Weekend was a bust, sometimes you win sometimes not.
Sat got postponed for 2 weeks due to storm and we lost power for 2 days.
Sons friend got sick at their biz competition and couldn’t compete.
Son did not go to national track event, and after reviewing results he likely would have had a great result.
Oh well!! Good life lesson for son19, crap happens, lol
I’m sorry to hear that @RightCoaster - it was a hard choice to make.
My D took the SAT a few days before the PSAT. Similar scores, but slightly higher on the SAT, and like others mentioned on this thread, found the PSAT math more challenging.
@RightCoaster sorry to hear that
@RightCoaster ugh, that’s just a bummer all around. I am so sorry.
@RightCoaster Sorry to hear about triple bummer.
Son took the ACT last June without prep and then once more this winter with a small amount of self-study to improve his English score. For some reason he wasn’t happy with his 34, mainly because he feels he missed out on the 35 by one question (still has a 35 super score). Anyway, I feel he should be done and move on to other things, and there are so many!
I am now trying to figure out which SAT subject tests he should take and would appreciate any input. He doesn’t know what his major will be, but I’m thinking Economics will be the mostly likely choice (definitely not engineering and computer science seems unlikely). His strengths would make him a good law school candidate but who knows what he’ll do. So, for the SAT tests, I think he would do best on U.S. History, English or Spanish. Those would not require a lot of prep and he would prefer to take two out of those three. However, I’m wondering if he should take Physics and History. I’m thinking that if he did well on the Physics, colleges would see that he can be strong in humanities as well as math/science. Even though he is taking AP Physics now, and doing well, he seems concerned about doing well on the SAT test and thinks he would have to do a lot of extra prep.
Any thoughts?
@elena13 maybe he could ask his physics teacher if he knows how much the AP and the SAT 2 overlap. S19 has asked his APUSH teacher her opinion on the history SAT 2 test and she had some good advice. Told him what he would be set on after her class and what he may want to review for the SAT 2. We found that, for the Bio SAT 2, S19 had a few holes. We bought an SAT 2 Bio book and he just needed to study three of the ten chapters in there. The rest had been covered in his Bio Honors class.
@elena13 and remember that he can miss a lot more questions on a SAT 2 and still get an 800. It’s not like the SAT. I think kids get up to eight questions wrong and still get an 800 on Math 2 as an example.
@elena13 Which AP Physics is he taking? I believe the subject test covers a broad range of topics such that AP Physics 1 only includes half of them, a mismatch between course and test. If he is in precalc now, he could take the Math 2.
@elena13 his other option would be to self report his AP physics score and then you don’t have to think about SAT physics. I agree that math 2 might be a good idea. S19 doing History and Math 2.
Have your kids thought about their essay topics yet? I really would like to steer DS into writing about his experience competing at the National level in ice dance, especially since the Olympics are still being talked about, but he is being a bit close-minded about it. Thoughts?
Ugh. @RightCoaster What a perfect storm of issues for the weekend. I’m so sorry. I agree that it’s a lesson in acceptance though. Stinks…but sometimes thinks stink. Maybe just one step at a time to recover. Keep studying for SAT until the test and cross fingers for no injuries during outdoor track season!
My kid started writing essays a few weeks back, @Samsmom2019 . They’re really great first drafts, but he hasn’t yet hit the topics in his life that I think would make killer essays. We have lots of time, though, and you never know what is going to be useful for a supplemental, so I’m just encouraging journaling and free form writing without editing yet, to get the raw material…
He has had a couple of experiences that I think are unique and interesting, but he thinks are ordinary, or are too personal to put in a college essay. But writing about something that you feel deeply about is a great way to build empathy in the person reading the story, and for a holistic admissions college having that AC on your side is the way to get in.
Orson Scott Card once stated that you have to write a million words of crap before your first good novel emerges, so the trick to being a good author is to get those million words out of the way quickly. I doubt kiddo will write a million words between now and next summer, but every few hundred words that he writes and reviews is an increase in his writing prowess.
The free advice sites that I have been reading (which are probably worth as much as I pay for them) say that an essay about ‘winning the competition and Learning About Myself’ is a very hackneyed essay and will often make admissions officers roll their eyes unless it is written very well.
If the competition is a huge part of his life and he writes about himself honestly, it will work itself into the essay. If he wants to write about “I did this great thing but it’s not the only interesting thing about me”, well, I think that makes him stand out. Don’t you?
