Clearly you have a very bright and determined daughter and I have no doubt that in the end, she will end up exactly where she is supposed to be.
Just to be clear, I was by no means suggesting she change/tailor her major to gain admission to any particular college. I was just sharing our “discovery” which has turned out to be a huge blessing for my daughter.
Best of luck to your daughter!
Look at CTCL schools. Colleges that change lives.
Muhlenberg gave my S merit and need based aid in the NPC which surprised us.
Does she mind religious schools? Messiah College and Grove City College might give some good aid.
The best way to find a tutor is to talk to parents of older students who have gone through the process. Private tutors are typically the ones who have the best success rates. Many of the tutoring centers and prep classes advertise more than they can truly deliver.
My D raised her SAT by 200+ by taking a group class. She’d originally had a private tutor who, frankly, was of no help. Of course, it all depends on the class and/or the tutor. When my S was studying for the GRE, he used the Magoosh app - very reasonable (under $100 for 3 months) which allowed him to do questions in small doses on his cell phone - waiting for a bus, while eating lunch, etc. You might look into that. You could also try Khan Academy online (free) - maybe suggest your D watch 2 or 3 short videos a day. Have her do the SAT question of the day. We found doing a little something every day helped and was less pressure.
Agree, too, that FairTest list should be pursued. She’ll need safety and match schools.
I would also consider working with a therapist on the test anxiety since it’s popped up in other areas of her life (tennis). College exams are pressure filled too because there are so few of them. Would be good to get that addressed sooner rather than later.
I’m a test prep tutor and I’ve seen a lot of high GPA kids do poorly on these tests. I don’t think it’s anything that warrants a therapist, but I do think a good tutor is helpful.
For many kids, it’s not that they don’t understand the questions or content. It’s that they repeatedly do silly things that tank their score. It’s not necessarily anything, IMO, that indicates some kind of learning disability.
I watch what kids are doing when they are taking a timed test section. For example, yesterday I worked with a super smart guy who hovered with his pencil near the right answer for seconds before circling it. That’s a time waster. He circled correctly, and then went right back to look at all the answer choices again. More time wasted.
Then he moved on to another question, crossed out one choice, skipped that and moved on to other questions. He eventually went back to the question where he had crossed out only one answer, and then circled that answer! It was, of course, wrong. He should have spent more time eliminating answers on that one question, then moved on. The net result was that he ended up rushing to complete the section, and rushing isn’t helpful.
This is pretty typical behavior of a lot of students who, IMO, overthink these tests. They think the tests are harder than they are. So they do okay when they do practice tests at home, but come test day, they do let the pressure get to them and it’s probably silly test taking “hygiene” that prevents a higher score on test day.
Students need to understand that these tests are not like regular tests. They are designed to confuse. I have to grudgingly admire the fiendish ways of the test makers who create these misleading answers.
Parents and students would do well to understand that these tests may be standardized, but are not true indicators of ability or intelligence. One student I know of is probably the smartest kid I’ve ever met. She applied TO to a school well-known for that. She majored in something a lot of CCer’s would possibly turn their noses up at (think along the lines of medieval studies, etc…), won an international award in a highly competitive intellectual pursuit, graduated summa cum laude, won a nationally known postgrad scholarship opportunity, and got a great job at a fantastic creative company.
These tests aren’t about intelligence. They are about trying to put students into groups of percentages.
I like to compare standardized tests to the service academies’ CFA test (Candidate Fitness Assessment) which measures the applicants’ physical fitness. Specifically one thing they ask them is to get down on one knee and see how far they can throw a basketball. Yup, you may be a 34 ACT, All-State swimmer and national science award winner, but how far can you throw a basketball? They’ve been doing it for decades. The thing to know is it’s not something anyone will ever do again, rather it’s a test to see if you can learn to do something physical. So instead of seeing the SAT as some measure of your personal worth, maybe think of it as a chance to learn an academic skill and demonstrate it. If you realize it’s part of a larger picture that only describes you rather than defining you, it might alleviate some of the pressure on test day.
The fact of the matter is that there are some folks who just are not going to it the highest notes on standardized tests for whatever reason there are also many of us who can only get that far by breaking our necks and putting in time and focus to the point where…there is no point of doing so. All of these things should be weighted into the measures one is contemplating.
My low test score kid is a high achieving adult now. We put in a certain amount of effort on SAT/ACT test prep and then he worked on GRE prep, and did not get much improvement. He’s had to work around these issues. Has a job he loves, a master’s from Harvard after getting into his first choice undergrad school (OOS Flagship. He figures he’s invested just enough time he should in test prep and his efforts in looking at other avenues has paid off a heckuva a lot better as he’s doing better, is healthier and happier than many of his high testing high school peers from back in the day. Mind you, he did not simply throw in the towel on test prep but determined that if a certain amount of extra effort wasn’t getting desired results, that alternatives measures should be examined.
