Please run the net price calculators to see if the money is doable. You and your D do not want to get all starry-eyes over a school which may not be financially feasible especially since you mentioned a lot of aid. I know at almost 70k a year it could be a relative thing.
Have the money talk now about how must the family can realistically afford to pay/borrow or if you will be chasing merit.
Agreed about the merit. Your D19 is interested in med school. For the most part, med schools don’t care that much where you go to undergrad (to an extent, of course). IMO, you’d be better off going to the school that gives you the most merit aid for undergrad. That gives you 5-6 years to save for medical school.
If it were my child, I would let the 33 stand, unless your child suggests otherwise. Leave it up to her. 33 is not a ‘disqualifying’ score (so to speak) anywhere. It is a strong score that shows she is capable of college work at the top colleges. And there are more important things to do than cram for standardized tests— do homework to excel in classes, participate meaningfully in clubs/ sports/ activities… and, oh yeah, be a kid, enjoying friends and high school!
I would consider another try. A 33 this early in the game means she can do it again. Having kids with the 33 and no magic money anywhere I would say that 3 tries is a reasonable approach. 33 is the top 2%, there are a lot of bodies in that top 2%. If you are aimed at tippy tops, she should try again. If she wants max merit, she should try again.
what is her math level this year? Unlike the SAT, the ACT-m contains several trig problems, which she may not have been exposed to. If so, her math score might go up normally.
Also, note that by applying ED to BU, they may expect you to be full pay.
(pro tip: the trig problems can usually be solved with the Pythagorean Thm.)
So this is a junior that took the test in the spring as a sophomore or early this fall? Sure, I’d take the April or June test and focus on math prep. You can get math books JUST to practice those types of problems. Especially if she is taking higher level math this year. If she were spring or fall of senior year, I wouldn’t bother and work with what she had.
My kid got a 31 spring of sophomore with a high of 35 and a low of 28. He has naturally gone up 4 composite points every year (23 8th grade, 27 9th grade, 31 10th grade) so to my thinking there is a good chance that math score will naturally come up a bit even without much effort or prep. We test annually because we homeschool and started in middle school. I wouldn’t spend thousands on prep or go overboard, but I do think a kid in that position is likely to see that score naturally go up.
ETA - many prep companies use extra hard tests for prep. I wouldn’t assume her score was a fluke. I still think it’s worth minmal prep and a try if she wants to. If she balks, it’s fine to quit. We’ve just done very little prep year to year other than keeping up math review and seen scores go up HUGE amounts in some places in one academic year.
I would have her take it again late Junior year. Have her practice the type of problems she got wrong.
As mentioned before, ACT Math score depend a lot on how much content do you know. Math Knowledge of a Junior is substantially different from that of a Sophomore. So, it is very clear you need to / you want to retake ACT for the sake of improving math score. Main issue seems to be whether to wait until Sep, or run the risk of diluting the focus on core subjects in the Junior year, and retake the test in Spring.
In my opinion Sep is not to late even for ED applications. However, April is a good alternative if she can take a couple of weeks to focus on ACT prep.