@SJ2727 your point about how different community cultures can make the wealth feel very different is a good one. We live in the East Bay in California on the Berkeley side of the east bay (as opposed to over the hills) and there are a lot of extremely wealthy folks who wear fleeces and jeans, and drive regular cars. You can know them for a long time before you figure out they are insanely wealthy. In San Francisco, or Marin County, way more people who it is obvious they are very wealthy within minutes of meeting them. The subcultures around showing wealth is drastically different in the communities.
4 Likes
When we visited USC the culture was very clear. If you have it flaunt it, it was the only school store that had a tailor to adjust your newly purchased gear and a $10k crystal football helmet.
6 Likes
@Mike_Ba never been there, but it does not surprise me. Growing up we joked USC stood for āUniversity of Spoiled Childrenā and the urban legend was that the main admission requirement was having enough money to pay for it. I was stuck in that belief until the Varsity Blues scandal. I was so confused at the time as to why celebrities were cheating and breaking the law to get their kids into USC when I assumed just giving them money legally would be enough. That scandal was what woke me up to how much admissions had changed since my day.
Having lived in both places (5 years in the Oakland hills/Berkeley border, now 10 years in Marin) I would mostly agree, though I have met plenty of people in Marin whose wealth flies under the radar. It becomes quite obvious when you arrive at their homes with stunning views of SF and the Golden Gate bridge or when you hear from your kids that their āski weekā plans involve a private plane to their house in Utah. Even within Marin, there are subtle differences between communities on this front.
On the school tour circuit, I saw it when I was a high school senior myself, trying to decide between San Diego State and University of San Diego. As we walked through the student parking lot at USD, we passed numerous Mercedes and BMWs. One group of girls was leaving a BMW convertible carrying shopping bags from Nordstrom. My dad said to me, āso, if you go here, thatās not going to be you.ā Point taken. 
4 Likes
So, I have a question that I recognize as very privileged. I posted before about how happy my S26 was about his ACT score from June, and I think I posted his actual score from April (in which he had a big dip in English, while the other scores were very high). Soā¦ the same thing happened again in June, but with improvements across the board. He now has a composite 35, which is amazing and he is super proud (as am I!). The breakdown is 36 Math, 36 Science, 36 Reading, 30 English. We were pleased to get the English score to 30 (from 28) and the 36s were so cool to see. But after sitting with it, we canāt help but wonder if the 30 going to stick out like a sore thumb, even if the overall composite is 35.
Heās talking about taking it again and doing more grammar studying to try to close the gap. Heās also talked about attempting to get a superstore 36 (he would need 34 on English to do it). Iām happy to take his lead, but curious what others think about how this mix of scores will be perceived. Itās very tempting to move on and focus on the other work to be done this summer.
I went to USC for grad school, thatās definitely a thing for undergrads, not so much in the professional schools. We were all broke grad students. 
Mine has a superstore composite of 34 with one outlier score of 32. We collectively decided that she needed to move on, and if her score isnāt good enough for the schools sheās targeting, so be it.
1 Like
I would take his lead on this regardless of how the scores will be perceived. If he wants to retake, great. If he decides heās done, great.
I originally didnāt think my D needed to retake the SAT, and I suggested that she put her energy into other things, but she wanted to try to improve her score. In retrospect itās a good thing that she followed her instincts and did the extra studying and retake. She might have always wondered if she could have improved the score and whether it might have changed things. In the end, she did improve her score, but even if she hadnāt, I believe she needed the retake to feel that she was ādoneā with the SAT.
2 Likes
Agree with you that Marin is not a monolith, but culturally displaying wealth is less frowned upon than it is over here. I know there is a lot of stealth wealth there too.
Totally depends on the stress it causes imo. My S26 is a procrastinator took the SAT 3 times ended up with a 1500 on his last try and a super score of 1510 or 1520. He said he missed some easy questions but didnāt want to study for the test again.
