Receive scores
Once you have completed the SAT® exam, you will receive your results within two to three weeks. You can log in to your College Board® account to find your online score report. This report provides a breakdown of your performance within each test and each subsection.
If you don’t have a College Board account, you will automatically receive your scores in the mail. If you would like to receive your scores in the mail (in addition to them being provided online), you may request to do so. If you want to receive your scores over the phone, you will have to pay a fee.
Decide if You Want To Retake the Exam
After you receive your scores, you should check out the admissions requirements for each school you apply to. It is likely that you will have set a goal score before taking the exam, but if you don’t know where your scoring threshold should be, you must research the SAT scores that resulted in acceptances from the schools you hope to get into.
This research can help you understand the amount of improvement that is necessary for an acceptance letter. Consider how a higher score could benefit your chances of admission and whether a better performance could provide scholarship opportunities.
You should know that you are very likely to increase your score in a second attempt. You can take the time between exams to learn from your mistakes and build up your confidence for round two!
If you decide that you want to retake the test, you want to do the best you can to maximize your scoring potential.
Set a Date
You will have to check out the testing calendar and set a date. Do this immediately, and ensure that you leave enough time between your test date and application deadlines for the scores to be sent out (again, this takes two to three weeks).
Make a Study Plan
Your score report will provide details about your performance, and you can use this information to create a study plan. Focus on the areas you can improve the most. Making a study plan ensures that your chances of improvement reach their full potential.
Practice Work
You must get realistic experience with the difficulty levels and styles of each section of the exam. A key factor during your retake should be an increase in confidence: this time, you know what to expect, have drilled your weak points, and learned from your mistakes.
Practice work is also a great way to improve your time management skills. Testing fatigue can result in silly mistakes, reading comprehension errors, and wasted time. Be sure to maintain your endurance. Practice taking the entire exam multiple times while preparing for your retake.
Send Your Scores
Once you have a score that you are happy with, it is time to send them to colleges and universities! Ensure that your scores will be accepted by sending them as official score reports from the College Board site.
Any unofficial reports are not accepted. After taking the exam, you will be able to send scores to as many schools as you want. Some students choose to have their scores sent out before they are released: in this case, you will get four free score submissions.
You can use UWorld’s SAT online learning tools to prepare for the SAT exam. If you choose to retake the SAT test, our resource offers tools to learn from your mistakes, pinpoint weak areas, and improve your performance. We also offer performance tracking tools to evaluate improvement. Try it out to maximize your SAT test scores!
