First Time Post - Several Questions - Take Your Pick!

Applying to College
21

That sounds great, and it now goes on a list of possible column headings I’m making for a future spreadsheet, maybe something like “reach/match/safety adjusted by merit scholarship chance” alongside a generic “reach/match/safety” based on admissions/test score #s and “holistic” EC guesses alone.

Having read a few ED/EA threads, I start to understand the discussion about ED as intertwined with not just “what are my chances” but as importantly “would I go even though I can’t shop FA/merit offers from other schools.” And then, taking that all into account and more, all the various “game theory” approaches to ED. No matter where we land on all that, it is good to start to piece this all together.

Without test scores and GPA and the like, I have no idea what her chances will be at various schools, and some of what she may have on her list will no doubt be so selective they will be high reaches at the very, very best no matter what (if not entirely out of the question). My D is not hooked, to use another term CC has inserted into my vocab now, so the stats over the coming year will, for better or worse, start to put some parameters around how all this fits together. And we will talk to our D about not getting set on one profile of schools (selectivity, financial, or otherwise) or a small number of schools too early. We’ll see how it all goes!

Thanks again ucb. With 50,000+ posts to your name, you’ve clearly been willing to help many people, and likely been willing to answer many of the same questions repeatedly, and I appreciate it! If more thoughts come to you, I’ll always be grateful to hear them.

22

MurphyBrown, thanks once again. I hope I am not wearing out my welcome with you or others, as this is all so helpful.

In fact, I just applied some of the advice you and others have given. I just got into Naviance thanks to my D’s counselor setting me up, and thus am seeing my D’s PSAT scores from her no-study practice administration of it she took as a sophomore. Looks like a 1290 (35 read/34 write/29 math) which I guess is a 196 for whatever that number is called if I calculated it correctly. So that would be above 180 and as a thumbnail make the PSAT worth exploring as a junior I guess.

As an aside, raises another (!) question. Does everything on Naviance get sent to AOs for colleges she applies to? I imagine that is a question for her counselor, but thought I’d ask. In this particular example, not that there is any reason too necessarily just illustrative, if colleges see everything on Naviance could we ask that her 10th grade PSAT score be removed if she decides to take it again and scores higher as a junior?

Thanks again MurphyBrown and all.

23

Sorry 1270, not 1290

24

I highly recommend downloading and reading the Compass Guide to Testing. It really breaks down what you need to take when.

http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/compass-guide/

Depending on your college list, you may not need any subject tests at all.

25

Fantastic AroundHere - just downloaded and printed out. Thanks!!!

26

My advice on testing would be to do as much prep now, before school starts, for the PSAT/SAT. The PSAT doesn’t matter for college admission , but she could end up a NMS, and that has real value in the admissions process. Junior year for an IBD candidate can be a slog, and to the extent that you can minimize the “piling on”, that would be great for all of you. Your daughter can take the SAT in Jan. to get a sense of she’ll do (and she can use her winter break to refresh her prep). After she gets her score, she can figure out if she wants to take a class, get a tutor, or study on her own and then retest in April. If she uses a test prep company, she may be able to take a practice ACT and see if that is better. I would recommend SAT II tests in June when the material is fresh. If she takes them in a foreign language, they’ll serve as a placement test (or better yet, exemption) if her college has a requirement. Some schools allow these to be sent in lieu of regular SAT, and it could be that this puts her in a better light. I would NOT study for them – she should be all set from her course work. You may end up with test scores you don’t need, but you won’t be scrambling either.

So now that I’ve said this, I’ll tell you that DS did not do any test prep at all until Jan. of junior year. Ho-hum PSAT score – not enough for NMS. He was an IBD candidate, and showing up at his test prep class on the weekends through the winter was about all he could put into it with all his other work. In other words, he didn’t do much work or study between classes. It did improve his score between Jan. and April, and he decided that it was high enough that he wasn’t going to take it again. He took two subject tests (as well as his SL exams). He didn’t study for either and did very well on both. At that point, he figured that while his scores weren’t as amazing as many that people have on these boards, they were fine.

