Should I cancel my SAT score?

Test Preparation
1

I took the SAT today and I’m debating canceling my score. I did very well in the ACT and I will be retaking it in April to get a goal score of 34 or 35. I only took the SAT because I wanted to try it. However, the ACT is my test. I am afraid that my SAT score won’t be high enough (it never is higher than a 2050-2100) and it will look bad on my application. Do you think I should cancel my SAT score? This way colleges would never see it. Or can I choose not to send my SAT score but only send my ACT score? Thank you so much for your help!

2

I cannot tell whether you should keep your test or not and that is something you must decide for yourself. However, as to your question on whether colleges will see the score if you do not cancel, be aware:

  1. Colleges in general assert that they use your higher score, SAT or ACT, if you submit both, to determine admission.
  2. Majority of colleges allow you to send whatever tests you want to send if you have taken both SAT and ACT or more than one of either. However, the caveat to that is that you must check to see what your high school puts on your transcript sent to colleges because many put all your scores on the transcript, and thus not sending a score through College Board or ACT accomplishes nothing.
  3. The minority of colleges are referred to as "all scores" colleges. They require you to send all your test scores. However, what that actually means varies among colleges and you need to learn each college's actual rule to know whether you can withhold a score. For most of those, you don't have to send both SAT and ACT. They require either all SAT's oir alternatively all ACT's, or many of them require all SAT's if you send it but if you send ACT you can send only one test score. There are, however, a small number of colleges, Upenn and Stanford among them, that require all SAT and all ACT scores that you have. Nevertheless, all the 'all scores" colleges profess like, in point 1 above, that they use only your highest test scores to determine admission.
3

Thanks for your input! I am probably going to cancel my score because I am thinking about applying to UPenn. Do you know if colleges know if you cancel your scores?

4

No, they don’t know.

5

If you cancel a test, College Board sends nothing to any colleges or even your high school and it is as if the test never existed as to you. Thus, the only way any college will find out you took the test is for you to tell them, which is not even reuqired by the all scores colleges.