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<p>The operative words are bolded. Adcoms just don’t care; it is to THEIR advantage to superscore.</p>
<p>sorry…maybe I am naive…but wouldn’t superscoring be like “unrhinging a bell”? I mean, sorry to say, but the schools will have seen all the scores… right? Or is "the school’ “JUST A SECRETARY”? I don’t mean to be sarcastic…at all… but to err is human. I am hopeful, just trying to find out the truth.</p>
<p>My prediction is that she will do very well on one of the sections that she is NOT focussing on. Don’t ask me why, but it happens . . . a lot.</p>
<p>The schools have all the scores, but the admissions committees don’t always see them unless they read the folders carefully. At many schools a secretary or a computer program will notate the highest score in each section somewhere on the folder where it’s easy for the reader to see. </p>
<p>My older son got three 800s on the subject tests in one sitting. I don’t think anyone was overly impressed. (Certainly not MIT, Stanford and Caltech who all rejected him!) He was very happy though not to ever have to think about them again.</p>
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<p>UC and CSU use recalculated GPAs for their enormous numbers of applicants (e.g. 60,000 for UCLA). But they require the student to enter the courses and grades into the application, and verify later.</p>
<p>Exactly my point ucb. </p>
<p>It is impossible for the colleges themselves to do the recalculation themselves. The UCs enlist the applicants to get the dirty work done, and hope that not too many typos occur.</p>
<p>My son followed the OP’s suggestion when he took the SATs many years ago. There was no “score choice” then. He did well on the Math section every time he took it, but the second time concentrated on the CR section. He thought he should be able to do better on the W section and took it a third time. Overall, he improved 210 points, but when CR went up, W went down and vice versa. Nonetheless, he got into several fine schools, so I don’t think this method bothered any of them.</p>
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<p>I think parents (and some students) assume that college admission officers are looking for things that weed out applicants until, in the end, the ones still standing get admitted. I submit to you that if they are looking for great students, they’re reading files with a view toward finding out why each applicant should be admitted – a very different approach. By reading applications from this perspective – trying to build a class of the best people as opposed to building a class from the ones who weren’t “defective” – they aren’t unringing bells when superscoring. This is true even if they see the other numbers inside the folder after being impressed by the super scored numbers that the assistant scribbled on the folder jacket.</p>
<p>What’s more, the information reported for “Common Data Set” purposes (and regurgitated by USN&WR and other college guides and ranking services) is superscored data. When you see what the average SAT or ACT scores are for an admitted or incoming class, you’re not seeing how those students performed on all administrations of those tests. You’re getting the average of the superscored results for those students. So evaluating applicants by looking at superscored numbers dovetails with their subsequent reporting standard.</p>
<p>Has she tried ACT?</p>
<p>I think the premise is slightly off, I don’t think you forget how to take the test after you learn the skill after a few months. In her very last test, she should be ready and good at taking all the sections.</p>
<p>Another way to look at it is if she has enough time to study for one section within certain time period, why take the test when she is not ready for another section? Skip the test and take enough time to study for all sections of the test. Take the whole summer to study and take the test in the fall. There are at least 3 opportunities to take SAT in the fall.</p>
<p>Also what if she studies for one section and she does poorly on that section? What do you do next? My kids studied for the whole test then the next one we concentrate on a particular section and sprinkled in the other sections that they are already good at for review as we take the next test.</p>
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<p>As my daughters pointed out, the obvious advantage to the student in hitting the high scores in one sitting is they don’t have to take it over, meaning they can spend more time on ECs that mean something to them. So it is to the student’s advantage to get high scores in the first sitting, but doesn’t matter to the adcoms, unless the extra time they got bump their ECs to a point it looks important to them.</p>
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<p>I tend to agree that it probably does not matter, BUT - after everything has been looked at and compared and you have two almost exact candidates and are going to chose only one, wouldn’t the advantage go to the kid who scored hypothetical 2400 in first sitting as opposed to the one who has 2400 superscored after three sittings? ;-)</p>
<p>^^Why would it? </p>
<p>Don’t forget, that every test administration is not equal in rigor. And, the difference between an 800 and a 760 could be one correct, but incompletely filled in bubble. (Perhaps the student’s pencil lead was getting down the the nibs.) Perhaps the single-sitting 2400 got lucky in that one or two of the mind-numbing CR passages happened to be about authors or subjects that the student just read about in HS so was familiar with the boring material.</p>
