<p>Student here (senior). I scored:
26 on my first practice test, Feb of junior year.
Between January and March I prepped for the SAT, but changed my mind when I found out that I wouldn’t have to take SAT subject tests for my colleges if I took the ACT.
29 on the real test in April after two private tutoring sessions
32 in June after six more sessions and 3-4 practice tests
33 in October after one more session and one practice test
I was admitted ED to my dream school in December (and also accepted to two rolling EA schools). I sent in only the June and October scores because my school accepted score choice, but I planned to send in all my scores to other colleges on my list.</p>
<p>I did not ask specifically, but other parents/students did ask. </p>
<p>Obviously, if a school asks that you send all scores then they care, but the vast majority of schools just don’t care how many times you take them. Now-whether it is a good use of your child’s time to take standardized tests over and over is another topic for another thread (I vote no).</p>
<p>I haven’t read the whole thread but in case no one has suggested a private tutor, I will. </p>
<p>Imo, prep classes are a huge waste of money. Hire a good private tutor. </p>
<p>Also, I remember my son’s tutor telling him to do the subjects he is strongest in first so if he runs out of time his best sections will all be completed. </p>
<p>He went from a 28 to a 32. Took it twice, once in March of his Jr. yr. and again in October of his Sr. yr. </p>
<p>He also only took the SAT twice (June of his jr. yr and Sept or Oct of his sr. yr.) and his scores both times were a bit lower than his ACT scores.</p>
<p>His tutors (we had one for critical reading and another for Math - though the math tutor for only a few weeks over the summer) also covered both the ACT and SAT as we didn’t know which one he would do best on.</p>
<p>Penn requires that you send all SAT and ACT scores.</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://www.admissionsug.upenn.edu/applying/testing.php[/url]”>http://www.admissionsug.upenn.edu/applying/testing.php</a></p>
<p>Just thought I would come back here w/a little bit of an update.</p>
<p>On March 25th, our daughter took a practice test at home and scored a composite of 30, her highest score yet. With her other practice tests, she took them as part of the prep class that she is taking, and those were taken under “real life” testing conditions in that they were taken at the high school where she will be taking her real tests and they were run by her instructor. With the test she took at home, we tried to mimic the conditions as best we could, but she still took it at home. We did time her and everything and gave her the same sort of breaks between each area of the test, but it is still very different than what the actual test will be like. Anyway, she did increase her score, and this time she got a 30 composite on the test. Her best score before was a 28, but she had an overly inflated science score of 34 on that particular test for some reason, and has not been able to duplicate that high score on any other practice test. If the science was more in line w/what she usually gets, she probably would have only scored a 26 or 27 composite on that first practice test. This is the highest she has ever scored and it gave her confidence. Here is the breakdown of her scores:</p>
<p>Composite - 30
English - 32
Math - 31
Reading - 29
Science - 29</p>
<p>I think the practice tests are helping her, and we are really going over the areas where she is missing questions. On English, in past tests, she was only able to get a high score of 28, but w/going over her problem areas, she was able to score a 32 on this last test. A lot of questions that she was missing had to do w/using commas vs. semicolons and using who vs. whom, and w/going over the grammar rules, it has seemed to help her score. With math, just going over the problems that she is missing is helping her on all subsequent tests. Reading and science are just hard to improve on because the passages are so different from test to test, but I think just taking practice tests is helping her get used to the timing, format, and pacing of these sections. It seems like what we are doing is helping her, so we are just going to continue on this path.</p>
<p>Her first real test is on April 14th. This Friday she is going to take a practice test at home (the kids are off school for Good Friday), and on Saturday she is taking her last practice test as part of her prep course. She also has a prep class this Wednesday and then the following Wednesday as well. After the April 14th test, she will take a practice test through her high school on April 24th (this does not include the writing portion of the test though) and then another real test on June 9th. From here on out, we are just going to have her take a practice test each weekend to help her maintain what she has learned about each section. We are really hoping that on at least one of these 3 tests she scores at least a 30. If she doesn’t get what she needs after the June 9th test, we will get her a tutor for the summer and then have her retake the test in September. I believe there is another test date on September 10th.</p>
