Parents of the HS class of 2010 - Original

<p>Congrats to those whose kids have taken their PSATs. Glad to hear that many of your kids seemed confident once they were finished with their exams. Hope the same will be true for my D and the other Saturday test takers.</p>

<p>Daughter's school is a public charter high school. All sophomores and juniors take the PSAT paid for by the school -- not the district, because it's a charter school. They do so because it's a college-focused school -- nearly 100% of graduates go on to four year colleges -- but many students don't have exposure to the SAT, prep courses, etc. Providing that is part of the school's mission. The test is used to help students be aware of where they are and what they should be working on, in preparing to do well on the SAT. I also think it's great to practice and to get it done early. I took the SAT for the first time when I was in 7th grade. My son took it as a freshman, and had his last SAT before college in the fall of his Junior year. He was happy enough with his scores then to stop wasting time on it. </p>

<p>On the other hand, the PSAT is mostly irrelevant for my daughter. She'll have the "important" equivalent of the PSAT in January, when she has her junior year National Portfolio Day. She's putting work into preparing for that, definitely.</p>

<p>TrinSF, please explain more about National Portfolio Day. I've never heard of it.</p>

<p>My daughter's school is public. Our school district pays for everyone to take PSAT during Junior year and, beginning two years ago, sophomore year. Like booklady's school district, our district has a solid commercial tax base. To be honest, if it were solely up to me, I don't know if I would have my child take the PSAT sophomore year or not. However, the sophomore year exam was instructive for D as it helped her determine the area in which she needed more practice. And she had close to a year, between 10 and 11 grade to pace her own practice(much of it during the summer), as opposed to just a few months during the school year between the 11th grade PSAT and her first SAT I sitting. For her, anyway, the 10th grade PSAT was more helpful than harmful.</p>

<p>TrinSF: I've also never heard of National Portfolio Day. Is this related to art studies? Good luck to your daughter.</p>

<p>And good luck to all students who either have taken PSAT yesterday, or will be taking it on Saturday!</p>

<p>Glad I didn't see all these PSAT talk until today. I would have been on pins and needles wondering whether S was bubbling correctly!! LOL. As it is, I dug through the recycling to see if he bubbled on his practice test. He had. I'm so lame.</p>

<p>S sounded reasonably confident the brief time we talked about it. He skipped two of the CR questions. He was stumped on two of the math questions and then figured them out at the last minute, and he said he barely had time to get them done.</p>

<p>He'd done three SAT practice tests this summer and had gotten up to 212, which is three points away from our NMSF cutoff. But on Sunday he did the PSAT practice test in the booklet they give you and he made a 203. He was kinda bummed. He went from maybe NMSF to hopefully commended. He's thinking about doing a January SAT, spending some of the winter break studying up. Good idea? Bad idea?</p>

<p>Also, I know I read this on cc somewhere. Which is supposed to be easier -- SAT or PSAT?</p>

<p>Adding that our district pays for all sophs and juniors to take PSAT, and, for the first time, our school this year is paying for the freshmen to take it.</p>

<p>DD (whose best subject is English) said that CR was pretty difficult.</p>

<p>Anyone know if colleges can get the PSAT scores... should I start expecting letters? (DD thinks she "checked something" about score release...)</p>

<p>My D did not take the PSATs yesterday, but good luck to all the kids that did. I was reading some of the student-posted questions and answers and it looked pretty tough to me.</p>

<p>Youdon'tsay,
The PSAT is hypothetically "easier," since students are supposed to be taking it months or even a year before they take the SAT's. The math takes into account that the students have had a year less math than they will when they take the SAT's.</p>

<p>MSUDad, yes, you should start getting college mail based on the PSAT scores. The colleges buy lists from the Collegeboard, and send out mass mailings to the students who have taken the PSAT's.</p>

<p>Yes, MSUDad, with a decent score, your DD will be overrun with college materials starting in a couple of months, provided she checked the box indicating that she was open to receiving info from colleges. Because DS took it as a sophomore this started about a year ago for us. At first he looked at each piece. I would take the day's haul with me when I picked him up at his sports practice, and he'd read it on the way home. It helped get him thinking about places. </p>

<p>Now, the pace has slowed down slightly, and I just throw it in a box. We'll go back through it all at some point. I told him if he put in some SAT practice this past summer and went to look at a few schools in-state, then most of the college talk would be on hold until next summer. I feel like we have a good handle on what he's looking for in a school now.</p>

<p>Thanks, momof3sons. I never can keep this straight. I wonder why his SAT practice scores were higher than the PSAT practice. Oh well. Nothing he can do about it now!</p>

<p>
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DD (whose best subject is English) said that CR was pretty difficult.

