<p>Show her the admission stat of her dream schools and make her realize if she does not want to put effort on the test her dream will never come true.</p>
<p>From another post, it seems like the Dream School(s) is an ivy school. If so, then a 28 isn’t going to cut it. </p>
<p>Frankly, it sounds like the student is a good student but not a strong student so doing gymnastics to raise a score so much is a bit silly…her classmates would all be much stronger students and she’d feel overwhelmed. </p>
<p>I’ll just say this… I have multiple friends with 4.0 GPAs, stellar ECs, strong recommendations, 35 ACT and/or 2300 SATs that did not get into any Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Caltech, etc. </p>
<p>No one with a 28/29 should be comfortable with their chances at this “dream school” - heck, no one at all should feel comfortable. Admissions are that competitive. </p>
<p>I absolutely would NOT pay my kid to study for the ACT. If she doesn’t have the internal motivation to do this, then she needs to dream a different dream. </p>
<p>Has she had just one attempt so far? Improvement in 2-3 point range seems very likely by just familiarity with the test the second time around, but as others have said, ACT is a test of diminishing returns. Many retakes typically don’t result in big increases. </p>
<p>FWIW, my youngest got the same score times 1 and 2, in spite of a prep class and many practice tests. She went up 2 points in attempt 3 and never did hit the score she’d earned on her highest practice. I think the increase on attempt 3 was more due to being rested than anything else. It was June, school and sports were over, and her summer job hadn’t started. Like yours, she was just past wanting to put in more time. I wanted her to try a 4th time for one more point, and she said no. I accepted that. </p>
<p>I agree with everyone who says change your search strategy to eliminate “dream schools.” Dreams aren’t real, after all. There are many fine schools that would be happy to have a kid with such good grades and ECs. And if her test scores currently aren’t stellar, they are solid. Some of these fine schools will even offer merit because of her grades or class rank. </p>
<p>Let her take the test again in the fall IF she wants to, but don’t push it. </p>
<p>By the way, things turned out great for my own little mediocre test-taker. She’s not going Ivy or Top 20 or elite or tippy top, or even to a school that gets much mention on cc, but she’s very happy with her choice. Mom’s pretty happy with the price tag, too. </p>
<p>Will second what everyone said about dropping the dream school. There are plenty of good colleges out there that would really appreciate your daughter instead of happily sending a heartless rejection letter. Personally, when I have dreams, I work really hard to achieve them. I have to question whether this is really her dream school if she’s not willing to work on her ACT score. </p>
<p>That said, I went from a 26-31 (32 superscore) after 4 tests so it is possible (26-29-30-31), but it takes a lot of determination on the part of the test taker. When I started practicing, at first I was like your daughter, but as I saw my score increase, I got more and more motivated. I even started enjoying test days and still plan on trying to bump it up a few points for my own satisfaction’s sake (too late for it to matter at any of my college choices). I actually think it should be easier to bump it up from a 24. When you are getting scores like that and have a 4.0, you’re normally just missing some fundamental test-taking strategies or a very obvious part of, say, the math section. The ACT is a very predictable test, a huge part of it for me was just learning strategies and figuring out what I was getting wrong on each section. There’s normally an obvious pattern. I second what someone said about the private tutors. I used these three tutors (math, science, english & reading) from local private schools, and they were beyond helpful. They had all the strategies, were able to instantly pinpoint my trouble spots, and gave me twenty real past tests to practice with. I only went to each once, and it was the best $180 I ever spent (I paid for them myself). I also purchased multiple textbooks (Red book, blue book, yellow book…I think I have 7-10) I went through one a week and did all the practice tests. None of this will work though unless your daughter is willing to practice. It’s up to her.</p>
<p>To be honest, it must not be her dream school if you have to worry about motivating her.</p>
<p>Has she tried the SAT? I know someone who got a 26 on the ACT but then close to 2300 on the SAT. Everyone does different per test.</p>
