My son took his SAT scores to qualify for an academic summer program and did pretty well. They appear to be a well-rounded score (unlike his SSATs). Reading 550, Math 620, Writing 580. Is there any value in letting some of the more competitive schools know about these? Is there a way of finding out the average SAT scores for accepted PGs or 12th graders? Is this a score of what might be expected for an 8th grader who scored ~85%?
Maybe just leave well enough alone and hold on any communication with the admissions office? Any advice is appreciated.
I’d hold off. While your son’s scores (for DUKE TIP or JHU CTY?) are good, I know of at least one kid (not my own) who scored in the 700s as a 7th grader, and yet was rejected or waitlisted at a few selective BS a few years ago.
Just remember that the BS applicant pool is rarefied air. It takes an EXTREME outlier to truly stand out, at least from an academic POV.
If your son scored high enough to qualify for JHU-CTY SET then it might be worth noting. However the scores above are fairly routine for top BS school applicants. The scores are quite good, by the way.
The BS will be more interested in how he does on the SSAT, however.
Thanks for the advice - I was impressed, but then again , I think that I am used to a different scale and maybe less of a competitive pool back when I was in HS. He does qualify for the JHU CTY.
A few schools have reached out to his counselor, I may just give him/her this information to maybe allow him to have something to talk about if his relatively low SSAT reading scores come up.
I would agree to hold off. These are great scores though.
My kid’s scores were lower in 7th grade but
his counselor said “These are better than mine when I applied to college! But then, I wasn’t applying to MIT or anything.”
The percentiles for college bound seniors were similar to what he got for his SSATs in reading. It gives me pause to think of what we are offering our kids in LPS’s if an 8th grader is doing this well.
I think it is more of a personal decision. My family and I decided to submit my ACT scores after much thinking and discussion. I didn’t directly send them from the testing company, just mentioned it in my application in the “Academic Awards and Achievements” section. I decided to submit it because when looking at the schools’ average ACT scores for their 11th graders/juniors, my score was a couple of points higher, so I thought that it would help further demonstrate that I am well within the academic range of their students.
Well, to get into Dukes TIP or Johns Hopkins SET, you need a score of 700 or above before turning older than 13. While your sons scores are rather impressive, they might not be noteworthy enough to play a major role in an prep school application.
Yeah - we thought that it would seem rather provincial to be bragging about “above average” scores at some placed that probably see much higher scores all the time.
My DD Boycotted the SATs. The BS application process was enough for her (she took the SSAT a second time). She is not interested in CTY/TIP. I will have to let it go! Congrats on the great scores for your DS!
That is a very good score for an 8th grader, and better than average for many good public high schools. If you look at the CTY data in 2014 about 1000 8th graders took the SAT and a 620 Math is in the 53rd %tile. Now remember the CTY pre selects the top 5% on various standardized tests here is a link for their data.
The Dukes program tests more kids, sample size was 15,000 but they only had the 7th grade test stats, but I think they pre screen less as the %tiles were skewed greatly from the CTY data and probably represents the general population better.
Going back to the OP’s question, standardized test scores are not like sports in college accpetances – they aren’t tracking “recruits” at an early age, no matter how strong they are. Colleges will start looking at kids when they are old enough to apply, really not before (unless maybe they have a HUGE hook – Malia Obama or Emma Watson, for example). One of my kids had a 740 CR, 620 M, 640 Wr at the same age as your kid. We did not tell colleges about it. I figure it was good for a few things:
It told me she was likely to be very high scoring when the standardized testing would count in high school. And she was. NMF, 2380 superscored SAT, 2 800 subject tests in widely varying areas, and a 35 ACT. She did study some (except for the ACT), but it was clear that she likely would have scores high enough for top schools. Of course, that is only one part of the application. But it was helpful information.
It opened up some opportunities for programs for her. She went to Davidson THINK for a couple of summers. Never did CTY or NUMATS programs, but we looked at them, and she could have. She also got invited to participate in a CTY online forum called Cogito that was a godsend for her, meeting up with kids like her online from all over. I believe her THINK experience played well in her application, so indirectly the scores probably helped boost her final results – they were a stepping stone to an experience that then was impressive to colleges.
I would say it gave her a needed confidence boost. She knew she was different from other kids her age, but she just labeled herself as “weird”. This gave her an idea that her differences were somewhat based on something good, not just being odd.
So I wouldn’t go telling schools, there isn’t any point. But this information does have some uses.
