Back in high school, I was smart, but got pretty lousy grades. As a result, my SAT scores also suffered (990 on the old 1600 scale). I’m back in school now and getting straight A’s, so I was wondering if it would behoove me to retake the SAT’s, or do four-year universities not care at this point given my age?
Thanks,
Adam
If you were smart but didn’t get good grades in high school, you would expect that you would get good SAT scores anyway. That is, if you were the sort of person who was naturally smart, read a lot on your own, played intellectually challenging games, etc., but you never bothered to study much for tests in high school, you would expect that you would do well on the SAT tests, since they aren’t so much a test of what you learn in school as of how generally well read and clever you are. I suppose if you were naturally smart but never engaged in any intellectual pursuits at all (and I mean literally never read anything, never played any intellectually challenging games, etc.) in high school that you might do better at the SAT now than you did then if you are now studying a lot.
Are you in college at the moment? Do you intend to stay at the college you’re at? Then what possible point is there to taking the SAT? A college doesn’t care about your SAT score after you’re admitted. If you’re planning to transfer, I suppose that it’s probably a good idea to retake the test. You almost certainly won’t do worse, and you might do better. Also, buy one of the books to study for the SAT (like the Princeton Review book on the SAT) so that you understand test-taking strategies better.
I was considering retaking SATs since English is my second language and I got a lot more proficient since I first took them. My high school GPA was a little under 2.9 but my combined SAT score was 1430 (on whatever scale they used in 1999). I realized that right now there’s some new stuff I would need to get ready for since the tests changed, so I took the GREs instead. Have you considered that alternative?
Erm, without getting this into GD country, I don’t think that’s a given at all. Maybe you’ve noticed companies like named Stanley Kaplan and The Princeton Review? Despite having the word “aptitude” in it, it is at best contested whether it tests for aptitude.
Oh, I agree that the test courses and books from companies like the Princeton Review and Kaplan can increase SAT scores. That wasn’t my point. My point was that the SAT is not a test of how well you’ve mastered the standard college-prep courses offered in American high schools. Partly they are a test, as you say, of one’s test-taking abilities, and you can indeed learn better test-taking abilities by the Princeton Review and Kaplan courses and books. Partly they are a test of one’s natural intelligence (assuming that such a thing really exists). Partly they are a test of how generally well-read one is. If one were to skip high school and spend all one’s time reading and working on clever puzzles in math puzzle books (assuming that one knows a little bit of algebra and geometry), one might do better than if you just did a standard college-prep curriculum in high school.