<p>@mom2and Ok, i will ask my guidance counselor about it tommorow. Thanks for your advice and wish me luck…
I really really hope everything to go fine… and that ACT won’t accuse me as cheating hopefully… :(( </p>
<p>Many schools give the ACT to all juniors. Saynet is correct. It IS a valid test, though it doesn’t have writing. Also, if you don’t have an ACT account set up, they do simply send you a paper in the mail, though the school also has the results on file.</p>
<p>Finally, I am one of those crazy parents who had one of her kids take the ACT as a baseline with no practice, and here is why:
I had a one child who never studied for a standardized test. Not once. He took around 25 (17 APs, 6 SAT IIs, ACT and SAT) and made high scores on every single one.</p>
<p>Along comes child #2. This child had very little standardized testing experience, and saw no reason to prep for the ACT. Junior year, I told him that I wanted him to take the test–no studying–just so that both of us would know where he was. If he scored really high, I wouldn’t bug him any further. If he needed to work on something, I wanted to know then instead of senior year. So, he took it. I was blown away at how high most of his scores were, and we knew that he didn’t need to waste a moment prepping for three of the sections. But one score was quite low, in comparison, and it brought his composite down. So, DS could see that he would not be wasting his time if he worked on that one area. He did so over the summer with no prompting from me, and both that subscore and his composite improved on September’s test.</p>
<p>I don’t know how other parents convince their kids to spend months/years poring over standardized test manuals, but my kids don’t do it without a darn good reason. Fortunately, that first test gave my son a reason to study a bit for that one section without feeling like he was wasting time he could have spent doing much more important and interesting things, AND we avoided any contention about studying by having him take the first one without doing so. ;)</p>
<p>Mom2collegekids, my kids took the standardized tests without studying, and did very well indeed. They put the time to good use following other interests. </p>
<p>If a student tends to do well on standardized tests, it’s very likely they’ll do well on the SAT and ACT. Doing well in classes, activities, being able to read independently and getting enough sleep are all higher priorities.</p>
<p>The next ACT testing date is Oct 25. You would need to pay a late fee, but it’s not that long after the September test that you should need to do a lot of prep. Not wanting to take it even with the possibility of raising your score, only leads to more suspicion. As was said, even if you drop a point or two it will still validate your Sept results. Talking with your guidance counselor is a good idea.</p>
<p>@saynet - Your state does what mine does, which is require its juniors to take a state-wide ACT. However, when you made your account, you were supposed to have specified that you had taken it previously and then “linked” your new online account to the score sheet you received in the mail. You need to contact ACT and find out how to get that ACT on your account with your two others.</p>
<p>@periwinkle and @happykidsmom, I am among those who didn’t push my kids to study for the SAT. They are both good test takers, and I figured that if they just familiarized themselves with the test material, they’d do fine. Both reviewed the math a few nights before the test. My daughter scored a 2340 in her one and only sitting; my son scored a 2230 in his only sitting. They were both happy with their scores and saw no point in suffering through the test again. She ended up at a school where she is thriving; my son is applying to second tier LACs and a few reaches.</p>
<p>Since the SAT is a good predictor of how prepared a kid is for college-level work, it doesn’t make sense to me to keep taking the test over and over again in the hope of getting a higher score. What if you are naturally a B student, and then cram or take a prep course, taking the test multiple times until you get that score high enough for Harvard? Do you really want to go to Harvard knowing that most kids who end up there were straight A students and scored well on their first or second try at the SAT? Why sign up for misery when you can find a great fit elsewhere?</p>
<p>To the OP, if you didn’t cheat and that 31 is your real score, then you can do it again. Your goal should be to prove that you are a person who is capable of scoring a 31, not to inch it up even higher. If that happens, so be it, but the main thing is to know where you stand and what types of colleges you should be looking for. Good luck!</p>
<p>Amen, @Periwinkle and @Massmomm . Life’s too short for test prep. Back in the day, we called it “school”. ;)</p>
<p>You can also get a “baseline” by taking a practice test. That will let you know whether you think you need to study and where your weak areas are. No need to complicate your life by making this experiment official. </p>
<p>The OP’s repeated mistakes in very basic written English make me think it’s unlikely that 32 will be replicated.</p>
<p>Don’t want to derail the thread, but …while your kid is smart and scores high on standardized testing in general and can earn that merit scholarship (many times based on the test score) off the bat, should other kids who also are very smart - carry similar GPA’s etc. but NEED to spend some time (not 40 hours a week!) have to settle for a lower merit scholarship - thousands of dollars difference over 4 years - by settling for test #1??? If my child is a couple points away from a jump or two in merit, you bet I’m going to be in favor of some study time to retake and get a higher score!!! </p>
<p>Happykidsmom, I find your post #26 very offensive to kids who choose to spend some time prepping for an important test. Schools vary, teachers vary, content in classes vary. “School” doesn’t always take care of the knowledge needed. </p>
