Mine is backpacking on Santa Rosa Island (very remote/primitive) for the last few days with Girl Scouts. She’s back tonight and I know she still has a ton of APUSH summer homework to crank out in the next week. PSAT studying has totally fallen by the wayside. Plan is to take the Dec 1 SAT.
hgtv - i love your avatar! pretty. My kiddo too didnt lift a finger towards PSAT. I’m guessing he’ll take it without prepping as he’s now doing homework and running XC. I tried to get him to do it over the summer, but socializing too came first. i think he sees the ACT test as the one to prep for over the winter when he doesnt have ECs.
Nicki20- i take all those claims with a grain of salt. who knows where they get their info! my first thought about that claim would be that the more elite colleges have kids applying who more often take the SAT over the ACT; and the more elite colleges dont give out scholarships as much. my S20 is taking ACT in oct too without much prep; then he’ll prep hard over the winter and take it in february before soccer season starts.
My daughter likes the ACT over SAT. She had the old ACT explore in eight grade till the state switched to SAT. We would preferred to have taken the ACT in September but the band has a football game the night before and is marching with NIU band the day of the test
D20 will take the PSAT on 10/8 & the ACT on 10/27. She will start this week with a formal prep program through college counselor’s company. She did a preliminary assessment and the ACT seemed liked the better test for her. We will see? The goal is to be done with all testing by the end of the year and focus on classes, volunteer work, and EC’s.
@bgbg4us thanks! I’m actually pleased that my D spent the summer socializing. Up until 8th grade, she was very shy and friends were hard to come by. It is so nice to see her having fun now and bonding with friends. Hopefully cramming for the PSAT for the next month and a half will make up for lost summer prep time.
I’ve never heard of more merit money being given for the ACT vs. SAT, and I’ve been researching a ton on colleges that give merit $.
My DS starts school on Wednesday 8/22, will take a proctored practice SAT test on 9/15, the real SAT on 10/6 and the real PSAT on 10/10. We hope that will be the end of standarised testing!
For those of you that might be in the running for National Merit, you can use one of your free scores to send in your SAT scores. If they don’t end up making the cut off they just disregaurd them, but if they do you save some money and one less thing to deal with later.
@3scoutsmom
Thanks for the tip. Where do you send in the SAT scores for the NM?
@makemesmart use code 0085. NMSC is listed with all the other colleges on the send score page.
and for national merit, if you send in more than one test score they will only consider the highest score but they won’t super score.
D’s testing schedule is the same as @socaldad2002. We already know she does better with ACT than SAT, so focusing on that. I told her I see little value in studying for PSAT (since we are in CA and the cutoff will be extremely high), and suggested she does only ACT self-prep. Just don’t want her to lose all the momentum will volunteering projects and EC’s, and her schoolwork is intensive enough, I just don’t want her to bury herself.
I love this thread. It’s helping me help my D who’s feeling overwhelmed with the start of school and all of the fall testing. She will be taking the PSAT in early Oct but NM is a long shot.
She took the ACT in June without prep and scored well even though she ran out of time and guessed on some of the questions. She should do well with some prep but I don’t think she’ll have time until the spring. She’s not sure if she’ll take the SAT.
Fall is also when I go into panic mode and you’d think after seeing two kids go through the process it wouldn’t be a big deal. Kid #2 was a HS junior 8 years ago and things are so different.
Our school is doing something different. While in the past kids having study hall have SAT practice during that time This year they are doing for kids who have a 400 math class,which is considered a senior class, twice a week SAT math study for 25 minutes ( half a lunch period). I think the reasoning for the class kids at the 400 level, which is calculus or stats, are a couple years beyond what is on the SAT. Many, include my daughter, have forgotten what they learned.
@Nicki2012 I wish our school did this!
I think will benefit more the PSAT/NMSQT? in October than the SAT in April. The PSAT last year for the first time ever the Math score was lower than English score.
Hello @Nicki20 I’m an NIU alum. Go Huskies!!
Just returning from UNC and Duke visit. First want to say that the Research Triangle Area of NC is very beautiful. Lots of greenery and both colleges are near residential areas. Houses and lawns were well kept. Lots of pride at both schools due a lot to sports but so much more. Near strip malls with common shopping places like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, TJ Maxx, etc. Both schools are near interstates or other highways so very accessible.
UNC is highly rated and is actually the first public university. They are mandated to take 82% in-state so doesn’t leave much for us out-of-staters. We visited the Music department and DS got a lesson from the instrument teacher. Pretty cool to get personal attention like that. DS went to the science department and spoke at length to the Chair about the program and undergraduate research opportunities. Want to say they were very generous with their time. Great presentation at the information center, probably the best yet and we’ve been to quite a few. Seems generous with AP credit and the ability to double major.
