Downward SAT Trend

chillaxin
Thu, 13 Apr 2006 23:18:23 +0000

Basically, I’m a junior right now, and I’ve taken the SAT three times in my high school career. However, the first two times were both the Old SATI during my freshman and sophomore years, and I never took them seriously because they were solely for talent searches and I didn’t expect the scores to go on my permanent record. Hence, my math score actually went down (from a 730 in my freshman year to a 710 in my sophomore year) and though it went up to a 770 this year (stupid curves), there is still that slight downward trend.

I’m not complaining about the scores, but I was wondering how colleges will view it, especially since I’m applying to those insanely competitive schools (read: HYPSM). I went to a Stanford information session today and they said that while they will only be accepting the New SAT for the class of '11, they will still be looking at all the SAT scores holistically for upward trends and whatnot. Obviously, there’s no way I can erase my freshman and sophomore year scores, but I was wondering if there was anything I could do to ameliorate the situation. I realize that it’s not too big of a difference (-20 points), but still, any advice would greatly be appreciated. Should I put my awards in the talent search under awards (it’s not prestigious, but it would help explain the scores) or attach a very brief explanation or …?

If it matters any, in June of my sophomore year (I got the 710 in January of that year), I got an 800 on my MathIIC, and I hope to get a 5 on my AP Calc AB test in a few weeks. In addition, I’ve always been a straight-A student and a straight-A+ student as far as math has been concerned (though some of the teachers didn’t put the A+s on my transcript) and I’ve always held the highest math grade in all semesters for the entire class (as in all of the Honors Trig classes in the school for that year, all of the Adv. Alg. 2s, the AP Calcs, etc.).