<p>was going to say what mantori suzuki said. Our dental hygenist is a former student of mine who struggled as a test taker but who became an outstanding dental hygene student and finished as one of the top students in her class at the local CC. Check into hygenist programs at community colleges. You get specific vocational training for a bargain basement price.</p>
<p>I suggest CC. We work with students like this all the time. She would fit in fine and you would be paying rock bottom prices while you discovered whether or not the remedial courses were effective in her case.</p>
<p>Sometimes they are phenomenally affective, but sometimes students have organizing or processing problems that a rememdial course can’t remediate. And often, the school will do the requisite testing.</p>
<p>With two or three remedial courses (in math, reading and/or writing) the student is placed in a program called Basic Education. S/he is assigned a counselor and has an advocate.</p>
<p>Of course, you pay a semester of tuition and no credits are earned, but I think it’s well worth it to have a stronger foundation.</p>
<p>Good luck. Don’t despair.</p>
<p>And yes, I think the high school did your D a disservice.</p>
<p>I agree with above posters: Don’t be discouraged, Do try to get a sense of where your D’s difficulties might be, Do make sure she’s on a course she wants, and Do make sure she has the necessary academic background to succeed while pursuing that course.</p>
<p>Just a couple thoughts not previously mentioned: First, have your D take one of the timed practice test in an ACT Prep book. If her result is substantially better, the issue may be one of consistent test taking. (My D had this … she’d skip a question in the booklet but not on the answer sheet, so all subsequent questions were scored “incorrect.”) Second, you might consider having your D spend next year improving her academics at a Prep School. This is a common solution for athletes and other low-scoring students who want to be in college. And finally, in direct response to the question in the OP, you might consider open enrollment and SAT/ACT score optional colleges. The list of such colleges and universities has grown to more than 800:</p>
<p>[The</a> National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest](<a href=“http://www.fairtest.org%5DThe”>http://www.fairtest.org)</p>
<p>As others have mentioned, dental hygienist salaries are equivalent to RNs. As a result, RDH programs in the OP’s area are very competitive. The pre-reqs should be taken at community college and she will need pretty close to straight As in them to gain admission to the local RDH programs.</p>
<p>An 18 is not really as bad as it feels. In my state, the average (I just recently saw a report) is 19.6. Standard deviation is about 5.1 which means she’s about 38th percentile. I can tell you I was actually a lot lower than that on the CR reading of the SAT (22nd percentile), and am still going to a very good college (and I hope I’ll do well).</p>
<p>Hopefully you can better attest to her intelligence than a single ACT score can though. If you think she can do work required (perhaps with advice from people here), your guess is probably better than the ACT’s. </p>
<p>I don’t have much of value to add, just words of encouragement.</p>
<p>I actually have seen many such ACT scores. I work at an urban, public university; it is a good, solid school. I have seen LOWER ACT scores, in all honesty. </p>
<p>My personal suggestion would be CC. The profs at CC are committed to helping students learn. They have office hours & assist students one on one. There are tutoring services available through CC’s. The cost is low … and the education can be excellent, if the student avails herself of everything available to her.</p>
<p>She should make sure to see an academic advisor right from the start in order to evaluate her strengths/weaknesses, plan coursework, etc. If she decides to continue on for a 4 year degree, proper planning can allow her to transfer in at junior level.</p>
<p>Reality check on the ACT scores, folks: I just looked up the mid-50s ACT scores of a public college that is known as a “teachers college” in my state of residence. </p>
<p>Mid-50 ACT = 14-17</p>
<p>A score of 18 is clearly not a kiss of death for an aspiring dental hygienist.</p>
<p>Midmo, is that 14-17 ACT for aspiring teachers? How can anyone who has a 14 ACT teach any academic subject at all to anyone over the age of 4?</p>
<p>Mid-50 ACT = 14-17</p>
<p>I would question this also and wonder if it is a typo wherever it was originally published. It makes no sense to me. </p>
<p>The average composite score for Michigan students in the graduating class of 2009 was 19.6 on a scale of 1 to 36, according to a state press release. That’s the same average score for Michigan students in the class of 2008. In Michigan ALL high school students are required to take the ACT - college bound and non-college bound alike. I just quickly checked a couple of the aboslutely less selective regional colleges and all report average ACT as 21.2 - 21.6. Our local CC reported 23 as the average ACT score of last year’s first year students. Something is “not right” about 14-17.</p>
<p>By the way, for those of us who are more conversant with SAT scores, an 18 ACT is roughly equivalent to 880 Math + Reading score on the SAT (so, something like 440 Math, 440 Reading). An ACT score of 14 is roughly comparable to a 670 SAT (so something like 330 Math, 340 Reading).</p>
<p>
That sounds very odd to me as well. Our 2 large State Us require a 24 for automatic acceptance and a minimum 21 with a reasonable GPA to be considered. The average for the school is over 24. A 14-15 would not get an acceptance let alone be in the mid 50%. Even the smaller regional schools require a 20 for admissions. And at the CCs subcores below 19 in any subject would require taking, and passing, remedial classes.</p>
