@collegeandi your D will do fine! We found that my son’s best result came when he cared the least about it, there’s something to be said about that.
He took the SAT and ACT a few times, doing better each time with some at home studying. He took multiple practice tests at home, that helped.
On his last attempt he just showed up and cranked out his best score. Maybe he was older, smarter, wiser or just more relaxed… who knows? It was a great relief when he got the news he had done well.
We found an ACT score of 32 made my DS16 more eligible for honors programs and much higher merit . My DS19 most likely will not be getting those scores even though he is ranked In the top 10% of his class and has a 4.45 GPA. He just doesn’t test well.
@RightCoaster My DS16 received his last ACT score of 32 on the Tues before he was scheduled to retake his SAT. First words were " Do I have to take the SAT on Sat?"
@RightCoaster some schools have virtual tours. Might be a little different than Google Earth tour but a way to visit a school from afar.
@collegeandi My D16 did better on the ACT than she did on her PSAT/SAT, even on her first attempt, which was a true practice test for her. She took it one more time without prep, scored several points higher and was done with a 30 (she was more of a B/B+ student and had SATs in the 1100s/1700s). I regret making her take the SAT at all after her PSAT score somehow dropped between 10th and 11th grade. Even the 30 was enough to get her into some schools that I thought might be out of reach.
Maybe I’ll see if S19 will try one of the free online ACT tests this summer - I am curious to see if he can do the math with just honors Algebra 2 under his belt. He might have to wait until the middle of junior year if he takes it at all. My kids are nothing alike so I can see him being the complete opposite of his sister when it comes to these tests.
My son is taking Honors Alg2 and Honors Geometry this year. He probably won’t know enough to do really well in math on his first attempt, but you never know. He’ll probably do.a winter ACT and then a spring ACT. We’ll see where he ends up, and if he needs to take it again he can try fall of his senior year. I think he’s taking Honors pre-calc junior year and then AP calc senior year.
My oder son also did better on ACT versus SAT, but he did not take the SAT in his senior year, only as a junior. He might have improved his score on the SAT as a senior if he tried.
Oh, @eh1234, @RightCoaster, that gives me some hope! Thank you!
I’m surprised by how early some of you are doing testing. For my older D16 we started in the spring of junior year. She first took the SAT in March and did poorly. I think that was a wake up call as it looked like all the schools she wanted were out of reach so it was a good kick in the pants. She took the SAT again in June and added the ACT which I think was offered just a week later. The scores were substantially higher and roughly equivalent. For us the June timing was best because she was had recently finished studying for APs so that info was still fresh in her mind, and she was preparing for finals, so she was just in super study test taking mode. She did retake both the SAT and ACT in early September senior year just to see if she could bump them up a bit. That was pretty much a waste. Some individual sections moved up but totals moved slightly down. Since school had just started, I think she still had summer brain. I am planning to do the same schedule with my S19, maybe omitting the Sept tests if he comes in where I expect/hope in June.
We plan on Fall Jr year to start and hope to be done the end of Jr year if at all possible .
@carolinamom2boys said:
That’s exactly what we did with our D15 and I think is an especially good timetable for students who are good test takers and aiming for highly selective schools. We knew from the sophomore PSAT that D15 was in good shape to be NMSF so we had her focus in the early Fall of junior year on taking timed practice tests. I found lots of good info on the test prep forums here on CC to help pick good test prep books. She took the PSAT as a junior and scored well enough to make NMSF, then took the SAT in December and hit her goal. She would’ve taken the SAT even earlier in the Fall but the testing dates conflicted with debate tournaments. Then in the Spring of Junior year she only had to worry about AP exams and subject tests, and all testing was done by June. This put her in a good position to apply ED in senior year.
