<p>My child, now a junior, scored 1200 on the PSAT as a sophmore, with no prep work. Heck, I didn’t even know it was being given to all the sophmores. Anyway, her score seemed kind of low considering she is ranked close to the top of her class (4 out of 300 as a freshman). Is it likely that she would score the same on the SAT a year later? Or is the PSAT the exact same subject matter/content and any junior would likely improve their sophmore scores? Should enroll my junior in a prep class…? Also, she is profoundly deaf in her right ear and is apparently entitled to a quiet place and extra time for her tests. An accomodation has already been filed with the school but they told me I’d have to arrange this directly with the testing folks…any thoughts on this?</p>
<p>Some schools are less competitive. 120 on the PSAT is far below the national average even without prep work. I took it as a 7th grader and got 1470 (out of 1600) which is considered average among asians. Anyways, get the extra time. I do not see why being deaf would affect your ability to take the SAT since you never need to hear anything except “Stop. Put down your pencils”. I don’t see how extra time is applicable. Whatever. Try to get it if you can. If your daughter’s mental ability truly is disabled as a result of her deafness, then I apologize. Otherwise, the moral thing to do would be to ask to take the test as a normal person. </p>
<p>A few years back Collegeboard would mark disabled tester on the score report, but now they got rid of that so many “disabled testers” are getting close to perfect or perfect scores without being penalized during college admissions thanks to their “disablities” like “ADD”, which is really easy to get diagnosed with. Just pretend to have a short attention span in front of the doctor or nurse.</p>
<p>As for the SAT prep, if you feel the need to spend some money, go ahead. I would not, but prep companies claim SAT prep works. I doubt it. Princeton Review published their SAT prep book before collegeboard published theirs, which means they did not know waht teh questions would be like or just ********ted the book for money. They publish a “new version” each year, but hte only thing new about it is the date. </p>
<p>My advice: get the collegeboard blue book. get the collegeboard online course. straight from the source. the most in depth explanations are on the online course. they made teh test. They know every reason why this answer is rgiht why this answer is wrong. With the online course, your kid will know more than any Princeton review worker any day. Btw princeton review workers are required to have a bachelors degree and a 2100 on teh SAT. Nothing too great. Basically, they are unable to answer 1/10 of the questions on the test. If you have some moeny to throw around, get some essay prep. That is one thing the online course can’t help you with. You can’t get some guy to edit your essay. Collegeboard has some sort of grading algorithm, but it mostly just checks if your essay is long, the words are actual words, and if you used big SAT words. It is nothing like the real grading.</p>
<p>Thanks for replying…and helping.
Funny, the school counselor, when I could grab him for a minute, insisted that 1200 for the PSAT was a good score for a sophmore.</p>
<p>About the hearing issue, according to the Mass. Eye and Ear Hosp., being deaf in one ear is the equivalent of having ADD/ADHD, esp. when it’s the right ear, which is apparently the “speech” ear (vs. the left or “music” ear). When you hear in mono (vs. stereo), you can’t localize sound & all sounds become equally important and distracting, eg. a shoe shuffling, a pencil tapping etc. Therefore, for testing, the audiologist recommends a solitary quiet place.</p>
<p>I see. Then I apologize for my rude comments although I do know a fellow who pretended to have ADD for extra time. And the psat has a maximum score of 240. The national average is around 156 or so. Unless this 120 is for only the verbal portion and math portion, I am afraid it is in fact a terrible score. Even if 120 was only verbal and math added together, it is not competitive. I believe that would be around the 75-80 percentile. </p>
<p>As long as she has a good grasp of English grammar or just is a quick learner, she should be scoring in the 2100-2300s pretty easily in no time (as in a month or two of 1-2 hour a day practice). The key is confidence and carefully analyzing the questions and reviewing each answer and each question with the online course.</p>
<p>Yes, the 1200 score was just the math and verbal & I believe it was around 80%.
Anyway, thanks for your comments and your confidence that she can score well with a couple of months prep.</p>