<p>FromMD yes you are 100% right LOL!! I too am very stressed about junior year but I do not want to show it: AP tests, PSAT, ACT, SAT - she " only" has 7 tests next year. 13-15 would stress her too much. I think by the end of this year she will have completed her subject tests. She will take IB English but that test will be senior year, along with some APs. You are right let’s take it one step at a time and get through junior year first. I will vent here because I do not want to vent in front of my daughter.</p>
<p>Latichever- I bought my daughter a PSAT review book as well as SAT and ACT review books. She will practice over the summer. Question: is it necessary to study specifically for the PSAT or will studying for the SAT cover you for both? My daughter will get tutored for the SAT/ACT beginning mid August, but I will not tutor for the PSAT. My feeling is that she will do her SAT review and she will take a practice PSAT, and whatever score she gets, she gets. She did very well on the PLAN ACT this year. I just don’t know what the difference is between the SAT and the PSAT.</p>
<p>twogirls - it sounds like your D is doing great. There are so many great schools right “below” ivies in terms of prestige and selectivity. Great school spirit but not a big party scene may be tough to find 
- at least I associate those two in terms of general school vibe. (Not in terms of individuals - there are lots of students who would enjoy that combination). </p>
<p>My strategy with my two older guys was to spend a ridiculous amount of time pouring over info about different colleges - facts and data and also gossip and whatever I could find out about “vibe”. I narrowed it down to 2 or 3 dozen schools, my kids narrowed it down further, and we visited as many as we could. I’m in the camp that loved doing college visits and found it helpful. I especially thought it was helpful to meet with a faculty member in the department they were interested in. My oldest didn’t do that and my middles on did. It really helped him feel like he knew what each department had to offer him. </p>
<p>But trust me - she’ll have tons of great schools to apply to and great results, I’m sure!</p>
<p>Pinot you are right I know she will be fine. We also love doing college visits- we already saw 8 schools sophomore year ( NOT necessary!). We will visit as many as possible - don’t think we will get to all of them. Once we see the acceptances and offers she will narrow it down and visit again. The process worked with my older one and I know it will work again. Junior year here we come!</p>
<p>PinotNoir - I love visiting schools too. I’m driving down to my Master’s degree alma mater to show my daughter, but really I just want to see the school again after 20 years. </p>
<p>Latichever - I am in the process of building a summer study course for my daughter so that she can prep without being overwhelmed. I bought 3 vocab books - Direct Hits I and II and Vocabulary Cartoons - and I’m going to have her learn 10-20 words a day (most of them shouldn’t be new to any 16 year old but it’s scary sometimes the words that they haven’t ever heard). </p>
<p>I got a book just on CR called The SAT Reading Bible and plan to work through a chapter of that plus the SAT blue book through June. I also intend to find various short articles to give her to have her read them quickly for practice. Her weakest section was CR even though she reads a lot. Not sure why, but I figure she doesn’t read tons of boring short articles like they get on the SAT.</p>
<p>For Math, I bought a book called Dr. Chung’s because it has a lot of practice tests. I plan to spend July going through that and the blue book. </p>
<p>Starting in July, the plan is to do a practice test every week or so to get used to it. </p>
<p>Last year, we did a virtual class for French IV and I created a syllabus and put it on a calendar so we’d know what to do every single day. I’ve done the same thing for the SAT. She kind of hates me right now, haha. Tough.</p>
<p>Twogirls - The only difference between the SAT and the PSAT is that there’s no essay on the PSAT. And unless you’re going for National Merit, then the only value to the PSAT is practice. </p>
<p>I have a question now about Subject tests. It never occured to me to try to do a Subject test prior to doing AP. My daughter is in honors chemistry right now and loves it. She seems to really get it and I know that other kids in her class are struggling, so I don’t think it’s just an easy class. I should ask her teacher if she’d be ready to do the subject test now. She’ll be taking AP chem in her senior year (they only offer it every other year) so it would be either now or after she’s applied to colleges. They don’t HAVE to report those right? So there’s no harm in taking it and doing poorly?</p>
