We got D19’s ACT scores. I just showed them to her without saying anything to see her reaction. She immediately said, “Oh, that’s bad.” So now we have to decide whether to take it December 9 (the weekend before finals) or waiting until February 10. The deadline to sign up for December 9 is this Friday, which happens to be the day she gets her SAT scores. We’ll probably wait to see them to decide, since it’s possible that she’ll get the score to qualify for scholarship on the SAT.
If not, hopefully, she’ll realize that she didn’t prepare hard enough for the ACT. She really should be doing math problems every single day when she’s in prep mode.
@gusmahler Shoot! Yes, if the math section is a place where your D needs improvement then doing problems every day and finding/understanding her mistakes will definitely help. S19 found that math problems on the ACT and SAT don’t look like problems from math class even if they test the same concept. One has to get used to how the questions are asked. Seems like studying for math is more straightforward than the other sections and she’s got plenty of time to retake if needed!
Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping. The additional issue is that she did significantly worse on reading and science than she has in any of her practice tests. Even though she did badly on the math, the score is around where she was for the first two practice tests (though worse than her third practice test).
It may be a fatigue issue.I kept telling her that she has to take all 4 sections in one sitting to be accurate. But she never “has the time” to do so. So she’d take two sections one day and two sections the next. I also think she was overconfident for science and reading. She’d done so well on every practice test that she took it for granted that she’d do so again. So she ended up dropping 5 points on those sections that she didn’t expect to drop.
@gusmahler It sounds like a good plan to wait for the SAT score - maybe she’ll score high enough for whatever scholarship you’re looking at, or maybe it would make more sense to retake the SAT. (Although I gather she focused her prep on just the ACT?)
S19 appears to be going in to his December ACT without looking at a single practice question so I don’t really see the point! Oh well the fee is non-refundable so I guess we’ll just see what happens.
He was pretty happy with his Oct SAT but surprised me this week by saying he wants to take it again. I’m sure he won’t really prep (again) so I don’t know why he thinks his score would go up! I wish the January SAT still existed because I could possibly bribe him to do some quick prep over winter break.
Yeah, what happened to the January SAT? I think May is a difficult time to try to take the SAT if you’re also taking AP exams. The March SAT conflicts with our district’s spring break and we’ve planned a trip.
Son19 is signed up for his 1st Sat Dec 2nd and 1st ACT Dec 9th. He took the PSAT and he has to wait until mid December for the results. Why so long for a psat result??? Wish we knew what his psat looked like before he took the other 2 tests, but oh well. I’m fairly certain that he end up taking the tests again in the Spring and at least one of them again next summer/Fall.
He got his state testing results back last week and he showed a big improvement on his English section. I know the test don’t necessarily correlate with SAT/ACT results but he ended up moving into the 'advanced" level, so maybe there is some hope for him doing OK when he tests in December. English is his weaker area, so we’ll take any improvement!
The reasoning I’ve seen for the long delay in getting PSAT scores is because more people take the PSAT than any single sitting of the SAT or ACT. Every junior (and many sophomores) take the PSAT. But only a percentage of them take the December SAT or ACT because people take them at different times.
We did an open house visit at Virginia Tech this weekend and came away very positive. It is a beautiful campus, friendly, enthusiastic students and professors. The engineering program looks fantastic and D16 talked to people from all 13 engineering majors. Two weeks ago she was a firm computer science major, a week ago she floated the idea of chemical engineering, now she has it narrowed down to about 9 possibilities. One plus to VT is you get admitted into the engineering school and take general engineering classes for the first year. At the end of the year who apply for your specific engineering major. Everyone with a 3.0 or above is guaranteed a spot in their first choice major. I asked a prof how hard it was to get that 3.0 your first year. She said basically if you are a good enough student to get into VT engineering you have the ability to get a 3.0 your first year if you work for it.
So VA Tech goes in the definitely will apply and would be very happy to attend if accepted column. Since it is in the affordable and reasonable chance at admission columns as well this is good news.
Our first quarter grades are coming out on Friday. The only class that’s a question is calculus, but that’s a pretty big question. It could be anything from a C+ to an A-, depending on how the teacher weighed extra credit and retests. Nerves are wracked.
