest SAT sitting or highest subscore accross sittings, so I only see an upside to multiple tests. Great start and good luck!</p>
<p>He had no prep other than doing a few practice tests. He’s always been good at tests. Essays are another story</p>
<p>There’s a blurb somewhere – maybe on the written score report? maybe on the collegeboard site SAT prep pages? – that tells the statistical probability of improving your scores a second time around based on your scores the first time around. One of my sons had similar scores to your son’s. He elected not to re-take because, statistically, his scores would likely go down, not up. With his first scores (again, very similar to your son’s scores) he got into every college to which he applied (though he didn’t try to go to the ivies – wasn’t interested).</p>
<p>Definately retake it. I did a little better than that freshman year with no preparation, and I’m hoping to drastically improve this year (junior year); but even if I don’t , I have a decent fall-back score (just as your son will).</p>
<p>SimpleLife:
Superscoring changes the game completely. There’s almost always a section where you can improve.
And as the OP’s son was only a sophomore, his score will almost certainly improve if he retake it as a junior or senior.</p>