<p>first child -- did pretty mediocre on psat's -- although i encouraged studying, just really didn't have the motivation. combination of seeing those scores vs. colleges the child had then become interested in helped provide motivation. studied -- especially a lot of vocabulary studying (there are a lot of "fun" voc study books out there - knowing more vocab helped enormously!) -- raised score almost 200 points on sat (out of 1600).</p>
<p>second child -- more diligent about studying for psat. did well, but some weaknesses. studied more for sat. did just about the same as on psat. concluded it wasn't an issue of studying more - just simply had trouble with some of the types of questions on sat. looked at act practice tests -- felt more comfortable with types of questions. studied for act and did well.</p>
<p>so my personal conclusion as to which test? it really depends on the kid -- for either test there is a certain amount of basic studying i think should be done -- to familiarize not only with instructions but to try to understand how the test makers think -- there are ALWAYS some types of questions that repeat themselves that if you know to look out for you get right (isn't there ALWAYS a math question where you have to choose how many correct answers there are to an equation, and if you forget to consider the negative numbers, 0, or 1, you get it wrong -- and both my kids who are great in math fell into that trap when they first saw those types of questions)</p>
<p>but once you've done that basic amount of studying? some kids will plateau and some will keep climbing. my second kid was never going to be comfortable figuring out what the sat was looking for in their convoluted reading passages and felt the act's were much more straight forward. my first kid just needed to broaden the vocabulary available and was then fine finding the right answers.</p>
<p>the only way your d will know which is right for her is for her to take more practice tests of both. books with "real" sat and act exams are readily available and well worth the cost.</p>
<p>We have the CD "Rock the SAT". Subject daughter doesn't want to listen to it in the car but one of her siblings who is taking SAT next month loves it. Since I've paid for the SAT prep starting this month we'll probably go thru with plan to take March 1 SAT and register for April ACT. I love that she's spending most of her time junior year on this stuff!!!</p>
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I love that she's spending most of her time junior year on this stuff!!!
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<p>between college entrance exams, thinking about which colleges they might want to apply to, and taking drivers ed, we found junior year the most stressful for US as parents!! ;)</p>
<p>Ditto marite--go to SAT prep section of this forum and review the "xiggi method" -- basically, she could do the past tests released by the College Board and review her correct & incorrect answers to see what she did right/wrong & why. It helped my son.</p>
<p>A good tip my son found helpful (from the CC SAT boards) -- come up w/ a list of 5 literary figures and 5 historical figures and write some vingettes about them. Then, they can be used when necessary in the essays. That really helped him (although we've yet to see his SAT or PSAT scores--he did well in the past, though...).</p>
<p>My daughter (also in NY) got sub-1500 SATs and 28 ACT. Just a different test that works better for some people. There's also the fatigue factor and the preconceived notions. Here in NY, the ACT is somewhat of an unknown quantity, so the hysteria doesn't accompany it.</p>
<p>My son tanked the SAT's (under 1500) and the PSAT too, for that matter. His peers were getting NM and his scores stunk. The PLAN test went better. To prep for the ACT's he did study... for about 10 days...then was one point from ACT scholar. He didn't take the SAT2's he didn't take the ACT again (no need to), got into two engineering programs already.
So, I'll eleventh, twentieth or whatever number to say, take the ACT!</p>
<p>Yes a kid can raise a SAT. My D's first was 600MATH 610CR.. and who cares about the essay (she eventually got a 710). She took the SAT four times. One did not count, it was a practice test administered by her school. I decided to forego the Kaplin or Princeton courses as they were expensive and time consuming.. she plays three sports. I did get her a math tutor, a middle school teacher, who helped her 1.5 hours per week for about 6 months. She went from a 1210 early in her junior year, to a 1330 last month (Nov.). 670MATH 650CR. She took the ACT twice and got a 28 both times. The second time she took the ACT she improved on everything, but actually went down in science. She'd taken every advance science course her HS offered but was floored by the science portion on the ACT this past October. I paid the tutor $30 per hour, which he claimed was the going rate.. a bargain as far as I was concerned. So yeah a 120 point jump in 14 months. From what I've read students in the top 25% of their class benefit more from tutoring vs. the expensive course. Nothing to back that up.. but generally hardworking kids stumble of small items (math formulas and so on) and don't really need a broad based course. Be advised some folks don't recommend HS or MS teachers because they don't have an intricate knowledge of the SAT or applied stategies.. What we did seemed to work. Good luck!</p>
<p>The tutors are at least $150 an hour in New York! And the good ones are all booked! But the class I'm signing her up for is small (8-10) and supposedly all kids in her score range.</p>