My point being everyone should make their choice based on their individual child. @gusmahler Just as you believe a summer school is important , I may believe that a break over summer is more important for my child’s well being. There is no right answer for every child. You do what’s best for your child and everyone else will also evaluate what’s best for his child .
Thanks, everyone. She’s better than an 1100. She’s way smarter than I was at her age, for one thing. And she already knows more - lol - I can’t even figure out how to help her with her math and science stuff, as I never got to her level. That’s why I’m wondering whether she’d have better luck on the ACT if there’s a measurable difference in its outlook/execution.
Then again, she may just suck at these tests. Which really doesn’t follow, as she did qualify for CTY a few years ago, based on tests. I’m just confounded.
10th grade PSAT scores. My son just sent me his score report of 1290, 640 verbal and 650 math. He did not prep. I know he plans to prep for either SAT or ACT which he hopes to take fall of junior year. Based on his score do you think he should try a sample ACT or just stick with SAT. He is legacy at a non HYP Ivy and highly selective small liberal arts college, he is interested in both.
I typically recommend taking both. My son did much better on the ACT than the SAT, but I understand that the revised SAT is more similar to the ACT so I’m unsure how that will effect outcomes.
With the revision of the SAT, seems that the primary advantage of the ACT is that math is one-fourth of the total instead of one-half. Not a big deal if your kid does equally well on both halves (like @karen0), but possibly a big deal for my daughter, who did 110 points better in verbal.
DS19 got his PSAT score 1430( 720 verbal, 710 Math) NM Index 215 no prep. I am really happy about it. I was really worried that he might not be a good standardized test taker. Georgia’s cutoff was 218 last year so I’m not sure if he can do that next year or not plus the cutoff might be higher by then. But hopefully he can get a decent SAT or ACT in May/June without prepping and then not have to worry about it. If he doesn’t do well then I will have him have him do some sort of prep before next Sept.
Son17 ended up with a 1240, did much better on Math section. So that’s good, and there is room for improvement since he did not prep at all for this test. I think he’ll do better on the math section next year, as he’s taking Alg 2 and Geometry as a sophomore, so he can take pre-calc. He’s also a member of the math team. I think between the math team, studying for school, and maturing he’ll improve there. Going to have to really work with him to improve English section though. I’m confident he’ll end up doing well on one of the tests. sat or act, so no big surprises today, that’s good. He did better as a sophomore than my son17 did as a junior, and my son17 went on to score a pretty respectable ACT in the end. It’ll all work out.
@gusmahler - my daughter was 120 points better in verbal, so ACT definitely sounds better-suited to her. Thanks for the insight.
@Gatormama my son did better on verbal on Sat, and so/so on Math Sat. When he took ACT he flip flopped and math became one of his better scores. He took the ACT a few times, and english remained the same on all tests while math and science went up.
You won’t know until you try both. I’d recommend taking each test a couple of times, it can’t hurt.
Thank you all for the good advice. Just logged into College Board. 140 points higher on Verbal than math. Plus Science is her standardized Super Power. I’ll look into the ACT!
I knew this year was rough for her, but her Math went down from last year (how???)…Semester grades are down too. Kid’s been struggling. Just trying to get this semester over with and move on!
Thanks to all for the advice about the ACT for more verbal/more science/less math students. We just signed up for a SAT/ACT Combination practice test in January (the school’s PTA is offering it). It seems the ACT may be a better test for D19.
One other piece of advice I’d give, is that if you have student who scores a decent score at first, but not great, take it again, and maybe a 3rd time. That is, if your kid can handle it. In my son’s experience, and according to his friends that we’ve talked to, the tests are kind of randomly easier or harder. My son took the ACT 3 times, the first 2 times he took it, he said he was confused on some sections. The last time he took it he immediately felt better about and predicted an increase in score, and that’s what happened. He said the overall test was easier, and every single sub section showed improvement.
Most of the time the kids said that they thought certain tests that they took were just harder than others.
If you have the kind of kid that gets 1500 plus on 1st SAT attempt, or 34-35 ACT, I wouldn’t worry about it.
I thought the ACT had precalculus on it? Is it just Alg 2?
