<p>The admission officers look at the highest scores, section by section. That's made clear enough on the Harvard Web site, where it says, "We consider a student's best test scores," in response to the Frequently Asked Question "If a student takes the required tests more than once, which results does Harvard consider?" Harvard admission officers who speak in person at regional Harvard in Your Town events </p>
<p>make clear, consistently, that this policy is applied section by section when applicants submit more than one SAT I score. I would encourage CC participants to attend a session like that, and to report back here what answers are given to what specific questions that prospective students ask.</p>
<p>Post #21 is misinformation. It equivocates between well-known facts (Harvard has a policy of "superscoring" the SAT) and multiply refuted suggestions (Harvard's admission procedures look at ONLY the highest scores and no other aspect of the score report). </p>
<p>CC posters have already asked Harvard's representatives about whether they consider ONLY the highest scores and quoted the answer, "we will consider everything that you provide". It is also public information that Harvard and Yale and others have a multi-stage admissions procedure where first and second readers consider the whole file, including the full SAT score report if that is of interest to them, writing notes for the later stage where the formal admissions committee meets. When Harvard says it considers section-by-section highest scores this means that the summary card printed for the formal committee lists the highest scores. It does not mean that there is no potential for the other scores to contribute to an admissions decision. </p>
<p>This has all been detailed in other threads, including several recent ones started by tokenadult.</p>
<p>Post #21 consists in large part of quotations from or citations to Web pages posted by the Harvard admission office. I will be happy to read more on the subject from the keyboards of the same staff if they care to post more. </p>
<p>What hasn't been detailed at all in this thread is the "impact" (in the debate coaching sense) of a repeated SAT I test. There is NIL statement from any admission officer anywhere on the planet that when an applicant submits a second set of SAT I scores (which the applicant chooses to do or not), that decision by itself makes the applicant worse off than when the applicant had only a single set of scores to submit. </p>
<p>I will, of course, ask various admission officers about this when they next visit my city. </p>