Especially if the college says that it’s “recommended” rather than required. Thanks
Do you have actual schools/scores in minds, or is this all purely hypothetical? Like many things, the answer is “It depends.” An 800 will not compensate for an otherwise weak application, but a 550 won’t do you any favors.
I mean, I do have a couple of schools and scores in mind, but I’d rather keep the situation hypothetical for personal reasons if that’s okay.
I have no inside info, but my hunch has always been that the subject test scores are meant to be confirmatory.
At a very competitive school, you want every part of your application to be as solid as possible. Will it keep you out of a school? Probably depends on how bad the score.
If the applicant is on the edge of being accepted, then having a significantly better or worse subject test score than other candidates could easily make or break it.
Since you never know if you are on the edge or not with very competitive colleges (the ones that generally want the subject tests), it’s best to assume that the tests are make or break and prep accordingly.
The simple answer is that if it never mattered, there would be no reason for them to ask for it.
Then hypothetically, I cannot imagine that an applicant applying to these colleges would not want to ensure that their application is as strong as possible.
And since this is hypothetical, I’m moving the thread to the low-trafficked cafe with the other hypothetical threads.
Not necessarily. Putting up a few hurdles weeds out the ones who are not serious.