<p>I am currently entering my senior year of high school pondering on how important my SAT Writing score will be in regards to my college admission. After taking the SAT twice, I got a high of 720 on math, 770 on the critical reading, but only a 590 on writing. I do well on the multiple section for the writing, but the essay kills me. I'm not a bad writer, just a meticulous one, and because of this, I am unable to write very much. Both times I took the test, I barely filled an entire page, which I'm assuming greatly affected my score. Will my scores in the other sections supersede my low score in writing? Could a well written application essay make up for my score? I also got a 32 composite score on my ACT, so could that also make up for it? Currently my top choices are for schools Vanderbilt, Standford, Princeton, and Rice.</p>
<p>Well, your current score doesn’t even match their middle 50%, so it’s gonna bite you pretty hard</p>
<p>The essay doesn’t get factored into your writing score. The essay is a separate score, on a scale of 2-12. You should work on your vocab, grammar rules, and idioms if you want to improve your score.</p>
<p>That being said, the writing score isn’t that important. Math+CR is the more telling stat, and you have a great score.</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, the writing score is calculated using your raw MC subscore and your essay subscore.</p>
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<p>(Note: I don’t know where Wikipedia thinks the other 2% come from.)</p>
<p>Ah, my mistake. Collegeboard reports 70% and 30%.</p>
<p>That’s odd though. I got an 800 on writing with an 9 on my essay. Seems like that shouldn’t add up. How did that work out?</p>
<p>I got an 800 with a 10 on the essay, so yours is definitely not an isolated case. I, too, think this percentage business looks too simplistic; there’s probably some sort of algorithm CB uses to calculate the writing score that converts the essay subscore to something else. I think the curve just tends to be very generous to those who do well on the MC portion, because there are far fewer of them.</p>
<p>I got an 800 with a 10 on my essay as well, but definitely improve your writing scores. Even if CR+M are more telling, some colleges may use the total SAT score as a cutoff or filter in the preliminary “rounds” of the admissions process. You’re clearly a good student based off your other scores, and it would be a shame if this one score held you back. So review grammar and practice practice practice! Good luck!</p>
<p>I did great on the MC but bad on the essay, and I got accepted to Notre Dame and Duke and waitlisted at Penn and Harvard (those four were the only top 20 schools I applied to). My best advice is to do well on the MC, because good multiple choice can make up for a bad essay but not vice versa.</p>
<p>I took the SAT twice, and these are my writing scores from both times:
790: perfect score on MC, 8 on essay
760: two MC wrong, 9 on essay</p>
<p>The discrepancy between my overall writing score and my essay score didn’t seem to have a huge negative effect on my application, so just work on improving your MC score.</p>
<p>Do you all really think the writing score is a make or break deal for selective colleges? My son has a 2320: 800 M, 790 CR, 730 W with a 9 essay. He also has 800 Physics SAT II, 800 Math SAT II, and 730 Literature SAT II and will take Chem SAT II in the fall, hopefully for an 800. He’ll take the AP Lit exam senior year along with 2-3 others and is an AP Scholar with distinction already.</p>
<p>He’s an excellent candidate, having some national awards (physics olympiad semis twice, AIME twice, nationally ranked in chess for age), he’s doing graduate level physics research, he’s a baseball player, music is his strongest EC with lots of work in music.</p>
<p>Do you really think his writing score will hurt him? We are both ready to move on from testing except for the 4th subject test. We met with a private college counselor who said the same.</p>
<p>The writing score isn’t always considered by top colleges, because they expect you to have a 700+. If you got a 590 that is definitely a HUGE problem for schools like Princeton and Stanford (Rice too, for that matter) .</p>
<p>And wow, I’m always surprised to see so many high SAT scorers with single digits on their essay. You can write a perfect essay beforehand, and apply it to any prompt. I did this, got a 12 my first time. Bam, it’s that easy. They teach us this method in speech and debate for impromptu speaking (which is like an SAT essay, but spoken in front of a room full of people) </p>
<p>I would love to take 10 essays in a row as my SAT haha</p>
<p>Okay, but if my ACT scores were in the middle 50% for all the aforementioned colleges, which for the most part, they all are, do I need to worry about my SAT score? Do you need to score well on both to have a chance at a good college? So far no one has really addressed that for me, and, honestly, hearing how well other people did on their essays doesn’t answer any questions.</p>