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</p>

<p>MSUDad, English is my daughter's academic strength, as well, and she also thought that the CR section was relatively tough.</p>

<p>D said the test was tougher than the practice (old CB tests) she had been doing. She wouldn't elaborate on which sections, and said she didn't talk to her friends about it afterwards. I agree with what many have said, for us this has just been practice leading up to the SAT, and maybe an additional surprise if she reaches the SF/commended levels.</p>

<p>Happy with some changes, or should I say refocusing in our school. Parent meeting this morning and the new head of the upper school and the newly created "dean of curriculum" or whatever her title is (aside, we keep adding adminstrators to our school, soon there will be more than students!) are developing guidelines for teachers to make them be more in tune with the subject tests. In the past, some teachers don't know how well their classes align with the tests, because they don't know anything about what the test covers! And the students aren't warned and some go in and take Bio for example without any prep and get a poor grade. So, they aren't going to teach to the test, but will be aware of the material covered and make students aware of gaps and in some cases have extra sessions to cover that material for interested students. All a good thing, and I think the new people at the top are realizing we need to play more in the outside world. The college counselor is new this year also, so there is a lot of refocusing going on for the better. The education has always been superb but I think the students will now potentially be seen in a more positive light by those not familiar with our school.</p>

<p>jackie, that's wonderful. NO ONE at S's school ever mentioned SAT Subject Tests to kids or parents.</p>

<p>jackief, your school is fortunate to be able to add on a college counselor. Overall, I'm pleased with our school district, but I have to say that our high school GCs provide little to nothing in the way of actual "guidance" with regards to college search and selection. In fairness each of the GC's pupil load is just too big to do much more than write recommendation letters, and help process transcript requests, so the parent, by default, becomes the college counselor.</p>

<p>momonthehill, my kids attend a small private college prep school. For my D's class of ~62, they will be split in some fashion between the new college guy and the previous two counselors who also carry a teaching load. New guy was hired so he can go out and travel and network more without having teaching duties. So yeah we are paying for all these perks through the nose. I have always been extremely happy with the teachers/rigor/education, my biggest complaint has been that not enough attention is paid to other things the students should be aware of early enough in the college process. I think their scores and acceptances could better reflect the students, the mean scores are not indicative of the level of kids at the school many who were near the top of the class in their local publics. So I think some of that is changing in the right direction. I am also less worried now that I have seen Naviance data from our school and see that there are many top tier schools where kids with less than an A from our school have been accepted.</p>

<p>Three cheers for Naviance data -- if your S/D's school has a contract with Naviance, get a password to log in. One can find acceptance stats (based on GPA and SAT) for students from your kid's school at various colleges. It gave a us a good idea of where both kids stand in relation to their recent peers and how colleges viewed the preparation from their HS. Also made it really easy to figure out which schools would be likely admits/merit $$ possibilities, was suprisingly accurate on the target schools, and which ones were pie-in-the-sky reaches.</p>

<p>S2 is looking at a few LACs/mid-size universities that don't get many apps from his HS, so it is a bit harder to tell what his chances are. The more data the school is able to collect from recent grads, the more useful the scattergrams. If you have a recent grad or current senior and your school uses Naviance, be sure to let the GC know about admits/waitlists/declines! Future seniors and parents will appreciate it.</p>

<p>My S's school is a public high school in CA, so the college counselor tends to focus on getting students into the UC, CSU and community college system. She's pretty knowledgeable about how kids can take classes at the nearby community colleges for credit. In fact, in the visual and performing arts area (our city is home to SONY Pictures Entertainment) some of the classes are offered on the HS campus after school. </p>

<p>Yes, we are fortunate to have a college counselor and she also has an assistant that helps coordinate and put on various college related mini-test prep courses for a nominal fee.</p>

<p>Somehow my S has fit in some test prep before Saturday. Last night, while watching the presidential debates, he was scribbling away, writing notes for an extra credit AP US History assignment. He's deep into his fall schedule so there are already schedule conflicts. Last week, the mock trial coordinator got to glare when he told her that a water polo game took precedence. This afternoon, the water polo coach will get his chance to frown when he's told my S will miss practice since he really does need to attend the "mock" mock trial at a local law firm office after school. Friday after school are two water polo games. Saturday AM is the PSAT and in the afternoon, another water polo game.</p>

<p>And so it goes with his fall, overflowing with activities outside of class.</p>

<p>About which exam is easier- PSAT or SAT- I think the standard answer is that the PSAT is easier than the SAT because a) the SAT includes a couple of more advanced math questions, b) the SAT includes the essay, which the PSAT doesn't and c) the SAT is longer.</p>

<p>However, the PSAT is the more 'unforgiving' exam for two reasons- a) there are fewer questions and so you pay a greater penalty for every question you get wrong and b) it is your one and only chance to qualify for national merit. You cannot retake the exam, and there is no super-scoring. You could exceed the cutoff in sophomore year but it won't help you if your junior year score is lower than the cutoff.</p>

<p>My D had some trouble with the math yesterday, but she thought the reading and writing were pretty straightforward.</p>

<p>On his one/only PSAT practice test Sunday, he only missed two in math, omitted none and got a 73. :( That's harsh, indeed. </p>

<p>I'm going to try really hard not to mention any tests for the rest of the semester. However, that'll never happen as he's awaiting results from October's MathII Subject Test. Never ends, huh?</p>

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On his one/only PSAT practice test Sunday, he only missed two in math, omitted none and got a 73. That's harsh, indeed.

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The SAT is even harsher from a percentage point of view. It has many more math questions, two wrong for my son gave him a 760 one time and 770 another. Meanwhile 6 wrong on the verbal gave him an 800.</p>