I donāt think the extra handful of questions would make a difference for him even if he got a perfect 1600 I doubt that would be make or break thing for his application. So we just moved on, I know one of his friends is taking the SATs 8 or 9 times. Itās not stressful for them.
If your S26 has the time and willingness to take it again sure why not let them try.
Same for me as a grad student at USC many years ago. We were basically all poor. I literally ran out of money my last semester and more or less couch surfed for the final couple of months.
My kids refused to consider USC for undergrad which is fine with me because there was no way we could or would consider paying for it.
It was an amazing grad school program for me though. And worth every penny.
Absolutely agree.
My D26 refused to consider it as well. But, rest assured, she still has quite a few $$$$ schools on her list, so Iām not getting away scot free.
This is true. Mine was so close to the end of her rope that she couldnāt do it without sacrificing her mental health, so ending the misery was a no brainer for us. She wound up taking the SAT a total of 4 times and ACT 3 times.
Wow! Thatās a lot of retakes.
Kid was stubborn, she did better baseline on ACT than SAT, but insisted on focusing on the SAT cuz it was a shorter test. She acquiesced and pivoted to ACT, and with targeted prep, hit her goal score.
If she listened to me from the beginning, it woulda just been ACT and opt out of the school day SAT.
āOne of these things is not like the others ā¦ā With three 36s, the fourth score will stick out whatever it is.
If he wants to review grammar and try again, let him. If he decides he is done testing, that is fine too. Highly selective schools might ding him for a 30 in English. There are many more schools that would find the score more than acceptable and move on to other parts of his application.
Since some folks are talking about how if their kid followed their testing advice they would have been better off, Iāll share the opposite. I pushed my kid to take the SAT fall of junior year, when it turns out in hindsight, they were incredibly busy and had little time to prepare. I did this in part because local testing sites were really hard to get in Northern CA (in fact, when I first tried to sign her up, we would have had to fly to San Diego or Arizona to get a site), and I got a local spot and wanted her to take it locally rather than travel for it. I was concerned (perhaps ignorantly) about available future opportunities for local sites. She ended up not having a ton of time to prepare, took it, did not do as well as she would have liked (or frankly that I think she could with reasonable prep). After that, she decided she was done b/c of the stress of it all. After talking to college counselor, she decided to go test optional everywhere pretty much (I guess theoretically she could still submit that score somewhere if made sense, but for most of her schools it clearly would not). College counselor was on board and said she can have good shot to get into many schools sheās interested in without it. Thankfully, none of the schools she was interested in require SAT/ACT. But, I clearly messed this one up. If I had some patience, she could have taken the test at a time that was good for her and not as stressful. I know she would have scoreed better with prep, even if only ended up taking it once regardless. Thankfully, my error wonāt likely cost her going somewhere she feels good about (or a stress filled mess about retaking) according to her college counselor. I was doing my best to try to do what was best, but in hindsight I was dead wrong.
2 Likes
Yeah the whole site scarcity thing sucks. We had to go through the same thing at one point I was going to fly us to Utah to take the SATs, then turns out our school can open up seats but you have to know the right counselor to ask, then they added a bunch of new testing sites so the whole thing became easier. But the early stress of booking a test site 10 months in advance was not fun.
3 Likes
My S23 was one and done with his overall score of 35.
Why does your kid want to try to raise the 30? Based on his list will it really matter with admissions? Do his schools of interest give more merit for a 36 versus a 35 superscore?
College prof here who doesnt think a 30 stands out poorly at a huge percentage of schools. (and some of his top choices donāt even consider test scores as very important on their CDS). I get lots of perfectionist type kids in the program I teach who really mentally struggle with not being able to ādo overā tests and exams. Thereās so many other things that he can focus on to strengthen his overall application and build a list based on who he is, not who he wants to be.
Wow, that is nuts! I canāt imagine how stressful that was just trying to get a seat! For us, not getting in at our closest site that was 1 mile away meant driving 30 miles.
3 Likes