<p>Hi Laclos- you sound amazing !!! My daughter took honors bio last year and the class was encouraged to take the SAT 2. My daughter took it and did very well. She currently takes honors chem and will be taking the subject test on June 1. Most kids in our school take the subject test without taking AP first. If you do poorly you do not have to send it. Is there an advantage to taking PSAT practice tests? Can’t you take practice SATs for the PSAT? I just bought a Princeton Review PSAT book with practice tests but why can’t my daughter just practice taking the regular SAT instead? Maybe I should return the PSAT book?</p>
<p>Re: studying for PSAT vs SAT. I asked my son’s tutor about prepping for PSAT the summer before Jr year. Tutor’s opinion was that the SAT should be the focus (my son took the Oct SAT two weeks before the Jr yr PSAT). The tutor provided copies of old PSATs that my son could use as practice but did not feel that dedicated tutoring time should be allocated toward the PSAT. I think that completing a couple of practice PSATs is very worthwhile so as to become accustomed to the format and timing. The students are given a blank copy of a ‘real’ PSAT when they register for the test (at least that is the case in our school). </p>
<p>Laclos–your plan sounds great but my son would not have taken instruction from me so I hired outside help for the first time ever. Money well spent for this student as he wouldn’t have gotten around to starting. Once he saw this scores increase, he was much more willing to sit for practice tests. Having said that, he would never have carved out the time if I hadn’t forced him to think about this week to figure out where he could schedule a 3.5 hour block. Good luck!</p>
<p>Last year on the bio test some of the pages in the test booklet were stuck together. This resulted in her bubbling in the wrong page. Thankfully she caught the problem and they let her fix it.</p>
<p>My daughter doesn’t want to think about anything college related so it’s annoying to her that I’m obsessed with it. I have to be obsessed with something, so it might as well be planning for college as anything else. She acts like she isn’t going to do the plan I set forth, but when summer comes around, she won’t have much else going on and my plan is for no more than 1 hour a day, so I think she will figure out it’s not going to kill her. We’ll see. I can’t afford for her to do paid tutoring and I don’t think it would help much anyway. I’m aiming for slow and steady.</p>
<p>We aren’t doing any PSAT prep specifically. I don’t know when she’ll sit for the SAT. It makes sense to do it right after the PSAT to make use of all that prep, except we aren’t prepping the essay part yet. I’m barely prepping her with grammar because that was her strength on the first PSAT. She could use an improvement, but nothing like she needs on CR.</p>
<p>Laclos–this is just my own son’s personal experience…and since he is my oldest, I learn at his expense…but I had read that the W section didn’t matter…that it wasn’t difficult…etc, etc so I did not have the tutor work on the W section at all. Each section was a separate set of fees & a set # of hours of instruction and I decided it wasn’t worthwhile. Well…my son’s W score was far enough below the M & CR that I decided to have the tutor work for one two hour session on W after the Oct exam. Score increased 100 points. Now, I would guess that some of the improvement was my son paying more attention to the W section, but I think the prep helped also. There is a yellow book with red writing on the front…Metzger may be the author. SAT books are all packed away in the attic so cannot access. Son said book was useful, perhaps for grammar.</p>
<p>You sound as though you have done your research, but in case you have missed this, someone (or multiple people) have posted sample essay prompts and responses in the SAT prep section of CC. I asked my son to sit down and bullet point responses to several of the essay prompts but he was not interested in trying that. It is the one section of the SAT that he really didn’t prep for adequately. I thought it would help to have several responses outlined as it is a lot to write and first think of what to write in only 25 minutes.</p>
<p>As to when to sit for SAT…fall of Jr year is early and not what our HS advises, but son’s winter sport is so time-consuming that I knew Jan & March would be out of the question and I wasn’t comfortable pushing first testing off until May, so he took Oct & Dec.</p>
<p>My daughter will be busy this summer- she is a counselor and will have drivers Ed. She will be putting in close to 12 hour days, but she loves it. Weekends will be spent doing community service and taking practice SAT/ACT tests. I would like her to take one each week. Tutoring will begin in late August for the Oct ACT. Hopefully she won’t need much…</p>
