<p>So I didn't do as well as I would have liked on the SAT yesterday.</p>
<p>I think I got 6 CR's wrong (four of them were from the final passage idk what happened), which would put me at a raw score of 60 and 1 M wrong (misread the question), which would put me at a raw score 53, and I think I did well on W.</p>
<p>Although I would still probably be somewhere in the high 22s to low 23s (which is a fairly decent score), I am not satisfied with my performance yesterday and feel that I could have done much better. </p>
<p>Would you recommend canceling this score before Wednesday and then retaking or simply retaking without a cancellation? In other words, do top colleges look down upon retaking the exam? Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it. I'm sorry if I come off naive in my post, I'm new to this whole SAT business.</p>
<p>You wasted five hours taking the stupid test - do you really want to cancel your scores? Take them. If they are good, great. Keep them. If they are not what you wanted them to be, take them again.</p>
<p>You could have amazingly well on W this time, and then the next time, you could be 50 points lower. Do you really want to lose that advantage? Superscoring is your best friend. ;)</p>
<p>^Well, here’s the deal. I think I got around 700-740 on CR, 770-800 on M, and 780-800 W, which is really, really weird because I always score the highest on CR and M. I was doing fine until I got to section 8 and then I started feeling extremely sleepy and couldn’t concentrate and ended up missing 5 or 6 questions between sections 8 and 9. I’m fairly certain that I will get a better score if I retake the test as yesterday was one of my worst performances on a standardized test ever. Well, I guess I’m just beating around the bush, my real question is, does it look bad to take these exams multiple times (esp. if one has several antihooks, such as being male, asian, etc)?</p>
<p>No, I swear no ■■■■■, I’m being honest here dude. My rents are pretty much convinced that retaking is really bad and they don’t want me to, so I’m trying to figure out if that’s true. I’m sorry if my post came off like that.</p>
<p>wheat is mean lol. some people are perfectionists. a slightly crooked shelf bugs em, as does a below perfect score on a test. let them aim for whatever they’d like. its great to be confident that you can do better than a 2340 and try again. i wish i was lol.</p>
<p>Natacion: depends on how many tests you’ve taken. Three is usually the most one should risk, while one-two is preferred. Personally, I’ve taken four, with 2050soph->2220junior->2280sen->2380sen. </p>
<p>As long as you are making score improvements, you should be fine. Though I’m not so sure about my own status, as I’ve rarely heard of people taking it more than three times.</p>
<p>Thanks for the constructive advice guys, this was my first exam and I’m currently a junior. I doubt that I scored a 2340, as that would require some very generous curves, but I guess I won’t cancel if you guys think that that would not be in order.</p>
<p>Don’t cancel your scores because it’s your first try, the score about 2300 is not bad for a Junior. But you should cancel it if next time you got the same feeling. Good luck!</p>
<p>How do you know something even worse won’t happen next time? Maybe you will get a headache, or misbubble or …
keep the score, you probably did just fine.</p>
<p>idk…I think that I did as badly as I could have on the test yesterday, just as some context for this test, I got a 240 on my PSAT and 2400s on my four bb practice tests prior to the exam…but I had major insomnia the night before the test (<1 hour of sleep) and was completely overcome by anxiety and stress during the test and couldn’t concentrate at all towards the end (all the questions that I missed were in the last four sections)…it was absolutely ridiculous, I think I may need to consult a psychologist…</p>
<p>But yes, your point is totally valid…I guess I’ll just suck it up and live with whatever score I receive?</p>
<p>I would definitely keep it – even though it sounds like you will do better next time. 2300+ is clearly more than high enough for most schools other than the top handful, and, even then, it’s high enough for those schools if everything else (especially grades/rank and the intangibles) is sufficiently strong. Plus, of the top schools, only Yale and Stanford do not accept Score Choice, so if you do improve you can (for Princeton and Harvard) simply not submit the score from this test date. So for those schools you have absolutely nothing to lose. And if you do get a 2400 next time, Yale and Stanford should still be duly impressed by your test-taking ability since only a couple of hundred test-takers each year manage to pull that off despite a lot of smart people taking multiple cracks at the exam. Most importantly, though, it sounds like you may have an issue with pressure, and the 2300+ should take the pressure off next time; you should be able to approach the test with a nothing-to-lose mindset (since you can always cancel that one if you don’t do well). But if you cancel this one, you will be right back where you were going into this test – maybe feeling even more pressure because you have one fewer opportunity to be perfect.</p>
<p>^Thanks a lot STMoore! Your advice really helped and looking at the matter from your perspective has pretty much convinced me not to cancel. </p>
<p>Because I’m curious, hypothetically, let’s say that someone scores a 2200 on their first attempt at the SAT and then scores a high 2300. Given that the other aspects of this person’s application are stellar, would this adversely impact the person for schools that do not accept score choice (i.e. Stanford, Penn, Cornell, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Yale)?</p>