Did atrocious on the SAT; SAT Optional Suggestions?

Parents Forum
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That’s not true. My daughter didn’t test well (though better than early_college) -but her academics were strong enough for her to be admitted to excellent colleges. She graduated summa cum laude & phi beta kappa. My son did test well (National Merit scholar) – but did poorly his first 2 years of college, took a hiatus, and graduated 7 years after he started with roughly a 3.4 GPA from a second-rate public university – but fortunately he continues to test well and just aced the GRE. (In the words of my d., “about 7 times better” than she expects to do). </p>

<p>I would agree that the strong test scores are important for my son to compensate for his less-than-stellar academic record, and degree from a non-elite U… but I doubt that my daughter will have any problems getting into whatever graduate program she chooses.</p>

<p>In the end, however, test scores count for almost nothing at all. In the real world, people demonstrate their full abilities by what the accomplish, not by what they score on a test. Early<em>college has already been admitted into an excellent college – hopefully the finances will be enough. If early</em>college does well in his studies, he will have good options for grad school if he so chooses. I’d advise ec to also pay attention to cultivating strong relationships with faculty along the way – I think that LOR’s carry far more weight for grad school admissions and fellowship applications than they do at the high school to college level.</p>

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<p>Well, good for ec for not wasting time on nonsense. Did anybody ever lay on their death bed and say, “I wish I had studied harder for the SAT?” </p>

<p>I wish other students on CC would spend more time researching schools and a lot less time obsessing over Ivies and their “dream” college.</p>

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<p>AMEN calmom. I couldn’t have said it better myself. At least one person agrees with me, lol. I love Clark and I really hope I go there. It has everything I’m looking for. They looked beyond my SAT scores. BTW, starting next admission cycle Clark will be going SAT Optional.</p>

<p>Cornell College is in fact not holistic. All they care about is the SAT. I think it is ridiculous to say I couldn’t keep up with their course-load when I’ve taken over 10 Honors/5 AP classes. I’m so glad I withdrew. GCSU, say there holistic, but they deferred me due to my SATs. Well, at least they didn’t reject me but I know a girl who got admitted with only 1 AP class. I tried so hard in APUSH and received a 4 on the exam, while she took the easy way out. In the end, it will come in handy in college.</p>

<p>And you know what? I’ll stop making excuses and tell you why I did bad. I did not study! That’s why I did bad on the SAT/ACT! It’s a waste of time like calmom stated. It’s not because I have a “learning disorder”, it’s because I didn’t study enough. Simple enough! I don’t believe a stupid test should determine my future, and for the most part it won’t be. And I have done bad on finals sometimes because I didn’t study. Sometimes I just give up if my grade is high enough, which I did in trig because there was no way I could get an A and my B was basically determined any way I would have done on the final. I know I can’t blow off finals in college, but in some cases it wasn’t worth all the added stress. I did great this semester on finals except for two classes, but oh well. I will def take the GRE or LSAT more seriously if I want to go to a top grad school, but I’ve already considered going to the Peace Corps after college and I could get a Masters for free. Or if I go to Clark, I can get a free MBA or a free Masters in Communications. Gosh, I love Clark :)</p>

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<p>Post #419:

You need to take the on-line estimators with a grain of salt for any college that does not guarantee to meet full need for its students. Those figures are estimates only, based on averages. If a college promises to meet full need, then it will be pretty close – but the colleges that don’t will leverage their aid. They will often be very, very generous with the students they want the most, and very, very stingy with those who they don’t care about (the “admit-deny” group). </p>

<p>It’s good for you to be looking at the numbers right now to be doing some planning, so you aren’t in for any rude awakening in the spring --but please don’t draw conclusions based on incomplete information. </p>

<p>Here’s what I think you should do from here on out: as your college applications are in and you have already been accepted at colleges that can offer a good education, focus your energies on finances. You might throw in some more applications to financial safeties – if any exist for you. (Weak test scores do put you at a disadvantage for merit aid – many colleges are using their merit money largely to build their US News rankings). </p>

