<p>I agree w/ OP- the system is badly flawed. Our kids are being tested and stressed to death. I’ve read the whole thread and what sticks with me the most was the OP’s d’s comment that she “didn’t have time to cry”. What are we doing to our kids?
I don’t have any answers…my d’s SAT scores were lower than expected too based on her GPA, even with prep. Taking a tip from a college counselor, we decided to have her focus on the ACT, where her initial scores were a bit higher than her SAT. But she still had to take the ACT multiple times to get it into merit scholarship range. Then there were the SAT II’s…we made the mistake of having her take 3 in one day…2 were OK, but the third one she kind of bombed. Unfortunately the bad score was in her area of interest, but she hadn’t taken the class inseveral years and didn’t prep enough. AP’s she did quite well on, with a fair amount of prep. We’re actually sending AP scores wherever possible to try to offset the one bad SATII score. </p>
<p>she’s applying to quite a few colleges as we need aid and she’s one of those on the bubble kids…so now we have the costs of sending multiple test scores to multiple colleges, not to mention the original costs of the prep and multiple testing. (We didn’t know we were probably eligible for fee waivers.)</p>
<p>Sorry about the rant; I know there are test optional schools, but as of now, there aren’t enough to just opt out of testing and only apply there…I just know college board is getting rich on our kid’s backs.</p>