SAT: 2220; 800M, 690R, 730W
ACT: 34; 35M, 35R, 34E, 33S
Essay was a 9 which brought combined English + Writing to 32.
I took the SAT in November of Junior year and ACT in June, but I forgot my calculator and didn’t finish the science section for the ACT. Is it worth it to retake either of these?
From what I’ve read, these two scores seem to be about equivalent. Is one better than the other? Can/should I submit both? Does Harvard look at individual sections? I’ve only taken each of these tests once.
Thanks! I’m really clueless about applications
EDIT: Would subject tests compensate for either of these a little? I think I did well on those.
You don’t really need to retake either of these tests. Submit your 34, and that should be sufficient. Beyond that score, you encounter the law of diminishing returns.
FWIW: A 34 ACT is within Harvard’s middle range, so you should let it go and focus your energies this summer on writing your essays. As Harvard has more academically qualified applicants than they room for in the freshman class, Admissions uses a student’s essays, teacher recommendations, guidance counselor report (SSR) and interview report to distinguish between one-high performing applicant and another. So, at this point, your essays are far more important than re-taking your ACT or SAT to get a higher score.
If there was just silly mistakes/problems that happened when you were taking the test, you should really retake it. While it’s kind of a pain, you could easily score higher and open many doors.
I have a personal experience with almost your exact same dilemma (our SAT scores match on two scores and are within 10 pts on the third, pretty much the exact same, and we have a similar spread on the ACT). I chose to submit the ACT score for two reasons - first, I meant that I didn’t have to submit SAT II scores as well (although I did well on them in the end, so this part was largely unimportant). Second, and more importantly, the ACT more accurately demonstrated my abilities in reading/writing, as opposed to my SAT writing score which was the same as yours. Like you, my math score was lower on the ACT, but I felt (feel) as though the school and the admissions officers especially puts more emphasis on broad abilities like English. Just my two cents - in the end, your ACT is comparatively higher anyway, so barring any other intuitive guessing on the importance of specific scores, you should submit that.
