At our small school of 150 kids per grade with 100% going to colleges, PSAT is offered to all freshmen and all juniors. It is the first test taken that lasts 2 and 1/2 hours. I think for majority of kids it is a good practice for the upcoming loooooong SAT/ACT tests and levels ground for those who never prep.
Sophomores went local college tour field trip and seniors had a mental health day.
@curiositycat333 …I think ours does it for practice, to introduce kids to how these tests are and to also maybe identify some kids who are rocking the test but maybe skating by with regular grades maybe?
@curiousitycat333 our school lets sophomores take it and treat it as a good way to practice for the real deal. Not all sophomores take it. I know some very good sophomore students who didn’t take it, mine did. I figured what could it hurt, I don’t think it really added any stress. There was no prep, and I told him just go into with the mindset of learning how to take these tests with a time limit. I think it helps. Son17 took the act/sat multiple times and it wasn’t until this fall where he felt comfortable in all aspects of the test, which resulted in his best score.
D assures me she is going to work on essays after work tonight. She didn’t yesterday despite being home all day. I’m in serious nag mode. I just want them all done by the end of the month.
@itsgettingreal …was she glad to see her UT acceptance yesterday? Or was it anti-climactic like at our house because meh, you still have to wait 3-4 months to find out IF you are accepted to your major?
@carachel2 D is finding all the acceptances anticlimactic. She’ll get excited when the non-automatic scholarships start coming in. No reach schools here.
** PSAT**: afaik, last year was the first year that it was both offered in school and paid for by the school-prior to that i believe it was a saturday test paid for by the family.
at least in my state, one of the big fat elephant in the room reasons for testing everyone has to do with PARCC and graduation requirements. performance on the early PARCC tests was abysmal so there needed to be alternatives to meet the standardized test requirement for proficiency to graduate (or a portfolio req. with was underutilized).
you can “pass” the PARCC, the PSAT, the SAT, the ACT, the military one that starts with an A and maybe the accuplaner. you just need one. while the thresholds are pretty low to “pass”, there are plenty of kids who have a tough time meeting the requirement–the non-college bound types who traditionally wouldnt take most of these tests to begin with.
but hence the reason for test often and early.
@curiositycat333 - our school uses it to help figure out if kids are ready for certain AP classes.
My D’s school offers/encourages the PSAT 9th and 10th for practice. Since it’s not counted for anything there shouldn’t be any stress involved. Because of the project-based curriculum the kids don’t get as much work with single answer tests and the kind of convergent thinking required.
@curiositycat333 Our school district is trying to use the PSAT and SAT in place of the failed assessment tests the state of Florida had put in place. I think @greeny8 's District may be doing the same thing.
@MichiganGeorgia Our school states that they use the PSAT and SAT to place students into some AP classes, B/C Calc is one.
(I’ve been debating whether to post this here or on FB)
QOTD - Is your D/S an introvert of extrovert? How has affected their college selections?
D is introverted. Shy at first but very personable when she gets comfortable with someone and very funny. This is a big reason for why she prefers big schools. I’m still not sanctioning the single dorm room freshman year. lol
My thoughts Re PSAT. They might have all sophomores tested to see what the scores are with minimal prep.
Some kids are already in honors or AP classes based on prior grades and state assessments, but some kids might not put effort into getting good grades or have home situations that make it difficult for them to get good grades, but might be naturally good test takers.
After the sophomore test scores come out and some students are high scorers, they might encourage them to take junior PSAT.
QOTD: Our son is definitely shy and introverted. I’m not sure why he has a preference for big schools, but part of it is due to going to a large HS - going to something smaller would seem odd for college. Each school up the chain has always gotten bigger, so it’s a natural progression for the college to be bigger. He’s not a sports kid or school spirit type of kid, but his HS and most of his top college choices are all big on sports and school spirit.
Re the PSAT - I would guess that the school gives it to all kids in grades 9-11 since the vast majority go on to a 4 year college. It is probably one reason why they have so many NMF each year.