We found the same thing with my older son @RightCoaster He retook the ACT 3 times and ended up with a score that made him eligible for larger merit and Honors College acceptances at Clemson and CofC , and got him an invitation to interview for high dollar scholarships at Furman University which he would not have gotten without his highest score.
@2019hope – the ACT also has trig. See: http://www.kaptest.com/study/act/making-the-most-of-your-calculator/
Wow, as usual I am behind on this list. Glad to hear all the good results. Count me among the folks who think test prep should be done early. We were pleased with S19’s PSAT scores. We met with our IB counselor in November to register him for classes. We think he will have:
BC Calc/HL1 Math
AP/IB HL1 Chem
AP Lit/IB HL1 English Lit
AP/HL1 Biology
IB HL1 Film
IB SL Geography
IB SL German
.5 something; possibly choir
.5 TOK (Theory of Knowledge, an IB requirement)
I haven’t been here in awhile, but now that S19 got his PSAT scores, the whole “my younger child will actually be going to college in the not too distant future” thing has hit me. He got a 1360 (650/710M) which gives me hope that maybe he will be one of those kids who can take just the SAT once or twice and not have to do both tests. D16 was definitely an ACT test-taker and her SAT prep turned out to be a waste of time.
S19s grades/ECs aren’t strong enough for him to apply to highly selective schools, so cracking 1400 would be more than fine to go with his A-/B+ grades.
His only issue was with the reading (I think he missed one math question and ran out of time for 3 questions), so it should be easy enough for him to prep on his own to work on paying attention to boring passages and making sure he’s on pace to answer all the math questions. I’d love for him to be done testing by the middle of junior year. He would probably need to wait for the ACT since he’s taking Trig/pre-Calc next year.
I think he’ll pick next year’s classes in late January or February and will have his first APs next year (probably Physics 1 and maybe CS Principles, which is new to the school next year and I don’t know anything about it). He’s so excited to drop French and PE after this year!
I’m really not sure what classes S19 should take. His PSAT test scores were high, not quite high enough for NMSF in our state but high enough if we lived elsewhere, and that is with no prep whatsoever.
So, he tests well and should have high SAT and/or ACT scores. But he is pulling mostly B’s in his classes this year with a very rigorous schedule. That isn’t because he can’t hack the material but rather that he struggles to do and turn in homework mostly because he is busy pursuing his own interests. Right now it is the science fair taking all his time. He is writing a kernel for his own original computer operating system.
So it’s not like he is lazing around. I know he needs a great GPA for his target schools even with a stellar SAT (if he manages to pull that off). But based on his past experience, dropping down to easier levels (i.e. taking regular history vs. APUSH) probably won’t increase his grade because he struggles even more to do easy work.
Mostly though I want to enjoy the high school years with my last kid at home. The best way to do that is for me to put the ball firmly in his court, give him support and encouragement
So my kids’ high school (which is a small, as in ~120 students, part of her 500-student K–12 school) can’t offer a full complement of math courses each year. They’ve settled on a rotation where each math course is a double-length block, letting them do one year in a semester, with precalculus offered every fall semester, AP statistics offered every even-numbered spring semester, and AP calculus AB offered every odd-numbered spring semester. Relatively few (as in about 20% of each graduating class) take both calculus and stats—neither the school nor the district routinely fast-tracks math advancement.
D19 was set to follow the same path as D17—precalc this (sophomore) year, stats next year, and calc senior year. Instead, they’ve moved stuff around so that she’ll take calculus next semester (neither she nor her sister want to be in the same class, but I keep telling them that a live-in study partner is a pretty nice bonus when taking higher-level math courses), stats junior year, and then…Well, we’ll figure out senior year when we get there. (Probably calc I and II at the local college, though.) She’s both a bit frightened by the prospect (as far as anyone can tell, a sophomore has never taken calculus in the entire 20ish-year history of the school), and also excited. We’ll see how it goes.
Good luck to your Ds, @dfbdfb! You’re right that if they can manage the dynamics it could be quite wonderful. Sophomores at our school take AB quite regularly; if they are well prepared, as they sound at your school, it should be no problem for her, maybe even easier than for her sister, since she will have had pre-calc immediately before AB.