<p>The other thing you can be doing is focusing on applying for private scholarship money. A few thousand dollars extra in scholarship money may make all the difference in the world to you in April, and if a college has “gapped” you (not met full need), they generally will not reduce their grant aid to you based on scholarship money. Basically, any college that claims they are meeting need with a parent Plus loan is gapping you.</p>

<p>I don’t think anyone is going to give you a huge bundle, but I do think it is very possible that you could get roughly between $2000-$8000 in private scholarship money if you make an effort to apply. The point is that you have to work as hard at researching and applying for various scholarships as have already done at researching and applying for colleges.</p>

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<p>I really need to start applying for more private scholarships. I’ve read that it is a waste to apply to these small scholarships when all these people are applying. Also, a lot of private scholarships are only for the first year. I haven’t found fastweb or scholarships . c om very useful or good. I did apply to a $900 alumni scholarship at my school and will be applying for theater scholarships at Thespian Conference in Feb, but I have just found trouble finding some which is worth the time and energy. My parents already told me that they won’t take out any parent plus loans.</p>

<p>GCSU is my financial safety, but I got deferred. I will find out in the end of Jan if I got accepted. I will apply to Valdosta State if I get rejected, but it isn’t ideal.</p>

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<p>If a person is a “bad test-taker” there is a REASON they can’t demonstrate their knowledge base in that format. Speaking in generalities and not about any one person, perhaps they have test anxiety, ADHD, impairment in speed of information processing, deficits in the automaticity of fluency in reasoning, graphomotor problems, visual scanning problems, cross-modal integration problems ,expressive language problems, memory difficulties,a reading or math disorder, trouble with organization/prioritization/executive function, NLD, you name it. Or maybe they do not understand test-taking strategies, do not have adequate study skills, or do not have the cognitive capacity to perform at a higher level than they did. Or maybe they are unwilling to put in the time ane effort it takes to study, have poor time management skills, blame everyting but the kitchen sink for their difficulties and do not take ownership of the issue and how to manage it. Sure there are people who are more naturally gifted in many areas, but if there truly is a big schism between one’s academic abilities and their performance on structured testing, then there is SOMETHING going on. </p>

<p>IIRC, Calmom, your dau had a huge discrepancy in her test scores (700s and 500s maybe? I dont recall exactly), and also, IIRC, Barnard was a reach, and you were pleasantly surprised at her admission. Thats all great. I still think Clark was a reach for EC, but noting that they have an** almost 70% admission rate**, want more males and geographical distribution representation, then these are all factors that likely helped tip the hat. And his GPA seemed to show an upward trend. Take full credit if you were the one and only one to suggest it. Its a good school and fits many of the OP’s desires. So hopefully its affordable. That remains to be seen.</p>

<p>Also, IIRC, your s had an identified learning issue. You looked into it, identified it early on, addressed it and remediated or accomodated it. You didnt make excuses or claim that you/he didn’t “believe in tests” .</p>

<p>The OP originally (after abandoning the early college idea) had some pretty lofty college targets (NYU, Vassar, to name a few). If he really wanted to be competitive for those schools, then taking a laissez faire " I am too busy and don’t have time to study and the study class I took was a joke" attitude was not going to end well. And it didn’t. There may have been tenacity shown, but it wasn’t always directed at the appropriate priority at the time. </p>

<p>If a person is a “bad test-taker” and makes no effort to identigy causality or remediate it, they either can work to avoid the tests (ie test optional schools) and select career paths that will not require it (the op has mentioned theater, journalism, etc). But if grad or professional school (or a career requiring certification) is in the future, then there will be tests to take… GREs LSACs, MCATs, licensing exams, state/professional/technical certification exams etc. It is not entirely easy to skirt the possibility of having to face an exam, but it is doable in some fields.</p>

<p>Many of us tried and tried and tired to be helpful. Maybe we were, and maybe we weren’t. We started out gently, and became increasingle direct (or many simply gave up). But merely rationalizing that one is a “bad test taker” and blaming the world for their issues instead of taking ownership of them isn’t helpful either. JMO.</p>

