<p>My daughter is a junior in a highly competitive magnet high school ranked in top 20 in US. Wash U is currently on the top of her list. She'll be applying into business school. We will be visiting sometime in the spring. She currently has a 4.0 unweighted GPA, but taking all HL IBs and BC calc so likely will go down a bit. She took ACT in September and scored a 34. 35 on math and 34 on all other sections. Are these stats enough to get in or should she attempt to take ACT again and maybe do an SAT? She also has a 730 on Bio and 700 on math 2 Will be retaking math 2 at the end of the year. She was also a DECA national winner last year.</p>
<p>First, I like your username! Haha.</p>
<p>Second, please make sure to encourage your daughter extensively this year and to provide her comfort as she takes those challenging classes you’ve listed. I personally regret not trying even harder to achieve a 4.0GPA, as it dropped during my junior year because of hard classes and extracurriculars. Positive parental encouragement is a sure-fire way to help her achieve this goal! My own parents, however hard they tried, seemed to scold and criticize me instead of giving me the positive encouragement that I longed for. Please keep in mind that she will be very stressed this year! As much as it is your duty to straighten her out and make sure she’s doing her work, I believe it’s helpful to help her relieve her stress once in a while. This will accumulate to an overall better junior year experience, and will show in her grade reports and ACT scoring.</p>
<p>These stats are very similar to mine, and I’ve been told that I am a “High match/Low Reach” candidate to Wash U. Even so, as you’ve mentioned in your post, she attends a top rated school. This will factor in and will probably help her more.
I also got a 34 on the ACT, albeit a 35 super score. If I were given a chance to retake the ACT now (I’m currently very nervous regarding my early decision admission to WashU), I would.
However, whether she should attempt the ACT again should be up to your daughter’s discretion. An unmotivated student won’t score any higher if you just sign her up for another test-taking session without proper reflection. Pose questions like “Do you believe you can keep up your GPA?” (Take this with a grain of salt, because the difficulty of any class can’t properly be judged by a student before he/she takes it), “In your opinion, do your extracurriculars make up for those 2 points?”, and “Are you confident in yourself?”
If asked in the right setting, I believe she should be able to discern whether or not to take it again – after all, this is HER future!</p>
<p>Sorry for the long winded response. As a current senior in high school who has just sent in his Early Decision application to Wash U, I thought it’d be helpful for you, as a parent, to be able to see into the mind of another parent’s son.
I hope my response helps you and your daughter in her own admissions process!</p>
<p>No, there’s no point in retaking the ACT. A 36 is only marginally more impressive than a 34, and it is a complete waste of resources to try and get one. A high 3 (or 4) GPA and impressive ECs are even more so a reason not to worry at all about standardized test scores.</p>
<p>@jeheono I got into WashU with your exact same ACT situation (34 w/ 35 super). That score is perfectly fine and should make you very competitive. Best of luck!</p>
<p>Hi Momworried–If your daughter scored a 35 in the math section of the ACT, I wouldn’t bother with sending the SAT2 Math subject score. (If she is taking the Math SAT 2 again because another school requires it-that is fine, but I wouldn’t take it again just for WUSTL). If they don’t ask for it-and it doesn’t strengthen her application–don’t send it. </p>
<p>The 35 on the math section of the ACT is impressive. Let that (in conjunction with her GPA, rigorous courses, etc) stand for themselves. The 700’ish math score is good–but no where near as strong as the 35. Her 35 in math puts her in the top 1/2 of the top 1%…she pretty much needs an 800 on the Math 2 to equal that percentile wise. I know that they say they only consider scores that will help you…but why even give them the chance to think “hmmm…her ACT math score was very impressive, but the SAT2 was just good…maybe she actually falls somewhere in between”. Have them thinking “wow-great ACT composite, and look, she’s super strong in Math as well”.</p>
<p>It’s kind of like working in sales and continuing to talk after you have gotten the “yes”. Once her stats reflect who she is as a student (and what you have listed is a very strong academic record)–stop.</p>
<p>That’s a solid ACT score. In my opinion once you hit a 33 (99 %) then there is not much of a difference in a few points. Granted a 36 always looks nice but instead of spending so much time to try and attain a perfect score, which won’t even help much in admission over a 34, your daughter could be focusing on her senior year classes. This is just my perspective.<br>
(I only scored a 33 if its any consolation)</p>