<p>^^and the OP’s D will likely be happier and more successful at a college where she can shine (since her GPA shows she is a good student) than at a college where she is having to paddle frantically under the water’s surface to keep up. I know of two young women who had average SAT scores but had great HS grades; one went to a directional state school, the other to a small Catholic women’s college, and they did extremely well in college (magna and summa cum laude in the two cases here). Both are in very successful careers making great $$ and getting promotions.</p>
<p>.
It sounds like you are assuming that students who achieve a top HS grades while taking a rigorous course schedule including AP classes will struggle in college unless they also have as high ACT scores as is typical for the entering class. The studies I referenced earlier in the thread do not suggest this. Instead they suggest HS grades and HS course rigor are far more influential than test scores towards academic success in college. </p>
<p>I also do not think it’s a given that a student needs as high test scores as much of the class to be accepted to a school where most of the entering class has high test scores. Instead the high scores often more relate to the pool of applicants who have great grades with outstanding course rigor, great LORs, impressive out of classroom achievements, and an otherwise stellar applications tending to also have great test scores. Test scores do influence admissions decisions, but how much influence they have varies quite a bit from one college to the other.</p>
<p>For example, if I look at Parchment member decisions for applicants with a 3.9+ UW GPA while taking 4+ AP class over the past 3 years; at some colleges admissions decisions closely follows ACT scores, like the acceptance rates for Vanderbilt listed below:</p>
<p>36 - 100%
35 - 94%
34 - 72%
33 - 67%
32 - 57%
31 - 50%
30 - 33%
Below 30 - 0%</p>
<p>Near perfect stats at Vanderbilt seems to nearly guarantee acceptances, and low test scores with high grades seems to nearly guarantee rejection. The admit rate increases with each point increase on the ACT. I get the impression Vanderbilt places a strong emphasis on stats, leading to admissions decisions that would make sense to most on this forum. However, there are many other colleges that seem to have more of a holistic focus, leading to very different results. For example, admissions decisions for the same for 3.9+ UW GPA while taking 4+ AP class over the past 3 years at Harvard are below:</p>
<p>36 - 30%
35 - 27%
34 - 17%
33 - 13%
32 - 19%
31 - 12%
30 - 17%
Below 30 - 20%</p>
<p>Scores at or above Harvard’s reported 75th percentile ACT of 35 appear to help, with a notable change in admit rate between scores of 34 and 35, yet most perfect stat applicants still get rejected. It’s not clear there is a significant difference in admit rate for lower scores (among this unique group of Parchment members with 3.9+ GPA while taking 4+ APs), such as not being clear that an applicant who spends a lot of effort boosting his ACT from 30 to 34 is going to have a notably improved chance of admission with the score increase. The OP was obviously talking about much lower scores and likely less selective schools, but a similar principle can be applied to other situations.</p>
<p>@Data10
Very interesting data although from a limited sample size. Your observation aligns with mine very well. There are people think there is a cutoff or threshold that score does not matter afterward. I do not agree with that. I believe there is a threshold but the slope of dependence becomes much less steep afterward. So ACT 36 will still be better than 35 for instance. That is exactly what your data shown. </p>
<p>“a parent willing to time and go over answers with them,”</p>
<p>My D surpassed me in English in her 3d grade 
For the sake of good grades, I’d better stop giving her advice on grammar. :)</p>
<p>@laplatinum,</p>
<p>How do you find a good tutor?</p>
<p>californiaaa, ask around your acquaintanceship (in real life and on CC). Ideally, you want someone with a number of years of experience in the field. But the most important thing is to talk to the individual and get a sense of the trust and communication you can establish with that person.</p>
<p>@Hanna, Thanks!</p>
<p>I just wanted to restate something I said several days ago. Someone pointed out that just about any top student could improve a few points on any given day on the ACT (from a 31 to a 33 for example), which I agree with. However I really want to reiterate a good tutor can help any child and it’s worth the money. My daughter had 3 friends who used the a same tutor, 2 in a small group, 1 individual. One girl improved from a 17 to 21, which means she gets to go to college. Another girl improved from 24 to 29, which in our state gets her HOPE scholarship money. They were in the small group. Her peer from AP classes improved from 25 to 30, and he gets academic scholarship and is one of 32 freshman invited to his schools honor program. So go for it, if you think it will help! </p>
<p>It really depends on how dedicate the student is and their learning style. Some may benefit more from a tutor while others can do it by themselves.</p>
<p>I raised my ACT score by 6 points, but I didn’t prep AT ALL for the first test and I prepped quite a bit for the second test. Practice tests helped me to learn the different “types” of questions to find the correct answers easier and faster. I signed up for a class but never went, I just studied out of the book. I did very little actual studying, just brushing up on some math skills that were lacking, but I took a bunch of practice tests.</p>
<p>That ACT course book was probably the only reason I was able to pass college math, that was an amazing resource. It was basically remedial math lessons from elementary level to basic algebra. I didn’t read the whole thread, but I wonder if there are any specific sections she’s struggling with that she can focus on, or are they all about the same. I did pretty average on all the sections and then really tanked one, so that affected my strategy.</p>
<p>In the end, though, I think I ended up at a school that might have been too difficult for me. No class individually was beyond my depth, but trying to take a full-time schedule of them was too much. I graduated but it was such a grind that I didn’t get much out of it and it was some of the most miserable years of my life, dream school and all. I didn’t have your D’s grades, though. </p>
<p>^ I agree with you in both points. First, my D also mostly self-prepared for the ACT and got big improvement simply by doing a lot of practice tests. Second, attending a prestigious school full of students with better academic performance would be a miserable experience.</p>
<p>@californiaa, for my two youngest children, we went with one of the testing prep companies (eureka) and interviewed/tried out tutors they hire and recommend. For my older children, we hired tutors from princeton review. </p>
<p>I think it’s actually quite a bit easier to raise one’s score 5 points when going from the very high 20’s to the low 30’s than when trying to go from 24 to 29. At the higher end of the curve, you often only need to get one more answer right to gain a point, whereas in the mid-range you might need to get 3 more answers right to gain a point. So adding 5 points to the composite on the higher end might require getting 20 more correct answers on a test of around 220 questions, so an 11% improvement, whereas moving 5 points from the mid-range might require getting 60 more questions right – over a quarter of the total questions and perhaps half of the questions that were previously marked wrong.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Even a 36 will get you rejected three-quarters of the time with these tippy-top schools. On the other hand, it’s a great way to get significant merit aid from many top-notch state flagships – my son was offered $71,000 in scholarships over 4 years for his score.</p>
<p>I am sure it is impossible for someone with ACT 32 to improve 5 points. 
I am not sure if it would be any easier to improve from 31 to 36 than 24 to 29, but I am sure there will be more students in the latter case due to the much larger population to begin with.</p>