Sending low standardized test scores to competitive colleges?

Applying to College
1

Hi all,

I have a pretty common question, however I don’t know why I can’t find an existing thread about it. People have said they exist, however, they just don’t show up… Anyways, I was just wondering if sending all standardized test scores, even low ones, to your top choice/competitive colleges will affect your admission chances? I know some institutes say that they automatically replace your lower scores with the highest in their system, but is there a clear disadvantage to sending all your scores to the schools? I would like to use superscoring and boost my scores, and more importantly, want to save myself $45 and use the free 4 score-sends after registering the SAT. If my score is not what I’ve expected (i.e. lower), than will that screw my chances to get in that college?

Thanks in advance,
J

2

Some very selective schools require you to send all your scores. Most colleges will superscore for you so it doesn’t hurt they also get all your scores. In general it doesn’t pose a problem you send all your scores including those that are a bit lower. Now if you take the tests 8 times and some of the results are pretty horrible, in that case it’s probably better to only send the good results… You’d want to send no more than 3-4 tests. Much more and it looks like all you did in your recent life was cram for the standardized tests.

3

Just send the best one(s).
If they dont ask for all of them why would you send low scores?
It will probably harm your application if you send low scores to the competitive colleges.

4

@WilliamNYC Like 8 times as in 8 times of the same tests right? Yeah I don’t expect to be doing that. As long as these lower scores won’t hurt my application…

5

@PeteWells It’s just that I have the opportunity to send to 4 colleges for free, so why not? I won’t know if my score is good or not until they come out a month later, when those 4 free score-sends have expired. Like you said, will they legit hurt my application?

6

Use the 4 score sends for the institutions that superscore, that will not harm your application in any way (even if scores arent as good).

But if they dont superscore, a low score may be harmful. In this case it would be better to wait for the score before sending them.

7

@PeterWells Ah, that makes sense. Most colleges superscore anyways, and those that don’t aren’t on my priority list. As long as they superscore the tests, lower scores shouldn’t hurt my application right? That’s all I need to make sure. Thanks for the help!