I had a D who was an athletic recruit, great GPA, terrible standardized test taker. Constantly told by coaches that she needed higher scores. I won’t tell you how many times she took the SAT and the ACT but it was more than a half-dozen and overall she raised her scores more than 400 points over more than 6 tries.
The following worked for her, though the suggestions may not work for everyone.
- Practice taking tests in timed conditions in uncomfortable places; fatigue is a factor and it was with my D;
- Take the test away from the home HS, and away from friends; my D would get nervous watching others;
- Try to take the test in a quiet room, and ask the proctor to be moved if there is a disturbance; construction outside the window disturbed my D during one test. The next test, she promptly asked to be in a room not near the perimeter of the school and they accommodated her;
- Eat a good breakfast;
- Do not study the night before;
- Reduce physical activity two days prior so there was no left over fatigue from sports events;
- Practice using every old test available; My D had a tutor at the outset but practicing with the old tests really helped. Questions are recycled;
- Do the SAT question of the day every day;
- Read the NYTimes front page every day; practice restating the premise of what is read;
- Do all of the given math problems in math class even if you are doing well and don't need to; continually working the math brain was helpful for her.
Good luck.
Myjanda…your daughter did not “bomb” the SAT. She took it for the first time, and her score was not as high as she hoped it would be. She is not the only one who is experiencing this.
As noted above…it would be helpful if she could identify her areas of weakness, and work on those…then retake.
And you know…there are colleges where she will be able to apply and be acceoted with her current scores. And also as noted…look at the test optional schools.
“I had a D who was an athletic recruit, great GPA, terrible standardized test taker. Constantly told by coaches that she needed higher scores. I won’t tell you how many times she took the SAT and the ACT but it was more than a half-dozen and overall she raised her scores more than 400 points over more than 6 tries.”
This is great to hear and I’ll share your suggestions with my D. She’s a junior and her ACT and reading/writing SAT scores are extremely low, not reflective of her abilities as a student at all. (She got a 640 on the Math SAT, the only score she was at all happy with.) She’s about to take the SAT for the third time.
I could have written your story-down to the TE part. Only difference is that my dd scored slightly below her psat around the score you are working with. We used a tutor who helped my older d raise her sat score over 2100 last year, so we know it’s not the tutor. Currently regrouping and reading all the advice here. Good luck-I hope you keep us posted.
Another big factor in addition to time that causes the PSAT to SAT gap could be the essay. There is no essay in PSAT while the essay score is included in the writing section score.
It certainly could be the tutor. Some are just not versatile enough to reach all kinds of learning styles and id the specific issues that a student could have. THey have a one size fits all methodology, and if a kid happens to fit that mold, it works. Otherwise, it doesn’t.
It’s possible the pencil is the culprit - you want to make sure going into a test that you have the right pencil (with back ups), calculator, extra calculator and/or batteries, watch if you need it - though looking too often at the time is what often slows the student down. Also it’s critcal a few tests are taken in completeness and not just section at a time. I think fatigue is what accounts for many score drop offs.
Try a test ACT from the Real ACT book and see how she does to get a pulse of whether or not that is the better test for your D.
SAME THING happened to me. It destroyed my confidence.
But then I took the ACT and scored an equivalent of 350 points higher 
The measure of anybody is what they do with what they have, not with what they wish they had. SAT scores are just a very small piece of the puzzle for anyone worth their salt.
The good news about all of this, is that you can start focusing on schools that will work for your DD with these scores, even as she works to increase them. IF she does not, you have a good start at some realistic choices for her. If she does, you’ll have some great likely/safety schools on the list that you and she have investigated. I find that a lot of families spend all their time cherry picking those top schools because it’s just more fun, and don’t put the time into the schools that are more realistic choices. If you read some posts on this forum in the aftermath of this year’s decision, you can see what happens in too many cases.
Those who spend the time looking at those colleges that are not the superstars, gain a lot knowledge about the schools, and can learn subtle differences among them and pick out what is best for their particular circumstances rather than worrying about the lottery tickets hitting. So much is out there on the usual schools, and not enough on some fine institutions that are not as well known.
^^D did exactly what @cptofthehouse described above. She took the ACT and SAT. I don’t know if you would call it “bombed” but she didn’t do as well as she had hoped. So she took them again. Got the exact same scores. She was pretty upset with the second results.
I worked with D, composing a list of schools that were in line with her scores. Then I worked with her on studying for the ACT. She wasn’t doing the work, taking practice exams. So I took the practice tests with her. Somehow that made it fun for her, and she was more willing to go over her weak areas and take more practice tests.
When she took the ACT the third time, her scores went up significantly. She became a very strong candidate for her schools. They weren’t quite safety-level but they became pretty low matches. She chose to stick with this list instead of adding or changing to more selective schools in line with her new score. She liked these schools earlier; having higher scores didn’t change that.
I think she made the right decision. She got into her schools pretty quickly. Overall, applying to college was a fairly low stress process for her.