Taking SAT summer before high school freshman year

Lindagaf
Sat, 09 Feb 2019 21:44:38 +0000

Really, you have heard of students being offered more advanced classes in their high school based on test scores? I have never heard of that, ever. I have heard of competitive summer programs that want to see a high test score. Is that what you are talking about? Johns Hopkins has a well-known summer program for high scoring kids.

@socaldad2002 , I do not agree. I do see harm in over prepping. One, some kids get burned out. Two, there are currently only eight official SAT tests released. I strongly feel that students should prep using official test materials. A kid who is not even in high school is going to burn through official tests in a few months, leaving him/her to use alternative fake tests, which, IMO, are simply never as good as real tests. No doubt College Board will release some new tests by then, but it’s not like they will release twenty new tests that the OP can ration over a couple of years. Three, let’s says you prep and prep and prep, and your score never budges above a certain level. That’s very demoralizing and stressful, and might cause you to be stressed out for a long period of time. There comes a point of diminishing returns, whereby your prep efforts are not going to be giving you a return on your time invested. Studying hard will help your score, but only up to a certain point.

I do know of a couple of kids who have prepped excessively and did get amazing test scores. I also happen to know that those kids are hyper-intelligent in the first place. I know far more kids who prepped too much and didn’t get the Harvard-worthy scores they dreamed of. One particular student did at least 12 full exams and had tons of tutoring. His parents didn’t help matters, because they were certain it was Stanford or Bust. That student received 1150 on the test. It was lower than I expected, because I did think he would get around 1400. I think it was a case of far too much prep.

For now, I think it’s a good idea to read widely and keep your math skills sharp. That will help you a lot.