Like your daughter, he plays an instrument. His orchestra director suggested that he send a tape with his application and felt that he’d be a welcome addition to any orchestra. (He had friends who were top soloists in touring youth orchestras – he was most definitely not in this category.) He decided not to do this as he felt it’d be disingenuous; his interest in pursuing this in college is slight to none. But I think that it could be helpful to your daughter if she’s interested.

27
  1. Take the SAT/ACT as soon as possible. Even though most do take it 2nd semester junior year I would suggest taking it for the first time in the fall. The PSAT is in October so a good time to take the SAT the 1st time is Nov/dec since if you have already prepped for the PSAT, the SAT will be easier to prep for.

The SAT and ACT are more similar now than they were before but my recommendation is to take practice tests for both and see which one seems more comfortable. I did this and immediately ruled out the ACT since I found the SAT easier for me. This will save time as you won’t waste time prepping for a test you are not comfortable with.

There isn’t officially a max # of times you can take these tests but think of 3 as an unofficial max. Definitely take it twice because more times than not you score(or at least your super score) will go up. I recommend fall and then winter/spring. Take it a third time if and only if you are completely unhappy with your score. I would STRONGLY suggest to not take it at all senior year. I know that right now I am overwhelmed with College apps and if I were to be studying for a test right now I would not be able to prepare as well as a was able to junior year. Try to get it all done as early as possible.

From my experience, I would also suggest taking the tests withing close gap of each other. i.e. If you take it for the first time in Nov, take it again in Dec or Jan, don’t wait until May. I say this because once you start prepping for a test it is easier to build on what you started. If there is a big gap I doubt that all that time will be spent on test prep and skills will be lost if not worked on. It’s also better to work really hard for 2-3 months and then be done.

  1. It is important to note that Subject tests are not mandatory or even considered by most colleges. The easiest way to find out if you are okay to take a subject test is to take a practice test. (Practice tests are the holy grail to test prep). If you can answer most of the questions or are at least familiar with the topics I would try to take it. If this is the case, most probably only a few topics need to be brushed up on. I am not really familiar with IB, but SAT subject tests don't always go with AP courses either. Sometimes all that is needed is an honors course (this is true for tests such as Math II and Bio). For these, only general info on the subject is tested. For others, not even an AP course is super helpful (like Lit or USHistory) and for these, a bit more self-prep is needed. Again the only way to figure out if you are ready to take the test is practice tests. However, I wouldn't stress about these.
  2. Playing violin seems like her most important EC and even if she doesn't pursue it in college your colleges will see the depth in which she is involved with it so don't worry about this.
  3. I think you mean "superscoring". Most schools do it for the SAT and a slightly less number of schools for the ACT. Basically, if you can take the highest score from each section of the SAT.

I don’t think you should take the SAT several time just to superscore, or not try to prep in a section just because you assume the scores will superscore. You should take the test each time with the intent to raise your score in each section. Whether that happens or not may depend on the curves or how hard that particular test may have been. Ex. I got 10 points lower on my math section the 2nd time I took the SAT despite getting the same number of ?'s wrong but since most college will superscore this won’t effect anything.

  1. Each college weights differently. Some may only include core classes. A general way to estimate this for yourself is to add .5 for Honors and 1 point for AP/IB. This method is not accurate as your weighted GPA will be different everywhere, but it can help you compare your rigor to others who have been accepted to the school in the past.

I know this is long but I want to answer the questions as thoughrally as I could. As someone who has recently survived junior year, I wish your daughter good luck .

28

gardenstategal and lonelymoonlight, wow and thank you. Insightful and specific as to the challenges of junior year, and great advice throughout.

