When preparing to apply for college, most people take the SAT and of those people, the majority of them take it more than once, maybe even three or four times. But how many times is the right amount for you?
Before you take the SAT, look at all the colleges you are interested in and see what their average SAT scores are for the previous year’s accepted students. This will give you a good idea of what you need your score to be. If you score above and beyond all of the averages you should be set on the SAT portion of your application. If not then that is where the real trouble begins.
The maximum SAT score is 2400. The average SAT score in 2011 was around 1500. For acceptance into many of the top colleges in the country you will need to score somewhere around a 2100.
In theory, the more you take the SAT the higher you will score each time. While there is some truth to this there is a limit to your abilities and you don’t want to waste your time getting the same score over agian. Also, many colleges require you to send all test scores from all tests, not just your best or most recent one.
Ideally the best thing to do is to simply take the SAT twice, once to get a feel for it and once more to improve on your previous score. If you do feel that your score is too low you can take it more times, but the most you should really take is 4 or 5 if you really think you can improve it by a significant amount.
No matter what your SAT score is, it won’t be the only thing that colleges look at. If you don’t get the perfect score you are aiming for you don’t have to worry, colleges take into account GPA, extracurricular activities, and letters of recommendation with just as much as any test, and at some private colleges an SAT or ACT is not even required. So go out, and do your best!
