Sat help!

College Majors Musical Theater Majors
61

As I’ve mentioned, I’m an SAT/ACT tutor. I’ve been doing this for over 10 years. Plus, 4 of my own kids have gone through this. I say this because I do feel I speak from experience and proven results. People should feel free to disagree with me of course.

I do not feel you should take both ACT and SAT unless there is a compelling reason to do so. If you want to find out if you do better in one or the other, just take full practice tests in each. It will be obvious. (If it’s not, choose one you like better.) Then throw all your efforts into one. You only have limited time. If you use that time to prepare for both tests, you have less time for each. They are quite different. Yes, student x or y could have taken both tests and done well (for whatever reason), but this is not advice I would give generically to all students.

I’m not sure people appreciate the amount of study and prep some students put into these tests. IF you go in cold, you are competing with someone equally bright who has studied for 6 months. If you audition without practicing, no matter how talented you are, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage, sometimes a major disadvantage. Same for SAT/ACT. Yes, sometimes you get kids who don’t study at all and get near-perfect scores, or study very little. But that is rare. It stands to reason that most students will do better with preparation and practice. Some students, particularly those who are rusty in some content and/or are not natural test takers, will do far better with practice.

I intensively teach both content and strategy. You can learn this yourself if you’re motivated & a strong self-learner (there is tons of info online). Or you can take classes. But you need to aggressively practice. You first diagnose the problem(s) and see if there is a pattern to your wrong answers. If you’re weak in content (you’ve forgotten basic algebra or you don’t know grammatical rules), study content first. The prep booklets by any number of companies have a lot of info. There is also tons online. Once you are strong in content, or concurrently, study strategy Again. the test prep books (like College Board’s, or Princeton Review or Kaplan or whatever), have many strategy tips. Diagnose your patterns. If you find you are getting questions wrong because you’re not reading the question carefully, be sure to do that next time. Or you might not be reading all the answers. Do that next time. etc.

If you don’t want to do that it is totally fine. And I certainly don’t think these tests necessarily indicate anything about your intelligence, drive, creativity, etc. But boy is there a lot of money in these tests. My own kids would never have gotten into the colleges they did, with the large grants they were awarded, without their high scores.

If your kid is not a high scorer and never can be, fine. I’m only saying that it is a good investment of time to study. Wherever you are, you can improve. I recently tutored a kid with disabilities, whose score was below 1000 for all 3 tests. After tutoring, he went up to 1350 for all 3, including a 490 in reading (this from a 340). This is a huge increase for him.

Whatever you decide, best of luck! There are so many pieces to this process.

62

delete

63

delete

64

Sorry for the multiple posts!–something is wrong with my comment box!

65

@connections Your advice is good. Especially about the waste of too much time on the different tests.
I couldn’t get two of my kids to do any prep for the tests. D was focused on other things but did fairly well. She would have done so much better with prep! The other scored well over 2000 even barely making it in on time to the test. My next will definitely be prepping because of the money involved!

66

In general, what are the test scores usually needed to get merit money? Someone we know said 2100 on the SAT and 31 on the ACT. Is that right? Is there a huge range among the schools in terms of what they look for? My D is a junior so I really haven’t looked into the numbers anywhere but she’s starting to take the tests this year and I’m not sure where we need to be. Do they look at the total number only or do they look at the individual pieces? Thanks!

67

Merit is going to differ from school to school since the selectivity of each college differs and so do the stats of admitted students. Merit is generally offered to those whose profiles are at the top range for admitted students to that particular college.

68

My daughter had a 4.4 GPA and an 1880 SAT…she was given great merit aid at all the colleges she was accepted to. In the range of $15,000 to $30,000 a year depending on the selectivity of the school.

69

Running the NPC for each school was a must for us. We also looked at each school’s financial aid info. Some spell out requirements for being eligible for merit scholarships, for instance, Coastal Carolina and Otterbein.

70

thanks @bisouu - I like numbers! I get it that it’s not that easy though and I’ll start looking at each individual school’s stats once we get our list around a little more. Just trying to have some idea of where we need the test scores to be to start hitting the merit money marks so we can decide whether to sit on our first test scores or try again.

