That was a waste of time and money! UGH – well it is time to fish or cut bait. It is what it is now and she will go where she will go.
Frustrating – but at least you will have no regrets that you should have done something more. My S took the SAT twice and basically got the same score both times (even with additional prep for the second exam) – so after the second sitting we decided he was “done” with the exam and focused on finding colleges that were good fits, matched his academic stats, and appeared affordable. It worked out just fine.
Good luck moving forward in the process.
One of my kids had a 300 point increase in the two part SAT. The other didn’t increase one point.
It is what it is.
There are tons of colleges out there that will welcome your student.
My older attended some sessions of a class trying to improve his essay score. (Silly since it didn’t count that year and they eventually dropped it.) The class was worse than useless - they consistently gave his essays ones and twos, but with no feedback as to what the issue was. He’d already gotten a nine or ten the the first time round and I saw the essays he’d written they weren’t that bad. When he retook his essay score went up, the multiple choice went down so he ended up with the exact same score. His math went up 10 points and his verbal stayed the same. (But not to boast it could only go down!) For a high scoring kid the first score may be very close to the best they can do. And I think many testing prep companies actually have lots of students whose scores don’t move.
@happy1 Agreed - we tried, it is what it is, and she did do the work, I saw her doing it all the time
Feel ya! Happened here, too.
I feel your pain. DD spent the summer before junior year studying for the PSAT, especially the English since math is her strength. The result? 10 points DOWN in English, 10 points up in math. Not even close to NM score for our state.
We switched to the ACT and she basically aced it with maybe 4 weeks of prep, and just skipped the regular SAT. If you don’t think your current score represents your child’s true accomplishment, consider the other test.
And, yes, it’s also fine to move on. There are colleges out there for everyone, including test-optional schools.
The weird thing is that she did better (much) in some areas on the first test and better in some areas (much better) on the second test – should she have ACT send schools both scores? I don’t think they ‘superscore’ but not sure how to handle this as to applications.
Most places do not superscore the ACT, but what does it hurt to send all the scores?
We sent all scores even though my daughter was all over the place on her tests. She did one old SAT one new SAT and two ACTs. All with about the same composites. She did much better in math on the old SAT which is supposed to be harder, but better in English on the new. She only increased her score by one point on the second ACT, but decreased her sad science score by one point.
We just submitted them all because she had good scores in all sections of the tests (except for science) but her highest section scores were all on different tests. We knew they didn’t superscore either the Old vs. new SAT or the ACT, but we figured showing her best section scores was to her advantage.
The ACT/SAT concordance tables showed that all of her composite scores were pretty equal.
She was admitted to all but her reach schools. Good luck to your daughter!
There are positives and negatives with taking a test prep class as opposed to one-on-one tutoring. The one negative with a test prep class is that the instruction isn’t necessarily geared 100% to your kid’s specific needs or weaknesses. But nonetheless, it’s not a “waste of time and money,” when you can say you gave it your best shot.
Also she got a 1090 SAT, should she send that too??? (new SAT)-- we focused on ACT because of the nursing major.
You should only send both ACT scores if you know the school superscores. The ACT charges for each score report to the same school.
The ACT is like that…there is definitely a point of diminishing return…go with what you got and good luck!