<p>I don’t think OP and HFA are thinking about the test-optional level of schools. Frankly, the better colleges on the Fairtest list are very happy solutions for many families, the sort of families that don’t characterize their kids as “lazy,” but see the wealth of positives. </p>
<p>We all look at our kids and their potential, often note where they fall short. Neither of mine tested well, both are bright and well-educated, went to Top 20. We went through the gyrations of trying to get them self-motivated- but focused on positives: their abilities, their apparent interests, their valid accomplishments. I am baffled by parents calling their kids lazy. “Glass half empty.”</p>
<p>Of course, we have kids on CC who say their parents are highly demanding. There is always, imo, something sad in their tones. At 15 and 16, do the boys, themselves, want a top college and an engineering future? Or is this, once again, about what the parents want?</p>
<p>Yes, in general, the BS offer solid guidance, test prep, the sorts of EC participation that colleges like, and great LoRs.</p>
<p>“But…prepping for the PSAT was not happening.”</p>
<p>I actually don’t believe in prepping for the PSAT or PLAN at all. I think it is best used as a baseline - so one knows where kid’s strengths and weaknesses are before they take the SAT or ACT in spring of Junior year (I don’t believe either of those should be taken any earlier, either.) Once you know the baseline and what kid needs to work on - then, if you choose, get a tutor who will work with kid on their weakness or if not, they can begin prep on their own. </p>
<p>If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have had my kid take the PSAT his soph. year, either - but his school has all the kids take it Soph. year. </p>
<p>Fwiw, I would not have dreamed to prepare for the SAT or PSAT in the ninth grade. It was simply not an area of concern or conversation. I did take the mostly worthless PLAN in the Fall of the 9th grade and had taken the mandatory TIP in sixth or seventh grade in middle school. Few people paid much attention to the Kiddies SAT and ignored the invitation by Duke (or whatever schools organizes the first ego-boosting summer camps. </p>
<p>However, I could not disagree more about avoiding the PSAT in the 10th grade and wait until its official version in the Fall of the Junior year. By all accounts, that is both too late and a … huge mistake. </p>
<p>One can EASILY overcome a 1500 9th grade score but it will not happen by simply counting on the HS progression and classes. Simply stated, with its current version, there is little more that will serve to increase a SAT score in the 10th or 11th grade, except for the occasional Alg II concept and deeper learning of graphical functions. </p>
<p>One can overcome a 1500 by starting a proactive (a marathon vs a sprint) preparation that has a target date of none other than the 11th grade PSAT dat ein October and for BOTH the PSAT and SAT. The advice to wait and use for the PSAT to establish a baseline in the 11th grade is what comes from your typically poor GC office. And it is dead wrong! </p>
<p>If you want an “official” baseline, the PSAT of the tenth grade might work. Note that in my book, that baseline serves little to no purpose as most kids will need to address their deficiencies. The beginning score does not really matter! The start of the preparation should be during the 10th grade and have its apex in the summer BEFORE the junior year and again focus on both tests in that Fall. </p>
<p>The rest of the 11th grade and 12th grade should be reserved for the other tests, including those pesky AP tests. Hoping for great reversals in the senior year is a bad play. If one did not find the time to work on the SAT, chances are that when the demands increase with college applications or your typical senior HS courses … there won’t be much time or energy. </p>
<p>None of the above, inclduing my use of the term marathon, intimates that it should be a long-term calvary. A dedicated workplan might not take more than a couple of hours a month over a long period of time. And in the rare event a tutor will be needed, most of the preparation part will be over … allowing the parent to know exactly what a tutor should focus on. </p>
<p>I wonder if some of these students are “lazy” because they aren’t really interested in the plans their parents have for them, and are (consciously or unconsciously) sabotaging their parents’ plans. What if, for example, the kid doesn’t really want to be an engineer, even though the parents have already decided (while he is still in the middle of high school) that this is what he will do?</p>
<p>“One can overcome a 1500 by starting a proactive (a marathon vs a sprint) preparation that has a target date of none other than the 11th grade PSAT dat ein October and for BOTH the PSAT and SAT. The advice to wait and use for the PSAT to establish a baseline in the 11th grade is what comes from your typically poor GC office. And it is dead wrong!”</p>
<p>Well, my kid didn’t start prepping at all until after his Jr. yr. PSAT and his scored increased tremendously. I think too long a time prepping leads to burn out. I didn’t want 3 years of my kid’s high school experience to revolve around a preparation for standardized test. </p>