<p>Abasket, I was responding to Mom2collegekids’ assertion that students should study before the first test, and that they’re foolish if they go in cold. </p>
<p>In my opinion, you need to weigh any possible jump in test score against the time invested in test prep. Taking the test a second time does raise scores, by what, about 20 points? And I’ve seen published reports that most prep adds about 30 points. So if a 50 point increase means a larger scholarship, then great! However, remember that after a certain score, most kids who take the test again post lower scores. There is a point of diminishing returns.</p>
<p>As far as motivation goes, I would hope that your kids respect the time and effort it takes to earn your money and would be willing to put in a reasonable amount of time and effort of their own to try to get a score that may land them a nice scholarship. If your kid values your time and money so little that they are not willing to make any effort to contribute to their own college costs, then I’d question why you would want to pay for them to go to college at all.</p>
<p>@Mathyone, I agree with the practice test. That actually helps the students familiarize themselves with the types of questions they will encounter on the test. But spending hundreds of dollars in a prep course that may or may not improve one’s score doesn’t make sense to me. And spending night after night studying for THIS one test, when students could be learning a lot more interesting material that will actually enrich their lives, seems a waste of time. Who is to say whether simply studying subjects of interest or reading challenging literature won’t improve the score as much as a prep course or nights of test-specific preparation?</p>
<p>Mathyone, hypothetically, what if a student puts in time on test prep, but the score doesn’t increase? Is that a symptom of bad character on their part? Because it’s not a simple relationship of test prep = higher scores. </p>
<p>@abasket , Clearly, you neither read the rest of the thread, nor the posts I was responding to. Given my post before that, where I said that my son prepped a bit for a section of his ACT where his score was lacking, I am obviously not opposed to test prep, nor do I care one iota what choice any other parent makes for their children (though I did express some sense of awe for those parents who managed to convince their kids to engage in full-on test prep, which I guess you missed?) I simply made a choice not to force my children to prep for tests they didn’t need to prep for. Shall I be offended that you have a different parenting style than mine? Or, perhaps, I should I be offended that you misrepresented my post as being offensive due to your choice not to read my prior posts?</p>
<p>And my reference to “school” referred to the fact that I am old and we had no test prep AT ALL when I was in school… and we took the test once. And we had no APs. So, shall I jump to the conclusion that you are Ageist and insensitive to my life experience? LOL. Once again, life is WAY too short for that, too. Hope the rest of your day is better for you. ;)</p>
<p>And, @abasket , I just realized that it was your very rude, insensitive and condescending remarks to the OP that were the reason I felt obligated to jump in and comment in the first place. So, I’m thinking that you lecturing me about being hurtful to kids whose parents force them to go to extraordinary lengths to try to boost their less-than-perfect test scores is ill-placed, at best. ;)</p>
<p>@Periwinkle </p>
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<p>That is fine. Obviously, they weren’t taking the test that way to “get a baseline” for later practice and retake.</p>
<p>My own son took the MCAT without studying AT ALL (no practice tests, no reviews, etc) and did well on that. He’s now in med school. (BTW…I would never advise doing this to anyone!!!)</p>
<p>What I objected to was this weird idea of taking it w/o studying to “get a baseline”…and then studying to “do better later.” I think that is just strange.</p>
<p>@mathyone , older son never wanted or needed to prep for a test. He won almost every scholarship he ever applied for and is attending a top school. So… he is of flawed character? </p>
<p>And, since my younger son only wanted to look over the one area on the ACT he didn’t make a 35 or 36 on without prep–leaving him time to pursue myriad other activities much more conducive to intellectual stimulation and civic engagement–he is disrespectful of me and unworthy of either my support or a college education? Wow. I am feeling better about my out-of-touch-with-reality approach to parenting with each post. Ha!</p>
<p>I think I’ll check out of this post before I get in any more trouble. But, @saynet , good luck! If you were my child (and, from what I’m learning, you should, perhaps, be glad that you’re not, 
), I would encourage you to wait and see if you get contacted by ACT before you bother taking the test again. I don’t think you have to prove anything to anyone but them. With all of the new security measures that have gone into place since that article was written, I think it’s unlikely that you cheated, and I would be surprised if you were contacted. </p>
<p>In terms of getting a baseline (a good idea in fact), I considered the PSATs (which my kids did not study for) as serving that purpose AND/OR taking a timed practice test at home. They did not use the REAL SATs without any prep as a trial run to get a baseline. They took the SATs twice in junior year and it was meant to be for real. (actually one of my kids never took the PSAT because she applied to college in her junior year and took the two sittings of the SATs in her sophomore year). A timed practice test at home was a good way to get a baseline.</p>
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<p>That sounds fine. No record.</p>