@2muchquan - 35C with 29 writing is a good score. I think anything above 27 should be great.
@2muchquan THANK YOU for posting that IL April 19 ACT with writing scores are up. I just checked and S’s scores are there! Compared to a year ago, he went up on all subtests with a healthy jump in composite. Whew! I think he can be done with testing after SAT2’s in June. Congrats to your daughter on her great scores!
Congrats @262mom! Great news! D has only a couple of SAT 2s left, too, and that should do it. One in June and one in October.
Does the college search and CC worm its way into your brain? I think so in my case. S18 was telling me a little about his girlfriend (they’re so sweet together!) He said she plays in the orchestra, plays piano, and does Irish step dancing. I was nodding to myself, thinking “Good EC’s…” What is wrong with me??
@payn4ward I have bookmarked your link (we are one of those nerdy families). I love that the internet is full of knowledge, rather than just being all porn and BS!
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Thanks for posting. I’ve been so confused about this, but things don’t look too bad from this converter. M score goes down by 30. Not terrible, but some schools where she looked to be at or above 75%, she’s not anymore (others she still is). CR went up by 20! This is where she really needed a boost, so I’m very happy here. Writing is…not good. I’m just going to close my eyes and hope the colleges ignore it. Seems like they should get a better handle on writing from the essays.
@Ynotgo I love the idea of superscoring across my kids! D11’s SAT had CR 130 points higher than M. D17’s was M 90 points higher than CR (or whatever they’re calling it now.)
And I am a SF fan as well. Recently loved The Martian, which probably everyone has read by now. I’m a big fan of Hugh Howie’s Silo series about a group of survivors (from what? We don’t exactly know) who live in a giant underground silo… Great characters and a puzzle that drops clues, gets more puzzling, etc., but then wraps up in a very satisfying way. Iain M Bank’s The Hydrogen Sonata was really different – epic scale, cerebral, kind of abstract, but still pulled me in. John Scalzi’s Redshirts is a must for any Star Trek fan – very funny, but also touches on some interesting issues. Two I didn’t like but many others do, Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy about a sort of Area X being studied by the government. I liked it at first, but then it went in different directions I didn’t like. I read the classic Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem. He’s a great writer, but it felt like two or three stories smushed together and I hated the ending (also didn’t help that Kindle version was chock-full of typos.)
@SincererLove Congrats to your D! My D is in a 4 year engineering program at her HS and has also seen that “male dominance” bit pop up sometimes.
SF fan here, I’ve been trying to talk my DD14 into taking this (1 credit) UF honor’s class in the fall…because I so badly want to take it…
(Un)Common Read: The Science of Starship Troopers
Robert Heinlein’s classic novel Starship Troopers is widely considered as one of the best science-fiction novels written in the 20th century. Although it was written roughly sixty years ago, many of its technological aspects are strikingly modern and quite prescient. The class will focus primarily on the scientific and technological aspects encountered in the story. The novel is a very good example of “hard” science fiction where the essence of many of the fantastic devices that exist in the Starship Troopers universe are based on real physics recognizable in our present day (and perhaps near-future).
Students in this course will learn about these (and other) topics:
• Exoskeletal power-suits (robotics)
• Interstellar travel at relativistic speeds (modern physics)
• Exo/Xenobiology (extraterrestrial biology and life science)
• Directed-energy and atomic weapons (lasers and nuclear fusion)
• Realities of spacecraft dogfighting and maneuvering (space vehicle kinetics and
thermodynamics)
[/quote]
I have a theory on how to make the “atomic” powered suits work! Yes I do…though I’m still working out the whole…radiation shielding thingie…but a few rads never killed anyone!
@2muchquan …congrats to your D! Now she is done?!!
Hoping for similar results in June so D can be done.
@2muchquan congrats to D for excellent scores, hope she is finished with ACT/SAT now. Time to move on to other things.
I’m hoping my son is done in June. He may be done no matter the results, and just go with what he has.
@2muchquan According to the stuff kids have been reporting, that writing score is pretty darned good! My D only got a 24 on writing on her first try at the ACT in April (with a 33C). From what I’ve read here on CC, a lot of kids with high composites and lower writing scores have been requesting re-scores and seeing them go up dramatically. My D is taking the ACT again in June to try to “fix” her science section score - if she gets another anomalous writing score on that test (presuming her C goes up) we will request the writing rescore. I guess your score cannot go down on a rescore, and if they do revise it up, they refund your $50.
But mostly, congrats to your D for being so close to done with testing!
I’m not good with math, either. Want to hear some scores that will make your hair stand on end? My first SAT score was 700 verbal, 440 math. Yeah, ow. I took it again and eventually got it up to 500, but it’s embarrassing how bad I was at math. I don’t remember not liking it, I just remember not understanding a lot of it.
DH had like 800 math, 680 verbal. I LOVE to tease him how my verbal scores beat his. That, dancing, and art are the only things I can beat him at :D.
@Ynotgo wrote
Me too. I just got my reading list for my Visual Literacy class over the summer, and it has a new William Gibson book on it: “Pattern Recognition”. It’s in paperback on amazon (yay not expensive textbook!). It just came in today and I have two weeks to read it before class starts (I like to get ahead). It looks very cool.