<p>But you are entitled to your opinion and when you have kids you are free to do what you think is best for them. </p>
<p>Prepping for the SAT and PSAT is complicated for the next few years, especially if you have a student currently entering 10th grade. The Fall 2015 PSAT will be the new re-designed test, while the October, November, December 2015 and the January 2016 SAT will still be the old test. I do think there are significant differences in the test. Further, sample tests will not be released until Spring 2015 so you do have a somewhat smaller window for the new PSAT prep.</p>
<p>I believe I am the original poster of “love the kid on the couch” so I am going to come back and tell a new generation of parents what they don’t want to hear.</p>
<p>HF- The idea of “I just want him/her into a decent engineering school” is so ludicrous I can barely stop laughing. Sure- you can cajole or bribe or coax or nag your HS kid into an engineering program but then what? Spend Monday-Thursday camped out in his or her dorm room to make sure your kid goes to lecture, hands in problem sets, goes to lab?</p>
<p>So just forget that plan from the git-go. Nobody is making through an engineering program without wanting to be there. Nobody. It’s too hard and too time consuming. So let it go right now.</p>
<p>To the OP and all the other folks weighing in on their lazy kid- the problem is you and not your kid. Sure, it’s easy to be the parent of the kid who is out there curing cancer and winning awards and whose teachers say, “this is the most curious and hard-working kid I have taught in a decade”. And sure, it’s easy to say, “yes” when your over-achiever asks if you can drop him at the bus station at 7 am because he’s talked his way into an internship with a major think tank but since he’s only 14 and doesn’t have a driver’s license, he’ll need you to help with the commute. And yeah- it’s real easy to yell “Get out of the garage and go to bed” every night at midnight because your kid is tinkering with a home-made defibrillator he or she has crafted out of parts bought at radio shack which can be distributed in rural communities which don’t have emergency rooms for $10 (including shipping).</p>
<p>We’d all love a kid like this. And we all know we’d have the secret sauce for taking a kid with so much moxie and so much energy and so much creativity and curiosity and molding him or her into the Rhodes- winning/Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cal Tech and MIT admit we’d love to have spawned. Or helping that kid figure out how to apply to Julliard and Curtis even when the auditions conflict with the Intel finals. And helping figure out how to get home from the White House after the Presidential Scholar ceremony in time for the Olympic trials in his/her event.</p>
<p>Guess what? Your job is to love the kid you have- not this kid. Your job is to work with YOUR kids interests and talents and aspirations, not to mold the go-getter you didn’t spawn. Your job is to figure out where the disconnect is between the person your teenager wants to be and the fading photo of the person you think he or she SHOULD be.</p>
<p>That’s your job. Love the kid on the couch because that’s your kid.</p>
<p>I have many nuggets of advice on a practical level of how to encourage a kid who doesn’t seem to be operating at his or her potential. But none of them work until you’ve looked at your kid, then looked at yourself, and recognized who has the problem.</p>
<p>I totally agree with blossom. Those are words to live by.</p>
<p>I will add, though, that there are kids who sometimes need some urging to get off the couch and do something. But I think what blossom is saying is that it won’t work unless that something is something the kid wants to do–even if he needs prodding to get him to do it.</p>
<p>Hunt, like I said- I have many practical and time tested tips for helping a kid find his voice or her passion.</p>
<p>But I know dozens (yes I counted- and it’s dozens) of adult children with terrible or non-existent relationships with parents who tried to shoehorn the artist into medicine, or who bribed the playwright into chemical engineering, or who just spent their adolescent years hearing what a disappointment they were to the family.</p>
<p>What adult wants to have a loving relationship with people who made them feel lousy and worthless for the last 20 years?</p>
<ul>
<li>That could have been me and my son. We werent trying to push him into anything - all we wanted was for him to do his homework and if he did it - not to forget to turn it in! We had to pull him from his public school and put him in a private school in 9th grade or high school would have been the horror that middle school was. It was much better for us to let his school dish out the consequences than us. Fortunately, it only took one detention the first week he was there for him to turn around and he had a great 4 years of high school and our family life was a lot more pleasant. </li>
</ul>
<p>Fwiw, the results of the 10th grade PSAT are shared around December - January. Starting to pay closer attention to the SAT in the Spring plus working with some diligence between the summer and October of the 11th grade is hardly a … 3 years ordeal. I estimate it at a 10 months with perhaps 90 days of harder than usual effort during the times school is out. </p>
