Same with the time and that is why they won’t try the act. Onto next steps….
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My son also ran out of time on math and RW. He generally runs out of time with many timed math or English testing though. He said he thought the RW was harder than March.
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My son agreed that the RW was harder this time around (he took it at school in April).
He didn’t put a ton of time studying for R/W this time around given how busy he was with end of year stuff (AP tests, finals, etc).
He spent a an hour or two each day this week focusing on math, which was his lower score on the last test. We will see. He may decide to take it one last time in October at school, but I am letting him decide. He will likely go test optional at his first choice school, as they report that only about 35% of enrolled students submitted scores and the average scores are 1450-1520. My guess is that he won’t cross that threshold without some serious study time.
My son already signed up for the August exam, but that will be his last. Like you said, with all the end of the year stuff we realized he didn’t have a lot of time to study and so we signed up for August a couple of weeks ago. I say we because it was my strong suggestion (and I paid for it of course!).
He’s really at the lower end of submitted scores for most of the schools he is looking at, but all the schools have a good chunk of kids going test optional and some have quite a lot going test optional. So if his scores remain consistent I will be coming back to the group to ask for advice on whether he should submit them or not!
Best wishes to all the kids who took it today!
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mine did! I think not everyone gets exact same one (even bearing in mind second sections) FWIW.
Mine thought RW had some extra-long passages (not necessarily hard, but longer than they expected?) and thought math wasn’t too bad. who knows? I think they all psych themselves out sometimes!
They will take again in August, and hopefully that will be their last, but not 100% on that..sort of depends on how they do. They are applying engineering, so they really want their math to be fantastic and their school superscore…
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It’s so hard to watch your children do things you know aren’t in their best interest or seem to be deliberately making their lives more difficult. I have a few thoughts
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I agree with the other poster you may want to check in with your student when your feelings aren’t so hot to see if something else might be going on. If you’ve already expressed your dismay/anger to her, this could be harder as she may not want to talk with someone she may see as upset with her.
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2 Bs are not the end of the world. They’re not even “bad” grades. They’re perfectly normal and are fine for college admissions.
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One of my own kids failed PE during Covid due to lack of turning in assignments, so I’ve been there. Believe me. And that kid is now about to start their senior year of college with a 3.9+ GPA, an ongoing scholarship which makes going out of state cheaper than staying in state, a spot in the Honors College at their university, a clinical internship with a hospital in their field of study, and will be applying to doctoral programs in the fall.
Take some deep breaths, try to see what else might be happening (for my student, it was a mix of things, but definitely depression and anxiety were high on the list of ingredients in that mix), offer support, and try as hard as you can to stay non-judgmental in conversations. Also, allow for some grace and mental health recovery this summer. The burnout for kids in high school is REAL. They need to spend some time recovering during the summer and relaxing, reconnecting, and building up their mental energy to do another year of school in the fall.
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S27 took the SAT on Saturday for his third and final time. He has a good, solid math score and all but one of the schools on his most recent college list accept superscores, so he was mostly focused on RW. I don’t know that there will be much of a score improvement because he did very little prep after his last test in March. On Saturday’s test, he felt that some of the vocabulary was hard, but didn’t think the rest was too bad. He said that it’s a toss up as to whether or not his RW score improved.
For the math, he said he had a lot of time left with only four questions remaining, way more time than the other times he took the SAT, but ended up needing to spend most of that time on those last questions. He does think he got the problems correct, so that’s something.
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D27 took her third SAT on Saturday, as well. She wants to keep some very reachy schools on her list and feels like her current (excellent!) score isn’t cutting it, so she panic registered for the June SAT and the July ACT when her May score didn’t improve much. She felt okay about this one, said the RW went well and the math wasn’t hard but had a couple of very time consuming problems so she felt crunched for time which never happens to her. Really hoping this one is the last one!
