<p>I'm a parent, and asking on the parent's forum, because on the SAT section I just see a lot of bragging, and what I need is the advice of parents who have been there and might have insight.</p>
<p>My kid just took the ACT for the first time, so we really don't know how she will do, practice testing aside. Is there some strategy about the 4 schools to put down to see the first scores? If a college is sent a score early, do they really take note of it and see that the student is seriously interested in their school? On the other hand, should one wait until one gets better scores to send to to the most desired schools?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>If child is only going to take the ACT, then there is no downside to sending scores now. If child ends up retaking, then you can send those scores too. Most schools only use the best grades. Best to use the free reports for highly likely schools, like the state school that is their safety.</p>
<p>If child is also going to take SAT, then there is more strategy. If child does much better on one, then those are the scores you send. So, you don’t want to send these if they turn out to be the bad ones. In this instance, I would send them to the likely safety and less competitive schools.</p>
<p>In either case, have child send a letter to the school saying child is interested in the school, is intending to apply in the fall, and please keep the scores on file.</p>
<p>Note: Safety schools for early scores is good. Even if child ends up retaking, the scores may be good enough for safety school (don’t need to send better scores) and you can use the future free one for the other schools.</p>
<p>Note 2: I think with the ACT you send specific scores. With the SAT, they default to sending all scores, and notify the schools if you exclude a score. That may affect your strategy (don’t want a school to see the lower score), but most schools will use the better score, so not a problem.</p>
<p>Our GC recommended that we don’t send any scores to the tests that kids take. Then when you eventually have all the scores in fall of your Sr year, you can decide which ones to send based on the results of the tests and based on each colleges requirements. This will maximize your strategy for reach or target schools. However, then you lose the free score reporting. So you may want to consider sending the free scores to your potential safety schools, or not use the free score reports at all. We did not use the free score reports.</p>
<p>I Used them for match/safety schools that strongly consider the applicants interest and that I really liked.</p>
<p>Our family’s strategy was to send the best score to the school. Take both ACT and SAT more than once. It is not the quickest score to the school that is more likely to get a student admitted, it isn’t a footrace “to the tape”; it is his/her best score.
I rcommend you NOT send any schools to any school automatically. Wait until you have the advantage of seeing his best, then send those.</p>
<p>For example: what if a kid quickly sends auto scores to school X because he has a strong interest, and it’s a 28ACT? Then suppose for example, the kid feels the 28 did not accurately test him, so he re-takes the test a couple months later and scores a 32? Is there anyone(other than operadad) that thinks a quick 28 was more advantageous than the later 32?
Our family’s philosophy, and most advice we’ve seen is put your best foot forward the first time.</p>
<p>Thanks for all your sage advice. It would be really great to hear what an adcom had to say about this. Do they notice you if you send jr. year scores?</p>
<p>If you miss-out on free score reports - that’s a drop in the bucket in terms of $$ overall.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why the free score reports can only be requested before one sees the scores. It makes no sense. Is this a scam so people have to pay more money?</p>
<p>Do they notice? Why would anybody even send jr yr scores, unless the student got a perfect score…?</p>
<p>“Do they notice?”</p>
<p>I thought it could indicate a sign of interest, for colleges who care about such things.</p>
<p>I think there are a handful of colleges that might consider sending scores junior year a sign of interest, but I’d consider it a pretty weak sign. My older son always scores well so we went ahead and sent his junior year scores sight unseen to his top schools, they weren’t that different from his second set. If you are less confident, I think sending them to safety schools is probably a safe enough bet. Nearly all the schools my kds applied to superscored and insisted on having all the scores so there was really no reason not to send scores.</p>
<p>For colleges that use superscores or highest single-sitting scores, or which require all scores, there should be no harm in sending scores using the free reports.</p>
<p>If the college considers all scores and allows score choice (or if you are not required to submit both SAT and ACT if you have both), or allows tests to be optional, then there may be reason not to send scores until you know what all of the scores are.</p>
<p>Here are the SAT use practices of various colleges, so you can tailor your SAT score sending strategy to the colleges:
<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-score-use-practices-list.pdf[/url]”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat-score-use-practices-list.pdf</a></p>
<p>There does not seem to be a similar document for ACT use practices.</p>
<p>Son did not send score reports to schools until he had all scores in front of him. In retrospect, we should have sent them to his safeties since it would have saved a little bit of money.</p>
<p>We will be sending the safeties the free scores using the PSAT score as a predictor that sat scores for safeties will be in the comfortable upper range. </p>
<p>Absolutely college board knows kids and parents will be too scared to use the free ones and will later pay but my blood boils every time i think if how College Board permeates so many aspects of our kids high school lives and anything free they offer should be taken.</p>