My counselor thinks that I should not retake the SAT because my grades are low and she doesn’t want the admissions officers to think that I slacked off in school. (My average is projected to be a 90 from sophomore and junior year and that includes switching to a difficult private school so my grades went low but are on an upward trend)I understand what she’s saying but I’ve only taken the SAT once, in the August before junior year, so I think I can really improve because it has been so long and I’ve learned so much.
@rockclimber14 I’m not an expert but I think If you have doing better grades and take a Sat againg and get better scores, the admission officers
can think that you had bad grades for the school change and right know you are adapting to new school and going up in your grades.
So she is saying you should keep a lower SAT score just so that there is no difference beween the SAT and your GPA? Honestly, the silliest thing I have heard in a long time. Some kids are great test takers. Why should they not use that advantage. Take the test again. Maybe you can get a 1450. That would be great. At the same time, continue to work on your GPA. Best of luck.
While it may sound silly it’s probably not (although in this case I would not consider the OP grades as low). My son had a 1460 SAT and mediocre grades (albeit from an extremely rigorous special admit magnet school). He only applied to a few schools initially and was rejected from two he thought he should have been accepted based on kids with similar stats from his high school (he was deferred to branch campuses). On those apps he did not disclose any additional info.
When he submitted a second round of apps at the end of December/early January he disclosed his ADHD to explain the inconsistency in his grades (and steps he was taking - medication switch, behavior mod, etc). He was accepted into all of the additional schools he applied (most within a few weeks). A few were definite safeties with high acceptance rates but he was also accepted with significant merit from schools that were very similar to the schools he was rejected from. Without a good explanation for a big discrepancy between GPA & scores I think the initial conclusion is laziness. But again, I wouldn’t qualify this as a big discrepancy that would raise any red flags.