<p>Let me post a short blurb from the "xiggi" thread that is at the top of the SAT list of permanent "camped" threads (this is post #111 if you want to look it up yourself--first go to the "SAT Preparation" section, then look up "xiggi" thread, then go to post 111):</p>
<p>How many times can I take the SAT and is there a better time? </p>
<hr>
<p>On this issue, allow me to be a tad controversial and direct: You “can” take the SAT as many times as you want. This means that you should take it until you obtain the score that satisfies you. This said, you really should not HAVE to take the SAT more than a few times. .....</p>
<p>Why do I believe that you can take the SAT almost at will? </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Despite a few “common sense” voices that will negatively depict a multiple tester as an obsessive candidate, there is little evidence –if any- that colleges penalize multiple trials. On the contrary, schools are actively encouraging multiple trials by using the best individual scores or best “one-sitting” scores. It would be easy for schools to implement policies that discourage multiple trials: they could average scores or apply a diminishing scale to scores obtained on repeated tests. Yet, there is not a single confirmed report of a school applying such penalties. The evidence shows that schools show interest in your best scores, since it is in your and in THEIR best interest. I have to recognize that Chuck Hughes, a former Senior Admissions Officer at Harvard College, gave the following tip in his book: “Never take the SAT I more than 3 times”. However, as related in Tom Fischgrund’s “Perfect 1600 Score”, the example of a student who was accepted at Harvard after scoring a 1600 on her FIFTH trial would contradict this position. Further, despite my multiple requests at various admission offices, no schools has ever accepted to acknowledge the existence of penalties for multiple trials. </p></li>
<li><p>It is important to know that, at most schools, the information sent by candidates is processed by technicians or other administrative personnel. The consensus is that only the BASIC information such as grades and test scores are copied onto the admission files used by the adcoms. While the detailed information does not disappear in a dark hole, it is very doubtful that the schools that receive tens of thousand of applications devote much time in analyzing the number of SAT attempts. Chances are that the adcoms will only see the sanitized test results and base their early selection on the best scores. </p></li>
<li><p>Even if a mild penalty for multiple attempts did exist, there are NO schools that give a bonus to reward a single attempt. If you obtain a 1450 on a first trial, no school would EVER round your score upwards or send you a brownie! If you consider your score sufficient for your target school, that is wonderful. However, if your score could be improved, you should NEVER hesitate to take the test again.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>just enjoy your score and take the time you would prep and put it towards starting a club, volunteering, sat ii's, (not the act), applying for college/scholarships. great job</p>
<p>I don't know if my opinion matters. But if money is not a problem, or you could really care less about the National Merit Finalist thing. </p>
<p>I would say concentrate on getting perfect scores in all of your subject tests, and having strong ECs.</p>
<p>i wish i had these problems..</p>
<p>not retake</p>
<p>get some 800's on SATII's</p>
<p>strengthen EC's and do some volunteer work</p>
<p>Neither Harvard nor any other (superscoring) university has given a clear answer, much less complete reassurance, on the SAT-retaking question raised in all these threads:</p>
<p>Will an application with multiple SAT-I takings listed on the score report (no matter what the specific pattern of scores is, and no matter what other information appears in the application), always be treated identically to a hypothetical "superscored" version of the same application? * That is, the same application but with multiple SAT I's replaced by a single-sitting SAT result whose section by section subscores are the highest ones from the original report? *</p>
<p>While that seems like a simple Yes/No question, it appears that no admissions office has ever answered it directly. A Caltech student who served on the admissions committee answered in the negative in a CC thread, but Caltech doesn't have a highest-score-only policy. An MIT admissions person answered implicitly in the negative (i.e., superscoring is not the end of the story at MIT) in a recent CC thread, but it was somewhat oblique as an answer to the above.</p>
<p>Has anybody else gotten a full answer to that question from any university?
