My oldest is a high school junior. She took the SAT and ACT her sophomore year, figuring it’d be good to get some practice in on them and then take them for real her junior year. However, she did pretty well when she took them last year—rather to her surprise, she got a 2070 on the SAT and, still better, a 32 on the ACT.
For most of the schools she’s interested in, those scores put her at 75th percentile or higher for recent entering classes. (She’s not interested in the HYPSMs of the world. In fact, she actually may be a touch biased against the HYPSMs of the world. Think the next group or two down the prestigiosity scale, I suppose.) So: Are schools likely to look askance at her scores if she doesn’t take the SAT or ACT this year, but just sticks with what she got as a sophomore? I’m guessing it’s not an issue, but I’m asking in case it is.
(And yes, I know, she could probably raise her scores by taking them this year. She feels, though, that if she doesn’t have to take them this year she has better things to do with her time, and I’m not inclined to argue the point with her if I don’t have to.)
Using a Sophomore year score is fine. Chances are her score Would go up but there’s no reason to take it (unless she wants to try for some better merit $).
Thanks, y’all—that’s what I’d figured, but this is our first to go through the process, so sometimes you get nervous that you’re missing something important…
It is fine, but if she is seeking merit aid and could do better (and most juniors can), the payoff could be significant and well worth the hours required.
You should do some research on the colleges she is interested in, in particular into what they do with merit aid as mentioned above and what scores are needed for honors programs.There are colleges that provide specific information on merit aid including telling you minimals needed in grades and test scores to qualify. Some will even provide several ascending grade and test score requirements needed to qualify for larger and larger merit awards
For those who have raised it, the colleges she’s most interested in that are open about their merit aid policies, her GPA (which has been high and stable her first two years of high school) plus a 32 ACT pretty much maxes it all out—so there’s little to no pressure in that direction.
One thing that you may want to consider would be taking the NMSQT at the beginning of Junior year to qualify for National Merit. If she it going to prepare for that she might as well take the SAT that is administered within a week or two of the NMSQT.
National merit is not a huge amount of money, but every little bit helps.