College Blogs

The college application process seems, if anything, the epitome of having to make difficult choices. High school students and their parents must make many important decisions ranging from which schools to apply to, (Big or small? Florida or Vermont?), to which anecdotes to include in their personal statements (the time I saved that litter of puppies, or my adventures in the Food Service industry?). To add another option to this litany of decisions, students can now choose their scores, in a sense, thanks to the College Board’s Score Choice™ program.

But does Score Choice really make a difference?

Looking back at my own experience with the SAT, I seem to have been precisely the kind of student the College Board is targeting with Score Choice™.  Bereft of any form of test prep, I was ‘fortunate’ enough to take the SAT 4 times, which would have given me many scores from which to choose.  ‘Fortunate’ was the word my parents used, as they forced me to take the SAT for the fourth and final time; I had no choice in the matter.  Though my scores didn’t change between the 3rd and 4th tests, my verbal and quantitative scores switched, leaving me concerned.  Wouldn’t colleges wonder why I had taken the test so many times?  Would college admissions’ officers penalize me?

Fortunately for me, in the real sense of the word, the two main schools to which I applied principally considered my super score, or my best score for each section over all tests I had completed.  It turns out that this personal reflection about my top schools constitutes the answer to our earlier question: the Score Choice™ program is worthwhile and helpful for students who are applying to schools that have adopted Score Choice™.  If so, there exist basically two options: choose which test dates to include in your super score, or the best single-date SAT score you received, depending on which option the desired school prefers.  The official list of cooperating schools, published here by the College Board, includes a fair number of schools, but many prestigious and big-name schools are absent from the list, as many schools choose not to participate in the program.  Furthermore, many of the schools that do subscribe to Score Choice™ are listed as considering only the best scores from each of the three sections on the test, which is exactly what most schools did before Score Choice™.

Though this program does provide more flexibility for some students, the fact that so many schools appear not to be participating reinforces the importance of a personalized approach to the college application process. It is up to students and their parents to find out exactly how the schools they chose consider SAT scores.  My college application experience is typical; I had to personally investigate the options provided by the schools that I wanted to attend.  Also typical of my experience was the clear lack of information and understanding about the college admissions process, and the need for expert help.

Regardless of whether or not the Score Choice™ program will help you, it’s clear that one choice will be easy to make: Kaplan SAT, ACT, and PSAT prep programs will not only increase your scores, but also save you both the time and financial investment of having to take these tests over and over again. Kaplan also provides insider information on these tests and the college admissions process, like how to navigate score choice and the college admission process.

To quote the philosopher Eddie Vedder, of Pearl Jam, if only I had known then what I know now…