<p>I was actually in a similar situation to you after the March SATs junior year. I had taken them during my sophomore, was happy with them (for a sophomore), and retook junior year and did worse. I was devastated (I know MIT isn’t big on scores, but other places are). My math score was fine, my reading was decent, and my writing was awful (not awful, but not what I thought I could do). I let them go and decided to study over the summer. I did nothing with reading, nothing with math, and worked on grammar for writing. I took SATs in October of this year and got a 1600/1600 and 2330/2400. Needless to say, I was pleased. SATs are so incredibly random that it really depends who else is taking the test and how they decide to scale it. To me, SATs are really contrived. So yes I would recommend retaking. But retake senior year if possible. And try the ACT?</p>
<p>I really hope that MIT, Caltech, and Stanford are not your only schools. Don’t forget safeties where you’d actually be really happy. It’ll take so much stress out of your life senior year.</p>