And she is also doing a bit of dropping the ball on assignments here at the end of the year which makes me insane. SAT studying and an overwhelming number of hours on her main EC have definitely made it a tough couple of months, but ugh those extra few points on the SAT or the better performance in her EC are not worth a hit to the GPA. It’s tough to let her sort it out herself, but I think she’ll be okay. Trying to keep my mouth shut over here and ride it out until summer break…
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27 had their absolute BEST term for spring of junior year! Finished strong with high 90s in every class. What a relief. Now off to work until August. We’ll see each other mid-July for an adventure race we are doing together, but other than that, it’s likely they won’t be able to get home during the weekend as their job is Sunday 10 am - Saturday 10 am and is over 3 hours from us. They don’t have their license yet, so it would be a total of 12 hours of driving for us over 24 hours to have them home to mostly sleep.
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Congrats to your child!
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So for better or worse, my 27 finalized his senior schedule with an online English Honors class. He wants to start it next week and complete as much as he can over the summer. It’s self directed with regular check ins with the teacher, but he still will probably be working on it into the fall and possibly later. He took a PE through the same school last year and it was surprising to me that it was quite a lot of time and effort and meetings - moreso than if he had taken gym at school for sure. He was on top of it all so I’m pretty confident he’ll be able to manage the self-directed time management part well. The HS counseling department thinks it will be fine for the colleges he is looking at says that his rigor next year is strong. I’m not thrilled about it and ticked off that he couldn’t take the original classes (which would have been DE as it turns out). But I’m trying to let go and focus on the positive that he will likely have more time to focus on his AP classes and math, plus hopefully have more time to enjoy life senior year. Oh, and he will now get to enjoy a free period - it may or may not be lunch, depending on when that free period is.
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It’s so interesting to me to see all these online options, especially for core classes. We do have DE but AP classes are much more popular in our district. I don’t think we know anyone taking any DE classes.
D27 got her schedule for next year and is very happy with the classes and teachers on her schedule. One more week of classes and then finals. She is checked out already. Luckily I think the teachers are also and there is not much more to do. Most of her classes were mixed with seniors and they graduated. Just about a week left and we can breath for the summer.
My kid was done with school in mid-May, but has one dangling math class she’s working on over the summer. Which is a MIT open courseware math class that’s fairly intense, so I might just end up giving her 2 semesters worth of credit for it depending on how long it takes her (if it were an actual DE class it would be 1 credit in 1 semester, so 1 credit in 2 seems fine). Right now she’s working on fly-in applications for Harvey Mudd and Caltech. She had a really good fly in experience at MIT last year, so hopefully one will work out – otherwise she’d only visit either of these if she gets into them. I’m hoping at least some of the writing will help with college app essays later.
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My kids don’t/didn’t get schedules with teacher names until the last week of August (and they went to different HSs). So things can be VERY different that way too:) I am always amazed by people who have schedules in April - lol. That said 27 knows for sure what classes they will be in, during the spring (its guranteed)… and for 25 they were almost certain to get into all core classes they asked for (if not electives.. but they would have no clue about electives of teachers untl just before labor day!
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This isn’t common at all, near me either. My kid is skipping a math level this summer with a college class, which isn’t unheard of (though only allowed in a few public districts and in a few private ones), but during the school year? not a thing in any town I know of for any core sort of class…
That is impressive! Good luck with the fly-ins. I hope they work out!
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Going off your screen name, we’re probably in the same area, so that doesn’t surprise me of the similarities. The regional differences are so interesting.
We also don’t get schedules until August, but D27 was meeting with her counselor and she asked so they gave her a sneak peek.
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My kids’ HS strongly pushes DE classes but these are in HS classes with HS teachers that a local college oversees (not sure the right word honestly). There is a small fee if the student takes the class as DE. So for example, Spanish 4 Honors was available as DE if you paid the fee to the college. So far, we have not done that with the 2 classes that were eligible. It seems odd to me. I think DE is much different elsewhere, as in the students are actually in a college class?
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I just read more about DE classes here. They are online, cost about $500, need to be taken outside of school time, and do not count towards high school requirements. Now I know why it’s not a popular option.
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Yeah, DE means a LOT of things I have discovered after years on CC (I was so confused by how people used term so looked it up- lol)… sometimes they are taught by HS teachers to all HS students at HS (overseen by a college somehow), sometimes it just means HS students taking college classes somewhere outside of class time for HS credit and college and credit, or sometimes during class time for HS and college credit offsite…. so weird…and then there is online aspect too!
And then colleges treat all of that different when you go to enroll
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