$95 per AP test but the upside is huge. This year again like last year due to Covid, you can cancel without penalty. That is significant. Many schools I have found out pay for their students to take the AP tests. I was shocked since our school gets us on this. However, since it doesn’t look like my senior will be in school this year at all and they charge for seniors to park among other bogus fees, I feel like I am at least saving money there.
My daughter at her Ivy school was able to earn a full semester of AP credit. They pretty much only take 5’s and some courses like AP Stats or APush they (engineering) don’t take at all so that’s money down the drain. Her sister goes to a school that takes everything but then we have to pay $10 for every credit she claims. She however could’ve claimed something like 37 hours plus her ACT English was high enough that she also didn’t have to take the first English course. They can each now graduate a semester and a year early respectively if they chose, but there’s no hurry. So for some, the $94 is a lot now but a possible payoff down the line.
But all the testing is insane. Very few schools btw gave Subject tests this year and few colleges, I think G-town may be the only one, require them anymore anyway.
CSS Profile no one should complete unless applying ED and then only until the deadlines for each school. It’s a complete waste of money otherwise to pay for all of them. I had to do it for my daughter at the Ivy for ED and almost paid to do it for USC and Michigan for both my girls but realized their due dates were much later. It was a good thing I waited because the one got into her ED school so it became moot and the other pretty much decided to go elsewhere so not worth doing it. Don’t forget the costs for people who can afford SAT/ACT tutoring and college visits, etc. Another savings this year - college visits. Never ends.
@ucbalumnus This is the case for my D21 where her SAT scores would have strengthened her application. She worked hard prepping for the test, then it was canceled, then she’d keep prepping only to have it canceled again. This happened three times.
@homerdog I’m glad to hear you say this because my D ended up applying test-optional as well. I had to will myself not to fret about it. Her counselor wrote in his report that all SAT dates have been canceled in our state since the pandemic began. Hopefully ECs, grades and letters of recs will be enough to highlight our kids’ strengths.
@MichaelCShort I cringe to think of the crap that AOs will have to wade through in the covid impact section. My D’s best friend’s father died of covid-related cardiac arrest in September. It’s noteworthy when a 51-year old father of 4 and primary wage-earner dies suddenly in his daughter’s senior year. D21’s friend noted this in the covid impact section. In my opinion, unless it relates to death, serious illness, or homelessness, the covid impact section should be left blank.
@goldpenn That is horrible about your daughter’s friend’s father. I have heard of many stories of kids writing in that section because they missed an internship, or a summer program, etc. and I think there are much better ways to get that across in an essay or an activity section, no different than college career centers advising students to list on their resumes cancelled internships and to state they were cancelled. The situation you describe IMO is exactly what that section is for. How covid really changed your life or trajectory of life. Many people became or will become homeless, saw things that can’t be unseen, became hungry, saw loved ones die, etc. Some created charities or foundations, but again, write that in your main essay. Others may not agree with me and I cannot put myself in other people’s shoes and acknowledge that this has affected everyone differently.
Also, nothing wrong with applying test optional. Colleges have made it clear you will not be penalized for not submitting. If they do, then shame on them!
Not at all. That’s a fantastic score and will do nothing but help you. This year is very different and I wouldn’t read too much into any trends.
Consistently there is great success with certain themes. Not universal but consistent. All schools of course look for High rigor.
BC specific it is more in relation to how you performed relative to your peers in your school and rigor. You don’t have to be val or sal but too 10 percent is a thing. And there’s plenty of exceptions to the rule as well. Coupled with 1510 is a great profile.
Most important from my contacts in the admissions world and some back channel info that they really do try to see if the personal essay and prompts connect back to that concept of global good and the whole person approach to education. In your own way. Ecs and variety of activities and not so much what they are as to why. Also some schools love laser focus in one area and bc seems to prefer the old fashioned well rounded student.
It’s never a good idea to rate someone’s chances other than broadly. Most with a profile like yours will be highly competitive.
I know the use or nonuse of the Common App’s Covid section has been discussed to death on CC. But I was surprised in an online forum with Bates’ AD that he kept encouraging students to say anything they wanted to tell him in that section. People in the chat kept pushing back on whether he meant that they should just use it for major Covid issues and he just kept saying that students could use it to tell him anything they wanted him to know. Perhaps because Bates has no other essays other than the Common App essay.
I like to think that AOs are professional enough that if they like what they read in the Covid section they will give the kid a bump, if not they will ignore it. I think a lot is being made of a minor thing in the overall context of each kids app. Ultimately, it is the first time and kids are going to look at it differently.