That a difference could arise is not self-evident, so it helps in posing the question to give some hypothetical examples (e.g. an aberrant score pattern that seems to make the superscore a misrepresentation of the score report; or a pattern of near-identical low scores repeated over a 2-3 year span, being interpreted less generously than just one low score obtained in the sophomore year).</p>
<p>It must be easy to contact the Harvard or MIT admission offices from the greater Boston area, so anyone in that area who would really like to know could just ask.</p>
<p>It is equally easy to ask by email or telephone from almost any location. The trouble is that universities won't answer, as they are reluctant to give details of their use of SAT in admission. You should know that better than anyone here: you emailed 4-5 universities, including Harvard, a list of questions, and got no new information.</p>
<p>[cough] If I were you I would retake again and again until I get a perfect score. Also, in order to achieve my/your goal, you should study day and night and memorize 1000 words a day.</p>
<p>Okay, just to add to the discussion, I'm posting the full quote from the NYT article. I'm as baffled as anyone about how the numbers add up, by the way. The original article was about the significance of the new writing section. Here's the quote:</p>
<p>". . . One indicator suggests admissions officers aren't hurrying to take the essay more seriously: after the College Board announced the very first average essay score (7.2, on a 1-to-12 scale, for the class of 2006), not a single institution asked the board to calculate the average for the freshmen it had just admitted. And though a mere .006 percent, or about 8,000 students nationwide, earned a 12 on the essay, the College Board fielded not one inquiry from a campus wishing to know how many of its own had received a perfect score. (Colleges routinely rely on the board to crunch their averages.)</p>
<p>'''We don't note that information,' says Gila Reinstein , a Yale spokeswoman. She does know how many received perfect scores on all three sections, though: 25 percent."</p>
<p>The full article is at <a href="http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F20914F8395B0C768CDDA80994DE404482%5B/url%5D">http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F20914F8395B0C768CDDA80994DE404482</a>.</p>
<p>The article is explicit that 25% of all admitted freshmen had received "perfect scores on all three sections." One possible takeaway is that even things you read about college admissions in the New York Times may be statistically inaccurate. <em>sigh</em>.</p>
<p>Sorry to have created confusion earlier with my bad (since corrected) facts.</p>
<p>Also, sorry if we hijacked your thread, OP. I hope you got an answer to your original question.</p>
<p>You're right, tokenadult; I should just the admissions office and see if they will tell me anything. I really would like a strong, math-y answer to this question. It would help me give my students better advice.</p>
<p>Harry Lewis (Harvard ex-dean, husband of admissions person, has been on admissions committee himself) wrote in his recent book that 25 percent enrolled at Harvard have SAT of 1580 and above. Harvard and Yale have about the same mid-50 percent range and admits are a little stronger than the enrolled so that is consistent with 25 percent of Yale admits getting perfect SATs on a 1600 scale. However, it may not be consistent with other information, such as 25 percent getting the much rarer score of 2400, and the 75th percentiles being 790 for the math and the verbal separately (so not necessarily 790 + 790 on the whole test).</p>
<p>The schools are probably reporting to NY Times only the fit-for-USNews statistics with the number of virtual 1600 and virtual 2400 highest score composites, not the single sitting results.</p>
<p>re: tokenadult,</p>
<p>Harvard admission gave you the usual wishy-washy answer in person, and a computer generated form letter as the answer to questions by email. </p>
<p>You were provided with the precise Yes/No question above, several times and well in advance of your Q & A session with Harvard, and this when you solicited "help" for your questions on CC before the meeting. But you appear to have asked something much more vague. It's interesting that you don't quote your actual question to them during the session nor the text you sent to various schools by email (which you have been asked to post, also more than once). It appears that this vagueness serves your purposes because the more detailed answers, such as MIT and Caltech's, give the lie to your various posturings in CC.</p>
<p>It's unfortunate that you blew the chance to get new information from Harvard, but as you say, contacting their admissions office is always open to you as an opportunity for redemption.</p>
<p>Colleges don't care what year you have taken the SAT unless you are applying many years after you have graduated from high school.</p>
<p>Year of SAT is relevant because scores tend to be higher later in high school.<br>
Admissions officers know this, and we know that they know it because they have commented on it in public, as in AdOfficer's recent posting about paying special attention to when the tests were taken. These comments tend not to be very detailed, but one implication is that an earlier score may be downward-biased and thus viewed more generously, even if the admissions people do not go so far as to invent a 50-points-higher SAT score for the candidate. </p>
<p>What I just said is not a contested point on CC, as far as I know (and if it is, a separate thread may be in order). But if true, it has some consequences for the SAT retaking discussions:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Retaking and getting the same score 1-2 years later may be perceived as a "drop" in scores or evidence that the original score was on the high side of the implicit 60-point range for the candidate. </p></li>
<li><p>If admissions officers are sensitive to the natural upward drift of scores as students progress through high school, we know that the upward bias produced by a highest-scores policy (superscoring of SAT) is comparable to that, especially for several retakes. So if there is any allowance for early scores one expects that some similar discounting of the virtual "super" scores may also be done.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It'd be a waste of time, money, and energy to retake. I'd focus efforts on scholarship opportunities or becoming more involved in the community. The goal of taking the SAT/ACT is to do well, and if you did it early in your high school career and on the first try, the more power to you.</p>