coping with a low SAT score

student2407
Sat, 10 Mar 2012 23:13:45 +0000

I think that there is something to not being a “good test taker” for the SAT. For example, I’ve always placed in the 95+ percentile in CA state testing for the past 11 years and in the 99th percentile on the ACT, but I only made the 90th percentile on my (first) SAT.

I do believe that grade inflation does exist but I doubt that it only exists in public schools. Public school students are disadvantaged in their quality of education and that is why many will score lower than private students.

My (public) school has a policy where your AP class grades are adjusted after AP testing meaning that you have to pass to get an A (or else they nock your grade down), and if you do far better on the test than in class then your grade is made higher. They also apply this to CA state testing where if you do unsatisfactory you are put in remedial classes but if you get in the top range your grade goes up a tad.

Anyway, we had two valedictorians last year and one had a 2380 and went to Stanford while the other had a 2250 and went to UCLA. This is even though our school has a low-ish CA API score in the low 800s.