<p>rumor has it that admissions officers put applicants at a disadvantage if they take their sat i for the third time.</p>
<p>i am retaking my sats in dec for a third time not because im obsessive or anything, but because i want to improve my chances for getting a scholarship from my country. Would a third retake look bad on my application?</p>
<p>This is a FAQ. </p>
<p>i hear u should take it only if u <i>expect</i> a significant change in ur score... if u get the same score more or less again, itl only reinforce ur limits... limits that ul seem to not know...</p>
<p>what is considered a 'significant' change in score?</p>
<p>what's the breakout (not total) for your SAT I now?</p>
<p>cr 690, math 710, writing 760</p>
<p>A Yale admissions officer said at college night at our high school (with 4 other Ivy officers nodding with her) that three times was fine. If you took it more than that they might wonder why you didn't have better ways to spend your Saturday mornings. I interpreted that to mean that unless you somehow looked like an obsessive compulsive grade grubber on the rest of your application even more than three might be overlooked. So my advice, sure take it another time. Your scores really are probably fine now, but some how 7's look better than 6's don't they? Do be aware with scores as high as yours are, there's a good chance some or all of them could go down not up.</p>
<p>I think the main one to focus on for the superscore is the CR - that is most likely to hurt you because at colleges like Harvard, the reading load is high for everyone (However, if you are a math /science concentrator, your math score would be somewhat problematic.)</p>
<p>So if doing some practice tests (easy to do since books like Kaplan, Princeton Review etc have good sample tests) indicate your score could go up noticeably, you may well benefit from retaking.</p>
<p>[But if your practice test scores show these are more like high water marks, then, as mathmom says, recognize that they could go down, too]</p>
<p>hypothetically speaking, what would happen if my scores went down?</p>
<p>The Harvard police shoots you.</p>
<p>well, at that point, you are faced with either taking it a fourth time, but the odds of hurting yourself more than helping are high, or leaving it as is, which leaves you where you are, score-wise, but with all the wasted time and energy. So it's worth doing the practice test, to see if you are likely to go up. </p>
<p>I would add that I am constantly amazed by the volume of students who retake without doing any worthwhile amount of additional prep - I wonder why they bother. The SAT is not magic - if you prepare intelligently, and look for where you systematically tend to make mistakes, you will do better than before. It's not difficult or expensive to prepare - there are lots os SAT prep books available, for less than the price of a couple of lattes. :) But it's not worth spending another 5 hours on a saturday morning if one doesn't do the prep to make it count.</p>
<p>If they go down, no big deal - they'll still look at your highest scores. There's really no downside to taking SATs three times except the wasted time. Use the Xiggi method it's here on CC somewhere and target the CR practice.</p>
<p>If I worked for admissions, I would look at all the scores, not just count the highest. Who says that they only look at your highest? If someone took the SAT 5 times and got a 650 the first two times in math, a 750 the third time and a 650 the last two times, I would obviously not take the highest score and would consider the four 650's a better estimate.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If I worked for admissions
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But you never have worked for admissions, right? About how organizations choose their rules, I'll quote 1861 Harvard graduate Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: </p>
<p>
[quote=associate justice of the Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.]
The life of the law has not been logic[;] it has been experience.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The simple fact is that every college that has considered the issue has decided that it fits the college's purposes for making admission decisions better to consider an applicant's highest scores primarily in admissions. This is the Harvard Forum here on CC, and I can assure everyone reading this thread that Harvard is as definite about this point as any college in the whole country. I see I haven't quoted this year's Harvard viewbook (which all of you should look up) yet in this thread, so I will do that now. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The OP appears to have reasons, based on an external program's requirements, to try to obtain the highest SAT score possible. It's more convenient to do that after just one sitting for the test, but it's harmful to admission chances AT HARVARD to take the test as many as ten times (as one Harvard admission officer put it at a public meeting) as long as the student is using her time or his time productively in other activities.</p>
<p>Harvard has said over and over they look at your BEST scores. Why not believe them?</p>
<p>At many colleges, they have some flunky put things like stats on the outside of the folder. So you glance at the folder cover and see only the BEST scores.</p>
<p>I've done applications (albeit for grad school), we did not spend hours wondering why someone's GRE score went up 30 points.</p>
<p>I see I omitted the word "not" in my previous reply. What I mean to say is that you can take the SAT as many as ten times without harm to your admission chances, as long as the rest of your admission file looks fine.</p>
<p>i finally retook my sat i's for the third time today and i personally feel that math was disastrous.. i'm unsure about reading and writing and i have no idea whether my overall score will go up or down from the last two times i took them.. there's a possibility that all my sections went down. Should i take the risk and wait or should i immediately cancel my scores? will a significant decrease in scores really hurt me?</p>
<p>anyone? i'm freaking out here</p>
<p>Canceling doesn't gain you anything. </p>
<p>I might add that you don't seem to know what your scores are. People don't know before they decide to cancel.</p>