<p>And again, except for the summer months, the “work” is never more than a a few hours a month. How does that compare with other activities that are also targeting the increase in changes in the application process? </p>
<p>I maintain that the earlier preparation is beneficial on many levels, but feel free to disagree or think that waiting is the weapon of choice against the usual procrastination exhibited by high schoolers. And, again, the type of schedule I suggest has aboslutely nothing to do with a boot camp! It is an alternative to the cramming and late scrambling that is often described by teenagers here. </p>
<p>“I maintain that the earlier preparation is beneficial on many levels, but feel free to disagree or think that waiting is the weapon of choice against the usual procrastination exhibited by high schoolers. And, again, the type of schedule I suggest has aboslutely nothing to do with a boot camp! It is an alternative to the cramming and late scrambling that is often described by teenagers here.”</p>
<p>Who said anything about boot camp? So test prep for PSAT and SAT is “only ten months” including the summer before Jr yr. and then the rest of 11th & 12th is prepping for AP exams. That is not boot camp - which is a very intensive but short period of time. What you suggest is more like a long drawn out prison sentence for the poor kids. Sorry, but bleugh, imo. </p>
<p>My son certainly didn’t cram. He worked two hours a week on prep for his ACT and SAT starting after we got his PSAT scores Jr. year and then once a week for a hour after taking them in spring of Jr. year. That was it. Since he was accepted at all the schools where he applied it certainly worked well enough for him. And he didn’t even take any AP classes (which I am also not a fan off.) </p>
<p>I don’t think there is only one way that works and people should decide what they think will work best with their particular student. </p>
<p>Ever considered that others might have experiences different from your own and your children? And perhaps opinions that are based on more than a N of 1? </p>
<p>Have you considered that there are students who do plan their full curriculum of HS and believe that APs are important? Have you considered that there are students who see the SAT as a bit more important than you do, and perhaps hope their scores might help them look beyond SAT-optional schools? </p>
<p>Agree there is definitely not only one way and agree on loving the kid on the couch.
But–if students wait until their junior year PSAT to get a baseline, they may potentially miss out in natl merit. Older son, unaware of the whole nm scholarships, did no prep and did make the cutoff. Younger son, aware of the natl merit, wants to reach it, feels capable of doing so but says he wants to prep before taking the test for the extra assurance. Summer is really the best time for him to do a lot of practice as his schedule gets busy once classes start. I don’t see this as a long, burning out session and I am a parent who believes in giving kids the freedom to explore their interest and dreams–not mine!</p>
<p>Anyways, mostly I pointed to illustrate that some kids respond well to outside imposed guidelines for these kinds of practices. Not jumping up and doing it spontaneously does not make them lazy.</p>
<p>“if students wait until their junior year PSAT to get a baseline, they may potentially miss out in natl merit.”</p>
<p>True, but that goes to knowing your kid. I have a better chance of winning the lottery than my kid would have scoring high enough to be a NMS. He could have studied every day for years. Most kids have zero chance of being a NMS. </p>
<p>Blossom, thanks for the useful phrase, “love the kid on the couch.” It is repeated often on CC.</p>
<p>Sometimes it is better to spend time on other pursuits and skip the test prep altogether. I kind of felt my relationship with the kids was more important and didn’t nudge on that issue: they pursued their interests outside of school and never prepped as a result. Two did fine, one didn’t, but they all found their niches.</p>
<p>There are some top schools on the test-optional college list and more are joining those ranks every year.</p>
<p>Boarding school??? Gee- why are you so concerned about planning your son’s life then shipping him off so someone else has the day to day job of forming his character? You either keep him at home so you (hopefully) have more control over his activities or you trust the school to instill those good study habits et al. Perhaps getting away from parents may be the best thing for this boy, he may transform into more of the person you want him to be. And, why have YOU decided on engineering? Perhaps a science or even humanities will be his forte. </p>
<p>One could say the parent is lazy because s/he doesn’t want to spend the time every day looking after the son’s welfare. </p>
<p>From the upper Midwest where public education trumps private. Boarding school is highly uncommon. That 2400 SAT was from a public school educated kid.</p>
<p>As others have said, if you care about merit scholarships, the PSAT could get you a lot.</p>
<p>And definitely get to know your child. I was someone who didn’t think of prepping for standardized tests as work, but rather as a challenge and logic puzzles. I had more fun doing practice tests than most schoolwork.</p>