<p>Hoping Molly will pipe in here. In her main thread she said she would look into whether the score for the writing portion of the SAT reasoning tests is given as much weight as the scores in CR and Math.</p>
<p>Son is very high Math, high CR, bombed the essay (retook them this week and feels he did better on the essay - but probably still does not have a score in writing that will "match" his other scores)</p>
<p>Since day one, we and he realized that writing is going to be an issue for getting into the type of schools his mathematical mind is best suited to. But he has other attributes and has studied extracurricularly (not a real word but...) in areas I would think would make him stand out beyond his abyssmal writing skills.</p>
<p>We are hoping that the writing score is not too heavily considered.</p>
<p>His writing was a true Bomb with a capital B
He got a 480 on the writing portion, which was mainly due to receiving a 3 in the essay. Very icky. But one point better than he thought he would get!
He feels he did about 3 times better on the essay this time, so he might get a 9, but I am not sure how much that would bring that score up.
High and mid 700s in math SAT, math II subject test and physics.</p>
<p>I will email Matt about this right now, although I don't think he will get back to me immediately -- as you can imagine, he has a lot on his plate this time of year.</p>
<p>I am not sure if the writing score will be considered this year. It has not been considered in the past few years, as the admissions office was evaluating its usefulness to them, but I imagine it will be used at some point, though perhaps not this year.</p>
<p>And for the record, my husband got a 450 on the old writing SAT II. :)</p>
<p>It is a year old, though, so you would want to make sure that Stu Schmill's comments on it still hold (which it sounds like Mollie is taking care of).</p>
<p>I got a 780 on the old SAT II writing. But a 450 on the Math SAT I. My son is the exact opposite of me, right down to his scores. I am a visual artist and my son still draws stick figures LOL. His artisitic bent is in music (figures as a math major)
But I hate to think that the schools he would best succeed in will not accept him because of his lack of writing skills. I do believe they (his skills) can be honed over time, and as he gets more involved in research, and the more esoteric subjects he might have a desire to write about, the writing will emerge more easily than the way it does now. He completed only the first paragraph in the essay responding to the prompt for the score of 3 on the essay last spring. This time he got 3 paragraphs in and felt like he was more able to express his thoughts, so that's good, and maybe his score will be much improved, but it will still be lopsided comparatively. I look forward to hearing the results of your query Mollie. Thanks for the link Jessie.</p>
<p>^^^
I don't know how your son is with his English classes, or better yet with technical writing like what's done for science research papers and lab reports, but I don't feel the SAT writing is indicative of a person's ability to communicate, except in a very limited manner. My d retook the SAT's, not for her math and cr scores, but in order to get her 1st 580 writing up to ...wait for it, 600. But she thought that just looked better. She's got some of the same worries you do, eventhough she scored higher on her writing. She looks at the stats of kids who are accepted places and her writing is considerably less when examined with her SAT I and II math grades of 740 and 770 and her Cr grade of 700. But when it comes to a lab report or a research paper, or something where she doesn't feel she has to come up with a bs answer (like these stupid prompts), she's great -- writes very well, in fact. </p>
<p>One of the schools she's applying to ... and she's still deciding about MIT, actually, but anyway ... this other school's honors program decided to include the writing portion in their acceptance. So, where she had no problem meeting requirements before that ... she's now 30 points under, using her SAT's. Whereas, a good friend of hers who was 40 points beneath the honors requirements based solely on math/critical can now get into the program because his writing score is his high score and his combined 3-part score is now higher than hers. Thank goodness they also accept the ACT, which she scored a 35/36 composite. Otherwise, she'd now be too short....</p>
<p>Zebes, who hates the writing portion of the SAT or ACT</p>
<p>P.S. My S, did about as well as his sister did, and his current job is that of a free-lance writer, having been asked to work for the company based on unsolicited spec pieces he'd submitted to their forum. Yet, if you'd looked at his writing scores ... you'd never have figured that.</p>
<p>I spoke to Lauren Avalos, an admissions representative, yesterday, and she said that writing is not considered as part of the application. Likewise, if you have extra SAT II's besides the required math and science those will not be considered either. The way she put it, is if you get a 530 on US History they will see it and say, "Oh, this kid likes history, but he isn't too hot at it" and the effect of the score will stop there</p>
<p>Also, I would think that good grades in English (or on an AP?) would override any problem the score might cause.</p>
<p>Really, MIT looks at stats (grades, SATs, etc) to say, "Ok, is this person pretty good scholastically overall?" One bad score among a bunch of good ones won't do much. After that, scores mean nothing - and it all rests on essays/recommendations/taking advantage of your opportunities.</p>
<p>When I took the SAT in June, I got my personal best in each section. I just got the Oct results, and my math and CR went down, but writing went up a lot. Should I send MIT the Oct scores (they already have June)? Can I still report my best writing score, even if I don't have collegeboard send it?</p>
<p>Since MIT does not consider the writing score, I wouldn't spend the money to send the new score. I would also self-report the previous score if you will not be sending the new score report.</p>
<p>Thank you! I trust you and everything, but just to be sure, do you know anywhere (have a link) MIT has said that they don't look at writing. I'd hate to regret sending the score because of a few dollars.</p>
<p>Go ahead and send it if you want to! There is no exact quote on the Admissions website to prove it to you, but if Matt tells Mollie they don't use it, they don't use it. I also read a lack of focus on the Writing section in text like this, from the</a> Admissions website:
[quote]
For students we admitted in 2008, the middle 50% score range was between 670-770 for the SAT Reasoning Test Critical Reading and 730-800 for SAT Reasoning Test Math. We do not have cutoff scores for the SAT Reasoning Test and SAT Subject Tests, as scores are evaluated within an applicant's context.
[/quote]
See any mention of the SAT Reasoning Test Writing there anywhere?</p>
<p>But by all means send the scores again if you'd like. Or find a way to refer to your improvement in your latest test in the "anything else you'd like us to know?" essay.</p>
<p>OK, I don't think I'll send it in. I was just wondering why they would ask for the score on the application if they don't consider it. And Matt's quote didn't exactly say that they don't count it.</p>
<p>They're collecting the scores so they can decide how they want to use them in the future -- they do quite a bit of number-crunching on all standardized test scores to see how well they predict student performance at MIT, for example. </p>
<p>So they'll write everybody's SAT writing score down, and see how well that correlates with, perhaps, their assessment of the quality of your essays (note: I'm making this up -- I don't know that they actually do this). But it doesn't have an effect on your admission.</p>
<p>I suppose I should also have posted my question to Matt, because then his answer would make more sense.</p>
<p>I said, "Hey Matt, are you guys considering the writing SAT scores this year, or are you still analyzing how accurate you feel they are?" So in Matt's response, he chose the latter. :)</p>