<p>CT1417 - Thanks for your experienced wisdom. I thought about how to allocate precious study time and the reason I’m not focussed on the grammar part is that on the first PSAT she scored a 63 on writing, but a 42 on reading. Her math was somewhere in between. I’d love to pull her grammar up to a 70, but unless she can get her reading in the ballpark, there’s really no reason to even take the PSAT. I think with reading, it’s mostly going to be a question of practice, practice, practice. She’ll get grammar practice on the practice tests, and if there’s a real problem, it should become apparent. I’m naively hoping that the practice itself will be enough to help her increase her score somewhat. </p>
<p>Twogirls - what a busy schedule! We’re trying to get my daughter a shift at the SPCA for the summer and she’s supposed to teach some karate classes. I’ve been urging her to get a job, but I think in order for me to convince her to do that, I’d need to take drastic measures and frankly, I don’t have the energy to follow through on any threats. We should hear this week if she was accepted into a week long summer bridge program, but otherwise, I’m still not sure how she’ll spend most of her time. She can’t drive… So it’s a huge mystery.</p>
<p>Both of my kids love to be busy all the time- it’s exhausting!! She promised me that she will do practice tests every weekend because there will be no school work. Hopefully she keeps her promise! I go back and forth with the test dates because she also plays a fall sport. I decided to have her take the Oct ACT and see how it goes. I don’t want to wait until spring because she will have APs to study for. I suppose she can do some testing in the winter as well.</p>
<p>My second loves to be busy, but she hates school. If I could merge the 2 kids together, I’d have a dream college applicant. :)</p>
<p>Twogirls—there is a Sept ACT date that you might want to consider, especially if she does study during the summer. I realize how impossible it is to schedule these tests around sports, but there may be some benefit to getting one exam behind her and testing while the summer study is still fresh in her mind.</p>
<p>The tutor comes in June to discuss a testing plan. She will take practice tests this summer and start tutoring mid to late August. I think Sept is too soon but if the tutor thinks she is ready then she will do it. I am still trying to decide if she will do the SAT in November or December- not sure yet. Realistically I am thinking that she can do the October 26 ACT and the Dec 7 SAT. She will probably take each test twice. I decided to take one day at a time. First I have to get her through the June 1 subject test!!</p>
<p>I was wrong about my daughter’s scores. I was thinking her reading was her weakest score, but it was actually the math. She was totally cramming on that just before the PSAT last time. I’m actually glad that it’s this way because she was just starting Algebra II at the time and having a really hard time of it, but ended up getting a lot of help and got a solid A in that class. Hopefully something clicked. That means we have less work to do on the reading, thankfully. </p>
<p>For the fun of it, I tried answering some of the questions she missed. The first one I did was really stupid easy so I was already preparing the lecture in my head about being careless… But then the next few I tried were quite difficult (I need to brush up on high school math). So I’ll cut her some slack on that. We just need to buckle down and study.</p>
<p>I think I’ll take the SAT practice tests with her so she can at least feel good about getting better scores than me, haha.</p>
<p>Speaking of practice questions…CB offers ‘SAT Question of the Day’. Anyone can register using an email address and the question will be sent automatically each day or you can just log on to the site and answer any of the prior seven days’ questions . [The</a> Official SAT Question of the Day](<a href=“The SAT – SAT Suite | College Board”>SAT Practice and Preparation – SAT Suite | College Board)</p>
<p>A fun, interactive site is Testive:[Testive</a> | TurboTest | Test Prep | Education Technology | SAT Prep](<a href=“http://www.testive.com%5DTestive”>http://www.testive.com). Developed by a couple of MIT grads (maybe grad students). I haven’t looked at it since last summer but it used to provide up to ten questions/day. I believe that the difficulty level of the questions is adjusted based on the responses provided, as long as the user logs in. My younger son used it almost every day last summer. I could never interest the older one!</p>
<p>3 days and counting down…</p>