@gusmahler is your D19 applying to highly selective schools? If so, you may be self reporting AP scores and not reporting a score for AP Chem might lead to the conclusion that D19 got a poor score.
I think it’s a different calculation for senior year AP’s. My D15 didn’t take several of her senior year AP exams because she had been admitted to her ED school by then and knew she was maxed out on the credits her school would give her. But even then some AP scores may be useful to satisfy requisites or for placement. For example, my D15 used her 5’s in AP Stats and Psych to satisfy prerequisites for some of her economics classes.
@homerdog I fully understand about the search for some merit aid. It can be harder to get some in New England but I wouldn’t say impossible.
The kid we know at Kenyon loves it. I knew nothing about that school until he got accepted there and we learned more about it. For the right kind of kid it sounds like a neat place.
If your son is looking to get away from rich white people from the burbs, I don’t think any of the schools like Colby, Bowdoin, Middlebury etc are going to cut it. They are in the woods and attended by mostly white kids. Tufts is more diverse, and might be a better fit. Your kid would have a better chance there being from another part of the country.
But Tufts loves extra curriculars and likes to see that have all sorts of strong interests and past times. You don’t need to be quirky, but you better be interesting. There is still the privileged white kid thing going on there too, but it’s a bit more all around diverse than the schools in the woods of New England. He might like Bowdoin out of all those school if he can handle Maine. We have a friend that is there now. He was one of the smartest kids in class, lacrosse player, etc. He loves it. But he is a rich sort of sporty white kid from the burbs.
What about some place like U of Rochester? He’d probably get a lot of $ at UVM and that is a nice state U with all sorts of kids and isn’t all about frats/sports. Super safety for your son, but he’d probably get honors college and $$$$$.
He doesn’t want the heat of the Deep South though? How about CA?
@RightCoaster my best friend’s daughter who attends our high school just got into Tufts ED. We never seem to get acceptances there, so she’s thrilled. She showed tons of interest and is very pointy in science. Didn’t even take honors English or history classes but took every AP science class the school offers.
I had Rochester on an early list but S19 is becoming less and less stem-y. While he’s taking the hardest math and science classes, he’s also taking honors everything else and science is not really where his interests lie. I think he may be leaning towards something like history or philosophy or writing. And those aren’t Rochester’s strengths as far as I know. Vermont is on the list still, though, as i think he would like the size and the honors program and the location.
I hear you about the white and privileged at Midd, Colby, etc. I don’t think it’s a complete deal breaker for a school but, mixed with either Greek life or a large percentage of kids majoring in business, it makes the school less of a fit.
Our next door neighbor’s daughter went to Bowdoin and loved it. They are a wealthy family but very down to earth. Not showy. S19 likes her very much and going to school with some kids like her would be great. Her sister went to Carleton.
I may be in touch via PM if I have more questions about schools out your way! Thx!!
Oh, and California too far for him but not D21! She’s hoping for USC!
Ugh, I posted here about the bubbling trouble D19 had on the science section of the ACT and how she hoped that it didn’t affect her. It did. She had a 34 (99th percentile) on science in October, but only a 29 (93rd percentile) on the science section of the December ACT.
The good news is that her math was substantially better, from 27 (88th percentile) to 31 (96th percentile).
The bad news is that her composite went from 32 to . . . 32. Since she needs 33 for her merit scholarship, she’ll be taking it again in February.
I guess it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. She’s already told me that she’s definitely going to retake any 32 or below. But I had hoped that her testing days are over.
@gusmahler I’m so sorry about the answer sheet screw up!! However I am super encouraged with her jump from 27 to 31 on the math, did she do any special prep for that?
I couldn’t sleep last night, between thinking about the scores and thinking about how much have to do before we leave for our Christmas vacation I was tossing and turning. I didn’t want to check the scores in the middle of the night because if they weren’t great I thought I would never sleep at all. Finally woke up earlier than my alarm this morning and checked. I am so happy for D- she got a 32! Not as great as many people here on CC but she will be happy to have that as her starting point since she is notoriously bad at standardized tests thanks a lot math!)
Her SAT was 1300 and from what I found this 32 is comparable to a 1450-1480 SAT. She will still take it again to try to improve but she will be so happy to know she is done with SAT and really only has to focus on math. She got 34s on English and Science, 36 on Reading and a 25 on math. @-) She had a hard time on the math that she did finish then ran out of time and had to guess on a lot. I am going to order the score report so we can bring that to a tutor and really see if she can improve although it looks like she would have to improve by a ton to raise her overall score too much.
D has two finals today - one being her hardest class (you guessed it, math) so I hope this will at least get her in a good mood when she wakes up. Our school has late start and short days during finals week so mt high schoolers get to sleep until 9:30 today!!
@momtogkc D19 studied basically only math. She read the book Ultimate Guide to the Math ACT by Richard Corn and did a lot of practice questions. She also upgraded her calculator from a TI-84 to a TI NSpire, and stored some important formulas in there.
25 on math is improvable. That’s what my D19 got on her first practice ACT math test. I’m sure yours can improve her ACT by quite a bit also.
February is probably the ideal time to take the ACT. The semester just started, so it’s not like she’ll be in the middle of finals. And her track season either starts that week or the week after, so she has little extracurricular activities. Now that I think of it, we probably should have shot for Feb in the first place instead of October and December.
