I took the SAT Subject Tests back in October, where I sent them to 8 schools: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Vanderbilt, USC, and Georgetown. I got a 600 (ouch) on US History, a 650 (ouch again) on Math II, and a 790 on Literature. I had planned to take the December test to get US History and Math II up as schools like Harvard require two scores, but there was a death in the family two days before and I had to fly out of state for the weekend. Therefore, I’m stuck with those scores. I applied EA to Stanford and got deferred (which I am considering to be a rejection).
How will these scores affect my chances at those 8 schools? I obviously have safeties but I still want to try to get in to at least USC or Vandy. My application is very humanities-focused as I show obvious interest in politics and philosophy as opposed to STEM, my ACT is a 33 and GPA is 4.0 right now but I will have 2 B’s on my midyear transcript.
those scores certainly wont help.
its time to adjust your list and perhaps add some others- do you have any colleges somewhere between USC , Vandy and your safeties?
Most of the schools require 2 tests and will take the 2 highest of all the tests you submit. So you’d have a 790 and and a 650 - really not too shabby, especially for a humanities focused application.
@menloparkmom That is not my full list, those are just my reach schools. I’m applying to Tulane, University of Alabama (accepted), George Washington, Pepperdine, UVA (still kind of a reach I think). But I just kind of wanted to gauge my likelihood of being accepted someplace like Yale with subject scores like that.
@persoc But if they still have the 600, will they take it into consideration? Or will it just not appear on the application that the adcom will review?
I think you have to trust colleges when they say they’ll consider your two highest scores. If they don’t say that (like Georgetown), then all bets are off. But if they explicitly say it, I think you should trust them.
Another thing to consider is that many colleges seem to aggregate your numerical scores into some type of index (see the posts on “Academic Index” and CC’s calculator. I’d assume that most top colleges use an index of this type, and if that college says they take your top two SAT II scores, then I’d assume that’s what they’d use in their index. And if the index is what’s important, then your third lower score has even less consequence.