<p>Born 1958. SAT V 770, MATH 740, first and only try. Got into Duke. Went to law school. I think I’ve done ok for an idiot. :-)</p>
<p>My son never took a test prep or practice test (aside from the PSAT and all the regular standard tests), he took the SAT 3 x and his range in total was about 100 pts total.</p>
<p>I just checked the new SAT vs old chart, it would only increase my verbal score by 70 and do nothing to my math score, So my son still got 300+ pts more than me. I think he was smarter than me when he was about 12…</p>
<p>“I am closer to 60 than to 40 and the main difference I see is that everyone I knew took it cold - no prep at all. We showed up with pencils and had never seen even a practice test. There was no PSAT. No one took it more than once either.”</p>
<p>I’m early forties. We did have the PSAT (hence National Merit). But you’re right, we took the SAT once. There were a few kids who took it more than once, but it was a NEGATIVE stigma associated with it – “the dumb kids, who were trying to take it one more time and raise their score.” I had 710V 710M, which recenters to 800V and … 700M. Darn!! LOL.</p>
<p>vintage 1959 here, which I think puts me near the bottom of the statistical trench. I was NMF with no prep, as was D1 (1990). DH (model 1958) was still drunk from the night before, however, when the test started and did not do quite so well…he tells this to the children as a cautionary tale. None of us worried much about testing day. I didn’t know what NMF was when it came in the mail.</p>
<p>We actually had a separate test for the National Merit Scholarship Exam, and then you had to find a corporate sponsor. Ah, the dinosaur days.</p>
<p>Ah yes, the good old days. I took the SAT once (with a hangover). Applied to one college. Don’t remember stressing about any of it.</p>
<p>Now our worst case scenario is having our oldest attend DH & my alma mater (flagship state U). Kinda silly if you think it through, we did end up okay… Then again, maybe that’s just my “stupid” talkin’.</p>
<p>ahaha! Best thread name ever!
At least I can find some comfort in the fact that I graduated in 1979 – one year before it all bottomed out in 1980 :). I was a NMSF with terribly lopsided scores (low math).
FWIW, I know my kids and their peers work a heck of a lot harder on their academics than I ever did, and testing today goes way beyond anything I ever experienced. I give them a lot of credit for handling it so well.</p>
<p>mythmom, I’m glad someone besides me remembers taking the separate NMSQT. I’ve had people not believe me until they looked it up.</p>
<p>It bottomed out in 1980? Wah, that’s the year I graduated! Wait, but that means I took it in 1979. I had a 730 V and a 630 M, no idea what that “re-centers” to but it got me into both of the schools I applied to. I took the PSAT and got some sort of commendation for it, but did no test prep. I remember interviewing at Wake Forest and being told that I should take the SAT again; they had a huge scholarship that had as the main requirement getting a combined 1400 on the SAT, I already had 1350 so the interviewer figured I’d break 1400 if I took it again. Didn’t bother; didn’t apply to Wake.</p>
<p>I don’t remember the extra test–I thought it was the PSAT, but those other initials do look familiar.</p>
<p>What I do remember is that corporate sponsors only went to kids of employees, so National Merit standing got me exactly nothing. My (widowed) mom even wrote to a company my dad had once worked for, but, nada.</p>
<p>Oh, and recentered, I’d have a 1600 (and a 2400 if you count my writing test). boy oh boy. 
I’d be strutting about how NOT “stupid” I am, except that between middle age and a lingering brain injury, I’m pretty sure most of those swanky brain cells are long gone. :(</p>
<p>All of my scores were higher than my kids, but the level of work they did in high school was far beyond anything I faced back in the day. They took Calculus in high school - that wasn’t available for me until college, IIRC. They studied stuff in Chemistry in high school that I don’t think had even been discovered back in the 60’s. So I’m not really sure what the vagaries of the test scores signifies.</p>
<p>Of course this assumes that SATs measure anything outside of your ability to…well, take the SAT.</p>
<ol>
<li>My Verbal score recentered becomes an 800! My math stays the same at 740. I don’t remember taking writing. For the achievement tests I took Math 2 and got a 790 which even then was only 80th percentile or so, and World or Europ. History. For a while I thought Mathson was so much brighter than me because he’d done so many APs, but then I realized that I did 4 APs my senior year when I was 16, while when he was 16 he was a lowly sophomore and only had done 2. Hah! I think I was one of the first classes where they combined PSAT and NM. I was only commended - unfortunately we fell into the East Coast Boarding School slot.</li>
</ol>
<p>Oh and I took the SAT cold, twice, though our school did try to make us learn vocabulary. My scores were virtually the same both time. I think math went up 20 and verbal down 10 the second time. But both scores were much, much better than the PSAT which I also took cold - I don’t even remember a sample book for that one.</p>
<p>“We actually had a separate test for the National Merit Scholarship Exam, and then you had to find a corporate sponsor. Ah, the dinosaur days.”</p>
<p>I graduated in 1982, and don’t recall taking a separate test for Nat’l Merit - I just remember being qualified based off my PSAT score. Also, I was sponsored by Dresser Industries ( = Halliburton !) which I had no connection with whatsoever. I seem to recall that at least in those days, you could get NM money three ways: a college could offer you money, if your parent worked for a large company that sponsored NM the company would offer you money, or a “random” corporate sponsor would sponsor you. Like I said, I had zero connection whatsoever with Dresser Industries but they gave me $1,000 that I put towards my college. That was in the days when $1,000 was a lot of money, LOL.</p>
<p>(1960, graduated HS 1979) My scores got me into Duke, but couldn’t go due to money. UGA would have given me $$ for a 1300 (single sitting; I had one, but superscored), so I retook the day of the senior prom to try to get the score. Bad idea. Didn’t have a date and didn’t get the score, either.</p>
<p>ACH Writing 680, USH 670, Math Level I 500 (gak!). Didn’t know Math Level II had a better curve even back then. Would have helped if I had taken math beyond Algebra II junior year (our crummy school was on double sessions and I had course conflicts). On the other hand I did 2 AP courses self-study at a time when the HS offered none, and was taking eight courses in a five-period schedule.</p>
<p>DH had a 740/760 (recentered to 800/770) and 800s on ACH Chem, Physics and Math Level II.</p>
<p>I had no clue about the SAT – it was just a hoop to jump through to get into my local state U. And I would never admit to my scores, but if my kids had scored anywhere as low as I did, I would freak out!</p>