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<p>I don’t think fastweb is a particularly good resource either. In my opinion, the bet bets are local charitable organizations. They tend to be giving out smaller awards, between $500-$2500 – but they are also focused on giving the money to local kids – so you aren’t competing for that money on a national scale. Also – I think there may be some essay-contest type awards that might be a good match for your interest in holocaust studies – for example, see: <a href=“http://holocaust.hklaw.com/2012/index.asp[/url]”>http://holocaust.hklaw.com/2012/index.asp&lt;/a&gt; (their deadline appears to be in April). Winning an essay contest can be a longshot – but your chances are tremendously improved when it is an essay about something you really care about.</p>

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Yes – that REASON is that the SAT & ACT aren’t designed to ALLOW students to demonstrate their knowledge base. They are multiple choice tests with questions deliberately designed to be distracting and confusing, because that’s the only way they can force enough students to choose “wrong” answers to result in any sort of significant score differentiation. It’s more of a test of style than substance – highly intelligent and creative thinkers often mess up because they think too deeply about the questions, read more into each question than is there, and/or are too conscientious about their work to apply effective test-taking strategies, like guessing and moving on. (I always score very well on standardized tests because I am a very impatient person, so the minute I encounter a question on a test that might actually require some thought, I just give it my best guess and move on. I don’t, however, think the ability to guess-and-go has much use in real life – certainly as an employer I would never want that sort of person working for me.)</p>

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<p>Most multiple choice test construction (from the SAT to a driving exam) has correct responses, foils and close approximations. Thats the nature of the type of exam it is. They arent “deliberately designed to be distracting and confusing” . LOL-- I am having visions of people with warts and bad teeth cackling around a table saying “we can really throw them off with that choice, Hortense! Good job-- put that in”. Test and measurements is a science, and bad questions are ususally tossed. The ACT is a subject matter test, which does more directly assess content knowledge, not abstract reasoning or creative thinking.</p>

<p>Of COURSE the SAT and ACT allow the student to demonstrate their knowledge base.
Some people may overthink a question, but IMO “highly creative and intelligent thinkers” know exactly how not to fall into that.</p>

<p>The SAT was designed to predict academic success in ones freshman year of college. It has taken on a larget than life role, fed in part by the USNews and the like.</p>

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<p>Thanks so much for the scholarship suggestion calmom. I will def apply for it. And I agree with you 100%. There has been many studies that have been done showing that SAT scores are absolutely no indicator of intelligence and aren’t really good at ‘predicting’ how well you’ll do in college. I find it CRAZY others may think that a 3 hour test can do that. IT’S BS.</p>

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Even if that sentence was not full of grammatical errors it would still be wrong. The SAT is not a measure of intelligence, ec. But it IS (was developed to be) a predictor of sucess in ones freshman year (though it does not account for all the variance in factors contributing to success). Do you have any research citations for your claims? They would be most interesting to read.</p>

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<p>[Do</a> SAT Scores Really Predict Success? - ABC News](<a href=“Do SAT Scores Really Predict Success? - ABC News”>Do SAT Scores Really Predict Success? - ABC News)</p>

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<p>Memorizing a bunch of vocab flash cards does not = success, it does say how well a student is at memorizing though.</p>

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<p>That is an interesting new Tv news blurb. But what I asked for was published research. Can you provide citations?</p>

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<p>You should read this journal: [Project</a> MUSE - The Review of Higher Education - Who Will Succeed in College? When The SAT Predicts Black Students’ Performance](<a href=“http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/review_of_higher_education/v025/25.3fleming.html]Project”>http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/review_of_higher_education/v025/25.3fleming.html)</p>

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<p>Have you read that book, ec? (By the way, it isnt a book- its a 10 year old publication) Are you addressing one specific subset of a population? Can you explain the correlation coefficient and variables that explain the variance in the measures and the predictive validity in minority populations?</p>

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<p>You asked for published information generating my belief is true and I gave it to you…</p>

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<p>The lit review in that publication does address issues with predicting freshman performance in the African American population. Cannot generalize from that subset to a general population.</p>

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<p>So, it still talks about problems addressing academic success with a minority group. It talks about one of the several flaws of this stupid, stupid test.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/optrept.pdf[/url]”>http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/optrept.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;