I’m in the beginning of my junior year and took the SAT for the first time and got a 1510 but I got a 16/24 on the essay. Is there a way to send my sat score without the essay scores to colleges? if not, should I retake the SAT with essay in hopes of doing better on the essay, or do colleges not care enough about the essay for it to be worth the risk of getting a lower score? it’s difficult to tell what this score means since they don’t give percentiles or anything with the essay scores
When you send SAT scores, you can’t pick and choose–you have to send the entire report. Some colleges do claim that they will not look at the essay and only the composite score, but you can’t send just the composite score if you took the essay.
If you’re going to retake the SAT, you should do it for the composite score. The essay is generally considered the least important score of your SAT (though you shouldn’t bomb it; it should relatively reflect your composite score). They don’t give percentiles, but colleges will see what you got on the individual sub-sections (writing, analysis, and reading), and that could give them a better idea of how well you write/analyze.
If the college you want to go to superscores, then even if you get a lower score on the essay, they’ll only look at your highest recorded score. If they don’t superscore, you’ll still have your first test if you score lower on the essay. It’s really up to you, but the SAT essay doesn’t really have a significant weight from what I know.
My son has almost an identical score profile as @go1617 same essay score. Is it a terrible score, not sure?