Gardenstate, the IB Diploma perspective in terms of balance is a valuable one. I worry about the demands of the diploma (although the # of AP courses many of the posting students here are taking is absolutely no walk int he park either - my goodness!). Trying to be planful about the admissions testing around the known demands of the school year seems downright critical to me.

Agreed then on the PSAT thoughts and getting started now. I introduced that idea to my D, and I think she’ll get cracking as soon as this weekend.

After seeing her sophomore PSAT results today, it looks like she can afford to concentrate a bit more on math, as her reading/writing numbers were appreciably stronger than her math. She would have to make a very substantial math leap to go along with some reading/writing improvement to get to NMS status, but even if not in the cards or a jump that big is not feasible, no worries obviously and the prep would help on the SAT if she takes it.

Thanks also for both your replies on the subject tests. She probably should have considered US History after her sophomore year since she just finished APUSH (even if APUSH isn’t perfectly aligned with SAT II). She got a 5 on the APUSH exam int he spring; not sure why schools just can’t take that instead of a US History SAT II. In any event, as suggested we’ll back burner figuring out subject tests until we see whether the schools she is interested in require the subject tests.

Good news and thanks to you both on the instrument/music. It is important to her and will be part of her identity as an applicant no doubt, and I imagine she’ll find ways to contribute musically whether an admissions factor or not. I’m wondering if maybe her IB Diploma paper isn’t a place where she can show some depth in her academic areas of interest, b/c as you suggest lonelymoonlight the violin takes up a lot of EC oxygen for her.

As to SAT or ACT, as I read more I really do like the idea of her taking real practice tests (timed) of each so she can see if she prefers one to the other as you did lonelymoonlight (and as others have helpfully suggested as well). I’m trying to pick my spots about how much to suggest to her and how much space to give her, but I think the practice ACT/SAT and see which one fits is an idea I’ll enthusiastically highlight.

Lonelymoonlight, the sequence and strategy you followed on testing and getting it done if possible junior year has strong advantages and makes great sense. I’ll share those advantages with her for her to consider as she decides what she wants to do. She may well like that approach best. Same with superscoring - as you suggest, I think she’ll be most comfortable just kind of letting that play out without being too focused on it as a single-minded testing strategy.

All this information is so helpful, and I feel like I’ve been able to make accelerated progress through this in the last several days right through your posts gardenstate and lonelymoon because of all the help. Going to be careful to try to empower my D without being directive, and the info and advice gives me the chance to help give her the tools she needs to make good decisions.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. And as for length lonelymoon, right back at you I’m afraid! :slight_smile:

29

There is a lot to be said for completing as much testing as possible during junior year. It takes some stress off to know what scores your kid has going into senior year, otherwise it is hard to finalize their list. Both my kids were only left with one subject test retake in the fall of senior year (weren’t totally happy with their first scores). Get visiting out of the way by the start of senior year, too.

And start with identifying safeties – school you are quite certain they will get into, they like, and you can afford. It takes more elbow grease to find them. Then move on to matches & reaches.

30

Thanks MurphyBrown - I owe you and the others here a great debt of gratitude. You and the community here are a pretty incredible source of information, perspective, and advice to help me empower my daughter in this process rather than leaving her (and me) feeling lost. Hopefully I can pay this forward to others in the coming months and years once I feel more confident myself about being helpful to those also who will also be starting the process in the future.

As for the index, I think I did it right. She took the test in October 2015 and got a 35 on reading, a 34 on writing, and a 29 on math, so 35+34+29 = 98, times 2 = 196. Sound right? Her composite was 1270 (690 reading/writing + 580 math).

