Hi, I’m currently a junior in high school and took the SAT in both October and January. In October, I did okay but I hope to improve on the January exam. The college board keeps asking if I want to send in my scores to colleges and I only have a few more days to do this for free. I’m not 100% sure where I want to apply yet but should I send in my scores now to show interest and then forward the new results if they are better?Thanks 
If you’re not applying for the current year, I wouldn’t bother sending them. We didn’t use any of the free score reports because we wanted to know the scores and decide which ones to send to which colleges. If you end up applying to a college that requires all of them, you’ll have to send them all, but if you apply to one that allows you to choose what you send then you can pick the best one(s) and just send those.
If you send scores to a college before you send in an application, often they’ll just discard the scores because your “file” is made when you send in the app. Don’t bother until next year.
@Qwerty568
I disagree.
I sent in my SAT scores about 5 months before submitting my application, and my scores were there. Colleges don’t just ‘discard’ scores.
@determined2300 Depends on the college. Smaller colleges that don’t have a lot of applicants will store scores. Some larger ones will, too. But a lot of them, most of them, really, don’t save them until you start a file.
Unless your family budget would benefit from “free” submission of SAT scores, I’d advise against sending them automatically after the test. You don’t know which test session you really want to use or even what test (ACT vs SAT). I know we are constantly told that the college will only use your best scores but if you blew the test wouldn’t you rather have the option of sharing it?
If you send in scores as a junior, they create a file and then match them with an application filed the next year. However, there is no real benfit to sending them now except that you can do four for no extra charge when you take an SAT test. Each test you take comes with four free sends but those expire unless you designate colleges by the Monday that is nine days after the Saturday test date. If you choose to send them later, you just have to pay a fee per college, or, if you take another test, you get another four free sends and you can send that new test plus any prior tests when using those free sends.