S19 took one SAT without essay and one ACT without essay and will submit the December ACT score. He didn’t come across any schools that want the essay, although I think if he had taken it, the format of the ACT one would have worked better for him. He didn’t really consider taking it “just in case,” and has the same philosophy with the subject tests. He’s interested in one school that recommends them, but not for applicants in his intended major so I think he’s off the hook.
Testing was the least stressful part of this process but I am daily freaking out about something or other the closer he gets to application season.
I wonder whether graders are fine tuned to the grading rubric of the new SAT essay or are still influenced by the old SAT essay grading rubric (the length of the essay was more important than style and composition). It’s a similar issue with teachers teaching the old AP Physics B (a lot of students had high scores) then moving on to teach the new AP Physics 1 & 2 (a lot of students failed).
SAT/ACT essays: Have to resort to humblebragging on this one, but I do want to point out that my D19 who got a 36 on the ACT reading and a 35 on the ACT English (or vice versa, can’t remember), and who’s taking second-semester comp at the local college this fall, got a 5/12 on the ACT essay this past spring. (She got somewhat similarly unbalanced scores on the SAT essay.)
So you’ll excuse me, I hope, for not putting a lot of stock in the essay portions of those tests.
@coolweather Yikes. I hope not. I assume the graders were trained on how to grade the new essay. It’s very different than the old one. It wouldn’t be that hard to give graders the correct rubric and for them to follow it.
@dfbdfb She should have taken the SAT because the ACT essay favors the writing skills of one group students and the SAT essay favors the writing skills of the other group of students. It’s a competition for customers. : :))
@dfbdfb Those essays have rubrics and you have to learn how to write them. If S19 had not been taught exactly how to write the SAT essay, his would have been bad as well even though he’s very strong on reading/writing multiple choice sections. I really don’t think you can wing that essay. You need to know a long list of rhetorical devices, understand their definitions and how they are best used, and then “grade” the author on how well they use these devices in their arguments. So, like so many parts of these standardized tests, you can be taught to the test.
My S18 was asked to take 2 SAT subject tests by the local college, because he was homeschooled. His SAT and grades (including Georgia Virtual grades) met admission criteria (1310 and 1500 and I also had Iowa Test of Basic Skills scores for him (99th percentage over several years.) I fully understand they wanted objective testing data, but they wouldn’t even look at anything else: It was the SAT 2 or no application considered. Their college, their rules, but it just seemed silly to pay for 2 more set of tests just because he was homeschooled.
It all worked out for the best. He found his college “fit” and where he’s supposed to be.
My understanding is that SAT essay graders are hired without a ton of qualifications - I vaguely recall that a long while back there was a discussion about the ease of getting that job and the advertisement for it.
My D did zero preparation - literally none whatsoever - for the essay in spite of my suggestions. From my understanding (per a blog article on prepscholar or maybe compass), the resulting score would be ok/sufficient for anyplace, although I doubt she’ll end up applying to a school that requires it or even looks at it. I think she just guessed correctly as to what was expected, on the fly, based on how she was taught at school (i.e. she was lucky enough to have been taught whatever it is). Accordingly, I do suspect that there is an actual way that can be taught.
I just looked back at S19’s essay from a practice test he took at a Kaplan center before he took AP Lang. He got a 5/4/5. On the SAT he took this March (more than half way through AP Lang), he got a 7/6/8. I would say that class prepared him. He didn’t do any practice for the SAT essay on his own. And I’m not surprised that his anaysis score is a 6 since it’s only the top 2% of essays that got a 7 or 8.
I see no other reason that his score would have gone up except that he had a very good AP Lang teacher.
The number of schools that require the ACT/SAT with essay but explicitly say they don’t look at the score for it is…interesting.
It’s not a lot, of course—not a lot of schools explicitly state that they don’t look at a given score, for reasonable reasons‚but the fact that there’s any out there at all gives a good indication of what adcoms think of that particular part of the test, I think.
Trying to catch up on lots of posts here! It’s been a crazy, hectic few weeks here. I’ll be glad when junior year is over–not until 6/21 for us.