I guess for better or worse, she clearly could use math prep most (without neglecting reading/writing). She’ll need to make a rather size-able leap to get close to NMS. It looks like from the charts that our state’s cutoff range historically has been around 214-216, so a pretty big index number (while not as big as some). My guess is she makes some fairly basic computational mistakes - just needs to slow down and be more careful. She took IB Math SL year 1 as a sophomore, so I think that is kind of like precalc maybe. She is signed up for IB HL Math Year 1 for this fall. She did fine in math last year, so I think the difficulty level probably isn’t necessarily as much an issue as learning some test strategies and doing careful computations. She did not have a drill-heavy approach in her math education through grade school and junior high, and I think it shows on some of the computational stuff. Maybe that will cause her to prefer whichever of the SAT or ACT allows use of the calculator throughout (I think the ACT allows for all the test and SAT allows for only half the test, but have not read up enough of that yet).

As for test dates/sequencing, hoping to pull together all this great advice and give my daughter some pros/cons for her to consider and kick around. Figuring out which test she is most comfortable with if she is only going to take one seems like one threshold determination. Since she is going to likely take the PSAT no matter what, that would seem to be one mark in the SAT’s column so that prep is most transferable, but I guess we’ll see how she likes each test if she decides to do a timed practice exam of each as I hope she does. In any event, I am hoping she keeps the number of tests to a minimum, so two rather than three with no test taken just to see how she does would be awesome. She does play a spring sport, so being planful about that is super important advice - as you are correctly inferring, the everyday practices and games when no practices take a ton of time starting after spring break and almost to the end of the school year.

I’m really hoping she can skip SAT subject tests. If absolutely required by a school she feel she really wants to take a shot at, then I imagine she’ll study up and be prepared come what may. Hopefully not necessary!

Thanks so much MruphyBrown for sticking with me through all these posts. My hope is some of what you are sharing with me is helping another parent who may read this now or int he future, because it certainly has helped me and my family., Thank you.

31
  1. If she is going into the more competitive schools, they may require Sat 2s at least in the subjects she plans to major in. I would definitely look into the schools requirements that you are interested in.
  2. Most schools only care about unweighted GPAs or they weight them themselves using their own system. This is because weighted GPAs are not constant across all schools so it doesn't tell much about how student A stands as compared to student B from across the country Since every school is different.
32

@JMS111 , in general, because the IB courses require submission of work during the year, they will be more work than AP. (DS found that to be the case, and his school had both and he took both.) So yes, you’re right to focus on managing demands, and the school work is the focus during the school year. And don’t forget, there is also the summer before senior year to improve scores (and another year of math under her belt might help with that.)

I felt sick about this process beginning junior year… way behind the curve, worried that IBD was requiring DS to take SL classes that didn’t play to his strengths junior year, and completely unable to “make” him fill in the gaps. (See above on test prep.) It was kinda miserable, but he’s off to his first choice school in weeks, so it does, in most cases, work out. For him, that experience showed him that he wanted a school where students were smart and engaged but not uber competitive or driven because that’s not who he is. Sounds like your DD will show you how she wants this to play out and that you’re doing a great job of showing her options.

33

casee37 and gardenstate, thanks very much. Spent some of the weekend poking around in areas you and others have provided insights about, and my dear wife and I talked to my daughter a little at lunch today. Even tried to make it seem spontaneous as I am worried about stressing her out - tough to walk that line of not getting her too stressed about testing while wanting to share things as I learn more from all of you about what things she can/should be at least thinking about.

Overall, she said she’ll take the PSAT and is good with us getting her some materials to prep with. I read the Xiggi method thread a bit, and while there are many ways to reach good results, will probably suggest some self-study around that approach, using real SAT/PSAT tests from the CB as the core material.

She also said maybe she’d be interested in a prep class. My wife discussed with her a tutor as an option, as we wonder if that’s not better given her kind of lopsided reading/math PSAT may show it would be good to focus on math rather than take a class focused about equally on everything. We’ll see what she wants to do re: class/tutor/neither. I think self-study would be just fine, but we’ll see how she feels about it all.

