<p>One needs to apply some common sense in parsing those policy statements.</p>
<p>The same MIT admissions guy was questioned about this on CC (i.e. whether their highest scores policy is the end of the story, so that a multi-SAT score report is always treated identically to the equivalent one-shot superscore). From his answer — that in at least some circumstances he would be prompted to look into the rest of the application to see how the score report fits in with everything else — it is clear that the answer is NO. A score report is, at least potentially, subject to different treatment than its one-sitting superscore. </p>
<p>MIT is one of the most specific universities in its statements that it “doesn’t hurt” to have multiple scores. More so than Harvard and far more so than Princeton. That even MIT’s statement does not indicate complete equivalence of the superscore with the whole SAT-I report, confirms what should have been clear from the beginning: that these policy statements merely say that there is no policy of systematically penalizing retakes (by subtracting points from the retest scores, or averaging the scores, or other method that is mathematically distinguishable from superscoring). It does not mean that no disadvantage can ever accrue from different treatment of the multi-SAT score report and its one-sitting super equivalent.</p>