@RightCoaster well yes, but I think by CC standards my son’s list was mostly safety and match schools. For him, we were looking for fit and reasonable cost.
Hoping you have a somewhat easier journey with your 2019 S!
@eh1234 My eldest son studied insanely for the standardized tests, but was never able to get the sky high scores. Later he had the same experience with the LSAT. I think a big difference between him and S19 is simply reading speed. For my 2 eldest, reading involves a bit of snake-fighting as they are both dyslexic to various degrees. For S19, reading and reading under pressure is simply natural and easy, and his score responds to prep in a way that his older siblings’ did not. Re the math score, he’s advanced in math and has done math competitions since age 9. Getting an 800 was not a matter of SAT prep.
I’ve spent enough time on the 3.0-3.4 threads to know that kids have many great options and merit aid/fin aid if they need it with a well designed list. My middle kid is a 50-60 ranked LAC and getting a great education and loving it. No need for the the tippy-top schools in my book. DH is pushing for our local flagship not any sort of ‘elite’ schools. However, I suspect that S19 has other ideas. He is still being either cagey or is just waiting until we tour a bunch of schools this spring.
@homerdog It’s a paddling race. A few of the older junior national team kids will be there. S19 does soccer with his HS in spring, so he won’t be that fast. S19 is not too keen as he doesn’t like bringing up the rear and not making it out of his bracket. But the easier road to the podium at nationals in his age group goes through that race and getting more high-level experience. And we can combine it with SUN!, college visits, seeing old friends, and a work visit (for me).
Congrats to all who are done testing! I feel really out of it because we haven’t started 
. 100 years ago, DH and I took the SAT cold, and we did well . . . I thought prepping was for GRE’s or MCATS, but the SAT was more of an aptitude test, and you can’t study for an IQ test, so I didn’t encourage D19 to prepare.
Well, as the March 10th date got closer, D’s friends started to talk, and it turned out three of them had been studying with private tutors for months (these are good students, bright kids). Huh. I started asking around a little, and this is common in our town! Even the College Board admits that studying will raise your score.
Are DH and I the only clueless ones? D got anxious about it and changed her registration date to May. Now, she’s using Khan Academy. She’s motivated and I know she’ll practice, but when I read that students start studying sophomore summer, I feel stressed (and also dumb).
Wishing I’d found CC earlier and looked at the test prep section. Then again, our kids learn mountains of stuff and are tested on it for years, with the results on their transcript. Why do colleges need them to study for an extra long, pressurized version of what they do all the time? Do they not trust their grades?
I will answer the 2nd question first. HS’s across the country have widely differing standards in terms of rigor, how grades are weighted or not, what is offered or not. Standardized tests is a way for colleges to compare apples to apples. So it’s not that they don’t trust the grades in the context of that school’s offerings but that it’s next to impossible to compare grades for all kids across all HS’s and the testing helps with that.
As for prep classes? Yes, they help. BUT the vast majority of students do not have access or the luxury to have a prep class or tutor and how much they help any one child will vary quite a bit. The only real advantage to studying sophomore summer is to get the darn testing over with and allow for opportunities to re-test if scores aren’t where you want. Not doing so does not, in any way, make you behind.
@3SailAway - Don’t feel dumb at all! As with all things related to our kids, they just continually get accelerated and more intense (have to start travel teams earlier, take more and more AP classes, start SAT prep sooner). You and your D are right on track. My D17 took the SAT in the spring of junior year then the ACT in June after she finished junior year without much prep. The ACT score was good and I thought we were done testing. Then on a visit to state flagship in Sept. of senior year we found out the honors program required a certain sub score of the ACT that happened to be her lowest, so she she took it again in Oct. to get the score she needed. No real prep either time but she was still on track with all her applications and got into great schools.
It is a little intimidating for sure to find out how many of my kids’ friends are doing/have done private test prep tutoring. As much as I want my kids to have all the advantages they can get, I can’t get on board with it. Part of it is the money and part of it is knowing that my S19 could easily have prepared more on his own with the resources available to him (online and book I wasted money on). I refuse to pay someone just to make my son study, but I definitely get why parents do it.
@3SailAway Our S19 did not use a tutor. I googled the best SAT books, set up a study schedule for him, and insisted that he study the summer before junior yaar. You really don’t need a tutor if you can get your child motivated somehow. That being said, he had just finished pre-calc so he was ahead in math and it was just a matter of reviewing. As for English and writing, he did a LOT of practice problems. We used PWN the Math book and the Erica Melzler English and Writing books to study and he did full college board practice tests in real time four times before the test. I don’t think a tutor would have done any more than light a fire under him and I wasn’t going to pay if he could do it himself.
It was time consuming and frustrating at times but he knew that this was the only uninterrupted two months he was going to have to study. Some of his friends did the same thing. Others are very focused on using Sundays to prep and are still trying to get the scores they want. Lots of testing dates left!
@homerdog - Oh how I wish I could have set up a study schedule for my son! And that he would actually follow it.
