Should You Retake the SAT as a Senior?
by Sarah M.
It has become clear that at many schools, a brief flirtation with test-blindness has ended and the SAT is back. So how should students go about sending in the best scores possible?
You can take the SAT as many times as you like. However, since the test is very time and labor intensive, you don’t want to exhaust yourself or waste your precious time by retaking it over and over again. It’s best whenever possible to be finished with testing in the spring of your junior year or the summer after. However, if your scores still aren’t quite as good as you think they can be, is it worth retaking the SAT during your senior year?
The answer depends on your application as a whole. Since writing all your essays can also be extremely time and labor intensive, you need to make sure that you are reserving sufficient time for them. It is usually better to use the summer before your senior year to work on essays, rather than more test prep. It’s also very important to decide on your college list and decision plan as early as possible, so that you can know exactly which essays you will have to write and when you will need to submit them.
If you are proactive on these other aspects of your application, and you’re still curious about whether you could improve your score, then retaking the SAT during your senior year can be a good idea. In general, early deadlines will still accept scores through the October test date, and regular deadlines through December.
However, if you have a particularly long list of essays to write, or if writing is slow or difficult process for you, it is probably better to reserve your time and energy for that. Remember that if you have already taken the SAT twice, and if you have not been working intensively on test prep during the summer, it is unlikely that your score with go up in a significant way.
In short, whether or not you should retake the SAT in your senior year has more to do with your time and energy overall than with your exact score. Maximizing your score is great if you can do that without letting the rest of your application suffer, but by the fall of senior year your essays should be taking priority.
