<p>My son has done very well in the past two years on standardized tests. This is a big change from earlier days when his severe dyslexia and lack of accommodations led to middling scores. A combination of significant improvement and appropriate accommodations made the difference. As he’s filling out the common app, I have three questions:</p>
<li><p>He sent in SAT and Subject tests to all but two colleges (SAT: 800M, 760CR, 760W; SAT Subject: Chemistry 800, Math Level 2 800). For two colleges, he needed a third SAT Subject test and took the December Literature test and got a 770 (this was nice, incidentally as he had spent junior and senior years not taking literature courses but working to improve his writing). He’ll send all the scores to the two schools but should he send the Literature score to the other schools? </p></li>
<li><p>He is a pretty talented artist, though he is not applying to be an art major. He works big, but he submitted small pieces (as required by the College Board) for AP Art and received a 3. At the same time, his school has a show for all the art majors (he wasn’t but has taken AP Art). A local organization gives $2000 in prize money, which is normally allocated in 4 $500 prices or 5 $400 prizes. Unlike any other year, this year the jurors gave 5 $200 prizes and gave him the one $1000 grand prize because they said his work was superior. The score is probably unrepresentative of his quality. Should he list this score on the common app? Can one suppress the AP score? Does it matter? [His only AP score other than art is Chemistry, on which he got a 5.]</p></li>
<li><p>Between the AP/College Board folks and his high school, they screwed up the administration of his BC Calculus exam. He takes long tests over two days and the free response section they give to him on day 2 is supposed to be different than the free response section they gave to everyone else so that people with two-day testing can’t hear about the exam. Unfortunately, they gave him the same free response test as the kids had been taken the day before. Although he didn’t hear about it as he came home and went to sleep (exams tire him out), the College Board is requiring that he take the free response section over, or if he wishes, take the whole test over. As such, he does not have a reported score for BC Calculus. Is there any reason to mention this in the application? He chose not to take AP Physics because it was only one semester of college physics and he figured, wisely, that college physics is likely to be taught at a higher level than high school physics and as a result has few AP scores.</p></li>
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