<p>I'm a junior, and I took the SAT in October. I got a 2270: 800 in writing, 780 in critical reading, and 690 in math (which, for the record, was a good 50 points lower than my usual practice scores). </p>
<p>My whole grade was just told by our guidance counselor that we definitely SHOULD NOT take the SAT in fall of junior year, and that retaking would make the colleges "look closely" at our SAT scores, while if we waited until March/June to take we'd theoretically do a lot better.</p>
<p>Well, obviously there's nothing I can do about that now. I had planned to retake in June to raise my math score, but apparently retaking is a bad idea...? Is this true? Will colleges (top-tier ones such as Chicago, Brown, Vassar, Swarthmore, etc) penalize me for having taken it twice? I had heard that taking it twice wasn't a problem, especially because taking in Oct of junior year is pretty early, but apparently that's not true...</p>
<p>I'm freaking out, so any advice/help/information would be fantastic!!</p>
<p>Your guidance counselor is very mistaken. Colleges don’t want to see you making standardized testing your hobby/extracurricular, but taking it twice, or even 3 times is perfectly fine. In fact, I would even advise you to retake, because math is not hard at all and if you focus on just that section (and avoid making stupid mistakes) 750+ is not hard at all.</p>
<p>If you’ve only taken the test once, then definitely retake. Counselors’ rules don’t apply for high achievers as much.</p>
<p>Hmmmm, that’s interesting, because I go to a very selective high school where the average SAT is ~2150…but this woman’s new, so who knows. Maybe she was trying to stop people for taking it in the fall just as an experiment (and therefore getting 2000-ish) and planning on retaking later? But I don’t think my 2270 is a score that would be embarrassing if colleges saw it, so I think I should be okay…</p>
<p>Thanks!! I was definitely panicking after that meeting; less stressed about it now…</p>
<p>I have a personal bias: I am not at all a fan of kids’ taking standardized tests repeatedly.</p>
<p>And yet, given what you’ve said, even I think your guidance counselor is talking through her hat, and you should try taking the SAT again.</p>
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<p>I disagree, particularly for strong students. I arranged for each of my children to take the SAT in October of junior year in order to get practice for the PSAT because the PSAT is the National Merit qualifying exam. Doing so allows a student to prepare for the SAT and the PSAT at the same time. Also, the October sitting is one of three dates for which the SAT offers the question and answer service, which allows a student to see what he missed in case he chooses to retake the exam.</p>
<p>After taking the SAT in October of her junior year, my D made the highest PSAT score in her school and later won a $2,500 National Merit scholarship. My S hasn’t received his PSAT score yet.</p>
<p>You have an excellent score already, but I would recommend retaking the SAT to try to get your math score above 700–not because 700 is a magic number, but because the Common Data Set form requests colleges to reveal how many admitted students scored in each 100-point set. If you haven’t done so already, it might be worth spending $18 to get your Q&A in order to see what you missed in math.</p>
<p>Okay, I’m definitely planning to retake, as long as it won’t look bad. I feel like since I did take it relatively early, colleges aren’t going to say “well, it took her two tries to get 2320+”…?</p>
<p>And yeah, I get my PSAT scores next week, and I’m pretty sure I did well on them – mostly because after you take the SAT, what’s a two-hour test, right?</p>
<p>I did get my Q&A and I looked it over. Most of my mistakes on the math section were silly mistakes, so I’m hoping that when I retake I’ll be more confident and not make as many of those.</p>
<p>Thanks, everyone!</p>