09-23-2008, 06:37 AM
oink, having updated myself thanks to Beachboy's links (thank you), yes you can retake the SAT to try to get a better score, but it has always been that the college sees all scores. The article says that effective class of 2010 that will change.
Because people with money hire tutors for the SAT, those higher scores on the retake tend to reflect intensive work with a class or coaching, and if I were an admissions person I would put more reliance on the first score or at least not ignore it, as more indicative of native ability.
Beachboy, the tests they're considering getting rid of are the SUBJECT tests, not the general SAT. I remember I took the Chemistry and American History subject tests to meet that requirement, but as far as I ever heard the verbal and math general scores were the only ones anyone ever paid attention to, and that was 40 years ago. Maybe if I had bombed on the subjects it would have dinged me. But the golden score was the combined math and verbal.
About 20 years ago I took the GRE (wow, it doesn't seem like that long!), and at the time I was privy to a lot of the admissions thinking at Cal for graduate school. The GRE was very important, because GRADES mean little these days. Too many schools inflate grades. The tests are a way of comparing students across the spectrum of institutions. Like at Cal, applying to the English Ph.D. or M.A. program, your application was going to be denied if you didn't score at least 750 out of 800 on the Verbal GRE. It was a way of making a simple cut with too many applicants in the pool.
The SAT's too provide a tool that is less arbitrary than grades. I think they are always going to be looking for a way to improve it, like adding the weight of a writing sample. Makes sense, writing is a good indicator of whether the verbal ability can be expressed, and it's harder to study for.
However, when I was teaching community college I had to grade writing sample achievement tests, and it's got its flaws because the people grading it have their eyes glaze over and handwriting effects the grade. If the handwriting is so bad the grader has to struggle to read it, the flow of the essay suffers. And so forth, it's all problematic and subjective.
Because people with money hire tutors for the SAT, those higher scores on the retake tend to reflect intensive work with a class or coaching, and if I were an admissions person I would put more reliance on the first score or at least not ignore it, as more indicative of native ability.
Beachboy, the tests they're considering getting rid of are the SUBJECT tests, not the general SAT. I remember I took the Chemistry and American History subject tests to meet that requirement, but as far as I ever heard the verbal and math general scores were the only ones anyone ever paid attention to, and that was 40 years ago. Maybe if I had bombed on the subjects it would have dinged me. But the golden score was the combined math and verbal.
About 20 years ago I took the GRE (wow, it doesn't seem like that long!), and at the time I was privy to a lot of the admissions thinking at Cal for graduate school. The GRE was very important, because GRADES mean little these days. Too many schools inflate grades. The tests are a way of comparing students across the spectrum of institutions. Like at Cal, applying to the English Ph.D. or M.A. program, your application was going to be denied if you didn't score at least 750 out of 800 on the Verbal GRE. It was a way of making a simple cut with too many applicants in the pool.
The SAT's too provide a tool that is less arbitrary than grades. I think they are always going to be looking for a way to improve it, like adding the weight of a writing sample. Makes sense, writing is a good indicator of whether the verbal ability can be expressed, and it's harder to study for.
However, when I was teaching community college I had to grade writing sample achievement tests, and it's got its flaws because the people grading it have their eyes glaze over and handwriting effects the grade. If the handwriting is so bad the grader has to struggle to read it, the flow of the essay suffers. And so forth, it's all problematic and subjective.