@CaucAsianDad I have no idea if the county is using the PSAT as an assessment. I’m just glad my D is almost done with high school and we don’t have to worry about any more state mandated tests. The FCAT was a joke.
Our school give the option to any frosh who want to take the PSAT, asks the sophs to take it, and requires the juniors to take it. It is all for practice for the lower grades so they are familiar with the test when it counts junior year. Our school knows what benefits can be received by achieving the NMF status, hence the focus on it. A good percentage of the kids make the cut annually.
QOTD - I’d say S fall on the extrovert side of the scale, but not the extreme end. He can be a bit awkward in new situations, but he is getting better. Boy Scouts and having to solicit donations for his robotics team has helped with the comfort level of engaging. His college search isn’t really affected by that factor. His search is more affected by affordability and making use of the NMF scholarships available.
@CaucAsianDad wrote
Boy, I wish we had that as our placement stipulation, D17 would have been in with no problem. At least she really likes AP stats (had to have a 94 or better in ap calc ab to continue on to bc in their school).
QOTD: D17 thinks she’s an extrovert, but she’s probably at more of an ambivert.
Our school encourages the PSAT for everyone and makes it free for sophomores. Interestingly, another HS in the same district is very oppressive about taking it-only lets the first 100 (out of a class of 500) juniors take it who sign up.
I am curious to see how D18’s BF did on the PSAT, but I think D18 is still mad at me about that whole thing so I’ll probably never know, lol.
The UMD essay-she stuck to 500 words for it, so I don’t know how much going over it allowed. IIRC, she had 488 words. However, all those essays start to run together for me so it’s hard to remember. I do remember she had to edit down one from 700 to 500, and that was a drag. Luckily she likes to use adjectives, so I had her cut a lot of those first.
For some reason I thought I read somewhere that the SAT subject test results come out tomorrow (the 21), but now I’m reading that it’s the 27. (I’ve decided adding “th” and “st” is just annoying-you can add it in in the voice that you imagine for me reading this).
I can’t remember when the PSAT results come out. I want to say January???
QOTD: I would say S is a little more introverted than extroverted, but he’s never had any trouble finding kids to hang out with when he’s gone to camp, a new school or other activities where he doesn’t know anyone. And that shows in his college list – he doesn’t care how big or small the overall college is, as long as the engineering program feels right. So, essentially, almost all the schools he chose to apply to are about equal to him. We might be throwing darts next spring.
@MotherOfDragons Jan. 7 is when the school notified us that S’s PSAT results were available.
QOTD: I think my D is more like @itsgettingreal17’s D, where she is a bit introverted at first. Actually she is just assessing other people. Then, when she feels safe with you, she gets loud and obnoxious. I think she has proven to be a very ‘good friend’, and has a really good core of ‘real’ girl friends. She can tell a fake a mile away.
Well, we had another mini-meltdown last night. She needs a good grade tomorrow on her MV Calc test to get the semester grade she wants. She doesn’t ‘think’ she’s going to pull it off. I keep telling her to chill on the grades. It’s over. Not going to help her or hurt her one way or the other. She won’t listen. 10 minutes later it’s like it never happened.
Go Cubs!
@mommdc But I’ve seen the reverse, people who didn’t see the point in taking it junior year. I have a relative that said her son wasn’t taking the PSAT junior year because he took it and did really well sophomore year so she didn’t see the point. Somehow they didn’t get the memo that only junior year really counted. I didn’t understand because kid’s father was a NMSF and they are chasing scholarships.
For those of you whose school’s use PSAT for screening for AP classes. Do they pay for the test? Our school screens for AP’s using pervious classes grades and teacher recs. It can be VERY hard to get into many of them although there are a few AP’s that almost any student can get into. Using the PSAT’s as a screener would have been to my son’s advantage, because he does extremely well on standardized tests but not always so hot on grades.
** QQTD ** Introvert – although he has really come out his shell this last year. I think it affects his selection of schools because he wants a school he can be anonymous and has large lecture classes he can hide in. Although there are other reasons why all of his schools are large state schools and I personally think he’d do well in a small LAC.