Which Colleges Superscore the SAT? (2023)

Your SAT scores are a very important part of your application, especially as the applicant pool gets bigger and more competitive every year. So how can you make sure colleges will consider your very best scores?

This article will discuss the colleges that superscore the SAT. After giving you a list of every college that superscores the SAT, I'll talk about how you can use this information strategically as you prepare to apply to college. To start, let's briefly review what "superscoring" means.

Superscoring is the process by which colleges consider your highest section scores across all the dates you took the SAT. Rather than confining your scores to one particular date, these schools will take your highest section scores, forming the highest possible composite score.

On the current SAT, this means taking your highest Math score and your highest Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) score across all test dates.

Maybe you scored a stellar 750 on Math on your first SAT, but your Reading and Writing fell into the low 600s. To improve your EBRW score, you spent a few months prepping and managed to bring your EBRW score up 100 points! To your dismay, though, you focused so much on reading comprehension and grammar that you forgot some of your math skills, and your great math score dropped the second time around.

If your colleges superscore, then you'd have nothing to worry about! They'd take your original 750 in Math and combine it with your new and improved EBRW score. Even though it took you a couple test sittings to achieve, you'd end up with a strong SAT score in all sections of the test for your college applications.

While the superscoring policy is ideal for you as an applicant, it's not entirely an act borne out of generosity. Superscoring can benefit colleges by improving their ranking. By showing that their admitted students average higher SAT scores, their ranking may get higher as well.

The following colleges superscore the SAT. In addition to their superscoring policies, I included most of their stances on the College Board's Score Choice. Even though these colleges take your highest section scores, many don't want you to use Score Choice to pick and choose which scores they get to see.

If you're taking and sending scores from both the old and new versions, make sure to call up the admissions office of your prospective college and clarify its policy on superscoring and Score Choice. We'll make sure to provide any updates as more information becomes available!

For most schools, you can find their policies toward standardized testing on their admissions website. You can also search for "name of college + PrepScholar" to access our large database of colleges and their admission requirements. Below is the complete list of colleges that superscore the SAT.

Get ready: it's a pretty long list.

Here are all the schools that have a policy of taking your "highest section" scores across test dates to form your highest possible composite score, according to the College Board. Since this list is huge, I recommend using ctrl + F to find any particular schools of interest.

Let me know in the comments if I missed any, and this list will be regularly updated!

Since policies can change or be unclear, definitely write to or call up the school you're interested in to ensure you understand how they consider SAT scores during the admission process.

Now that you know which schools superscore the SAT, what can you do with this information?

Superscoring can benefit you after you apply to colleges, but it can also be a helpful strategy as you take the SAT. If you're applying to schools that superscore, you yourself can superscore, in a sense, when you're taking the SAT.

What I mean by this is that you can concentrate on building up your highest composite score across test dates rather than trying to achieve it on a single test date. You could prep intensively for one section each time you take the SAT.

Of course, this method was a bit more helpful for takers of the old SAT, which had three separate section scores out of 800. The new SAT will combine your Reading and Writing scores, so you'll essentially only have two section scores to "superscore." However, the concept of building up your highest composite score against two or more test dates still applies.

How can you use this strategy and become an SAT super-scorer yourself? Read on to find out.

If you use this strategy, then you should start taking the SAT early, perhaps in the spring of your sophomore year or the fall of your junior year, so that you have enough test dates to build up your superscore.

If you're one of those students caught in the transition between the old and new SAT, then unfortunately this strategy might not be available to you. If you're retaking the SAT with the new version, then you'll probably have to treat it as its own separate set of scores. And if all the changes get just too confusing, you could always take the ACT! There are a bunch of colleges that superscore the ACT, too.

Unless a college explicitly discourages it, don't worry about taking the SAT too many times, as long as you don't exceed five or six tests—getting a higher score helps your application a lot more than taking it one too many times hurts it. Plus, unless you're caught between SAT versions, you don't have to feel anxious about the possibility of retaking the test and getting a lower score than you did previously (unlikely as this is).

At the same time, remember—everything in moderation. Even if schools superscore, college admissions officers are still people who might get thrown off if they see huge variations in your scores, especially compared to all of the other candidates. So don't just skip your Math section completely!

In conclusion, you should give your best effort on any SAT you take while also being strategic about building your highest superscore section by section. If you're researching school policies on superscoring and Score Choice, then you're already doing the most important thing: being thoughtful and intentional about every aspect of your college application to put forward your strongest candidacy.

Once you've familiarized yourself with the test, head on over to this guide to learn about how to study for the SAT.

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