<p>Placing out of college language requirements: could this be done with an SATII taken at the end of senior year? It’s still all a moot point for now, as OD could end up only applying to schools which have no language requirement.</p>
<p>I was looking at the percentile ranks for the SATIIs the Spanish scores (both reading and listening). They seem to indicate that there aren’t a lot of native speakers taking SATII subject test. Which seems odd and/or depressing, since UC requires two SATII tests. My off-the-top-of-my-head explanations, all of which are depressing: UC is right, there really are a lot of high school seniors, especially spanish-as-first-language students, who are not getting good GC advice and don’t realize that they’re supposed to take SATIIs to qualify for UC admission. OR, spanish-as-home-language students just aren’t applying to UCs and privates. OR, spanish-as-home-language students are bombing on that SATII. Ugh, these are all awful. Could someone come up with something else?</p>
Yes, but it has to be before you start college (spring/summer senior year is fine). You have to check if your school has an option of testing out though - not all schools do.</p>
<p>I hope that maybe kids that take Spanish (non-native speakers) do better relatively to the native speakers (compared to other languages) because there’s much more exposure to Spanish in the US?</p>
<p>Have to disagree somewhat with JHS. As someone else mentioned, if daughter doesn’t mind taking the subject tests and has taken the relevant class (especially AP whatever) take the subject test as soon as coursework is completed. Subject tests are only an hour. I know lots of kids who did just that and are on their way to Ivys and top LACs. No harm in taking both U.S. History and World History again if your daughter doesn’t mind the testing and believes she can do well. If however, she takes three from different disciplines and scores are out of the park, I don’t see the wisdom of taking more.</p>
<p>bigman, just to be clear, I wasn’t talking about taking the same subject matter tests later. Obviously, if you’re going to take a subject matter test, you take it after you take the relevant course. What I was relaying was the relevant experience with one of my children that when he took an SAT II in 10th grade he got a score consistent with his 10th grade PSATs, and that when he took other SAT IIs in 11th grade, his scores were consistent with his 11th grade SAT Is, and that if it had been YOUR child you would not have been happy about including the 10th grade score in his application (which of course happened even though he had three much better scores to submit). In hindsight, he should not have taken the SAT II in his 10th grade subject. He didn’t need to, and it didn’t help.</p>
<p>Now, if your child scored 800s on the SAT Is in 7th grade, and aced precalculus in 9th grade, by all means have him or her take the Math II SAT II at the end of 9th grade. That’s not really an optional test, and you have a track record of good testing already.</p>
<p>JHS - my son did not score 800 on the SAT I in 7th grade, but he scored very high, both in Math and English. He is a good test taker. He will be taking Pre-Calc in 8th grade and we really do not know if he should take Math II at the end of his 8th grade or if he should wait till he is done with , hopefully, AP Calc as a HS freshman? Honestly, I am not familiar with SAT II at all, what is a difference between the levels if math?
Tokenadult indicated that his son took Math II after 8th grade and there was a problem with score sending. Has anyone else been in this position - kids taking AP or SAT II after 8th grade?</p>
<p>I know that Collegeboard automatically sends to colleges only scores from tests taken in grades 9 through 12. Whether you are able to jump through hoops to include scores from grade 8 I don’t know.</p>
He should go ahead and take it now. If it’s a good score you’ll have to petition the College Board to put it on his permanent record, if not it should disappear and he can try again. I’m betting though that he’ll get a great score. I think he should take it in 8th grade, as you can actually forget some of the stuff by the time you’ve taken a year of calculus.</p>
Well, we still have one year to go but it looks like a win-win situation if you take it before 9th grade. If the scores are bad, nobody ever sees them and if they are good you retrieve them.
Tokenadult - was it difficult to obtain your son’s scores?</p>
<p>I also think my son will get a good score, and I definitely believe in the practice test
It gets kind of crazy if your kid is advanced in particular subject, I am so glad you guys here understand the problem!</p>
<p>Although I agree that Kelowna’s son should take the test at the end of 8th grade (this will provide him with what used to be “score choice” - he will be able to use the score if he is happy with it, and disregard it if he isn’t - it will not automatically be on his score report), I don’t think that a kid that is that good at math will ever need any revisions for Math II. I bet he’ll get 800 if you wake him up in the middle of the night at any point of his HS career to take it. For a “math kid” it is an easy test.</p>
<p>This is a fascinating discussion! I thought that SAT IIs weren’t required for many schools (called a couple of schools my son – a junior – is considering – RPI, Georgia Tech – & they all said: “not required; won’t help w/admission.”).</p>
<p>Now I’m rethinking based on reading this thread – son is taking AP Language & Composition & AP US History2 this year – thought it would be a 2 for one if he just hit the SAT II history test, but all the adcoms seem to say that it would be “irrelevant” for a potential computer science major.</p>
<p>Not sure if it’s a general rule, though, to try to get a few SAT IIs — at least 2, regardless of potential major?</p>
<p>The letter that came from our guidance department said that the more selective schools required these tests. It seems like a very bad situation to me (for everyone involved except the CB, who is raking in money), because clearly many kids will take test that will end up being unnecessary. But the advice seems to be to take the tests just in case.</p>
<p>If your son applies to an engineering/techie school an SAT like US History probably doesn’t count for much, but if he applies to a liberal arts college many don’t care what your likely major is when evaluating your scores. If he’s in a good AP history class he’s likely to score very well.</p>
<p>I just skimmed fast, so sorry if this has been mentioned already, but I know that S’s school looks at the top two SAT II scores in any subject and does not include the lower scores. In that case, it could pay for a student to take more than the two.</p>
<p>That’s interesting. I always figured – if you test okay – why not just add a few SATII’s to the portfolio? Good to hear some arguments for that point, esp. if attandance at a tech school is not a given.</p>