This weekend is the school play, and the last weekend of the outside play. I had planned (and bought tickets to attend) the Wednesday (all understudies) and Thursday showings of the school play. But kiddo got an offer from one of the actors in the outside play (who is also a playwright) to play a part in a staged reading of a new one-act play on Thursday night. So I think we may end up blowing off all but the understudy performance of the school play, which is probably going to result in some hurt feelings. No, it’s almost definitely already resulted in hurt feelings.
But kiddo now knows from experience just what a bad idea it is to schedule two major projects at the same time. Life is going to feel so strange once both plays are in the rear view mirror.
Every kid in our school district takes the PSAT, college-bound or not. Somebody has to be getting those 200 math/200 reading scores. I can remember a couple of kids from elementary school that I think are challenging the lower boundary of test scoring.
Our school district pays for all sophomores to take the PSAT, and I think neighboring school districts do as well. So yes I’m sure there are tons of tests to score.
Yeah, I forgot about that, 9th and 10th graders take the PSAT in our school district as well. The seniors get a day when they don’t have to report to class until around lunch time, which they take every opportunity to rub the younger kids’ noses in.
Stress is getting overwhelming over here. S19 had a boat load of homework last weekend and, with that Nike XC race and travel time to and from Terre Haute, he had little time to do it. He and his friends read on the car rides and did a little work on Saturday night at the hotel but only made a dent in the work. He hasn’t missed an assignment this week but he’s been up late three nights in a row and it’s wearing on him.
He got an 11/15 on an APUSH quiz and nearly had a breakdown. It’s just a quiz and it’s not worth all that much in the scheme of the class. He has tests and papers worth 100 points or more but he’s losing it over this little quiz. It was multiple choice and the teacher emailed me to tell me that she could tell he was upset. She said she will talk to him today, that he’s overthinking the questions. She does not want him worried about this quiz and said she’s losing sleep thinking about him being upset! He just feels like he’s putting so much time into this one class and getting anything wrong is ridiculous. This pressure he puts on himself is making me upset. I’ve been clear with him that, even if he gets a B in this class, it’s not moving his GPA all that much and it WON’T matter. And it certainly does not matter at all to me and my husband. He just looks at me and says it matters to him. Ugh.
It’s interesting that S19 cannot see the forest from the trees. I think he’s tired and maybe coming down with a cold too. And he’s got a long weekend of homework ahead with a big APUSH presentation and a BC Calc chapter test on Monday. He’s mapped out the work he needs to do and each night he just plows through it but another week of this is going to be a huge bummer. I’m hoping for little to no work over Thanksgiving weekend so he can recharge.
The kicker is that he also dropped his phone yesterday and cracked the screen so he has to pay to fix that too. ;(
When my d gets upset about a grade like that, I remind her that sometimes it’s a good thing to get a lower grade here and there. Part of high school is learning to cope with setbacks and how to rise above them. They need to learn to put it into perspective. It can be a really hard lesson for perfectionists who are used to doing so well. It’s very needed though. Mistakes are how we learn and that applies to grades as well.
So the craziness of our hyper-competitive public schools has made it onto a CC thread. Here’s a link to the Chicago Tribune article and the posts that have resulted. We live in one of the school districts in the article.
@homerdog I am not a parent who gives my kids mental health days , but I did give my son one day at home last year to finish a crazy amount of work that he had because none of his teachers coordinate anything. He did not ask to stay home. I insisted . He got caught up and finished the rest of the week with a much better frame of mind. Might be something to consider especially if you fell like he may be getting sick.
We don’t get the report cards until tomorrow. The website for grades is down pending the upload tonight. I’m more anxious than DS about what happened with calculus. I actually had a dream where he got the A. It’s… mathematically possible if the teacher awarded every sliver of extra credit possible, but statistically unlikely.
But hey, this is calculus not statistics so I will go with hope.
It’s also mathematically possible that he got a C+ in which case I will prepare myself for wailing and gnashing of teeth. Maybe I should stay up late and check the grades just before bedtime, just so I know.
Nah. He deserves the joy of crowing about the grades if it’s above C level. I won’t steal that from him.
I’ve never done the mental health day for the kid. I considered it, but kiddo said he wanted to go in to school because he didn’t want to get further behind.