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<p>Varsity debate. It has been taking up a lot of her time and energy. In fact the next two possible dates for the SAT subject tests (Jan and May) are in direct conflict with out-of-town debate tournaments that she may attend, depending on how well her team fares, and the one after that (June) conflicts with a school trip she might take.</p>
<p>vicariousparent - great about the tests.</p>
<p>I was trying to explain about how Dâs ECs are more of a problem than her difficult courseload - and all those conflicts are a prime example of why thatâs true. I feel like D has conflicts with absolutely single event - and thatâs just the way it is.</p>
<p>jackief - did your D take a test today? Canât remember, sorry. I hope your girls have fun at their dance tonight - sounds like fun :).</p>
<p>DougBetsy:</p>
<p>My 16 yo D is just as eloquent. Last May, we asked how he thought the three AP tests went. He grunted, âOK.â I gave him the âYou know thatâs not a sufficient answerâ look and so he sighed and said, âI think I got 5âs on the calculus and Spanish test and a 4 on the Euro.â Turns out, he was right.</p>
<p>I think he saves the eloquence for mock trial.</p>
<p>DougBetsy, if it were me, I would suggest he take at least the Math in Jan, and then for the others, depends on if he feels like it and what colleges he is thinking of. I donât think a higher number of tests would be that impressive, just that there would be more opportunites to get the 2 or 3 highest scores. Of course, if he already has two 800s and if he only needed two tests, Iâd let him sleep in 
:)</p>
<p>vp and LIMOM - yes it is the ECs that really get in the way. D does crew which has races every Saturday in the spring. Luckily those coaches know well that some of the kids will need to miss a race or two. She is also going on a school trip the date of the March SAT. She took one subj test today (Latin, which is only offered Dec/June)</p>
<p>jackief - Iâm glad your Dâs coaches are understanding. Thatâs not always the case.</p>
<p>
This tickled my funny bone. Sounds like a great kid!</p>
<p>Iâm impressed he knew what his AP scores were likely to be. My son told me he thought heâd gotten a 1 or 2 on World History. Thankfully his standards are higher than the graders!</p>
<p>mathmom, D told me she got a 1 on her Gov. AP. She didnât. ;)</p>
<p>I donât even ask anymore, because according to D, she is failing every class (edline tells a different story); her teachers have it in for her (except when they tell me how wonderful it is to have her in their respective classes); and she is just an overall failure who will never accomplish anything. I donât get it-the girl is really really bright and does really well. It is just not up to the standards of her âpressure cookerâ school.</p>
<p>I just got her out the door to her SAT (her father is driving her). She is completely exhausted and did not even look at a practice test or practice book since June. If she cracks 1600 (and I mean out of 2400), Iâll be ecstatic. I know, not exactly CC scores, but heck, I am counting on her grades not SAT scores. My only hope is that sheâll be too exhausted to be anxious.</p>
<p>Well, wish us all luck!</p>
<p>Hmm ⊠how many of you think your S/D would do better on the SAT if the test didnât run so long? Iâve always wondered about this. The SAT isnât the only long one, of course. Lots of professional exams are as bad, if not worse. While itâs true that some jobs (well, most jobs, at one time or another, sometimes seasonal) require such stamina to do well, Iâve never heard the claim that the SAT is testing that. So does it really need to be that long?</p>
<p>FindAPlace - a shorter test probably would have benefited D yesterday. I know Iâve mentioned here that sheâs been sick all week - well, she wasnât 100% yesterday morning, but she was feeling a little better - she said that about 2/3 of the way through the test, she was back to feeling just awful again.</p>
<p>Queenâs Mom - good luck to your D today. Iâm sure sheâll do fine. </p>
<p>BTW, did you all see the threads about the âloopholeâ to Collegeboardâs new testing policy? Seems unfair to mention it after so many kids signed up for the December test believing there was total score choice.</p>
<p>I saw (and posted) on that thread.</p>
<p>I am only a little upset. I canât imagine it will make a tremendous difference. If there is only one bad test score, it merely looks like she was having a bad day. We will see what happens.</p>
<p>Queenâs Mom - Iâm upset that the loophole wasnât mentioned earlier - it just seems unfair to advertise one thing, have people act on that information, and for the company to then change the rules. D most likely would have taken the test anyway, but maybe not, considering that she was just getting over being sick.</p>
<p>True, it does seem unfair to trumpet the great âcollege choiceâ and leave the ânot really choiceâ in small letters hidden on the website.</p>
<p>I was considering not waking D up for todayâs test because she was up past midnight every single night this week (including last night) and she really was not in top for, but I figured if there was âchoiceâ weâd be OK no matter what her score. However, my D is not looking into the uber selective colleges that some on this board are, so one set of lower scores will probably not even matter.</p>
<p>S took the SAT today. Heâll take the ACT next week, then heâll be done with those biggies! I hope. ;)</p>
<p>He thought it all went well. As usual, he had time left on Math to check his answers and find at least one mistake, and on CR there were some âambiguousâ questions, as he termed it. </p>
<p>His scores probably wonât be a surprise to anyone who knows him!</p>
<p>I donât really know what to think about the score choice thing. On one hand, I am leaning towards having my kids take more tests and not worry about a poorer score on one test/sitting. If there really isnât a choice for some schools, it will go back to how it was before.</p>
<p>Our counselors say the score choice doesnât matter anyway, because the college will only factor in the best scores anyway, and if you had one poor SAT2 and the rest good, or superscore on SAT1 then the poor grades arenât considered if they are sent or not. I havenât heard from adcoms any comments on if this is the case, they would probably say it publically, Iâm not sure what my feelings are on if a poor score along with several strong ones would really be a factor.</p>