I’m not complaining about his scores because they were great, but the idea that he would follow such a plan of mine is so far from reality! This application season is going to be interesting.
Oh @elena13, S19 is our oldest and a pleaser. And we are lucky that he’s just a first-born rule follower. Now, our D21 is another story. She’s a good student but very independent and not interested in following any of our advice. My hair is turning grey just thinking about trying to get her to study for standardized tests.
@3SailAway My kids school (a prep school) recommends SAT/ACT for the first time in spring of junior year after PSAT in the fall of junior year. Both D17 & S19 followed that schedule.
Thanks, guys. I feel better. We’ll get the prep materials. Our spring break plan is laid back, so D can jump-start, and if she doesn’t have enough time before May, her summer is flexible.
I love our town, but I’m not from here, and sometimes I get the feeling that memos about life got delivered to everyone but me. This has never bugged me before—it’s funny when it’s a fashion thing, and I’m very secure in my belief that our kids don’t need to play travel sports at age nine etc. But this private SAT tutor thing really shook my confidence.
Having you guys to vent to has been keeping me from contributing to D19’s stress!
@3SailAway We never hired a tutor. We took a very similar approach to homerdog’s. I bought tons of prep books and the official practice sets from SAT and ACT. S19 did not like review books so never touched them but did the full-length practice problems. He did about 4 full-length SAT practice sets and a couple ACT sets. He also did Erica Meltzer’s English/grammar practice tests. After each practice, I graded them and have him redo what he missed and then review the explanation to the questions which he missed both times. He took SAT in October and December and ACT in Februrary and we are done.
Good luck!
We haven’t gotten a tutor. Our school SAT is in two weeks and the kiddo has been doing a little studying, not much.
We can’t really afford a tutor so I am doing what I can on my own. I have been taking the free SATs on my own, timed, to see where my own skill gaps are and to refresh my own memory of all the concepts. My best composite so far is 1440.
Kiddo used Khan Academy last summer and self-studied but he wasn’t really internally motivated and I don’t think it made much of a difference. We studied together for the ACT and I think we did better, so we are studying together for the SAT. The ACT is more his thing, we think, but the SAT is free so he might as well give it a try.
We can afford a second test in whichever one he does better on, at some point this summer. Depends on play rehearsal schedule, like everything in my kid’s life.
I bought S a study guide, which he only opened once to take a timed practice test. That was the extent of his prep. His school offered a semester long class in prep but it didn’t fit his schedule; I believe it is a newer offering as they did not have it when my oldest was a junior (2012).
@3SailAway your kid has plenty of time to get a few tests completed, and also time for some self study or group class. You can ask your school counselor if the school offers any SAT prep programs. Our school has a session run by some teachers and there is a fee for it, but that seems to be what most of the kids do. They take it over one of the school vacations and just prep for the test. I don’t think it’s as good as a professional test prep center, but it at least gets the kids used to the test.
My son just did it over Feb break and studied a bit for the first time, so we’ll if he scores go up some.
My older son was pretty good about self studying, but he would rather answer the questions on a computer. So he sat in his room before each test and took sample tests. He ended up doing OK too. I think it’s really important for the kids to at least get used to the timing of the test, and to understand how the questions work.
We never had either kid study prior to PSAT because becoming a NMF is about impossible in MA unless you get a perfect score. We used those as no stress practice tests and used the results to see where they could study to improve.
DS is very happy with his SAT score and says he is finished with at least the SAT. He didn’t get quite the stratospheric scores I’ve seen on this thread, at least not in math anyway (780V/700M), but his report said he finished in the 99th percentile so I’m hoping that will be good enough for the schools he is looking at for merit aid, which are outside the top 50.
@homerdog - Ok good. You know what I’m dealing with. My D is definitely more of a rule follower and was generally more cooperative with the college app/visit process. She didn’t always take my suggestions but it still wasn’t that difficult compared with trying to work with my son who is a total smart ass. He thinks he shouldn’t have to study for anything and just ace it. It has mostly worked for him so I can see why he thinks that, but he’s finally starting to have a bit of an awakening. I may have finally convinced him that there are many thousands of kids with equally good grades and scores and who have also done a lot with their ECs. Still, that doesn’t mean he’s going to take my advice. Ugh
Hello, my name is InfiniteWaves, and I have a serious FOMO thing going on right now. Due to last week’s snow days, our visits originally planned for days off this week had to be rescheduled. Which I did. But we now have Thursday afternoon open. And despite the fact that we have done a bazillion visits over the past several months I am scrambling to schedule. Just. One. More. Because the time is there.
Someone talk me down. S19 is happy with his list and ready to wrap things up with the in-state financial/academic safeties we have left to visit. But, but, but… 
@Samsmom2019…Those are great scores… 780 verbal…WOW!
On the planet where I live, those are stratospheric scores. Congratulations!
We didn’t get a tutor for D19, but we did get an online video ACT course. Honestly, it largely was a waste of money for D19. She didn’t really improve in anything except math (because her other scores were already pretty high). And the main reason she improved was that she did a bunch of practice questions, not because of the videos.