<p>and saying hello to all! My DD is entering 8th grade and has big dreams! I’m hoping to learn from all of you who have “been there, done that” on the road to helping your child succeed in achiveing their goals!</p>
<p>My first question: Where do we start??? DD has ivy league hopes, and I know there are things she needs to be doing over the next years to even be considered…HELP!!!</p>
<p>DD is on track for honors level courses in all of the academic subjects next year…should we arrange for her to take the PSAT next fall? What else?</p>
<p>Welcome! We are a wonderful bunch, if I do say so myself. </p>
<p>At this point, all your daughter should do is work hard in her honors courses, and find a few extracurriculars that she loves. </p>
<p>8th grade, 9th grade and even 10th grade are too early to take the PSAT. It really is designed for juniors. If she takes it too early, you will not get a realistic assessment of her capabilities. So it’s kind of a waste of time to take it early.</p>
<p>Let your child be a child for at least two, maybe three more years. The classes she takes should be the ones that are right for her, and then she will already be on the right track. Really do not start worrying about this process before she is even in High School. Let her play soccer, music, dance, art, math, science, gardening, whatever she is interested in. When she gets to high school, check out the college guidance that’s available. If it’s good, leave it to them. They will know what they are doing, and when to do it. It it’s not good, ask around and find out what the older students did and are doing to learn about the process, and do actually proceed. You are rushing things to be asking these questions now, and that really is going to make for too much stress at this point.</p>
<p>“even 10th grade are too early to take the PSAT”
sorry to disagree, but if a student has the opportunity to take the PSAT[ a 1 hr test] as a sophomore, she should jump at it. By doing so, a student can see if they are within range of the NMF cutoff for their state, and find out if they need to “bone up” in any area. The difference between NMF and commended could mean thousands of dollars of merit $ for many colleges. U of Southern Calif. for instance offers automatic 1/2 tuition scholarships for MNF’s.</p>
<p>We toured an Ivy or two (or three), and the general admission statement was to take the most challenging courses you are capable of in high school, and do well in them. None of them stated a SAT/ACT cut off score, although you can check the averages of the admitted students on the schools’ common data sets. </p>
<p>Some school districts have advanced 8th graders taking 9th grade classes. If your daughter is capable of that, and she wants to do it, go for it. Caution, however: some colleges use freshman grades to calculate the final GPA. If so, the accelerated work your daughter does in 8th grade may come into play. This probably isn’t a big deal unless she is in the running for valedictorian and you are down to the final .001 of a point…(really, though, a pretty rare situation!).</p>
<p>She could certainly take the PSATs next year if you want her to. But, it’s a little early, and it might be discouraging if she hasn’t covered the material yet. If you want her to practice, you could get a study guide.</p>
<p>Talk to her about her extracurricular interests. If she has something that she has loved to do since she was little, by all means, keep doing it. If there is something that she has an interest in that she hasn’t tried yet, this is a great time to start. But don’t let her spread herself too thin. It’s better to do fewer things with a great passion.</p>
<p>You could begin the college visits, but it’s a bit early to do it officially. Start with your local schools, and just walk around the campus. Eat lunch in the student union. Get a tee shirt in the bookstore.</p>
<p>She probably doesn’t have many choices for electives this year, but if she does, I hope she can take the classes that interest her, rather than what “might look good on a resume”. Actually, this advice applies to high school, too. </p>
<p>Scheduling-wise, I’m not a big fan of the “study hall”. Better to let the kid take an elective that interests him (her) than to sit in a room and maybe/maybe not do homework (and if that is the only time the kid has to do homework, then maybe a time-management discussion is in order). However, if a kid needs it to get regular extra help from a teacher, then, of course, study hall is a good idea. </p>
<p>What interests does she have? Start your college search there. All Ivys are not alike. Harvard is as different from Cornell as two schools can be. An Ivy education is not so great if the school isn’t a fit. Don’t stop with Ivys either. If selectivity and prestige are important (and it certainly is for some) there are plenty of colleges outside of the Ivy League that fit that criteria. </p>
<p>The things not to lose sleep over: </p>
<p>1) If you read some of the kids’ posts here, you would think that your academic life and Ivy League dreams are over unless you score over 750 on each segment of the SATs. This isn’t true. </p>
<p>2) If the score was good the first time, don’t worry too much about taking it again to get an even higher score. According to CollegeBoard:
</p>
<p>3) A few .01’s of a point on a GPA is very unlikely to make any difference in admissions (depending on her class rank- if she is on the way to val or sal, then, it’s a different story).</p>
<p>As a parent who never knew the process I agree with making sure that your kid gets to be a kid. We all know parents who get too involved - but I STRONGLY believe that you as a parent should educate yourself in order to be a resource for your child as they navigate the whole “college thing” and now is definitely not to early to educate yourself. </p>
