Straight answers
How many times should I take the SAT?
Most students take it two or three times, and there's no College Board cap on attempts. The rule that matters isn't a number — it's that a retake should follow real work: if nothing about your practice changed between sittings, the second test day is mostly a repeat of the first.
A common rhythm is a first sitting in the spring of junior year, a second in the fall of senior year, and a third only if there's a specific reason — a section that clearly underperformed the practice work, a test day disrupted by illness, or a scholarship deadline that makes one more attempt worth it.
Between sittings, the useful gap is roughly six to ten weeks. That's enough time to work through the weak areas the score report exposed and take a full-length practice test under real conditions. Registering for back-to-back dates without changing anything in between rarely accomplishes much.
There are real costs to stacking attempts: registration fees, lost Saturdays, and the fatigue of living inside a test for a year. Fee waivers cover two SAT registrations for students who qualify, which is worth checking before assuming a retake is unaffordable.
Whether extra attempts help your application also depends on how your colleges treat multiple scores — some superscore across dates, some look at the single best sitting, and a few ask for every score you've taken.