<p>DD, now a freshman, got CR800, M710, W700 in one sitting. H never took any standardized tests for entry into Univ of Minn.</p>
<p>2331clk—I don’t recall, nor have I ever found, anything about taking the PSAT or score reports. I have a vague recollection of getting a letter of commendation from National Merit, but have no records of it.</p>
<p>VeryHappy–In 1995 I had to have Collegeboard send my 1965 scores to a graduate program I applied to. This was no problem for them, I believe, and don’t remember the cost as too great.</p>
<p>Ive never taken the SATs .
My older D did take SATS in 7th grade.
My younger D took them yesterday- I hope she studied, she certainly didn’t take a class- oh well.</p>
<p>When I first started reading CC I was amazed by all the high scores that were listed. Then I heard about recentering, and I didn’t see the sense of it. I remember that I took the SAT as a junior, and my GC really wanted me to take it again as a senior, but I had better things to do with my time. :)</p>
<p>H and I (both top 10 in our respective classes) went to a very rural school (during the 70’s) in an impoverished area of the state. Many students parents had not even graduated from high sch. If anybody made over 1000 on the SAT, they were thought to be geniuses. We only took it once each. Neither of us surpassed the 1000 mark but still managed to do fine in college (state u’s) with majors in nursing and mechanical engineering.</p>
<p>S1 blew us both out of the water. S2 did fairly close to the same as we did.</p>
<p>TSWE - Test of Standard Written English. I was thinking of this just the other day…(ok, my mind wanders to strange subjects). Does anyone remember if this was part of the SAT? I don’t remember taking any other test separately (1981 era).</p>
<p>Along the same lines–did your kid’s high school teach proper grammar rules to the same extent you were taught such? My S can write well, but the same paper in my day would have said “excessively colloquial” in red ink everywhere. He would have no idea what a split infinitive is. Nor did any of his teachers care. Using “as if” instead of using “like”, “to” instead of “and”, not beginning a sentence with “and” or “but”, etc. I was constantly amazed during his HS career when no one at the school ever cared about any of this–and I remember these type of things being beat into our heads. </p>
<p>Am I delusional, did my kid attend a real loser HS, or do teachers not care about this stuff anymore? (or all 3, haha…) oh yeah, interesting tidbit, my S and I attended the SAME hs.</p>
<p>Marian, it’s the same for me. I won’t tell if you won’t. ;)</p>
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<p>Apparently so. I’m looking at my score report right now and there’s a row called “Experimental Test”. One box says TSWE: I got a 60+, whatever that means.</p>
<p>You are not imagining this. I also had much more emphasis on grammar all through school than my kids did, and my English teachers marked up my papers much more than my kids’ English teachers. I was amazed that my kids would get English papers back with just a grade and maybe one or two comments, with no “marking up” of sentences that could be improved, grammatical errors, etc.</p>
<p>When we took the SAT (for me it was '74) there were no test prep centers and no practice tests – you just sat down and took it. That said, I scored 1350, almost two hundred points lower than my son. I’d like to think my score was pretty good considering I graduated high school at 16 and took the exam at 15, but then I remember that when he took the test in 8th grade (for CTY) he scored 1290. That puts me in my place.</p>
<p>Back in my hs days (79’), our papers gone over with a fine tooth comb. I remember getting points off for hyphenating a word in the wrong spot, putting punctuation on the wrong side of a parentheses, and even for crossing out a word incorrectly (3 lines, not 2). Now in today’s world, the computer will fix many of those mistakes if you bother to use the technology to do so.</p>
<p>I remember getting points off for improper spacing in my bibliography.</p>
<p>I told me son how we had to center our titles on the page. Count the characters, divide by 2 and backspace from the center (which you also had to set). Now you hit a button. I thought erasable typing paper was a gift from God when I first got some. Good lord am I old!</p>
<p>I had 740 V, 690 M; 33 ACT. D beat my ACT score, but the test I took was different. I have my score report — it includes social studies! Can’t really compare scores well, since the tests are so different now. I CAN compare my scores to my stupid brothers’ scores — older scored 800 M, high 700’s V. Twins (year younger than I) scored in the 500’s V, but one had an 800 M on SAT & other had 36 M on ACT. One of the twins was a national math exam scholarship winner his junior year in h.s. Older B was NMS Finalist. I never felt smart. Some family to be in.</p>
