<p>My D (a junior) is signed up to take the SAT this weekend, and she hasn’t studied. She did well on the PSAT last year, so she feels comfortable with just taking the SAT ‘cold’ and then using her scores to determine her next step…study and improve, or accept the score she gets. Then she plans to do the same thing for the ACT in December. This isn’t how I would approach it, but I am OK with it, as long as it really won’t hurt her to have low scores for her first tries. </p>
<p>I know it would be best for her to study/prepare before first taking the tests, but is there any reason it might hurt her chances in admissions by following her plan?</p>
<p>The vast majority of schools superscore SATs or allow score choice. It won’t hurt her chances.</p>
<p>Not a big deal at all. If subsequent official standardized test scores are significantly higher, I can’t see how the first score would hurt her admissions chances.</p>
<p>College admissions committees are awash in standardized test scores. It’s likely that admissions officers only pay attention to whatever “magical combination” (superscore or best one-sitting score) has been specified by the school. If the school does not accept Score Choice, then I suppose the officers can access an applicant’s comprehensive score trajectory…but that takes time…and there are a lot of applicants.</p>
<p>Bear in mind that standardized test scores comprise only one dimension of a student’s application. Having an additional, slightly lower test score on record really shouldn’t make much difference.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter at all. Colleges only want to see scores of students on their best days, and completely disregard lower scores.</p>
<p>took it the first time no study and scored a 1980 (which is low for my standards), then I studies some, and scored 2240 (with 680 CR). Then I studied a bit more and brought CR to a 760 (2320 superscore!). For most of my colleges, I don’t even have to send my 1980, and for the others, I doubt it has much effect.</p>