In retrospect, I agree that in general it could be best to space the Subject Tests out and take them as soon as the subject is completed. But our child did not follow this schedule when our child was in high school.
Actually, he took neither an AP Biology class nor any of two AP Biology tests in high school at all. But somehow he was graduated with a biology major in college. I guess there are just multiple roads to the Rome and one small “mistake” would not ruin anything. (If my memory serves me well: my child did not take the AP biology class just because he did not like the teacher who taught the class and likely also did not like that subject altogether in high school. I think he did not like biology until the spring semester of his sophomore year (in college, not in high school!)
He also did not space out the SAT I/II and AP tests. It actually caused some mild stress toward the end of his junior year in high school - he was busy taking many standard tests in junior and senior - I think he only completed one AP test by the end of sophomore: AP music theory and took SAT I, 3 SAT subjects, 10 AP tests all in junior and senior.
He kind of repeated the same “mistake” in college: He took the standardized test after his commencement (thus required a glide year) while most students on his track would take such a test between the end of sophomore and the end of junior. I think he had completed all of the prereqs in the middle of his junior year but he was not sure if he really wanted to enter this career path at that time.
A parent of one of my child’s suitemates said to us semi-jokingly, (when we happened to live in the same dorm room in the residential college during the commencement), that our child finally decided to officially get into this track and was busy playing catch-up now. Every child just has his/her own pace and “temperament”.
Even good students may need to be monitored with their use of the family credit card. Teens try things- I’m sure most will go to the forbidden/bad websites and deny it like our son did and other nonstellar behaviors (H tracked his history- he was still naïve about some things more than ten years ago- time flies).
This student is only a HS freshman. There is a learning curve in handing over responsibilities. Some includes it dawning on the parent that the child is old enough to handle things instead of parents. By senior year things have changed a lot. Then comes college…
I feel bad now, I signed up my kid to take all the tests from freshman to senior except AP tests where they signed up at school. I discussed with them the dates but I still did entering all the information myself. Secretary work.
Same wit SAT test prepping, they took the test on paper, I input them to the computer test site for automatic scoring. My kids are pretty independent and so am I.
The exact same thing happened to this sophomore yesterday. The SAT started, she opened the book and saw the essay question, was like “what???”, and asked if this was the US History Subject Test. She ended up taking the entire SAT because she felt the money would’ve been wasted. I felt really bad for her… she didn’t even have a calculator, and like your son, she’ll have to wait until October to take the Subject Test.
I wish your son the best of luck, and please don’t beat yourself up over this!
@lauriejgs Students and parents began reporting yesterday on CC that some SAT test takers were given an additional 5 minutes on one of the last sections of the test, due to a printing error by ETS on some, but not all, tests.
Five minutes doesn’t seem like much, but it amounts to an additional 25% of time for some students on this section. The College Board apparently issued a statement today, reprinted in Post #63 on the above thread.
So sorry this happened. At least he is only a sophomore with many tests ahead of him - better for it to happen now than for a test later in his high school career.
And for all the posters who made comments that were supremely unhelpful (e.g., ones whose posts include the phrase, “why didn’t you/he?”) - just ignore them. Some folks have a burning desire to put others down because it makes them feel better about themselves. They do this repeatedly here on CC and my eyes now glaze over when I see posts from them.
However, immigrant ethnic groups are often selected by the immigration system, and the fact that immigrants are motivated enough to move to a new country. If the immigrant ethnic group in question mostly came in as PhD students or skilled workers, then that biases the immigrant ethnic group to be non-representative of the the ethnic group in the country of origin. If you believe that there is any effect (whether nature or nurture) of parental education and work skill levels on how the children turn out, then consider that before assuming that this is an ethnic-based characteristic, as opposed to a characteristic specific to immigrants of that ethnic group.
The coworkers whom I talked to seem to come from a higher SES group (but not “filthy rich” ones like some very recent immigrants) in their origin country, especially one of them. He and his family have had two weeklong vacations in Hawaii in the past 3 years! (My own family came from a much more “humble” background and we have not had a single vacation in Hawaii in the past 3 decades! However, I think both his family and my family would stretch our financial means as much as we can for our children’s education expenses. So we are not very different in this area.) We once joked with him that his family has a vacation home on that islands. (His father does have a PhD.)
OP,
Why did you sign him up? He was not capable of doing it himself? I had no idea how and when and whatever else was involved with my D’s testing, I had no knowledge of it.
I guess, I am much much worse parent than you are, I was out of all signing up. So, do not feel so bad…there are plenty of us who are so terrible that you cannot even imagine…
I don’t understand why some people are giving the OP a hard time about signing up her son. I signed my older son up for all his SAT and ACT tests. Whoopee … He doing just fine in college. The fact he wasn’t the one to sign himself up for those tests did not hurt him one bit. I also recently signed up my rising 11th grader for the June SAT and ACT. This secretarial work. Nothing more.
“If your student doesn’t have a credit card how do they shop for clothing, school supplies, etc? Do you just give them an envelope full of cash?”
I have 3 boys. They couldn’t care less what they wear and hate shopping. I buy most of their stuff and my husbands. I assume it would be different if I had girls. In that case I would do what my parents did with me and give x amount of dollars at the beginning of the year to buy clothes.
OP - These things happen. I signed my older son up for the SAT Spanish and Physics subject tests. Then I forgot to tell him about it until the day before…