Duke is now on the top of his list. Department chair emphasized team based learning which is a pretty cool concept in contrast to lecture-style classes. Got very personal tour for over 30 minutes with chair and 2 program staff. They asked about DS’s background and other interests and seemed to genuinely be interested. Can not emphasize how much the personal interest made such a big difference. Also got a tour of music department by program coordinator. I’d set up all these in advance of our visit and so glad I did. At Duke double majors are also common and they also have something called pre-PhD which I will be investigating further. One of the tour guides was in the program. Maybe it’s a southern thing but must say everyone was so extremely nice. May not necessarily be a factor in choosing college but didn’t get that at many Northeast schools. Well also learned a fun fact: Duke has the largest number of lemurs outside of Madagascar. Crazy, right? They have their own forest! The campus is huge too. The freshman live on one end (East, I believe) and upper class men and women live on the other. Housing is guaranteed for all 4 years which we like. Unlike UNC though, they only transfer 2 credits max from APs
@SoccaMomma I completely agree with you about setting up dept visits. It completely changes what kids learn. We only do campus tours to see inside of dorms, otherwise they seem rather pointless to me.
FWIW, my older kids emailed the dean and UG advisor of the depts they were interested in. With our Ds14, one school went from being near the top of his list to “no heck, no way.” That dept visit was a nightmare. We walked out and never looked back. Another he crossed off his list b/c the dean told him that UGs only worked for grad students and that their research focus was on their grad students. The school that was a complete afterthought and not one we had really even considered seriously, Bama, went from the very bottom to near the very top. He immediately connected with the UG advisor who spent 90 mins talking to him about opportunities within the dept, taking him on a tour of labs, and talking to him about his own UG, grad, and post-doc experiences. (The dept lived up to his expectations. He ended up working directly with his research professor and by his jr yr, he was part of the research team alongside the post-doc and grad students.)
Dd17 had very similar experiences. The depts made the choice easy.
@SoccaMomma @Mom2aphysicsgeek
The triangle area also has lots of nice restaurants! Lol
I felt so dumb as we only used the website to register for college tour/info session, never thought of setting up dept tours. How do you do that?
@makemesmart My kids did it directly with the depts through email conversations. They would initialize contact with a brief introduction and state that they would like to meet with the dept and discuss courses and opportunities within the dept as UGs. They would also ask if they could sit in on an upper level class.
I know others who initiated the conversation through their regional recruiter and asked to be put in contact with the dept. Since we homeschool, my kids never met any recruiters at recruiting events, so they just bypassed that step. But after reading about the approach of going through the recruiters and those outcomes, I think that approach is the better one. Our kids still received the awards they were hoping for, but they were extreme outliers in accomplishments (graduating with international awards and entering ready for 400 level courses which are amg the reasons why they wanted to meet with the depts in the first place.) In hindsight, I think they possibly might have missed out on the awards they received via their approach if they hadn’t stood out so much. Making contact through the recruiter probably highlights them more in the admissions process. (Speculation on my part, but based on reading the results of those that took that approach, it definitely worked for them.)
Fwiw, I would make sure that any questions asked are not ones with answers on the website. This approach could be a double-edged sword. 
You only want to take it if it will highlight your student in a positive way!
@makemesmart Generally I do not go on tours anymore. There’s so much sameness to them and it’s hit or miss on the helpfulness of them. (Plus I’m not the one who’ll be living there for 4 years.) DS will go if he’s interested but generally unless the tour guide is in the same major, he/she won’t be able to answer his pertinent questions. He may start the tour to ask for the building that houses his major then go there and start asking. This is less reliable but he’s been successful more often than not with this approach by getting specific materials, one-on-one meetings, and even tours. This last trip, while he was away and very busy at his pre-college program, I emailed music instructors and sent his music resume to ask for a lesson. Also called the science and music departments to request a facility tour or small introduction of the major. Must say I was not 100% successful either, but he was happy with the outcome. Instrument instructors are generally not there in the summer so wasn’t able to connect with one.
DS declared he was done w college stuff for a while. Junior year will be quite busy. He has SAT tomorrow and ACT next week. Youth orchestra starts up soon too. He’s seen the vast majority of the schools on his list anyway with 2 safeties left to go. May do a couple of open houses in the spring.
What if your student doesn’t have any idea what she/he wants to study in college? This is where we are right now.