My daughter goes to a nontraditional early college public high school and her studies do not align with the SAT subject tests. She has her heart set on studying mathematics, and strategically, this sets her a part as a girl applying to Ivy league and reaches but her Math 2 score was not good and her other SAT subject scores are 710/730 in history and lit. I’m wondering if she should just not send scores and explain in Additional Information her passion for math and the non-traditional curriculum at her school.
Does she have ACT scores? Don’t many of the schools require subject test scores if you are using the SAT? (The rules change so often I can’t keep up!)
She should either sent them or not, but making excuses about why she didn’t, will just make her sound like a whiner. When my kid looked at the physics subject test, he realized he was going to need to learn some material for it that he hadn’t covered or hadn’t seen in three years. He spent a month with a prep book and took the test in June instead of May as originally planned to give him some extra time and ended up with a perfect score.
Her scores are probably acceptable, but there are lots of good schools that aren’t reaches. The most important thing for her to do now is to figure out which of those are the best fit for her.
I agree with mathmom: many students find that their HS classes do not perfectly align with the subject tests. Get a prep book and do some studying. What year is she at this point? What are her SAT or ACT scores? Is she taking calculus or will she take it next year?
There’s been a ton of these kinds of posts lately regarding SAT 2 tests. Do we really think that AdComs care whether a student has a 720 or a 760 on one of these tests? Really worth studying hard for a month to increase one of these scores by 30 or 40 points? There are so many ways to use your time besides studying more and more to increase a number, and those other uses of time would set the applicant apart so much more.
Look, an AdCom member might look at an 800 SAT 2 and take notice, or look at a 600 SAT 2 and take notice, but for all these scores in the middle, assuming SAT 1/ACT are great, I’d bet the farm that the SAT 2’s get a big shrug when not at either extreme.
Anyone think otherwise?
Yes, I think differently. If this is a student applying to colleges that REQUIRE the SAT 2 scores, then they will make a difference in admissions considerations. These schools have a ton of extremely well qualified applicants applying. They even have a lot of well qualified females applying to study in STEM fields.
I think the bigger question here is…what year in HS is this student?
What exactly didn’t “align” with the curriculum? Can this student study and retake these tests?
But more important…the student should cast a broad net, and this means that these Ivies and reaches should not be viewed as target schools…but actually should be viewed as reaches.
And how exactly can math of all things not align?
I wondered the same @mathmom. Did the student not complete the necessary courses to take whatever math SAT 2 she took?
@thumper1, I just respectfully disagree.
We’re talking about 2 or 3 admissions application readers who have to support your kid. They all know that the difference between 20 point increments in one of these tests is probably 1 question right or wrong at these upper levels (also true for, say, the difference between a 760 and 800 on the regular Math 1 SAT, so same argument applies).
That admission reader has to argue your kid in front of the committee. Whether that reader supports your kid, and how strenuously he or she supports your kid at the committee level, once he or she passes a numbers threshold will have nothing to do with these increments of numbers. And the difference between a 720 and 780 on one SAT 2 will be generally ignored as both would pass any reasonable threshold.
The difference between a 720 and a 780 might be ignored, but I’m willing to be that the difference between a 660 and a 720 will not be at the schools in question. I’m pretty sure that the numeric threshold at the Ivies and similar schools is significantly higher than you seem to think it is.
Also, assuming that this student is heavily into math, as described, and has taken whatever the equivalent of PreCalc is, it shouldn’t take “studying hard for a month” to raise her score on Math II to a reasonably competitive level. If she is behind in the standard math sequence, perhaps she should take Math I instead.
SATIIs are a good window into level of preparation. It’s not “just” a number. If she can’t pull a good enough score on the Math II exam with a little brushing up on areas she might have missed, then perhaps she in fact is not prepared to be a math major at one of those schools–yet. She doesn’t have to get an 800.
Obviously, if she wants to get into one of those schools, she needs to have a lot more going for her than her test scores.