<p>Anyway, that’s our plan, and here’s hoping that this works for her and then she can put the ACT behind her for good! </p>
<p>Thanks to everyone that is replying to this thread. I truly appreciate all of the responses!</p>
<p>I have another question I want to ask you all about the ACT. I posted this over at the ACT section of this forum as well, but for some reason I don’t have much luck getting questions answered over there. The traffic seems to be very light there compared to this forum. Anyway, here is my question:</p>
<p>Should you report your ACT scores to your high school? We are deciding not to send any of our daughter’s scores to colleges when she takes the ACT test in April and June. Should we also choose not to report the scores to the high school as well? We are trying to control which schools see which scores because we are not sure how she is going to do on the actual test, and she wants to major in engineering at a big 10 school. She’s been practicing, and her scores have gone up. Her lowest score has been a 26 and her highest has been a 30. We noticed on the high school transcripts that there is a place on there for ACT scores, and we don’t want a low score to be known to any colleges if she doesn’t score that well on her first real test. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>Thank you in advance for any replies!</p>
<p>Yes, universities look at those bloody test scores, but her high GPA can cover a multitude of testing sins (such as they are!). My son began with a 29 on the SAT and did go up to 33 also, but probably the 36 on the reading helped. He went through a prep program, too, and he focused on the sections that were lowest after the first administration with a private tutor. I know this sounds insane, but he did not have the GPA your daughter has. He also decided early on that between ACT and SAT, ACT was for him. That still meant, however, that for some universities, he had to take SAT IIs, so don’t forget the particular requirements for the university to which your daughter is applying. The other important things are your daughter’s EC’s, letters of recommendation, essays, and, for many of the private universities, her true interest in that campus. Having just gone through this slog with my son, I can say that his ACT, along with everything else, took care of the GPA to a great degree. He landed acceptances in universities with 35-70K applicants, so I truly believe the holistic admissions made a difference for him.</p>
<p>My son had no option to report to his high school: both SAT and ACT automatically report to the high school unless you cancel the tests. He never sent scores to a university until he actually applied to them, but that cost us a lot of money since ACT charges by the administration and SOME universities want EVERY test of whichever one you choose. Some just want the highest, some superscore, some take only one. There are all sorts of permutations, so if your child knows which universities, go to the websites and find out now exactly what they want you to send. I found it practically took a Ph.D. to decipher the websites and their many requirements, but get it all figured out now and make a spreadsheet of what you have to submit and any peculiarities such as SAT IIs even if you send only ACT I.</p>
<p>Ladyham: Just wanted to say congrats on the great scores. You’re a good mom. Your d will do fine when the time comes. I’m so happy to hear that your starting to see results. :)</p>
<p>Fyi, if you don’t put the high school code when registering, the scores won’t be reported to the high schools. However, I’ve found that many schools accept the scores reported on the transcripts. I prefer to have the cost savings of not having to pay the testing service to send them. In my son’s case, I can’t see any school caring what his lowest score was or how many times he took the tests.</p>
<p>Dungardeedoll ~ Thank you so much!</p>
<p>Reeinaz ~ The only thing that worries me as that the juniors were given a copy of their transcripts, and on those transcripts there is a section where it lists ACT scores. Since she hasn’t officially taken an ACT test, her section was blank, but I am not sure if it would have been if she had taken the test. On the ACT site where you sign up for the test, there is a long registration area that you fill out, and one of those sections is about reporting your ACT score for that particular test to your high school. Right now we have that section filled out as NOT sending the score to the high school.</p>
<p>Laplatnum ~ Yes, those bloody test scores!! UGH!! Everything else is in line for her, but we don’t know what her test scores are going to be. I know regardless of how she does on this test, she will be successful in college because she has an incredible work ethic in terms of studying. This test is going to be a hurdle for us, just can’t wait to get past it!</p>
<p>Our local high school quit putting on the ACT/SAT scores on the transcript and I think that is the way to go. The chances of error were there and every school that my kids applied to required them to send a score report directly from the testing agencies themselves.</p>