71

@connections I do politely disagree with the notion of just taking practice timed tests to see how well you do on the SAT and ACT and then deciding between the two. Especially this year!!!

This year the new SAT is being introduced and there is a lot of controversy over the test itself and how it will be normed. To me, it is way too much of an unknown. The practice tests that are out there are not going to be based on the revised tests and any results are not going to be normed to the current format. Lots of the test prep material will not be a valid indicator of actual results.

Many experts are leaning towards the ACT as the test to take because the SAT is just too much of a risk for this first year of changes.

Personally, I would take both tests to see real results. But I would certainly do a little research off this forum to be aware of the SAT changes and what they mean.

There are numerous articles written about what is going on, and I’d try to understand how they may effect tests results.

Personally since how your student will do on one test vs the other is a bigger guess than ever before, I can’t see how taking one extra Saturday afternoon to take the SAT or ACT is that big of a deal considering all the other prep and planning everyone does in this process.

72

My D took the new PSAT in October. I think if you took the PSAT as a junior this year it is a good indicator of the new SAT or at least that is what everyone is saying. Plus I only ordered the latest SAT guide from college board that is specifically made for the March 2016 and beyond test. I would get rid of any SAT prep books from previous years to be sure and get an updated one and only use it for practice.

73

@uskoolfish, yes, good bringing up this year–This year is odd as there may not be enough data to reliably predict how you will do in the new SAT. The test is not as yet fully normed, which is why they are combining both the March and the May tests.This is indeed precisely why some people are choosing the ACT, since aside from the new essay format, it is the same test. But when they choose the ACT, they are choosing that single test, and aggressively studying for it for that reason, that there isn’t enough data for the new SAT. So if you do both tests, you are competing with kids who, like several of my students, have been studying for the ACT only since the summer.

If you are in doubt - if the data is not a slam dunk - I’d suggest the ACT just for this year unless you perform poorly in the ACT format. I do have a few students who find the new SAT several tiers easier than the ACT; for instance, one is terrible at the ACT science portion, and his score didn’t budge after review… Also, remember that the PSAT results are data. If you did really well on that test (the new version), you can do a practice ACT to double check, but you may want to elect the new SAT.

I’m simply saying it’s a wiser investment of limited time to study aggressively for one test as opposed to half-study for two, or study for one and not the other. There are some kids who might elect to do both if they want, of course.

With all due modesty, you quote experts, but I myself am an expert in this area, with many years under my belt as a private tutor with proven results, triple teaching certification, an MFA, a CB scorer of SAT essays, and also experience as a test prep company tutor. Obviously feel free to disagree, but I am certainly speaking out of my expertise, not merely as a parent.

74

@connections I’d hire you to tutor my D ! I can’t find anyone in my area but Sylvan. We live in Maryland.

75

I would agree about looking at the ACT over the SAT, especially if your child was a pretty decent well-rounded student (decent grades in Math, Science and English). It is a better test of High School curricula knowledge than the SAT. My son did so so on the SAT but scored above 30 on the ACT with not that much effort. I actually took the ACT a few years ago and found it to be pretty straight forward if you have decent content knowledge.

76

My daughter took the ACT early so that she could retake it if needed. She scored a 25 and I was wondering if it was worth the time and money to take it again? Is there that much of a difference in aid between 25-30? She has a 4.0 in school. She is a junior and has plenty of time to take it again.

77

I am in NO way an expert - but I would say difference in the merit scholarship $$ offered between a 25 and a 30 would be VERY significant. And of course it depends on the schools on your list. For some- a 25 might be more than fine, for others, a 30 is really the gateway to being accepted.

78

@theatremom16 probably yes. Go to a school website like Pace and use their merit scholarship estimator and see what it says.

79

Theater mom, my wife is a college counselor and she would tell you definitively: Yes. It could make a lot of difference not only in admissions depending on school but also scholarship money.

80

The reason I was even wondering is because I did the financial aid estimator for Otterbein for 25 and 30 and it was exactly the same. Which surprised me. Thanks for the responses! This was exactly why she did it early, so she could get a feel for the test and where she needed improvement (cough math cough).