Should I re-take SAT for a better essay score?

Test Preparation
1

I come from a small highschool of only ~650 students in the Sierra Nevada Foothills of California. Our high school only offers 9 APs, and our demographic likely reflects this.

I’m considering applying Restrictive Early Action to Stanford University, and Stanford is my #1 Choice.

My GPA is 4.37/4, which is the highest in my school.
My SAT Scores on the New SAT are
Reading: 770
Math: 780
Composite: 1550
Essay: 13/24 (my question lies here)

I have extracurriculars ranging from coaching a tennis rec league to starting a competition team for the National Science Bowl for the first time at my school, and even taking it to 5th place in regional competition. In addition, I have an above-average number of community service hours, from youth group and coaching, among other things.

As you probably saw, I have the opportunity to retake the SAT in November, attempting to fix my essay grade, which I was dismayed at receiving. Now, upon reading several other articles about the importance of the essay grade, I was comforted by the fact that many call it “the least important thing from the testing category,” because the composite score is so much more important. I’m wondering if it’s a dealbreaker, and I’m looking for advice on whether I should apply Early Action or retake the SAT and apply Regular Decision.

Also, I was looking for help on what to do with the essay. I have a rather interesting circumstance - I myself just turned 15 in December. I’m applying without intent of taking a gap year, which means I’ll be entering college as a 15 year old. Shold I write my essay about this?

Thank you for all your help.

2

correction: I turned 15 in September.

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I think you should retake the SAT-with essay, however, you must be certain that you can pull off a score that high again. Stanford would not want to see your scores go down. One thing I can recommend is taking a practice test and seeing how you do. And start studying asap because you might even be able to achieve a perfect score! Furthermore, the biggest thing is making sure that you score higher than before. I would not advise you to take it again if you feel you might score 20 points lower and stay in the same essay range(this would be a disaster for you). Although I am not 100 percent sure; Stanford, I think, is not score choice. This means you have to send all your scores, therefore they would see if you scored lower than before. Once again, I am not 100 percent sure if Stanford is score choice, so take that with a grain of salt. To sum things up, take practice tests and essays by the college board. For the essays, I think if you typed them and pasted them somewhere on CC (not sure what forum), someone will take a look at it, and grade it, and give you feedback. If you rather write it, I recommend having someone take a look at it and grading it. Get a lot of feedback on them and find out how you can improve. Anyways, this turned out to be very long! I hope I helped:)