CATES Blog

What is Score Choice? What is Super Scoring? What’s the difference?

When you are taking the SAT exam many hours go into studying and preparing for the exam.  You take mocktests, work on practice problems, and formulate your perfect strategy to beat the test. Then you take the SAT test and, for many people, the work ends here. Don’t be one of these people. You still have a couple strategies you can consider.

One of them is Score Choice.  The College Board, the company that creates and administers the SAT, allows you to implement Score Choice if you so choose.  Essentially, Score choice allows you to elect which SAT score you can submit to colleges.  If you take the SAT multiple times, Score Choice enables you to select your best score and submit that score, and that score alone, to colleges.  There are some schools that require you to submit all your test results and your college counselor will know which ones, but Score Choice allows you, whenever possible, to put your best foot forward.

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If you took the March 2012 SAT, on the morning of Thursday, March 29th you may well have anxiously went online to your College Board account to see your score. For some of you – maybe too many – the scores you saw on the screen may have surprised you…and not in a good way, perhaps. Whatever the case, after sifting through the input of countless students, here’s what we understand as of today, before the online score reports and Student Answer Service data is available:

Students – Virtually every one of them – are seeing expected scores in the Writing section, scores within the lower bound of their mock test median range on Math, but a huge drop (70–100 points) from mock test medians on their Critical Reading.

Experimental Section & Section Sequencing Affected Focus

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Should I take the SAT again? When do I know if I am done?

The SAT exam is a long and arduous process and one which most people feel can’t end soon enough.  After long hours of study, countless mock tests, and the stress of the unknown, retaking the SAT can seem like the absolute last thing you want to do.  Once you’ve received your SAT scores you have a choice to make. Am I satisfied with how it went or do I want another crack at the test?

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When should I guess on the SAT Test?  Should I always take a shot at an answer even if I’m not sure?

The SAT Test is a long, multi-faceted, and at times, draining exam.  There will undoubtedly be times when you are taking the SAT exam that you are unsure how to solve a question or unclear which choice you should select.  It is vital to your success on the SAT test that you into the exam with a clear gameplan for these moments – a guessing strategy.

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When should I take the SAT exam?  How many times should I take it?

The SAT exam is offered several times each year: in January, March, May, June, October, November and December.  There’s no limit to how many times you can take the SAT (though there’s an additional fee each time you do).

So if you can take the SAT over and over and over again, until you get the score that you want, there’s no need to study, right?  Wrong.  Without taking the time to prepare for the SAT, you won’t understand how to take the test.  You won’t know the vocabulary covered in the Critical Reading Section or the rules of grammar you’re expected to know for the Writing Section.  You won’t know how to write an SAT essay, or what material is covered on the SAT Math.  There’s no substitute for making the effort to prepare effectively.

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