<p>With the new score-choice policy, I don't understand why some colleges remain adamant in asking for all of a student's sat scores. Don't colleges just look at the best score you received and use that as a factor in admissions? If so, what's the point of seeing all of a student's sat scores?</p>
<p>One reason is to see how many times you take the test. If someone takes the test 5-6 times any adcom would wonder what the applicant could have been doing instead of simply trying to crack the test.</p>
<p>Which candidate do you think is better?</p>
<p>Candidate A: SAT 2250 superscore
test 1: 750 CR, 680 M, 650 W
test 2: 690 CR, 750 M, 670 W
test 3: 680 CR, 690 M, 750 W</p>
<p>Candidate B: SAT 2250
test: 750 CR, 750M, 750 W</p>
<p>
This is your error. Not all colleges do this. Some colleges superscore, some use your best single sitting score, others look to see if you’re gaming the test by taking many sittings. I’ve seen students on this board talk about ONLY studying for one part of the test and napping during another section as a way to get their superscore up. Some colleges want to know this.</p>
<p>To a great extent the adoption of the requirement of all scores by a number of colleges was mostly an infantile, knee-jerk reaction by elitist college bureaucrats to the perceived misbehavior of the College Board in having the audacity to adopt score choice when they disagreed with it. It is interesting that many of them professed to reject score choice for the same reason, some bull about it being important to know how many tests were taken while at the same time asserting that they will only the highest scores to determine admission, in statements that were close to having exactly the same wording as each other, i.e., it seems they communicated with each other beforehand to come up with the same excuse using the same words that some committee of bureaucrats must have drafted. That excuse did not hold water since forever those same colleges had readily accepted that students could submit one ACT test score though they had taken multiple ACT tests. </p>
<p>Since the initial wave of all the colleges that adopted an “all scores” position after CB’s adoption of score choice, no additional colleges have done so and some that adopted an all-scores position, such as USC and Columbia, have gotten over their initial tantrum and switched to allowing you to submit whatever scores you want. The others still maintain their position despite that their all-scores rules are difficult if not impossible to enforce and have mostly done nothing but create confusion and trepidation among applicants since the meaning of “all scores” varies significantly among the colleges and it is often difficult to determine or understand what their actual requirements are.</p>
<p>@Erin’s Dad - But if students were doing what you say they were doing, wouldn’t colleges know either way because they have to submit all scores to get their superscore?</p>
<p>@carly2012 - Candidate B, but I don’t see your point. </p>
<p>Also, if students knew that their schools superscore their scores, they would send all of their highest-section scores either way, score-choice or not. And score-choice allows for that anyway, so I don’t see why colleges are against something that can only help students.</p>
<p>Even for colleges that Superscore, you can’t just send 1 or 2 sections from a sitting i.e you can’t just send the critical reading score and not Math and Writing from an October sitting; you have to send all the scores.</p>
<p>I understand that. But can you understand the superfluity of sending your 2 highest sittings as well as your lowest one in which you scored the lowest in all sections?</p>
<p>
It depends on how you look at it. It only helps affluent students get their scores up for college admission. It doesn’t do anything else that I know of.</p>