My daughter is very good at math, and has been scoring very high on the math portion of the ACT. Unfortunately, her English and Reading section scores are really bringing her down. I don’t want her to retake the ACT, or possibly just try the SAT instead, until this summer. She is stressed about scores a lot.
I’m not sure what to do. Her natural strengths lie in math. She’s worked a bit with ACT test prep books, but they don’t seem to help. Beyond that, I just feel like the race for the top of the high school GPA has students just doing rote learning and not really learning or learning how to be critical thinkers. She feels it is unfair that students who are not good at math can still score pretty well on the ACT because so much of the test is not math. She is a junior, and thus far has ACT comp of 28. Her GPA is well above 4.0 and she has a heavy AP load in math and science.
Any parents deal with this? I want to a) calm her fears but b) also help her do something that will make her feel like she did what she could even if the outcome is not as good as she’d like. I need some tips.
Also, are there schools that weigh the math score more heavily than others?
Read, read read. If she’s interested in science, magazines like the New Yorker have strong writing and often cover fascinating scientific topics (last year there was a lengthy article about apple genetics and breeding which was absolutely spell-binding). The New York Times has a science section every week. The Economist covers scientific topics and their writing is generally far superior to other similar publications.
She’s only a junior. Try finding two articles which you think will interest her (on topics she’s curious about). You read one, she reads the other. Then discuss- and swap.
She likes non-fiction? Fantasy? Biography? Find a topic she cares about (sports, math, medicine and the history of disease) and get a good librarian to recommend a few books which are well written and a moderate (not a huge) stretch for her intellectually.
There is no substitute for actual reading comprehension. The coaching and the strategies can marginally increase a score, but the fact remains that strong readers generally do very well on the language based parts of the test.
OP,
My D. had 50% of your D’s problem. My D. was strong in math, while it was not her favorite subject, it was simply easy one for her. She was also very strong writer and did not prep. English section for ACT - she said that it was simply common sense for her. She was a slow reader and we knew that it would be her lowest score on the ACT. Unfortunately, there is no way to improve it. She took some speed reading classes earlier in her life and they did not help at all. What helped eventually much later in her life was attending the medical school, that sped up her reading a lot. However, going back to the time that she was preparing for her ACT, she decided to focus on her math - her strongest subject. She actually prepared ONLY MATH and nothing else beyond getting familiar with the format of each section. Her preparation took about 1 hour / day for 5 days preceding the ACT test and the results were as predicted. She pulled 34 in math and science and 35 in English, while only 28 in Verbal / Reading or whatever the name of this section was. Her strategy of insuring the highest possible score in math to compensate for the predictable low score in Reading was the right one for her. Her total ACT score of 33 was enough for the programs that she was applying to. D. took ACT only once.
My advice is to focus on the strong subjects. I do not know how to improve English / Reading. The great score in English is achieved by very strong writers who improved their skills by lots of writing over the years. My D. belonged in this crowd. The high Reading score is achieved by avid readers those who enjoy reading for pleasure and my D. was not one of them and still is not one of them.
Are you willing and able to pay for a private ACT or SAT coach for her? After D1 stumbled we got D2 a tutor ($150 an hour) and it was worth the peace of mind.
As for schools that may weigh math scores more, look at Carnegie Mellon. Smith has had higher math scores for its incoming class than reading and writing.
It depends on how much lower the reading score is, if you can take MiamiDAP’s approach. Personally, I think become a better faster reader is a pretty good goal in and of itself. To Blossom’s great list of things to read I’ll add Scientific Amercian, in depth articles at an adult reading level, but not with the scientific jargon of the professional journals. My kids got sky high reading scores from being addicted to science fiction and fantasy.
Mathmom- thanks for adding Scientific American- a publication we subscribed to at the suggestion of one of my kids teachers and the entire family loved the articles. (even the middle schooler- who didn’t quite catch everything- thought the content was fascinating).
Being a strong reader with speedy comprehension and analytical skills is an excellent foundation for college level work. I’m not sure that the test prep services emphasize this enough.
I went to a quant oriented grad program (I was terrible in math but strong on the verbal skills) and my ability to plow through dense material quickly with comprehension was a great compensating skill for me. So it’s not just college entrance-- it’s a good life skill.
Check her subscores to see if there is a pattern to your child’s errors.
English was one of my child’s weakest sections. In her first test, she scored maybe 25, 26. I had her take practice tests in that particular section once or twice a week for a month. When I gave her the section practice test the first time, I noticed that almost all her errors were “Usage”, with one or two in “Rhetoric”. So, I had her study grammar rules and what not. In other words, treat the English section as a logic and rules test. When she took the ACT in June (she too waited six or seven months to retake to reduce the stress), she scored 34 in English. That, with a slight increase in the Science section, brought her score from 27 to 31.
If she is a junior, this means foregoing a few more chances to get a better score. It can add to additional stress in fall of senior year (while doing college applications and such as well as harder courses) if the tests taken then are her last chances at them. In addition, the summer time college and scholarship search will be limited by the one ACT score when assessing reach/match/safety.
It would be a good idea for her to at least try the SAT this spring to see if she does better on the SAT than the ACT. It will be less stressful this spring since it will not be her last chance at it.
There are also a lot of wonderful test optional colleges to consider. Here is the list sorted by state. When my D saw some school on this list were ones she was interested in she relaxed about the standardized test process. Agree that reading a lot helped my S and test prep with a tutor did help as well. http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional/state
My oldest, now in college, had a similar problem. Anything math or science, she aced. She received a 36 on both math and science sections of the ACT. She is a reader and did very well on the reading section as well. But… English. Her school administers the PSAT starting in 9th grade. Her 9th grade Writing score was a 51 (I know scoring is different now, don’t know the translation), and a whopping 53 in 10th grade. Since that was significantly different from her other math and reading scores which were excellent, we knew there was a problem. I didn’t know how to solve it. I did take her to a SAT place for one session with a tutor there, but she didn’t need traditional help. Finally, in August just before Jr year, I found a regular tutor who specialized in English grammar, and who taught the material, not test prep per se. This helped my D1 tremendously. She received a 61 on Writing on her PSAT junior year (just missing the cutoff for NMSF), but then a 720 in writing on her one and only SAT. She received a 31 in English on her one and only ACT. But since her other scores were strong, the English score wasn’t too bad. My daughter will never be the best in English grammar, but she got those scores into range where they didn’t harm her applications.
This helped in other areas too. Because the English tutor had her practice timed writes, my D got the only 100 her English teacher gave that year, and she got it on a timed write. She has since been a very strong writer, and her college essays were enhanced as well.
So that’s my recommendation. Get someone who can help with the specific area your D needs help in. Proper test prep might be useless for her.
Much of the English section on the ACT is made up of grammar and punctuation rules. Using a test prep book and really zeroing in on these rules can help a lot. For a kid whose strength is not grammar, repetition can really help. Do a lot of practice tests and make sure to understand the errors made. IMO, it can be easier to raise the English score versus the Reading score.
I was very lopsided in HS. I think lopsided in math is ok.
First of all, she needs to understand that whatever it ends up, she’s ok no matter what. One approach is for her to get a tutor and work on her ACT reading and rhetoric scores. Others have given you good advice there.
The other approach, and it’s not mutually exclusive, is to recognize that excelling in math gives one a competitive advantage in life in the sense that in your financial life, and everyone has one, you don’t have to pay other people to do math for you. The thought processes one develops are extremely valuable. There is also an economic need for folks who are mathematically skilled.
I think that it’s important to appreciate the gifts that she does have and encourage her to continue to push hard on her strengths. It will build up her confidence that she’s fine, which is the actual truth.