<p>If your child has ivy league dreams (and they are HER dreams) and based on a more mature thought process than would normally be associated with a child her age, than you owe it to her to start to educate yourself. Waiting till her sophomore or junior year to help provide the guidance she may require will be way too late. Besides that how will you ever know how good your schools college guidance is if you have nothing to judge it by. If your D goes to a prep-school her guidance will be better than you will ever be, but if your D goes to a public school you will NEED TO HELP HER.</p>
<p>You may want to check into your school districts gifted program, the regional “talent identification” program (in the Southeast look into Dukes TIP program) Many of the TIP selected students take their first SAT (not PSAT) in 7th or 8th grade. The scores don’t stay of the students record unless the student requests it. </p>
<p>A book that is a little over the top ("What High Schools Don’t Tell You, by: Wissner-Gross) but at least lets you see what some of her future competition is doing today to prepare for an admissions process several years from now. (Not just for the Ivy Kids)</p>
<p>Good Luck and remember to let your child have her own dreams. But do educate yourself to help her as she needs it.</p>
<p>I third the suggestion of having your D take the PSAT as a sophomore. Waiting 'til junior year can be stressful (with NMF on the line): “Did you study enough honey? You know the next two hours might make the difference between Barnard and State U.” And I totally agree with the notion of letting your D be a kid for a couple more years.</p>
<p>The one other thing our family did as our DDs entered 9th Grade was to have “the money talk.” We told them we could pay for the state flagship, but they would need academic scholarships if they wanted better … which meant good grades, good SAT scores, and good citizenship. They did their part and the rest was relatively easy!</p>
<p>It’s not necessary to take the PSAT in 8th grade. Some high schools recommend that 10th or even 9th graders take it, though. I see no harm in that. No college will ever see the scores.</p>
<p>One type of testing you should learn about is the SAT Subject Tests – formerly called the SAT II tests. These are tests in specific academic subjects, which need to be taken no later than the beginning of senior year but can be taken at any time during high school. </p>
<p>Many of the most selective colleges require two or three SAT Subject Tests in addition to the SAT. As your daughter plans her high school schedule, it will be helpful to keep these tests in mind. </p>
<p>Sometimes, a high school offers a course to 9th or 10th graders that provides excellent preparation for an SAT Subject Test (for example, the school might have a particularly good biology course), but students don’t take the test because they aren’t thinking about SAT Subject Tests yet. Then, late in their junior year, they find themselves needing to study that subject all over again in preparation for the test, when they would have been better off taking the test at the end of the course. </p>
<p>Your daughter is probably too young to be thinking about details like this, but it wouldn’t hurt for you to do a little research so that she will be prepared to make good choices among the SAT Subject Tests when the time comes.</p>
<p>Thanks for your thoughts, everyone! DD is busy doing her thing at this point…she came to us with the desire to go to Wellesley years ago, and has maintained her interest in doing that. Some of her advanced courses next year will earn her HS credit, and she has generally worked hard to do her best. We have also encouraged her to keep her options open, and she is interested in other schools as well…All this to say that we are just trying to get an overview of the process…finding out that a student needed 4 years of a foreign language to be eligilbe for admission to a college in junior year is NOT pretty…</p>
<p>my daughter took the SAT in 6th or 7th grade ( it is a blur), but that was for fun, not cause she was planning on early college entrance. ( her best friend however, that took it alongside her, did begin university @ 14)</p>
<p>important thing about the next few years is to feel free to take risks with trying new interests, and to keep in mind that Ivies are long shot for everyone- not to mention, college will have to be paid for in some way, and if your EFC is $50K, but your pocketbook looks like mine, it won’t matter and other options will need to be considered.</p>
<p>Our HS actually has the 10th graders take the PSAT as both a practice, and also as a beginning to guide them on their paths, so, I agree that taking it as a 10th graders is a good idea. But I will repeat myself here, and say that otherwise, your child has a while to go before it needs to get too crazy!</p>
<p>I took the PSAT as a sophomore. We were all required to take a practice one freshman year, and then we took the real thing sophomore year. I believe that’s still how my HS does it.</p>
<p>Also–encourage your D to take the ACT. I didn’t do so hot on the SAT (I think my total score was 1670 or somewhere around there), but I did MUCH better on the ACT (I think I got either a 28 or a 29 composite). And that, according to a score converter, could be as much as a 200-point difference on the SAT. And from my group of friends, a difference that large was not uncommon. The ACT actually tests knowledge rather than how well you can take a stupid test.</p>
<p>I’m going to echo the others to just let your daughter be a kit. Do some homework, but leave the big stuff up to her. If she has Ivy dreams, she’s highly motivated and will know what it takes.</p>
<p>My parents pretty much let me do what I wanted when it came to college–including not going at all if that was what I wanted. Granted, they knew I wanted to go!</p>
<p>Anyway. My point is that I always was extremely glad that my parents weren’t hounding me to study or do an extra EC to get into an amazing college. They’re happy if I’m happy…which I am, and I’m at a CSU.</p>
<p>Welcome to CC! And remember that a student who is “average” on CC…or even below average…is probably extraordinary in the college admissions process.</p>
We were all required to take a practice one freshman year, and then we took the real thing sophomore year. I believe that’s still how my HS does it.</p>