DD took the Math II subject test today. She felt the 1st 30 questions were pretty easy, and then the next 20 were rather hard. Not sure what sort of score we are looking at–but she will be ok with anything over 700. (Though an 800 is only the 79th percentile–ugh.)
Anyone else’s 2019 take Math II? Wondering if their thoughts line up with my DD’s.
As most schools have dropped requiring the essay on either test, it backs up how little it is weighted in my opinion.
To @dfbdfb 's point, S17 had E 35, R 33 and essay…8. I was not aware the score reports even sent the essays to the schools but if they do, I just can’t see colleges actually reading them in addition to everything else they have to parse through.
My D took the math 2 today as well. She just finished pre calc but did nothing else to really study for it. She felt that there were several types of questions she didn’t recognize. She felt that about 40 questions were pretty easy but 10 of them really threw her. My guess is that she will have to take it again. For the few places that actually care about the tests, I think they need to be top scores. Too bad, I really hoped she could be done with all this already.
Popping in from 2020 thread. D17 took the old SAT twice. First time, she got 2270 ( 700 r, 770 m, 800 w, 12 essay). We thought it was a good number and she was once and done. Then we went on tours for several selective schools. I remembered vividly, at Georgetown, they said they only look at R and M, not W. I was surprised and asked why. I was told that was kinda common practice. I think it was because of that, D decided to take the test again to up her R score. If these schools do not even care about Writing scores, I can’t imaging they would be so into the essay score. That being said, S20 just took the SAT with essay today. He did preparation for the SAT but not the essay. We will see if the english class is sufficient for the essay
@gallentjill shoot. At least for S19 it’s been true that he needs to study for SAT 2s no matter that subject matter. They don’t correlate perfectly to any class at his school. And SAT is notorious for asking questions in a round about way so the kids have to learn how to decipher the questions.
Yes! This is almost exactly how she described it. The questions were asked in a weird way that she didn’t really recognize. On the up side, she thought BIO was a breeze.
My D19 was sooooo blissed out last night after a fun choir concert, and she was singing and chattering away this morning before her SAT. I’m hoping this relaxation and positive energy will translate into a good performance. Really makes me appreciate the role of the visual and performing arts in education. Choir has been an absolute highlight of high school for her, and this year especially was a wonderful antidote to the stress of her AP classes. Let’s hear it for the arts in schools! (and this is reason #9780 why she wants to be certain to be able to sing in a choir or two in college…)
Interesting about the essay grading…I’ve barely paid any attention to D’s from her March test but I guess reading this she did well. She wanted to take the essay a second time, so it’s past 1:00pm here and she’s still not out of the test. Presuming she will emerge soon…! I want to take her to every California teenager’s favorite food destination, In N Out Burger, to celebrate. Teenagers here eat that stuff like it’s going out of style… My D19 is one of those who maaaaybe weighs 105 pounds and eats like a horse…giant bowls of cereal for after-school snacks, fast food burgers for lunches, cookies and milk last night to celebrate after her show. Meanwhile I gain weight just by being in the same room with her. Sigh…enjoy it while you actually have a metabolism that burns calories, dear kiddo!!
Dds comment on coming out of SATs “my brain was befuddled, just in one of those befuddled moods…so that was the first part…” Well, so much for 3rd time’s a charm! How about “4th time”? Is that a charm?
I’m late to the party but I have D16. We are from NYC and she does not want to go to school anywhere near N.Y. Closest school she will be applying to is Howard. Furthest is UCLA. She has decided to apply EA to every school on her list that offers it just to get it over with. She has been working on her personal statement for a couple of months now but I have not read not will i. Anyway this next year will be nerve racking but worth it for her to get into a school she loves. We’ve visited 6 schools so far with 5 more in the next 6 weeks. The only one she absolutely hated was Tufts. Almost from the moment she stepped on campus she didn’t like it. Whereas UCLA and Georgia State she fell in love with during the visits.
Anyway thanks for letting me ramble and look forward to the next year with you all.
@cinn124 Too funny. What is the deal with Tufts? My daughter’s friend flew from the Southeast to Boston this spring to visit after he was accepted. Whole family went. He hated it on sight, and they just spent the weekend visiting Boston. He’s happy where he ended up, though.