<p>Ladyham, I’m glad your daughter is getting some results! I hope she does great on the test in April!</p>
<p>My daughter took the ACT in February and was disappointed in her score, specifically math and science. Over spring break she worked through McGraw-Hill’s Top 50 Skills for a Top Score: ACT Math</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/McGraw-Hills-Top-50-Skills-Score/dp/0071613765/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333403268&sr=1-15[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/McGraw-Hills-Top-50-Skills-Score/dp/0071613765/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333403268&sr=1-15</a></p>
<p>She’s taking pre-calc this year and I think she was overthinking the math on the test and making it harder than it really was. She enjoyed the book (as much as one can enjoy that sort of thing) and stopped often to read me some part that she found amusing. After she finished the prep book, she took a practice math test and did the best she ever has, so hopefully with continued practice she can bring her score up when she re-tests in June.</p>
<p>So, any bonus points on the ACT and admissions for getting the exact same score on each section? DS took his practice test and got 30 on every section. I know in the PGA if you have identical scores for all 4 rounds it is an automatic exemption into the majors :D.</p>
<p>I looked at about 15 schools on Saturday, no tip top ones or even next to the tip top ones. But most were top 100 nationally ranked LACs. If a school didn’t specifically state that test scores on transcripts were acceptable (there were only 6 that didn’t state that), I emailed them to ask. They all said that it was fine. I was surprised to get such fast responses 
One said they prefer to receive them from the testing agency but they will accept them as reported on official transcripts. I get why many would not want scores listed on transcripts, but I’m looking to save money wherever possible come application time. And maybe others are too.</p>
<p>reeinaz–thanks for that info. You just saved me about $100. I was debating about signing up for extra scores for our kids for their ACT’s and it sounds like I won’t really have to!!</p>
<p>Well, my daughter took her last test as part of her prep class this past Saturday morning. The good news is that she scored a composite of 30. Here’s the breakdown:</p>
<p>Composite - 30
English - 32
Math - 28
Reading - 31
Science - 27</p>
<p>The bad news is that she had already taken this practice test previously. She took this particular exam in October when her high school offered the test to anyone who wanted to take it, so she has seen it before. I don’t really know what to make of this score, because although she did take this test before, she never found out what questions she got wrong, and what the right answers were on those particular questions. She thinks that seeing this test before helped her on the reading portion of the test, but she is not sure how much it actually helped her on the other sections. We are trying to look at it as a positive that she scored a composite of 30, which is what her goal is for the actual test.</p>
<p>Anyway, she takes the real thing for the first time on Saturday April 14th. This Friday we are going to go over all her past tests and go over all the questions that she got wrong on previous tests. We are hoping that these questions will addresses a lot of problem areas she has on the test and that it will help her to answer similar problems on the test on Saturday. She was considering taking another practice test on Friday after school, but then we all decided it would just be too much to basically take 2 ACT tests 2 days in a row. Including the practice tests she took through her prep class, along w/ tests from Real Real ACT book, and a test that we found through the internet, she has around 7-8 previous practice tests she can review. We are hoping that this sets her up to get at least a 30 composite on the real test that she takes on Saturday. Please send some good vibes our way! Thank you!</p>
<p>just a suggestion: just chill on Friday. Call in sick from school on Thursday if she wants to review more. </p>
<p>Good luck to her. Kick some ACT-butt!</p>
<p>Bluebayou ~ Thanks for the advice! I guess she is sort of chilling by not taking another practice exam on Friday. In the past, going over what questions she got wrong really helped her on similar questions on subsequent tests. We will have her go over the questions in a really relaxed and casual way. Hopefully going over these questions will give her confidence in taking the test on Saturday. I do think your attitude and confidence going into the test play a big part in doing well on it. I think if she just sat around and did nothing on Friday, it would worry her too much, especially if she doesn’t get the score she needs/wants on the test. She doesn’t want to look back and think she could have done more. Based on your advice, I think we are going to limit the time we have her go over the questions and have her go to bed extra early that evening. Thanks again for your comments!</p>
<p>Don’t forget she can retake again in the fall.</p>