<p>I’m working with my daughter to raise her score to a 29 (maybe even 30, but she realizes that’s a big jump), but D’s initial score is 27. We created a list based on that 27. This means NO top 20 schools, probably no top 50 school either. Instead of prestige or ranking, D focused on her interests and fit and came up with nice list of good schools for her. There is a reach but it’s not a “dream” school. I second looking at the test optional schools.</p>
<p>Here is the problem with re-taking and cramming for a better score…it is not who the student is. The test is best when it is used without extra prepping and without retaking unless there was illness or a mis-alignment problem. The issue is that even if student who ‘cram’ get the score up to qualify for the proverbial ‘dream school’, they are simply not the same caliber intellect or student as those who got to those scores by virtue of their long-term educational development and natural ability. These student who do manage to get accepted to the dream school then spend up to 4 years miserable as they cannot keep up with their classmates and the money pit of tutors keeps rolling.</p>
<p>Do yourself and your child a favor. Find schools that actually fit the student rather than trying to get the student to fit the school. You will all be much happier in the long run.</p>
<p>Remember, there is an opportunity for her to take the ACT in September - you could have her prep over the summer instead of cram for June (just have June as another chance to find out where her weak points are). </p>
<p>I should also say that D is working to improve her score so that some match schools move closer to the safety zone and maybe bring the reach to a match level. She is not looking to add more competitive schools to her list.</p>
<p>I disagree, respectfully, with Torveaux. Some absolutely brilliant people are not great test takers. Is it the norm to have this discrepancy between GPA and SAT/ACT scores? Not sure, but teaching a kid how to navigate a standardized test does not imply that their natural intelligence is below that of someone who happens to navigate those tests with ease. My kids are good test taker, not great. Their academic records were far better than their scores, and with a little strategic prepping, their scores rose to match their GPAs. They are from a high achieving district/school, so GPA was not inflated, as to cause the discrepancy, btw. Older kids graduated from lottery type schools mentioned here on CC, and fit the student body profile quite nicely, despite having prepped for the SAT. </p>
<p>I would like to ask…did your D take the PLAN? It’s usually given their sophomore year in school (Pre-Act), it gives a range of future forecasting of scores. It takes in account of another year of education. If her range was in the 30+ then I would agree on additional angst, but if it was in the 26-30 range she is in this range because it’s +or-2 on both ends of the scale. Yes I know that this isn’t an answer that is not arguable; with speaking with many prep tutors they agree that this on a regular consistent result bases is where the student would score, and the goal in tutoring is to have them fall on the upper end.</p>
<p>On the ACT itself, it seems there’s sections that can be prepared for rather easily (English and Math) and sections that can’t really be prepared for (Reading and Science). I don’t know how her 24 breaks down, but if she’s getting 30+ in Math and English and below 20 in Reading and Science, that may just be what’s possible. However, if it’s the reverse, 30+ in Reading and Science and below 20 in Math and English, there’s a lot of room for improvement. </p>
<p>Just my opinion on the test. </p>
<p>@Vladenschlutte I think that’s a good analysis of the ACT. Assuming familiarity with the test itself and appropriate test-taking strategy, math and English are content based and so are easier to raise quickly with prep than science and reading, which are skill and aptitude based.</p>
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Studies that control for a measure of HS GPA and a measure of course rigor usually show little correlation between measures of academic success in college and test scores. For example, Duke did a study that looked at the rate of dropping out of Engineering/Science/Economics majors by various application measures. With sufficient controls, test scores had the least contribution to dropping out of the major of all measured application criteria except for personal qualities, lower than LORs, essays, etc. There was a UC study that looked at fewer factors - HS GPA, test scores, income, parent’s education, and school API. It found HS GPA was by far the most influential of these factors for all majors, and SAT I verbal had a small negative correlation with graduation rate (within a specific number of years) for all majors. When considering all of these factors, they were only able to explain ~13% of the variance in cumulative 4th year college GPA. The vast majority of the variance in GPA depended on other factors besides HS stats.</p>
