@nytxca @itcannotbetrue
Just searched some more. It looks like this question comes up every now and again on CC. The best I can piece together is that there are several boarding school regions and they go by the highest cutoff in the region. It may be that the boarding school goes by region if >50% board? Otherwise it reverts to the state where the school is located. In our case, all of the above is NJ which usually has the highest cutoff.
None of this is substantiated other than the quote above in my last postfrom the National merit guidebook.
This has been around for a while. BS students are subject to the highest cut-off of the region in which their BS is located (e.g., MA for New England), not to the cut-off for their home state.
Thanks- @carpoolingma. Either way, it’s a tough cut-off for DD; either CA or CT/New England (MA scores for the regional concept?). They’re all about the same. Estimated to be 222-223 from what I’ve read for our kiddos’ class. Have read that NJ will land at 223 or 224. This is all hearsay from the testing gurus such as Compass Education and Prep Scholar, based on the last few years’ state cut-off scores.
If any Chimneykid gets above the 50th percentile in math, it is reason enough to celebrate in our family. We prefer a healthy 200 point spread or so between math and verbal SAT scores. Keeps things lively! :)>-
LOL, @chemmchimney , I have an artistic one, too.
On a separate note, I´ve missed you all. Let´s not go dark for so long again :x
And great news! It appears my equally right-and-left brained child made the NMS cut-off, along with most other kiddos applying to highly competitive colleges! Yippee! :))
@itcannotbetrue That is great!
@itcannotbetrue Congratulations!
On Safety/VeryLikely schools, it should be also affordable. So the school should satisfy 1. a guaranteed or near-guaranteed acceptance, 2. Child is happy to attend it (if all other options frizzles) 3. it is affordable to the family be it full-pay or full-ride.
Hopefully it will be also rolling admission and gives the decision before November, that would be a bonus.
I highly recommend applying to a rolling admission school during the summer and have an offer in the bag when October comes around with lots of work and stress. S2 received a full scholarship offer from UT Dallas during the last week of October that lifted his spirit up.
It’s always been that way. @carpoolingma give a great explanation. My assumption is that all New England boarding schools are lumped together, and the cutoff is the highest NE state cutoff (typically MA).
Wow, @itcannotbetrue, that’s great! Congrats!
Chimneykid2 exceeded family expectations on the PSAT - 230 pt spread between verbal and math <:-P
@chemmchimney The Like button doesn’t seem appropriate, but rooting for ChimneyKid!
Me too @GoatMama! She is at 98th % in English so it isn’t as tragic as it could be but my guess is she will definitely be playing the superscore me card for the SATs. She does have a learning difference in math too - it’s just not her jam. We are collectively counting the days left until she completes Algebra 2.
GK started BS with a relatively healthy SSAT spread between Q and R/V (Q being 95%). On PSAT-10, both Reading and Writing were higher than Math, and they stayed that way on PSAT/NMSQT. Not sure if BS is doing wonders for her reading and writing skills or it’s failing her math education :))
Just broke the news to Chimneydad and his response re the math “Well, she’s on the board!” :-bd
Umm, I don’t know if @chemmchimney D is already using the strategy, but she can just focus on the 60-70% of problems that she can handle and not worry/read about the rest of math questions. Few SAT problems, if any, need Algebra 2. Most are Algebra 1 problems.
My kids tested above 600/700 in 5-7th grade while they were in Algebra 1. Well, they were mathy kids, so Reading/Writing was in 400s then. Still they were able to do SAT math without Algebra 2 knowledge.
I tutored a neighbor for ACT math. She had a 15/36 to begin with and wanted to reach 24. I told her that she was getting 1/4 of the problems correct and told her to just focus on doing 1/2 of the problems correct and guess the rest. I don’t know doing 4-5 sets of ACT math sets with me helped her or not, but she made it to AF academy as a recruit so that was a happy ending.
PSAT/SAT math seems to be a problem for juniors who are already in Calculus and haven’t done Algebra for awhile now. SAT prep will consist of going back to Algebra 1 to brush off those skills.
@payn4ward Thank you! This is a solid strategy and the tips about Algebra 1 are very helpful. My junior is not in calculus but she can throw a pot like a boss and thank goodness her art portfolio counts for half of her admissions score at many schools. If we can just convince them to apply it to the math half of her application, we will be all set.
SAT is harder for mathy kids at top level. English is just harder to be prepped. More importantly, Great English Reading / Writing skill is much hard to be acquired, and BS has done a wonderful job for my daughter. It seems that “Her writing style is very developed and distinctive.”
And when you are getting less than 30 on ACT math, focusing basic concepts works better than doing a lot of practice sets. I found using software based program works better, as it can give you better idea on which basic concepts would give greater boosts in score. We used Aleks.com Of course, a good tutor can do a much better job in identifying and reinforcing those area.
Senior year is highly stressful, and having that rolling admission early can really boost the moral as @payn4ward said, and it could mean completely skipping the application stress if that happen to be your top choice as well.
@payn4ward Congratulation for your S2!
@itcannotbetrue Congratulations! That is a great achievement.
My D20 told me after the fact that she was going to miss the PSAT at school as they schedule the Saturday test day in October and she was to be off campus. It was like an oh well on her part. We (and apparently she) were never expecting her to hit the competitive MA cutoff; we live and she boards on MA. She chose not to subscribe to mom’s grind for the ACT over the summer and her September score reflected that. Thankfully, she realized the error of her ways and pulled of a good score in December. It feels great to potentially be done with at least the main test.