@ZooZooB "My daughter goes to a nontraditional early college public high school and her studies do not align with the SAT subject tests. "
This is not a good reason at all. Many kids (homeschooled, IB, French Bacc, A-Levels) will have curricula that do not align with SAT 2 Subject Tests. Also, the Literature exam has much in common with the CR section of the ACT. My daughter is doing her A levels and found that very little of her A Level material (less than 20%) overlapped with the SAT 2’s, but she needed 3 good SAT 2 grades. She put in a solid month of studying on these tests and got nearly perfect scores on all 3 tests.
Frankly, any highly intelligent kid who perceives themselves as Ivy material should be able to focus on these exams for one month and rock these tests. If they can’t then there are other perfectly good colleges they should be focusing on outside of the Ivies.
By the way, her USH and Lit scores are fine for applying to any school that requires or recommends them. She should however, retake the Math Level 2 exam in December. Good luck.
It’s important to note that SAT 2 tests vary greatly in the point spreads, too, depending upon the subject. For example: if you got a 750 on the Math 2 in 2015, then you were at the 62th percentile. However, a 750 on the Math 1 test placed you at the 91st percentile. And a 750 on the Literature test placed you at the 90th percentile.
I can’t help but think that the top colleges are going to be looking for a perfect score or pretty close to it on the Math 2.
Agreed; no college will find this to be a valid reason, although I’m still struggling with how a math sequence up to the calc level, regardless of Common Core or however a school teaches it, cannot align. It’s math. Anyway, let’s just assume there are gaps (which is often the case in other subjects), the solution is easy - get a prep book, and study the gaps.
No, it’s just that the only people brave enough to take Math 2 are already very good at math. But there’s no shame in doing well, but not as well as the math geniuses.
Well I know that there is often a matrix question on Math 2 and it’s not always taught in schools. Our very nice pre-calc teacher taught it to the kids the week before the test, though it wasn’t part of the official curriculum. But really everything else on the math test should be standard.
The problem with a curriculum that’s poorly aligned with an SAT Subject Test is that it can be difficult to find out what material you need to study and to find good resources to help you prepare. A test prep book may not be enough.
Sometimes, teachers at your school can help with this. At my daughter’s high school, for example, the physics teachers were very aware of the topics on the Physics Subject Test that were not taught in their school’s physics curriculum, and they were able to refer students to appropriate materials for self-study. But this may be the exception rather than the rule.
Actually I don’t think it’s that hard to self study - you go to the College Board subject test and they have pretty detailed descriptions of each test. In physics they even have a direct link to a Khan Academy lesson.
I’ve looked at the PR prep books, and IIRC the math book starts out by giving a review of all of the material on the test. It wouldn’t take much for a student to go through it and see what they needed to study.
When S was in HS the Honors Chem teacher held a few after school sessions for kids–mostly sophomores–who were planning to take the Chem SATII, covering material that he knew the test included but the HS curriculum did not.
From the experience of kids I know, the Ivies are fine with something in the mid 700s. Maybe Cal Tech and MIT expect 800s.
I agree.
ETA: it is also possible that this girl has gone way beyond normal HS math and hasn’t looked at the PreCalc and below stuff in a few years. That’s not wildly uncommon. Kids in that situation often benefit from a little work with a prep book to remind themselves of the material covered on the test.
While true, the guidelines for M2 from the College Board is to take ASAP after completing pre-calc. For a specialized HS, I cannot believe that this would not have been mentioned by a counselor at some point.
Meh, doesn’t matter what the reasons are. If a kid wants to study math at a top school, they’d better have a Math II score that’s pretty close to 800. Even my kid who has a math disability (18%ile for computation) scored a 730. It’s not hard math if a kid’s had pre-calc.
the rule of thumb is don’t send sat II scores if they are not required and don’t help you. My D just applied to cornell cals, they don’t require any subject scores, so she sent ap bio (790) and did not sent lit (740). The lit score was decent but she has act scores of 36 on reading and writing, so didn’t think the 740 would help.
your D might apply consider applying to u of chicago as they don’t require sat IIs. I know, not ivy league but I’m guessing they have some people on hand that know something about math. On the other hand, if she doesn’t score well on the act/sat math, it’s going to be very tough.