<p>^I was thinking something similar. A local “teachers school” in my area (EMU) has an average ACT of 21, and as best I know, they are more or less a place where anyone can go. Perhaps this area in general has more intelligent people then where momofthreeboys lives, but I simply can’t imagine someone getting a 14 (and trying) who is fully literate, able to do simple arithmatic, and able to work a job where reading would be required. Someone who filled C all the way down should get a 12. A 14 is also an easily achieveable score with pure random guessing. Though perhaps this college just attracts large numbers of people who guessed through the whole ACT and took a nap (I imagine this would have to be a state where the ACT is required).</p>
<p>Just checked, a 14 would be 18th percentile in my state, but everyone here is required to take the ACT to graduate from high school. I’m betting the majority of those people probably did guess the whole way through, or took the English and left everything else blank.</p>
<p>Midmo said this was an average a lower level state U but Midmo did not say what state…I still think it was a typo. If you remember everyone in Michigan is required to take it also to graduate and the state average was above a 19. My B+ student took it in 7th grade and got an 18 composite but had not had high school math at all.</p>
<p>^When I said your name, I meant Midmo. My mistake.</p>
<p>I second the comments that say that Comm College is a good place, and that there’s nothing wrong with remedial classes (the University of Michigan has them). Read the sports pages to see the scores that some athletes get on the ACT; certainly there are people at “good” colleges with scores under 20.</p>
<p>But it’s also accurate to note that the motivation has to come from her at this point.</p>
<p>There was no typo on the reference to mid-50 ACT scores for the school I was referring to on the previous page.</p>
<p>[College</a> Search - Harris-Stowe State University - HSSU - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board)</p>
<p>This is not one of the University of MO campuses, nor is it one of the State University campuses. It is a former private teacher’s college that produces teachers for the same failed urban school district that educated these future teachers. </p>
<p>However, the intent was not to derail this thread, nor get into the very hairy issue of teacher training standards, but to point out that the sort of students discussed here on cc are not representative of what most college students in this country look like, statistically speaking.</p>
<p>For instance, I live in a college town with extremely limited private school options. The vast majority–virtually all–of the children of professors, higher ed administrators, doctor, lawyers, etc. attend the same public schools as the rest of this town–which is approximately 30% free and reduced lunch. Despite the fact that a very large number of students score 34-36 on the ACT, and we produce a lot of NMF and the most Presidential Scholars of any school in the state, the AVERAGE ACT is about 23.5. That means that a whole lot of students are getting something in the range of 18. (We don’t use the ACT for assessment, and taking the ACT is not required of high school grads, so these are the scores of students who are planning to attend college.)</p>
<p>I conclude that a fair number of 18’s are going to school somewhere (no, not Mizzou, not the State Unis, but somewhere.)</p>
<p>EDIT: The College Board numbers are correct. I thought of this example because I know a person whose research involves teacher training issues, and this example was pointed out to me some time ago.</p>
<p>The most difficult part of this journey will be acceptance to an RDH program. It is very, very competitive - not because the work is hard once you get in (like nursing, it’s not, for someone who really wants to do it), but because the number of places is limited. Since salaries are relatively high, there are many applicants for even a single place.</p>
<p>So the greatest challenge may be doing well enough in the pre-reqs, whether community college or not.</p>
<p>Here is an example of the pre-reqs for a cc DH program in my state:</p>
<p><a href=“Page Not Found”>Page Not Found;
<p>Here you will see that the acceptance rates (with grades earned in the pre-reqs is about 20%, better than for my local nursing program - which is more selective than Harvard, but still quite a mountain to climb. By the way, they won’t care about test scores at all, but the pre-req grades are everything, and it doesn’t matter where you earn them - an A from the community college in one of the pre-reqs will be worth more than an A-minus from the similar pre-req fulfilling course from Harvard).</p>
<p><a href=“Page Not Found”>Page Not Found;
<p>And at the end of the journey, she will have to take a bubble test.</p>
<p>I agree that dental hygiene is likely to be too difficult. Unless her ACT scores were low for a particular reason (maybe she should prep and re-take?) they are below average. She may have a learning disability. Students with these scores tend to drop out of college. If she likes the medical field, perhaps she should try a CNA or medical assistant or phlebotomy program. The training would be much shorter and easier than dental hygiene.</p>
<p>I had no idea Dental hygiene was so hard to get into (not that I have given it much, if any, thought). The things you learn on CC.</p>
<p>I believe you will find admissions to dental school (with a B.A. of course) signficantly easier. The B.S. programs for dental hygiene may also be easier to get into than those at the community college (as they are for nursing, at least where I live) - wouldn’t know. But maybe not, as we only have one such program in our state (Eastern Washington University), and the pre-reqs are the same as for cc, the main difference being that to get the B.S. you would be required to take more classes outside the DH core.</p>
<p>Enrollment in the program is limited to 36 students FOR THE ENTIRE STATE. <a href=“http://www.ewu.edu/x6819.xml[/url]”>http://www.ewu.edu/x6819.xml</a></p>