Despite having used that plan for D15, I don’t think it will work for D19, who is less mature and less motivated. Also, I’ve gotten her accommodations from the College Board (extra time and MP3 audio). It’s a little harder to set up a properly timed and administered practice test at home that simulate the accommodations, and I don’t think she’d cooperate anyway. I’m generally opposed to using the “real” SAT for practice for fear of having multiple bad scores on file. But for D19 I think we should probably plan on needing to take the real SAT at least twice.
just dropping into this group. I have a D17, and also an S19. S19 is a really good test taker. he took the ACT as a freshman just to try it out and scored a 26, with science and English bringing it down, and his PSAT score this past fall was extremely high. i think SAT will be a better fit for him . he is fully capable of a 4.0, but unweighted is hovering around a 90 right now, which wont get him anywhere near top schools. His is my naturally smart kid who doesnt know how to actually study when things get tough, while my D17 has an LD and always had to work hard. He also has social issues, so doesnt do much in terms of Extra curriculars except for science olympiad.
Hoping to motivate him by taking him to my alter mater, carnegie Mellon for Spring break. Doubtful he would ever get it, as he wants to study CS/game design.
@sdl0625 If Carnegie doesn’t work out he could check out RIT and RPI for game design. If he is an A- kid with good test scores they might be a good fit.
We are also doing fall 2017 and hope to be done in Junior year. She’ll be doing much math review this summer in preparation for the PSAT, so we thought the ACT the month before would be a good time of the school year for testing.
If she needs to retest, we have time in junior year to get it done. We hope to avoid the SAT, based on her results in a SAT/ACT set of practice tests.
@RightCoaster those schools, northeastern, and WPI are also on the “list”. We are starting earlier with him than we did with D17, now understanding the process. Figure the CMU trip is just to get him started and excited, and motivate him to do well on his finals. There is no chance in heck I would get in these days. i graduated in 86 with Mech Eng degree. I was one of 8 women.
CMU is crazy hard to get into nowadays. Even with great grades and scores. Computer science fields are very competitive. I think they are competitive at WPI,RPI, RIT etc. but at least there is some leeway.
I like the CMU eye opener strategy though, could be a good wake up call and lead to inspiration.
If he gets a great score ( 33 and up) he has a decent chance at Northeastern, but it’s gotten very stat driven there in the early action round. A bunch of my sons friends and my son too were deferred EA. These were very good students
90+ GPA average and decent scores kind of kids, but NEU is looking to add kids with even better stats. At RPI,WPI they didn’t seem as focused on singular scores. That’s just what I’ve seen in my experience over the last year.
DS17 has ADHD. The one thing I regret is pushing him with his academics. I think he would have been better off in the regular classes instead of the gifted and AP classes. Not only did it hurt his GPA but it also has made high school a grind. In the end he probably would have ended up applying to the same colleges anyway… I wish that my kids could have had a high school experience like mine instead of trying to figure out how to have the best “resume” for college apps.
@MichiganGeorgia I agree, the kids don’t have it as easy as we used to. Nobody used to study for SAT’s, volunteer for 1000 hours, intern, etc. You did what you wanted to do and ended up going somewhere based on your grades, locale, sat score, $$. Now it’s like an evil game of maximizing all of the kids free time so they can get into a decent school, or just not worrying about it and letting the kid get in wherever he’s luck enough to get in. I have friends using both approaches. I would find it refreshing to not " play the game". I worried less with son17 until last year when I finally realized how competitive college admissions has become.
Good luck to your son17.
I think a major part of the problem is people believing that only “selective” schools are "decent " schools and that’s not the case. A lot goes into selectivity and it’s not always an indication of strength of a specific program.
S17 was done with all testing in 11th grade. He took (old SAT - was in the transition class) in Nov and ACT in April. He took SAT subject tests and AP exams in 9, 10 & 11 (spread out to match his class work) and was done in spring of 11th. There was time for him to retake in fall of senior year if needed.
Current plan is a summer prep class and then either the ACT or SAT or both in the august/sept timeframe. I’ve done nothing about it though.
I don’t expect S19 to be going for super selective, he’ll need merit and so that will be the strategy and he may well be the one kid that needs to commute.