I would encourage you to just have him write about himself without forcing the topic. His experience may come out. It may not. The admissions office can read about his titles in the extracurriculars section, but if he is not majoring in ice dancing it won’t be the only thing they want to know about him.
My uneducated opinion is that you should just encourage him to write, now. Once he has several pages of thoughts it’s time to take the raw material and enhance it, then edit it down to what matters. That’s what makes a great personal essay.
@Samsmom2019 Certainly seems like ice dancing is the topic he should choose. Our D21 will have to write about ballet since it’s what will make her stand out and the experience just cannot be done justice on the rest of the app. My understanding about the essay, though, is that it’s how it’s written not so much what they are writing about. Choosing an anecdote from his ice dancing experience and making it show his best traits will be the key. I’ve seen lots of advice about nailing down some adjectives that describe the student and then finding a story from their life that illustrates those things.
When we went to Kenyon, the admissions director told the kids to make sure their essays tell the schools who you are. She said, “what do we NEED to know about you?”
I agree with @ninakatarina . The essay is also about being vulnerable and being able to write from the heart. And it’s good advice to not write about winning that big competition or doing charity work and finally realizing how lucky one is. Those are not interesting.
@Samsmom2019 no. What we found is that since they work on it in AP Lit, all efforts that preceded that class ended up wasted. I prefer to pick my battles and I know that S19 will not let me even read them when the time comes. So no, our plans for summer will be all of the common app except the essay and focusing on the activity list which we found to be as much, or more, work than the essay. If there are supplemental essays he will get started with those but I don’t have visibility to the supplements until the CA opens. At least not really.
I agree, the essay needs to showcase the kids personality, not just facts. Schools want the person, not just a list (or bragging, or worse, explaining away a failure). So whatever they write about needs to showcase that, whatever it is that makes them unique and thus a good addition to the school/class.
Thanks for all the terrific advice, as usual. This forum is a blessing! 
@elena13 re-taking a 34 seems pretty crazy. From what I’ve heard, most schools treat a 34 the same as a 35 or possibly even a 36 (they are each classified as 99th percentile).
I’m actually sort of glad D19 got a 32 her previous ACT because my goal score for her was 34. But her own goal score was a 33. It took zero convincing for her to re-take her 32. But it would have been very difficult to convince her to re-take a 33.
I know she’s capable of a 35, but she doesn’t even want to think of re-taking her 34. Extracting those extra two section points seems more trouble than it’s worth.
D19 has her official pre-senior meeting with her guidance counselor this morning (yes, it’s the first day of spring break here, but a junior’s schoolwork apparently never ends), and so last night her mother and I sat down with her with the goal of getting her list of possible colleges down to 30—she got it to 29. She’s interested in industrial and manufacturing engineering, and we’re on the hunt for big MAC,* so it’s mostly big state schools of the sort that don’t get much love on CC (e.g., Iowa State, Arkansas, West Virginia), plus a half-dozen or so deep safeties (like Wichita State and UTEP, and that sector’ll be whittled down fairly soon, I think), a couple lesser-known polytechnics she quite likes (Cal Poly Pomona, Wisconsin-Stout) and a couple reachy outliers (WPI and Georgia Tech, with the former having an edge in her mind, I think).
Interesting things I learned from sitting down with her: She’s all in on the search for big MAC, much more so than I’d expected. Rather to my surprise, she’s very concerned with the form of colleges’ core curricula (which is why three or four colleges that don’t look remotely like any of the others, like St Mary’s in San Antonio, remain on the list). She’ll have to leave our state (Alaska) to study what she’s interested in, and after having observed the pluses for her older sister being at a college reasonably close to extended family, colleges within a couple hours of family get a pretty heavy thumb on the scale. Cold weather is a mild negative for her Alaskan self. And finally, she finds college rankings absolutely and utterly pointless (even more so than her older sister, who found college ranking schemes ultimately unimportant but still interesting data—D19 doesn’t even care to that extent).
Thanks @homerdog and @evergreen5 for your thoughts. He’s just taking AP Physics 1 and I think he can do well on the AP test so maybe just reporting that will be ok. I did ask his physics teacher and he gave me some helpful info. about additional areas of study S would need to do. I hadn’t really thought about the Math SAT test because I figured the math part of the ACT would show some of his math abilities. However, it might make sense for him even though it has become his least favorite class. He’s currently taking IB standard level math which includes an AP Calc curriculum. It may take less extra studying to do well on the SAT math than physics so I’ll talk to him about that. And @homerdog that’s good to keep in mind about being able to miss questions and still get a high score.