<p>Hi, phuriku, </p>
<p>This has been an interesting diversion from the question I raised when opening this thread. Ben, with his extensive experience in actual admission committee work, assures us that an applicant can fearlessly submit a second SAT I score if for some reason the applicant thinks that the first SAT I score is not high enough. That is so low-risk, based on what Ben said, that I conclude it might as well be considered nil risk, when balanced against all the other issues that an admission committee considers when evaluating candidates for admission. </p>
<p>I think Ben made a good point, too, regarding your concern about how SAT I scores are used for college admission. The SAT I is a task with particular “rules of the game” that don’t correspond exactly to how a working scientist or mathematician does his day-by-day work, and yet scoring high on the SAT I is a learnable skill. A high schooler who is smart enough to thrive at Caltech is smart enough to learn how to turn out an SAT I score within the range of scores found among admitted students each year. An applicant who submits solely SAT I scores that are below the level of any student recently admitted to Caltech has a very meager chance of admission, and that doesn’t bother me. There are hundreds of colleges in the United States that offer major programs in math, science, or engineering. </p>
<p>If you are scoring above the 75th percentile of admitted students at Stanford on the ACT, I would suggest that you don’t “suck at standardized tests,” but rather do reasonably well on standardized tests, and perhaps thrive better at some other school-related task. Of course when you apply to any college you will want to emphasize your most outstanding achievements. </p>
<p>Peak scores on either of the major brands of standardized test are rather rare. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.act.org/news/data/06/pdf/National2006.pdf[/url]”>http://www.act.org/news/data/06/pdf/National2006.pdf</a> </p>
<p>(see table 2.1) </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>
<p>The very most selective colleges have sufficiently many applicants with high SAT I or ACT scores that they can afford to be quite selective on the basis of those scores. But each of those colleges will occasionally pass over an applicant with peak scores on those tests to admit applicants with slightly lower scores who have other desirable characteristics. And returning to the point I asked about in the original post, if an applicant takes an entrance test once and doesn’t gain the score he thinks represents his abilities fairly, he is welcome to take the test again up until the application deadline. </p>
<p>I’m curious about the study oldolddad found about AP and PSAT correlations, and wish it wasn’t on backorder just now. I think Joe has made some very good points about how to relate your personal experience as a high school student to the broader issue of how admission tests are used in college admission.</p>