<p>WHY do you think adcoms would care? The simple fact is that one you clear a ‘750’ threshold, they KNOW you can do the work. They then go off and look at the rest of the app. Anything above 750 is a nice-to-have. (Of course, if you are applying to a top eng/tech school, an 800 in Math 2 is almost expected.)</p>
<p>If both 2400 students in your example have crappy ECs or poor recs, neither will be accepted.</p>
<p>And don’t forget, the adcom might not even see the number of times that the test was taken. In some/many cases, a clerk just writes (or computer prints a label with) the highest individual scores on the outside of the application folder. They don’t add a gold star for ‘one-sitting’. :D</p>
<p>I think this is risky. As others have said this will require her to take the SAT 3 times (ugh) and there is her assumption that her scores will go up significantly if whe focuses on that one area, which may or may not be true. She runs the rsik of looking very inconsistent and also, what if she happens to be sick on one of her planned testing days? I’d encourage her to study for everything and then if she needs to take it again, she can focus on the score she needs to bring up the most. You just never know what will happen with testing. My younger s’s highest score was in his weakest area. Did he focus more on it to prep? Maybe. But who knows. He studied for all and only had to take it once. He signed up to take it a second time but changed his mind. Your dau could too.</p>
<p>With all this SAT strategizing, it’s important not to overlook the fact that SAT Subject Tests are important, too, and strategy there is also crucial.</p>
<p>An earlier post in this thread gave some excellent information. The following tidbits may also be useful:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The optimum time to take Math II is at the end of precalculus. If the student is not taking precalculus until senior year, it’s best to avoid Math II if possible.</p></li>
<li><p>Not all high school curricula are a good match for the SAT Subject Test in that area. It’s worthwhile to check this out for your specific school, both by asking around at school and by having the student try a practice test. Even if chemistry is your best subject, if your school’s chemistry course doesn’t match the expectations of the chemistry Subject Test, you may be better off taking something else.</p></li>
<li><p>AP Biology, Chemistry, and U.S. History provide good preparation for the subject tests in those fields. AP Physics, not so much. </p></li>
<li><p>Some students deliberately design their high school schedules so that they take AP Biology, Chemistry, or U.S. History in 10th or 11th grade, rather than 12th, specifically for the purpose of getting a high score on the corresponding Subject Test. This makes for a weird-looking high school schedule, and it does put the student in a very rigorous course rather early, but it works well for some people.</p></li>
<li><p>There is no law that says that you have to wait until after you take the SAT before taking SAT Subject Tests. In fact, depending on their course choices, some students would be well advised to take one or more of these tests in 10th or even 9th grade. For example, a student who takes AP U.S. History in 10th grade and wants to take the U.S. History Subject Test should take it at the end of 10th grade, before everything he knows about U.S. History vanishes from his brain.</p></li>
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<p>I think there is a strong correlation between high SAT and high GPA/course rigor. Students who take 3 sittings to get 2400 probably have different academic records then students who can hit it first time. And I do think there is a difference between hitting 2400 on superscoring 3 different tests versus 2400 one time score after a second try.</p>
<p>I am guessing that it is extremely rare to the point of non-existence that someone get 2400 after 3 sittings because no one in their right minds would take another SAT after getting above 22-2300.</p>
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<p>There very well may be a “difference” (and some luck) involved, but the only question that matters is whether adcoms care about it. And they all publicly state that they do not care. Now one can be a cynic (which I tend to be), and respond that their public pronouncements are just spin, but there is no justifiable reason to come to that conclusion. A 2400 single-sitting raises their reported tests scores just the same as a 2400 multiple-sitting. My point is that there is no benefit to the college one way or another.</p>
<p>Post #38, what I mean is that the academic records might not be as stellar as students who would score 2400 in one or two settings. Admissions are not all based on standardized testing, perhaps the GPA will be not as stellar and hence such students might not do well in admissions overall. It’s NOT what adcoms think or care because nobody knows what they really think anyway.</p>
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<p>There are certain students whose criterion for test success involves getting a certain threshold score on each section of the SAT and each Subject Test. Some students are satisfied with 700 or higher. Others shoot for 750 or higher.</p>
<p>If a student who feels this way about testing scores 690/800/800 on the second try, he/she might be inclined to take the test again, whereas one who scores 760/770/760 would not bother. Yet the two students have the same total score – 2290.</p>