Thanks to gardenstate, MurphyBrown, and others’ advice, we were able to ask her to think about the upcoming year, and especially what awaits her starting right after spring break: her spring sport practices and games - IB SL tests - final exams - a violin audition she’ll have at the end of the school year - and maybe SAT IIs. She took it all in and, not surprisingly, said she’d likely be stressed after spring break. We talked a bit about the possibilities in terms of tests and sequencing (e.g. taking SAT/ACT once this winter after the PSAT and then retest if desired second semester before spring break - or - taking the SAT/ACT once in 2017 before spring break as a junior and then again late summer/early fall before senior year if want to retest). She’s going to think about it. Whatever she decides, thanks to everyone for getting me thinking about it so we could empower her to start thinking about it.

As for SAT vs. ACT, my wife talked to her about having taken the ACT last spring and the PSAT in fall of 2015 and whether she had any initial preferences/noticed any differences (not the same as taking both tests timed now, but at least she has already been exposed to both a bit). She said she felt the time pressure quite a bit on the ACT. We talked about the ACT being perhaps known for putting more time pressure on test-takers than the SAT. She thought maybe the SAT would make sense given she’ll be prepping for the PSAT. Again, she will think on it and we appreciate all the help and advice in this thread on that.

Gardenstate, this is, I think what you observed of your son is my D as well: “For him, that experience showed him that he wanted a school where students were smart and engaged but not uber competitive or driven because that’s not who he is.” Thanks for the sharing your experiences with the same parental anxiety I feel around this at times, as your feelings around the IBD and the competing demands on your son’s time as a rising junior resonate very strongly with me and my concerns about the coming school year.

Many miles to go, and as we keep plugging away on this, thanks again everyone for all the help!

34

I can vouch for tutoring. D17 took the old SAT last Nov and Jan and scored 1240 on Math/Verbal both times. Then after 2 months of weekly individual tutoring scored a 1390 on the NEW SAT. There is some inflation on the new SAT but not 150 points. And she will take SAT again on October. Got 29 on ACT in June and will retake this in Sept. Bottom line, we were stuck between the old and new SATs. Ideally, for D19, we plan for her taking SAT twice as a junior, maybe MArch and May or June, and then again in October, with some summer tutoring.

Regarding SAT 2. D17 had 650 in both American Hx and Bio/Env. Got 4 in APUSH and 5 in Env, so SAT 2s were low and we will likely not use them, and they were only considered at one school. D17 actually likes taking these tests, likes the tutoring, though she did ZERO prep on her own for SAT or SAT2.

35

I took a calendar and laid out every possible test date for SAT, ACT, and subject testing starting in January and going through the fall to try to figure out when my kids could test. Then overlaid it with school breaks, key EC event like state tournaments, recitals, etc. to try to create a plan for testing. It was useful to look at it in the fall of junior year to try to figure out the least stressful calendar (or at least to know in advance where the pain points were going to be).

I would not ignore subject tests until the last minute if your D thinks she want to apply to any schools that “recommend” them. But have her take ones that play to her natural strengths, whatever those are.

We did at home SAT prep. We found it useful to set aside a couple hours every weekend starting fall of junior year (usually it was 2 hours late Sunday afternoon). After initial review of the official prep book materials, they took one test to see where they stood. But we didn’t do it all at once, just the sections that would fit into the allocated time. Then scored to determine overall standing. Both needed more math prep than reading/writing, so most sessions after that focused on math. Kid takes a practice section, scores it, we review the ones they missed together. They made flashcards to review going forward (one said, “Don’t be a stupid rat!” and had a tick mark every time the mistake was just a dumb math error – there were a lot of tick marks. :slight_smile: ). They reviewed the cards before every practice test and the real test. Honestly, we could never find any time during the week or more than a couple hours on the weekend for this, but slow and steady paid off for them over the course of the year. Neither reviewed for the ACT more than just to look over the format and formulas. Both took it, and scored pretty equivalent to their SAT scores (I think the prep carried over between them to an extent).