Ok, so I’ve taken the SAT twice. I got a 1390 the first time and a 1370 the second. These are good scores; not enough for T20s, but I’m not planning on reaching that high. However, one of the schools I’m applying or (Northeastern Uni) is more selective and I’m on the lower end of the SAT average. However, I was planning on applying to all my schools early action (November 1st) so I could have the best chances and get everything out of the way. I didn’t even think about retaking the SAT or taking the ACT until I realized I could technically just wait for Regular Decision. But I’d have to actually grind studying for the test and now I have to deal with school and work and once again I really wanna be done with the college stuff for the most part right now. I’ve seen so many people on this site stress about college and I don’t know if I want to subject myself over that for a selective college where it may not even heavily matter.
I don’t have a lot of good leadership positions or school ECs, but I think I have some good activities due to a lot of self-taught useful skills I spent time on like programming and video editing.
Does anyone know how much actual advantage for getting in there is for applying early? And how much would a slightly higher SAT actually matter; is it worth going through all the trouble?
You did not improve your score the first time around, so I would ask a few basic questions to see if it is worth the time and effort to try to raise your score.
Do you routinely do better on practice tests under real conditions (be honest with yourself)? If so your lower scores may be a result of nervousness and/or bad time management for the real tests. It also means there is a realistic chance of a higher score if you can get over those hurdles.
Were your mistakes on past tests the result of not completing/rushing sections? Again if it is a time management problem, that is something more easily solved through practice and using different techniques, e.g. skipping hard questions initially, giving yourself mini time limits to better pace yourself, scanning the reading questions first before before diving into the passage. Based on the current scoring structure, you should never leave a question blank. There is no difference between a wrong answer and a blank, so you might as well guess.
Did you make a lot of careless errors such that you had a high percentage of missed easy questions? Carelessness often is the result of misreading the question. Often one of the answer choices would be the “correct” answer based on a common misreading. Again practice, getting more familiar with question patterns and being more more careful can yield improved results.
If you missed a high percentage of the difficult questions, it may indicate that you have peaked as a substantive matter. In this case, it may be very hard to improve your score in such a short amount of time.
Not knowing your other stats and your target schools, it is hard to say whether or not spending time on test prep and going to RD is the correct strategy. Generally, if you feel your apps will be in as good of a shape now as by Jan 1, EA has a lot pf advantages. If your stats are otherwise in line with your target schools (you are solidly in the 50th percentile or higher), no reason not to apply early. If you are falling below that level for some of those schools because of your SAT score and you confidently feel you can improve your score, then retake the test. If those schools have high deferral rates, I’d still EA because you can submit an updated score. If the school defers few students, then RD those schools.
For my second SAT, I studied alot less heavily than I did for the first one so I’m guessing that’s a factor. I’m going to review my SAT answers and stuff to check out what my biggest problem has been- theres a good chance it has something to do with test taking, but I think it also has to do with SAT questions being a bit unclear as to what the best answer is sometimes. Particularly with some of the reading questions I have two remaining answers that seem like they both could be right.
As stressful as it may be, my plan would be to cram as much as possible before test date. For example, I like to think I’m pretty good at Math because Im in advanced classes and its my favorite subject but I keep getting only 670 on it. Theres always some especially tough questions that throw me off with a random problem type I didn’t think of.
Northeastern is the only school I’m really worried about test wise(I’m at the lower end of their average). However, it turns out I can submit test scores for my application before December so i may take the November 2nd SAT and submit scores then