<p>The few persons I’ve heard about that got in to selective colleges with good everything except test scores all did well (this is quite different from low test scores + weak GPA + weak course rigor + … as is common with heavily hooked applicants). For example, the poster MrTubbz had a 4.4 GPA with high course rigor, impressive ECs, and a very impressive background. The main weakness of his application was an ACT of 28, including 24/25 in math/science. At Stanford, he was an honors coterminal masters grad, won the highest award given to Stanford students, became the youngest ever elected official of his home town after graduating, and continues to make major strides towards saving his community today. Another impressive everything except for her 1750 superscored SAT applicant became an honors coterminal masters graduate at Stanford. She describes her background and test scores at <a href=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8fHUSgpMBg”>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8fHUSgpMBg</a> . While in Stanford and beyond she also made amazing strides towards improving her community. It’s not only hooked applicants that have been accepted with applications that contain good everything except test scores. For example, a few months ago a parent in the Stanford forum talked about her unhooked valedictorian daughter getting in with an 1890. She didn’t post much detail about how her daughter did in college, aside from that she is graduating soon. </p>
<p>The anecdotal examples above are obvious not common, and lower test scores will obviously hurt chances of admission. However, test scores are correlated most other sections of the application, which makes it very difficult to estimate how much test scores will hurt chances. Applicants whose rest of application is good enough to have a high chance of acceptance without considering test scores almost always also have test scores well above the range we have been discussing, so we d have little past history to look at acceptance decisions. For example, if I look at the Parchment admit rates to Brown for students who have a 3.9+ GPA while taking 6+ APs, I get the following admit rates by test scores (this includes past years, so current admit rates would be lower):</p>
<p>36/2400 - 67%
35/2300-2390 - 61%
34/2200-2290 - 57%
32-33/2100-2190 - 32% (small sample size)
30-31/2000-2090 - 33% (very small sample size)
28-29/1850-1990 - Only 1 applicant had 3.9+ GPA, 6 APs, and scores in his range</p>
<p>The main thing the distribution tells us is that Parchment members with 3.9+ GPAs while taking 6+ APs tend to have very high test scores. If this group was admitted purely on GPA/AP without considering test scores, their 25th/75th percentile scores would be in the 34-35 / 2250-2350 range. The sample size is almost non-existent for this GPA/AP with the test scores we have been discussing, too small to have any estimation about chance of acceptance.</p>
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<p>Source, please? (And while you are at it, what do you suggest when a huge portion of test takers do not take until massive prep?)</p>
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<p>While I would agree that some have innate reasoning ability (my friend xiggi, for one), for others it can be learned. Just takes practice of that part of the brain.</p>
<p>“what do you suggest when a huge portion of test takers do not take until massive prep?”</p>
<p>My DS didn’t prep … It’s just that here on CC most of the kids are trying to get into top schools not state U. I think there are a lot of kids like DS that take the test as a junior maybe take it again as a senior just to see if they can do better and move on. </p>
<p>I would wonder though if my kid had a 4.0 and a composite 24. I would try and find out if she finished each section. If she didn’t finish the sections that would be a red flag that there may be something else going on. </p>
<p>I’d be surprised if “huge portions” of the test takers take “massive” prep. My kids did very well with no prep and only very slightly better with a little bit of prep. If you have a kid who has been reading 50+ novels a year their entire life - the CR section just isn’t that hard. Even my non-math guy could score in the high 600s on math without practice, just due to being good at multiple choice tests.</p>
<p>My d had very middling scores and had a ‘dream’ school that many of you would probably spit at - lol I found “like” schools with the same vibe and she ended up liking one of my picks better in the end. She’s a smart girl, excellent grades, leadership, activities, etc but we all decided we didn’t want her in over her head academically. She didn’t get into the dream and was WL at the other reach, but got accepted to every other school where her scores put her on the low end of match. Look closely at schools and how they rank the importance of test scores. </p>