My son is very intelligent he is in theater being the lead the musical. He is in a spectacular non school choir, wonderful soloist, he did Constitutional Team NHS, and more… He has 240+ volunteer hours, but just hasn’t been able to get this SAT score up. Will he still get into any difficult admission schools and will colleges still give him merit aid- he has to pay for a large part of private school if he chooses to go that route.
You guys should check out wake forest. It’s test optional and a great school!
Try the ACT. Many kids do better on one test or another. Or there are now many test optional schools. You give no indication of what colleges he is aiming for. Yes, he should still be able to get merit aid, depending on the college. You mention the 5 in APUSH, but is that his only AP? Is he a URM? There are too many unknowns. If he is aiming for Harvard, the test score probably won’t help him, but if he is aiming for a million other schools that aren’t in the category of acceptance rate, who knows?
My son did much better on the ACT than the SAT. I would absolutely have him study the ACT and try that test.
He took the ACT once and got a 28. He gets test anxiety and the ACT was just too fast for him.
He’s got such a great record- thanks @futuremed17 for the info
I’ll have to look at other test optional schools
1350 is a very good score. The national average is around 1000. Don’t feel like every kid in America is getting 1450-1600 SAT or 34 ACT scores. On CC the percentages are skewed way high. My son has a decent weighted GPA like yours and is pretty smart, and guess what? Similar scores and Act as your son. No biggie. Your son will get into some very good schools. His grades are good, his scores good, his ECs are good. He will be fine!!
Generally, the more difficult the school is to gain admission, the less likely your son will be eligible for merit, if offered at all. Drop down a tier or two and you will have more options. If you’d like more specific advice, give us more info: cost limitations, home state, course of study desired, type of school desired, geographic destination, large v small, etc.
@pardullet exactly- merit aid is important to us. He has to pay about 1/2 his way. We are looking at some of the 60K schools, but I don’t think it will work unless he gets his test scores into the 1400s. This kid will thrive anywhere. He is so easy going he can’t rule out any geographical location and is good at so many things that he can’t rule any major (interest survey and Myers Briggs say he would be good doing everything -ie didn’t help rule things out. Wants a university with a good community feel, lots of choices, a great choir/acapella groups that non majors/minors can audition for and >3500 students. The West and Midwest with easy/not too expensive flights are Mom’s choices.
If you are saying that you will only pay $30K, at a $60K college he has to get $30K in merit aid, and his scores won’t allow for that at “difficult admission” schools (well, depending on what you call 'difficult).
Do the supermatch (link is in the left column on this page) and pull out a few colleges that the two of you like the look of & check out the CollegeData info. For example [here](http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1575)is the CDS for Wake Forest: look under money matters and you will see that almost 1/3rd of the class got merit aid, averaging $30K (obviously, that’s an average, so be careful). So you know that Wake Forest might be affordable- if the merit aid comes through.