@momtogkc Glad to hear. <:-P Great scores! Wow, 36 in reading! No one in my STEM family can pull that. S17 had a 36 in math once but got 29 on English on that test.
Tutoring sounds a good idea. Feeling confident goes a long way.
For math, 25 corresponds to about 38-39 correct answers out of 60.
26 to about 40-42. 26 would have gotten her the composite to 32.5=33.
So even if she skips difficult math questions and focuses only on 45 questions, she can improve quite a bit.
@momtogkc 32 is an excellent score. Congrats. That must be a relief.
Just checked son’s scores and it was kind of average. . He didn’t do particularly well on any section, nor bad either. He knew immediately when he took it that he didn’t feel great about it, and I guess he was right, LOL. I was hoping he would excel in at least one or 2 sections, so that it would help with some super scoring later. But nope. Probably a throw away test, which is what we kind of expected considering he did no ACT prep and was not familiar with the timing and format. His score wouldn’t help him or hurt him, but the SAT score is a bit better. He did way better on SAT math vs ACT math.
Oh well, I guess he has time to start prepping for the next round in March. Worse case scenario is he doesn’t get any better, but his SAT score should get him into a decent amount of schools he was interested in. But if he doesn’t improve he doesn’t have a chance at some of the more selective schools he was considering. And he certainly wouldn’t get any merit aid which kind of stinks. Meh.
I ordered the Student Answer Service when my D took the Nov SAT. It just came yesterday via snail mail. On the one hand, it’s not as useful as I thought it would be because it doesn’t show the questions she got wrong. But it shows the categories, whether the question was Easy/Medium/Hard, and the Subscore areas such as Command of Evidence (COE), Words in Context (WIC), Expression of Ideas (EOI), Standard English Conventions (SEC), Heart of Algebra (HOA), Problem Solving and Data Analysis (PSD) or Passport to Advanced Math (PAM). It also shows whether the question falls in a “cross-test” area such as Analysis in History/Social Studies (HSS) or Analysis in Science (SCI).
There was no single area of weakness. Her mistakes were pretty evenly distributed and mostly she missed the hardest questions in each section of the test. She had a 1430 total score and the subscores were all consistent at either 35-36. I’m going to sign her up for the May SAT (we’re going on vacation during the March date) and see if we can inch each of the subscores up a bit.
We had a series of snow day fiascos that kept DS from being able to take the ACT. I’ve talked about our practice test travails on this thread before. I’m trying to do this as inexpensively as possible because our finances at the moment are not very strong. I really shouldn’t have scheduled our Christmas vacation, it looks like the weather is going to be rainy warm and depressing. Oh, well.
Anyhow, I haven’t timed the kid on either of the math practice tests he’s done. My sort-of-timed test he finished in just under an hour and a half. He got a 26 first time, 29 second. Second time through he left stuff blank that he had no clue on and there were 5 of those, so we agreed that we would assume random guesses would have given him 1 extra point on that one. He’s getting 34-35 on reading and science and he got 31 on both writing.
He really wants to bring his score up, but he wanted me to design a study plan. So far, I think we need to practice timing most of all for math. I’m planning to get that 5 pound book of ACT problems and create 20 question tests from the various sections, then let him so 20 minute sprints.
For writing, he always, always, always misses comma questions and verb tense agreement questions. So that should be easy to make some targeted worksheets for and drill on the rules.
But I like your thinking - the worst case scenario is not really that bad. If he gets midrange ACT he is still on target for a number of very fine schools and we can probably afford many of them. Thanks for reminding me of what’s important.
@Corinthian I think the score report for certain testing dates includes the questions. I also ordered the score report for S19’s Aug SAT and got the same report you did but I’m pretty sure the Oct SAT report offered a report that was more thorough. It’s unclear on the CB website but, if you dig a little deeper, you can see which dates include which types of reports.
I intended to go to work early yesterday because I thought I did not have to take my D to school. Before I drove my car away I did a sanity check with D. It turned out school is still going on until the end of this week.
S19 hasn’t taken the real thing yet but I plan to sign him up for the February sitting. I’m intrigued by the calculator option and will definitely pursue that since he probably will need a better one anyway. He did the official mock one from ACT last weekend and did ok but we have some work to do. English - 28, Math - 33, Reading - 27, Science - 27. I would have thought the science would have been a lot better but he said the questions are cut and dry – either you know it or you don’t. He’s been using “For the Love of ACT Science” for prep. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
@homerdog that’s interesting to know about the Student Answer Service. I get the impression that the College Board jealously guards a lot of their questions because they repeat them in future tests. Also, my D was taking the test with audio accommodations which is spread over two days. So I don’t think she was necessarily taking the exact same test as everyone else on her Nov testing date.
Hmm, I would have thought that saving math formulas on a calculator would not be allowed (since ACT doesn’t provide a formula sheet, it seems like they expect you to know them). Of course I never looked in to it and I have already purchased a total of 4 or 5 TI-84 CE plus calculators for 2 children. I’m not buying any more calculators.
I checked S19’s ACT score today even though he took it 4 days ago, haha (rescheduled test). I hope he gets the score before the end of winter break, but who knows. It could be February. His comments were “It was fine” and “the science was annoying.” He did manage to finish all of the sections. Goal is a 33 (which he got on his only practice test) but I have no idea how likely that is.