My close friend’s DD could not get the marks on her GRE to get into the top programs in her field. She spent a year working for a professor in her field, whose recommendation got her into one of those programs despite the low test score though it was a year later. She is now happily working in that field of study
@Lindagaf. This was my son exactly. He knew the material but the scores were not there. Practice tests were amazing. Then his personal tutor watched him take the practice test not just take it on his own and then go over answers. Same type of thing. Time wasters. So they spent a good amount of time on the “speed” of the tests and not doing the time waster stuff… This helped greatly. Great points.
Another view: sometimes the standardized test scores give an indication of 'where she is at". Find colleges that meet that. Kids usually want to go to a particular school because they have “heard of it” or it is “famous” but not always because it matches their needs.
Change the colleges for the kid, not the kid for the college.
“The crazy thing is that when my daughter started with the tutor she was getting low 30s in certain sections on the ACT. So to drop to mid 20s on the actual test was pretty demoralizing.”
My first thought was that the practice tests were either not actual ACT tests (not likely as tutors have access to past tests) or were not timed properly, likely, or the student had test jitters as they say. If a student knows they’re going to take the test twice say, you would think the student would be more relaxed on the first attempt. Anyway, that’s a big gap, a 31 and a 24 in english is like 17 questions.
“As mentioned things like slower processing can be an issue as someone already mentioned.”
Ok, but that would have been picked up on the practice tests if they were timed correctly, i.e. leaving a bunch of questions blank, usually show up then. This gives the tutor an idea of focus. If the kids is getting a 32 or 33 on the practice tests, the focus is very different than a 24. @Lindagaf and others would probably know more about that.
Years ago, there was a poster called @xiggi, who laid out a method for preparing for the standardized tests. We followed his method and both kids did well and in particular one raised her scores considerbly. I found this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/70589-xiggie-method.html. I’m sure there are others.
@RonaldP66 If it’s any consolation, I’ve been in your shoes as a parent. S tested meh, did one on one tutoring where practice tests were fantastic … retook SAT and got the exact same score as 1st time. I think I cried.
He just would over think things. Did same stuff in his sport - practice phenomenal, game day was a crap shoot.
However, he got into college (including a test optional reach) and is in his mid-20’s, employed, happy, etc.
I think reach schools are fine. Kids do get in with lower scores sometimes. IMO the kindest thing you can do is to help your D find a couple of realistic choices that she can get excited about.
The only advice I have is to find a great test center that has a full schedule, their own materials, with practice tests and reviews. It’s a few months long thing, with 1-1 tutoring. If she’s already done a full, excellent test prep (2 of ours did prep through Huntington), then maybe she’s not going to go up. And you’ve gotten great advice on TO schools.
If she’s wanting to try more, and she’s already done a full prep course, has she used the Black Book for SAT or ACT? It has lots of test taking advice and is easy to read.
It’s great that you’re not putting pressure on her. And, I’m sure it’s demoralizing for her (we have an anxious tennis player too?), and we thought we’d be in a similar position, so we’ve found lots of great options for her and constantly reassured her that it’s just a test, has nothing to do with her intelligence, and look at all these great schools you can go to…and for those she was interested in that we thought no way would she get in, showed her problems with them (so cold!, kids seem stressed, I’d want to have fun in college! etc.) I think it really decreased her anxiety.
Good luck!
We’re taking a couple month break so she can basically start from scratch for the July and August tests. We’re also probably going to get a tutor from a different place so she can get a different perspective and a different voice in her ear. I’m glad we started this process early even though we were hoping for different results. Because I would hate to be going through this in the fall when there would be too much pressure and the application process would be well underway.
If L.A. means Los Angeles, then be glad that UCs emphasize SAT/ACT less than HSGPA in admission.
Please don’t over stress. A 34 is the sweet spot perhaps for the most selective schools in the world. It’s not any sweet spot. 60k roughly out of 1.6mm test takers - roughly- achieve that score. It’s extremely rare. Don’t despair. 22 is average or there about.
Now, there is no reason she cannot improve her score with the advice above. She is very bright obviously
However, with so many schools on the east coast, both test optional and overlooked at the top. Don’t despair. There are many options.
Yes, we live in Los Angeles but my daughter has fallen involve with the east coast. She did a program called Explo at Yale for two summers and loved the program, atmosphere, and the kids she met. It’s a program that is simply based at Yale, not affiliated with Yale. They took some classes and also got to travel. She loved the Boston area especially and that’s where she hopes to land. In our experiences the kids on the east coast are a bit different than in L.A. so my daughter has made much better friends in the two summers on the east coast than in 2 plus years in high school. I tell family and friends that she’s one of those kids that if she’s fortunate to get to a college on the east coast I don’t see her coming back to L.A.
I went through the ACT/SAT thing with all of my kids – some of them did well right out of the hole, others struggled (all were good students). For the ones that struggled test prep class really helped - one of them got quite a jump in results. They taught the kids strategies to taking the test. It can be worth it - for us we were looking for that next level of scholarships so the cost of the class was far less than the 4 years of additional scholarship $$