Posted in wrong place!!
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There have already been at least one if not two sat tests given at Groton for juniors.
I know Juniors take SAT’s. My kiddo took it last fall as a Junior. And is taking it this December as a repeat Junior. Her school recommends Juniors take it in the Spring of Junior year. But to have kids announce they have committed to Princeton by September of Junior year means they took it before Junior year. Which I found unusual.
Our private HS encourages many non-athletes to take it August before jr yr starts, and scores are back in 2 weeks, so the first half of September. I assume athletes may have instruction to take it in June? I don’t think it is uncommon to have scores early in junior year.
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It’s worth repeating what I shared in another post. There are some colleges (eg Georgetown) that will request ALL OF YOUR SAT & ACT SCORES when you apply. So, if your student takes an early sitting of a standardized test OR if you “Just want to get a baseline”….be strategic and ask an admissions expert.
Also - if your student is a 10th grader applying to a pre-college summer program that requests SAT or ACT scores, be strategic. Most are test optional. Back in 10th grade, my student took a standardized test before COVID, in order to apply to a pre-college summer program (that ended up being online). That score showed up in the college admissions file even though it was not requested and not paid for (again). Your student is in their system. This happened at 2 schools my kid applied to….even one school that did not openly request all test scores. Why is this interesting? Well…Because they don’t tell you! 
So, if you think that you might apply test optional to college because that SAT you took the summer of Junior year was too low, you might actually see that score rear it’s ugly head without your request.
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While true, students and their parents need to not overthink this. Georgetown (which AFAIK is the only college left requiring all scores) will consider the best scores. And they know that scores generally improve over time.
So if there are valid reasons to test early, feel free to do so. But IMO, one of the valid reasons is not simply for practice.
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Completely agree! The kids in the school who are advised to take it before jr yr/early in junior yr are also advised to prep that summer, and typically (if no athlete/other reason), it is the kids who will be In honors precal or Calc in junior year, so the math needed is already done. It isn’t advised as a try-and-just see, without preparation of any kind.
Pre-SAT and Pre-ACT are great for practice and baseline. Especially if you have kids who are never going to prep on their own.
I’m wondering how grades play in to these rankings and chances. Is there a place for a kid at a top 20 boarding school who has some B’s mixed in with A’s (all in challenging, advanced classes) to get into a great college? This is our first time navigating such things and we’re trying to understand the dynamics.
Kid who graduated with my oldest was getting into an Ivy (great student plus a legacy). Was on their school’s 3v boat. All of a sudden gets a call from the school about having to register through the NCAA portal as he is now officially a crew recruit. They needed his scores and since they were going to take him anyway, why not use them.
Yes.
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Depends on how inflated the school is. One or two flat Bs probably won’t hurt you all that much here, but a few certainly will.
You will typically see that the athlete has “committed to the admissions process” at most Ivy League schools. This is a distinction from most non-Ivy schools commitments.
@AZBound: This topic of this thread is about Ivy matriculation from boarding schools. You should start a separate thread for your question rather than piggy-back on this one where your question will get buried ultimately.
@AZBound
A great college yes, absolutely. A top 10 college, probably not unless the kid is a strong legacy or a recruitable athlete. This is why people talk about targeting being so important.
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Yup. Know 2 students directly who had verbal offers in first year. They were being scouted in MS. By sophomore year were clearly also going to be high AI. Both were really annoyed that people thought that they were getting in just b/c of ‘brawn’ and not ‘brain’.
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Same with a number of families in our community. As I think someone mentioned upthread, this seems to be the “new normal” in the lacrosse world in particular.
I’ve been wondering about this lately too, if I’d actually stand a better chance of getting into a really good college at my current public school than at PEA.
For context, at my current school, typically around 5 students will go to an Ivy, none of whom are an athlete or highly-recruited musician or anything like that in recent memory (We are not very good at athletics clearly) (This number will vary from as low as 3 to as high as 10+ depending on the year).
These students are typically people who are all-around pretty good + have 1 huge draw niche draw. If I stayed at my current school, I already have one academic draw that has typically gotten an Ivy-leager or two every year for a few years now (although this draw’s Ivy-Leagers have declined from as many as 10+ to 1-2 last year). It’s a pretty niche subject though and I am already pretty much the best person at this activity as right now at my school.
Starting as a sophomore at PEA, I’m afraid that I would not be as competitive to get into a top school than I would at my previous school since I would have to compete against people with really big athletic and hook achievements.
I’ve been thinking that maybe at PEA I’d be a small fish in a big pond while at my current school I’d be a bigger fish in a far smaller pond. Of course, this all depends on whether I could get into PEA in the first place, but I’m still wondering if I should sacrifice a higher chance at a really good college for a really good high school experience. I don’t know if I could get top 10-15 at PEA seeing that I’d be entering at a sophomore and the curriculum is vastly different from what I’m currently taking and probably some of it wouldn’t translate well.
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Valid thought and the primary reason you should choose your high school based on the EXPERIENCE you want in high school. College matriculation should NOT be the end goal.
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IMHO, you do not need to worry too much.
It is pretty safe to say that we will not be at the top of the class at PEA. However, BS will make you a much better college applicant. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the school that one is from will have much of an effect on your college application. And besides, Ivies are not the only schools that will give you a good college experience, and I do not think you will have many problems with college choices (even if it isn’t Ivies, but they are far from a guarantee in your current school as well).
In the end, you want to give yourself a good high school experience. I would not want to stay at my school for 3 more years, only to be disappointed come college decisions.