<p>But yes it wouldnât sit well if the cb is changing rules in the middle of the game. I guess we really wonât find out until March, or even next fall when the colleges have any application/score report changes. There was already some rumblings about how some schools would want to see all scores, just like AP self reporting, but in the SAT case it could be enforced.</p>
<p>Score reporting, meh. I donât see the value for S2 to spend lots of time preparing and worrying about the SAT multiple times. We are still working with a âone-and-doneâ philosophy â investing the time and energy with the Blue Book upfront rather than dragging it out over the next year. (No test prep courses or tutors here.) S2 has too much going on with IBs, APs, CAS, ECs and GF, and frankly, I donât want to deal with reminding, nagging or messing with this for months on end, either.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thatâs a largely correct statement, one I have heard live from admission officers who were asked the question directly on more than one occasion. Here is my FAQ on the subject: </p>
<p>ONE-TIME TEST-TAKING </p>
<p>Colleges have given up trying to distinguish one-time test-takers from two-time or three-time or even four-time test-takers, because that wasnât useful information to the colleges. There are a number of reasons for that. </p>
<p>1) The colleges have utterly no way of knowing who spends all his free time practicing taking standardized tests and who takes them âcold.â </p>
<p>2) The colleges are well aware that students who have actually taken the tests sometimes cancel scores, so they have little incentive to give students bonus consideration if the students submit only one test score. </p>
<p>3) The colleges are aware that students who take the admission tests at middle-school age, who are numerous, do not have their earlier test scores submitted by default. </p>
<p>[SAT</a> Younger than 13](<a href=âCollege Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Toolsâ>Additional SAT Registration Options â SAT Suite) </p>
<p>[Hoagies</a>â Gifted: Talent Search Programs](<a href=âhttp://www.hoagiesgifted.org/talent_search.htm]Hoagiesâ>Talent Search Programs | Hoagies' Gifted) </p>
<p>[Duke</a> TIP - Interpreting SAT and ACT Scores for 7th Grade Students](<a href=âhttp://www.tip.duke.edu/resources/parents_students/interpreting_SAT-ACT_scores.html]Dukeâ>http://www.tip.duke.edu/resources/parents_students/interpreting_SAT-ACT_scores.html) </p>
<p>4) Colleges are aware that the majority of students who take the SAT at all take it more than once. </p>
<p><a href=âhttp://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/Avg_Scores_of_Repeat_Test_Takers.pdf[/url]â>Higher Education Professionals | College Board; </p>
<p>5) Colleges are in the business of helping students learn, and they donât mind students taking efforts to improve their scores. They know that students prepare for tests. </p>
<p>From the New York Times: "Although coaching would no doubt continue if subject tests replaced the SAT, at least students would be focused on content as much as test-taking strategies, Mr. Murray said. There would also be pressure to improve local high school curriculums so that students were prepared, he wrote.</p>
<p>âThese arguments make sense to Mr. Fitzsimmons [dean of admission at Harvard], who said, âPeople are going to prepare anyway, so they might as well study chemistry or biology.â He added that âthe idea of putting more emphasis on the subject tests is of great interestâ to his group.â </p>
<p><a href=âhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/education/19sat.html?pagewanted=print[/url]â>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/education/19sat.html?pagewanted=print</a> </p>
<p>6) And now the College Board is back in the business of letting students choose which test scores to send into colleges, </p>
<p>[Score</a> Choice - New SAT Score-Reporting Policy](<a href=âhttp://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/sat-reasoning/scores/policy]Scoreâ>Send SAT Scores to Colleges - SAT Suite | College Board) </p>
<p>so now there is less reason than ever to suppose that colleges care how many times you take the test, because the colleges have no way to know how many times you took the test officially. </p>
<p>Colleges treat applicants uniformly now by considering their highest scores, period. </p>
<p><a href=âhttp://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/349391-retake-how-many-times-take-sat-act.html#post4198038[/url]â>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/349391-retake-how-many-times-take-sat-act.html#post4198038</a> </p>
<p><a href=âhttp://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/utilities/electronic_resources/viewbook/Rollo0809_GuideApplying.pdf[/url]â>http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/utilities/electronic_resources/viewbook/Rollo0809_GuideApplying.pdf</a> </p>
<p>From the Harvard admission office: âIf you submit more than one set of scores for any of the required tests, the Admissions Committee considers only your best scoresâeven if your strongest SAT Subject Tests or portions of the SAT Reasoning Test were taken on different dates.â </p>
<p>See also a Newsweek article about the renewed score choice policy adopted by College Board. </p>
<p>[Reactions</a> to College Boardâs SAT Score Choice | Newsweek Education | Newsweek.com](<a href=âhttp://www.newsweek.com/id/172585]Reactionsâ>Reactions to College Board's SAT Score Choice) </p>
<p>Some colleges want to see all scores a student has ever obtained, period, but as one admission officer asks, if âa student submits a single best sitting of 2320,â does anyone really care âhow low were her other score sets?â</p>
<p>So I discussed with D if we should cancel the scores, and we decided not to. She feels she did extremely well on her writing (I know, who cares about that section); did about average on Math (average for her that is-which is pretty good) and absolutely bombed CR.</p>
<p>I think weâll take our chances with the âcredit choiceâ.</p>
<p>^^She probably did better than she thinks! </p>
<p>I can understand âbombingâ the essay, if you just canât get started or organized, or think of good talking points, but CR has so many questions & sections, sheâs bound to have done well on most if it, especially if sheâs a good writer. Her worries about a few questions are probably magnified in her mind.</p>
<p>I hope you are right, mommusic. She is very pessimistic about grades, but she is also a very bad test taker. It could go either way. We will see. </p>
<p>Does anyone know when the SAT scores come out?</p>