If you’re striving for a perfect ACT or SAT score, first know what it can do for your future, and what it cannot. https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/what-a-perfect-score-can-and-cant-do-for-your-future
A good reminder, especially to those students and parents who push for the perfect score as if that’s a single-most important ticket to guaranteed admissions to top colleges. For Asian-Americans in particular, having a perfect set of SATI and SATII scores could actually work against them as such could very well reinforce the stereotype of being “robotic.” When my son (no “hooks” of any kind) was taking ACT and SAT tests, our strategy was simple: just target past the “threshold” scores, i.e., those scores that assure the AdComs at top colleges that you can handle the academic rigors. Our threshold scores were roughly (give or take) 33 for ACT and 1510 for SATI and 720 for SATII’s. As soon as the test results came in past these threshold numbers, he stopped taking the same test with no attempt to improve on them. The same thing with the GPA. When my son first expressed his thought about going for the valedictorian honor, I told him to forget about it. Instead, focus on finishing in top 5-10 percent of the class. That mentality, I believe, saved him from a lot of unnecessary pressure and stress. It also allowed him to focus more on those extra-curricular activities he enjoyed.
In engineering the expressions that come to mind are “perfect is the enemy of good” and “shoot the engineer and ship it”
You’re saying it’s sometimes wise to underachieve.
With all do respect, that is horrible advice.
I would rather take my chances with overachievements than underachivenebts in this way too competitive world.
The thing that perfect scores will help most are scholarships. If you don’t have to chase every scholarship penny then once your scores are in a good range you should focus your energy on more important things.
If you could get perfect scores in one sitting, that’s a pretty darn good achievement. If not, I agree with @TiggerDad pass a certain threshold of your targeted schools is a good way of using limited times.
@mmk2015 if your comments is in response to me, that is not what I’m saying or meant by those expressions. Forgive me if you are responding to the OP.
A perfect score in one sitting will at the minimum draw a little bit extra attention from AO, either you are Asian American or not. It is hard to believe that a perfect score will hurt an Asian American applicant.
Increasing scores by repeating tests shows only that a student has improved their test-taking skills, nothing else. Score chasing for merit makes sense, but it does not indicate that a student has improved their general aptitude in a subject area. +1 to @TiggerDad’s post.
Do colleges see if you sent all SAT scores or not? How are they aware that a student achieved a perfect score in one sitting?
I am curious whether there is any statistic to show the average number of sittings for perfect one setting scorers. I, for whatever reason, don’t think that average is high.
I wasn’t talking about those who have the happy ability to score perfect on first sitting.
For that reason, @mmk2015, I wasn’t “advising” about intentionally “underachieving.” The article is about “What A Perfect Score Can – And Can’t – Do for Your Future.” If you can get the perfect score on first sitting, that’s great. My comments were addressed to those who think of achieving perfect scores as a necessary pre-requisite to successful admissions to top schools. Wouldn’t hurt but certainly NOT a pre-requisite in today’s holistic admissions environment.
@yucca10, I believe the Common App has you self-report scores. It asks you to list the date of the test and all of the subscores for that date, so they would know that way. They would also know when they look at the official test score that is sent.
Ah, I was thinking of not “one sitting” but “first try”. But the colleges won’t really know whether the score was achieved on the first try or fifth?
+1 to what Tiggerdad said. And we had similar cutoffs and were shooting for competitive merit. D hit our targets on the first try and then she focused on polishing her applications. She definitely was capable of a perfect or near perfect score and it wouldn’t have taken much studying since she studied little to begin with. But it was her essays that got her invited to compete for the competitive merit scholarships. Those are what made her stand out. Her test scores were in the ball park just like all the other competitive applicants.
well schools will know if you are required to send in all scores and only send in one, and it is perfect. Both my kids got perfect scores - one try. Everyone said “oh you have your choice of any school” WRONG, and my kids knew that. It was the rest of their applications and essays and recs that helped. It is only one data point!
So true! I’ve had to say, “Well, I can’t get into every college easily…” several hundred times.