Hiding SAT I scores

Chedva
Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:15:24 +0000

Remember, they see all of your scores not because they want to, but because that’s what College Board decides to send. Usually, there is a clerk going through the files to see how complete they are, and they have a “cover sheet” for the file that will list basic statistics on the student, including the highest test scores. This happens before an admissions officer ever sees your file. (Or nowadays, with electronic applications, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a program that calculates the highest scores (if there’s superscoring) and lists them on a sort of “electronic” cover sheet.) An admissions officer would have to dig into the file to see other scores, and they have neither the time nor the desire to do so.

A lot of kids take the ACT instead of the SAT I because 1) many find the ACT to be a more “user friendly” test; 2) it’s shorter; 3) for many schools, if you do well enough on the ACT with writing, you don’t need to submit SAT IIs. That reduces the amount of testing a student must do.