– my D23 took the PSAT in October . . .and just recently I saw that they have added a new PSAT date in January. I was surprised College Board added those dates, but glad for the kids and families.
Our high school cancelled the PSAT earlier this Fall and it was rescheduled for January way back then, so I don’t think the January date is suddenly new. But with everything shut down here, I don’t know if they’ll even be able to get that in. They just cancelled the Dec ACT everywhere here.
Oh thankfully, the testing issues did not affect my kid. He’s a senior. But I proctor these tests and I feel really bad for these kids and the schools. There is so much back and forth and ACT has been terrible with communication. I knew our high school cancelled it about a month ago, however, ACT only notified them this week.
But these juniors who may lose a chance of national merit, it really stinks.
My son got kicked out of his subject test so they could make room for kids for the SAT. It was fine because no school he applied to needed them but still just so crazy and I assume many didn’t get in.
I would imagine that both are true. Students from more competitive high schools are likely to get better guidance: through teachers, their school’s college counseling office, a paid college consultant, or well-educated parents. How is the scrappy talented first-gen or low-income kid from the weak or lesser known school going to be able to package him or herself more adroitly through activities, academic vision, texture or LORs? Especially if that school is struggling to deliver instruction online? How would that student even know how to begin? There may be some diamonds in the rough that intuitively self-present in exactly the right way. But I suspect they will be fewer and farther between. If they don’t have high standardized test scores to make them stand out, applicants like this could get lost in the crush of extra applications from relatively privileged students that attend more competitive high schools. I think that the main beneficiary of this moment is likely to be the
who also is middle class or above and who declines to submit a respectable test score that falls short of historical test ranges at T20s. Or students who are already well-positioned but through no fault of their own couldn’t take a test.
On another note, thanks for the advice on the “additional info” section. There was a spirited debate on the parents class of 2021 thread about whether use of this or the COVID section would be helpful or counterproductive.
Can still hope for March or June 2021! I am sure if they are able to take the SAT next June, they will be very grateful for National Merit making this policy - a lot of money on the line…
Unfortunately, I agree with this sentiment and it’s just again another sign that our society is letting these students down. Unfortunately, these students probably didn’t even have the opportunity to take any standardized tests so they won’t even have a high score to help offset the lack of ECs, income, access to college counseling services, etc. Some schools have not been back in person all year. I saw former secretary of education Arne Duncan interviewed about how far behind students will be and how some kids may need to repeat grades, but worse, how some kids have not even shown up for “school” since everything went remote last March and they have no idea what happened to these kids. This is a serious problem.
Kids don’t have access to internet, devices, but worse food insecurity is a huge problem.
We as a society really need to do something to help the income gap and especially what is going to become an even bigger education gap after we get out of this mess created from covid.
@mamaedefamilia I completely agree. It’s odd to me that there’s so much discussion about how SAT/ACT are inherently unfair or biased or disadvantageous to already vulnerable populations, yet putting tons of weight on essays is a good idea? At least with the tests you know the student actually sat for it (well, except for some rich celebrities of course), but with essays who knows who wrote them! Some people hire coaches and essay editors, etc., and of course kids in privileged situations have all kinds of guidance from college counselors at school to help them position themselves, hone their topics, say the right things, etc. A student could literally pay someone to write the essays for them and nobody would know. I’m just not seeing the logic of why this is any better than the tests.
It is always a moving target. Any time some factor of determining college admission becomes more important, parents with money will deploy it to purchase greater opportunity for their kids to do well in that factor. Colleges that do not want to let the overrepresentation of students from wealth get too far then have to find other ways to compensate for that.
You can see it with SAT/ACT (test prep), essays (essay coaching), grades/GPA (higher grade inflation in high SES high schools as found in a state study comparing grades to end-of-class state tests), extracurriculars (travel sports teams that cost money but offer greater development and opportunities to show achievement), etc…
Yes, families with means will always enjoy an advantage. However, objective measures are far more equitable than subjective ones. We could make the standardized tests less preparable, for instance, but we chose to go in the opposite direction, with each iteration of these tests. Standardized tests are often close to being the only element left for some smart but poor kids to showcase their qualifications in the admission game.
@ucbalumnus Yes of course those things are true, but my point was that the critics of SAT/ACT seem to be fine with emphasis on essays even though the same issues exist. I kind of think essays are even worse since you literally don’t know who wrote them.