<p>Re: the question of what our kids focus on these days. It depends on the school. My kids went to private schools & studied lots of grammar & process writing. S is at a public h.s. now & they do a lot of grammar & college-type writing — but the teacher uses a rubric to evaluate writing & just circles a number. No real feedback re: how he could improve content. Fortunately, he has a strong writing background from private school days. I sub in a public h.s. (not the one S attends). They seem to spend a lot of time reading together & answering questions that more or less test whether or not they paid attention. There is some very basic grammar (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs — they don’t do direct/indirect object, only cursory attention to pronouns/prepositions) & a bit of vocabulary. The writing assignments are given, but very little is expected. The writing I have seen is just awful, even in the AP Comp & Lit classes.</p>
<p>I remember my SAT scores, taken probably in 1966 (I graduated in 1967). But they were not even multiples of 10. 771V, 784M. No prep or any kind, not even a book. I remember that the total was 1555. But even the old scores I see here end in 0. Am I crazy?</p>
<p>Another thing I remember - I found the math section trivial. I could do all the problems and even had time to go over them a couple of times looking for careless errors. Yet I did not get an 800. I found the verbal section difficult, and did not finish some sections. But my verbal score was about the same as the math score. </p>
<p>S1 has already scored 1410 (V+M) in 8th grade. He is a lot smarter than I am. S2 is only 9, so we don’t know about him yet.</p>
<p>I took the tests back in 1977. SAT: 740 math, 620 verbal (I never did any outside reading other than that required in class) SAT Achievement Tests: math 1 790; math 2 800; chemistry 610; english 700; and biology 660. Neither of my parents had attended college, and it never occurred to me to either prepare for any of the tests or to re-take any test.</p>
<p>By the way, for those who think re-centering has not changed that much, I recall that my SAT scores were above average for admission to MIT at the time.</p>
<p>Times have definitely changed. As we homeschool our kids, I recognize that SAT scores are particularly important, so I have my kids practice before taking the tests. Also they read a lot. First two kids had 1540 and 1580 out of 1600. Last two kids will likely have similar scores. They read a lot, so I am not surprised by how much better their verbal scores are than mine was. </p>
<p>I think recentering was a disservice to bright kids. In my day, a 1500 was considered an awesome SAT score. I am now an interviewer for MIT, and I can tell that many kids are worried that 780 is not high enough in math (MIT admissions office says it makes no difference, but high school kids all know many friends who scored comparably high, so they are worried). I wish the SAT I & II tests were more difficult so trivial math errors would not hurt a very good math student.</p>
<p>I never took the SAT. I took the PSAT (do not remember my score, although I think it was pretty good). I decided to go the 2-years-in-community-college route and then transfer to a university. Discovered I didn’t need to take a 3+ hour long SAT for that, so I didn’t! Looking back on it, of course I realize I should have taken the SAT anyway, but I guess I was being lazy. ;)</p>
<p>How would you do today on the SAT? Any of you parents ever take a practice test just for fun? I have half a mind to do it (and never tell my D.D of course).</p>
<p>I didn’t take a full practice test, but I remember when I went over the question and answer service reports, I was suprised at what my kids got wrong. The answers were all obvious to me. (Especially in the reading passages.) I guess maturity is actually worth something! I’d probably have to do a little bit of math review, just because I haven’t had a project where I needed to use any trig recently.</p>
Huh. I’m pretty sure my head would explode if had to take the written test for a driver’s license, much less the SAT/ACT . Anyway, I think it might violate the solemn promise I made to all that is Holy that I would never sit for another test if I could just pass the bar.</p>
<p>1200’s for me, absolutely no prep, worked the night before, stayed up late, did not eat breakfast…wasn’t even sure why I was taking this test! My H to be, on the other hand, scored 15xx. But I was the better college student!</p>
<p>I am sure I would be embarrassed if I tried to take the SATs now!</p>