Ah, found another writer I like, Maggie Stiefvater. She’s got a series called The Raven Boys which is YA, but it doesn’t read at all like YA (some YA I’m like, gag.) It’s fairly dark and twisty. I got all of her books on CD out of the library and ripped them to a USB stick. I’ll listen to them once school starts up again and I’ve got a 2+hour drive in the car all summer. (my car has a USB port-I love technology).
@Gator88NE wrote
Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! :))
DH has a fondness for Heinlein. I’ve tried to get through Stranger in A Strange Land a few times but found the female characters to be really annoying and poorly written. I did get far enough through it that I can comfortably use the verb “grok” in a sentence.
We used to have a Starship Troopers pinball machine. The kids would sit on the top when they were babies and watch DH play. They were fascinated by it.
@2muchquan congrats on the scores! Does she feel like she’s done?
Super rainy here, which is good for my plants The baby birds have all hatched and are becoming fluffy, grumpy faced fledglings. So cute!!!
Thanks everyone. D was kind of done when she got her score back from the October ACT. But this latest was a state-mandated sitting that she could have studied for a bit more. And @thermom, she ‘fixed’ her Science section this time. That was her lowest section last time. It was all about pacing and timing. It was her highest score this time. Go figure.
On to Math 2 in June (oops, a year or two late).
I need my son to “fix” his science score, and then he can be done.
For those of you who like YA audio books, there are 2 free downloads per week here. We like listening to audio books in the car when we travel. http://www.audiobooksync.com
Congrats on all the great test scores! Definitely worth celebrating being done.
My S’s friend’s ACT writing score went up 1 point only during re-scoring from low 20s. His composite is 35.
We had psycho-educational evaluation done on our D when she was in second grade (long story, glad we did it). She has “a statistical significant disparity” between her verbal and mathematical aptitudes. Evidently it is a thing, and can considered a “special need” that impacts academic success in an otherwise gifted individual. My D has always struggled through math (a lot of tears at homework time) but is planning on AP AB/BC Calc next, just to prove to herself she can do it.
It shows up in my D’s standardized testing to a varying degree, unfortunately the PSAT/SAT is one of those tests, much like you @MotherOfDragons . I am predicting she will miss NMSF by a point or two due to an unusually poor math score.
I always heard there was a correlation between strong math and science aptitudes, but she has proven that wrong scoring excellent in science also.
@CaucAsianDad Amazing what your D has done with her challenge. I’ve recently heard of this condition. She seems to be coping quite well!
@carachel2, @MotherOfDragons She definitely feels done with testing, to the point where she was reviewing material for SAT Math 2, and said: “I can’t study for this! I’d have to go back thru every math book I ever had! The questions are too specific!” I’ve never looked so maybe she’s right.
@2muchquan Dd is taking the 2 in June as well. She feels like all the tutoring she has done did all the prep for her. I don’t think she is planning on doing anything else.
Books!!! One of my favorite topics!!
I enjoyed the Nightingale quite a bit. It is much better than other books by Kristin Hannah. All the Light we Cannot See, The Light Between Oceans and City of Women were also excellent. A book titled Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger was a favorite. Another good coming of age story is The Painted House, by John Grisham. It’s a completely different type of book than his normal legal/murder formula. Ian McEwan and Elizabeth Strout are favorite writers, but some of their books are not easy. I like Paula McLain’s two recent books a lot (the Paris Wife & Circling the Sun).
For “light” audio in the car I’ve become a huge fan of the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear, some Phillipa Gregory novels (ah, the perils of becoming Queen in Henry VIII’s court) and Katie Morton’s books. When I’m driving I can’t listen to anything that is so suspenseful that it’s distracting. Biographies by Steve Martin & Ellen were pretty good. A Walk in the Woods was a fun listen.
For classics, it took me about a year to get through Anna Karenina - best sleep aid ever. Enjoyed Daniel Deronda, Middlemarch, The Picture of Dorian Gray, some of Oscar Wilde’s popular reads and My Man Jeeves. Currently working on Of Human Bondage without much success (or enthusiasm). These are all Kindle freebies.
Looking forward to a book group field trip to Edith Wharton’s home The Mount in Lenox next month! The gardens should be beautiful.
For those of you who like SF, have you read Feed by M.T Anderson? Thoughts?
Congrats to those with great scores! My son got a 32C on the February ACT with a 30 on his writing, He’ll take it again in June to hopefully push it up by one more point. I am working on narrowing down his list by half, which currently stands at about 15 schools. Big college fair next Sunday with many schools that are too far away to visit.
@jmek15 I’m kind of jealous. Getting down to 7-8 schools would be nice. I’m thinking we’ll be at about 12. Summer will be interesting.
Which reminds me, I need to confirm which schools on the current list we should send both ACT scores to (if they superscore or pseudo-superscore) and which to just send one.
@jmek15 where is the college fair?
Right now dd only has 5 schools on her list. They drop off quickly when she starts to dig into their websites and looks at course catalogs, etc. I am hoping we can add a few in case 2 are eliminated in our upcoming visits.