<p>D returned from bible camp where she was one of the student leaders, socially pumped up but considerably sleep deprived, the night before the SAT. She went ahead and took it to try to improve one of the scores and instead dropped in everything. Should she try to send an explanation to her colleges or keep quiet and hope they really do use only the higher score?</p>
<p>Don’t worry. They’ll look at higher score. This serves as a reminder, though–if retaking to raise scores-- don’t send score reports until you see the scores.
It’s more expensive that way, but then you don’t have to send scores if you’re not happy with them.</p>
<p>atomom beat me to it and her advice is spot on.</p>
<p>Won’t they get all the scores anyway eventually? S is horrified because he scored a 570 on the Math IIc SAT subject test and plans to retake it. We didn’t have that score sent anywhere, but when he retakes and sends the new scores, won’t the old ones go, too?</p>
<p>Yes, timely, the old score will go too.</p>
<p>The only SAT or SAT Subject Test scores that a student could possibly conceal are those from the very last time that the student takes one of these tests. Those scores could be hidden by sending all previous scores before taking the exam, and then not sending the new scores until after the student sees them.</p>
<p>mardad, if your daughter plans to take any more SATs or SAT Subject Tests, there is no way she could have concealed the low scores she got when she came back from Bible camp.</p>
<p>I don’t think any explanation for the score decrease is needed, really. Lots of kids have bad days.</p>
<p>I agree … don’t worry. D was rolling along on her first ACT (she scored a 35, 34, 34) … and then she had a reaction to the pseudoephedrine she was taking for a cold. Her arm felt tingly, then numb, and all she could do was worry. I kid you not — her score on the final section, science, was a 21. She didn’t even think to cancel the score; she was too upset to think. When we told an admissions officer the story, she said not to worry. She told my D to just take it again, and the new score would tell the real story. It did, and the first scores have never been an issue. My friend’s son had an epileptic seizure in the middle of his SATs. Kids have bad days, they get sick, they frame-shift (get “off” on marking answers), etc. Fortunately, there’s almost always a next time!</p>
<p>Yes, we get all the scores when you send one… but I think the vast majority of schools ignore everything but the highest scores. We understand that the SAT is just one Saturday morning in four years of high school. (An important Saturday morning, yes, but just a Saturday morning.)</p>
<p>I wish the SAT weren’t so onerous sometimes, but it is what it is.</p>
<p>Chris D’Orso
Assistant Director of Admissions
Stony Brook University</p>
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</p>
<p>I see post #7 has a good response to this too. I heard a Harvard admission officer in my town say, “Anyone can have a bad day” in relation to Harvard’s policy–which is the usual policy at most selective private colleges–of taking an applicant’s HIGHEST test scores, section by section. College admission officers really aren’t interested in microanalyzing the reasons why one particular test day resulted in a low score. </p>
<p>Moral of the story: being well rested on the test day helps a LOT.</p>
<p>Only if it was something she ate. (What’s the worst that can happen - that she becomes a drug-addicted, homeless criminal? :eek:)</p>
<p>depending on the college, the rep may not even see the scores, unless s/he goes looking thru the file – some colleges have clerks write the highest score on the exterior of the file so the rep can easily find it and move on to the transcript, recs and essays.</p>