<p>Thank you all for your kind words! I really appreciate them. I sometimes get really wound up about silly things. </p>
<p>I think I was perhaps more annoyed because every other section, as in the other 9 on the test, went well and then…that one. Oh well. Honestly, if God willing, I didn’t make any silly errors on the math/any other part of the test, I’ll have a good score, even if it’s not an 800 in math. And the test was rather difficult relative to the one I wrote in May, so I think the curve will be nicer anyways. </p>
<p>Anyways, I’m pretty sure any adcom with a brain won’t put everything on one SAT section score, so screw it.</p>
<p>The question I got stuck on was one where you had a square overlapping another square somehow and you were supposed to calculate the shaded area. Everyone solved the question by just mentally rotating the second square while I was trying to find some algebraic relationship or whatnot for it. In almost every problem after Geometry, there’s some relationship thing that you’re looking for; so you fall out of habit. I even asked my dad, an engineer, the same question and he didn’t think of it that way either!</p>
<p>Perhaps I would’ve done better on this test if I took it in 9th grade or middle school, lol!</p>
<p>@Creekland, I guess that’s true. I had a 2190 with memorizing some words/skimming a formula sheet/cramming grammar the night before so hopefully if I improve on that enough, I can just finish it and forget it. Standardized tests are such a pain.</p>
<p>@parentsparkle, My mom says similar things…I think the message is finally sinking in somewhat.</p>
<p>@pdx, I’m glad your daughter felt good. To be honest, the SAT essay is a horrible test of one’s writing ability so tell her not to feel bad. It’s tough to be eloquent in 25 minutes under pressure. It’s really about just making sense and filling the space…fortunately or unfortunately. CR is actually my favorite section because the passages are sometimes really interesting.</p>
<p>@NewHaven, I hope you’re right! My school has a 4 day weekend this week (Veterans Day + PD day) so I’m going to thoroughly enjoy myself and not think. Hopefully teachers won’t give hw…</p>
<p>Also, a friend of mine that now attends UNC-CH was kind enough to give me copies of a bunch of PDF prepbooks and word lists (Direct Hits and Sparknotes) that I hopefully won’t ever need again, so if you want them, feel free to PM me with an e-mail I can send a link to.</p>
<p>I agree that the SAT/ACT writing sections are horrible for assessing one’s writing ability. Thankfully no one seems to give them too much weight either! My DS11 got 8s on both his SAT and ACT essays even though he’s a great writer.</p>
<p>I’ll third this. My '12 guy had won essay competitions with hundreds of entries - and only got an 8… He can write very well (As in college now and had a 36 on ACT English), but he can’t do it quickly. I worried - and shouldn’t have. He was annoyed. Fortunately, adcoms know.</p>
<p>DD14 takes the SAT on 12/1 and the big blue book has finally made it’s way off our kitchen counter and into her room. I asked her yesterday when she was going to study. She said after she gets her 12/1 score - because how else will she know what to study for?</p>
<p>And you know, that makes complete sense to me. :)</p>
<p>First semester grades are out - she has a full AP/IB schedule and she has all As … including an A+ in APUSH. </p>
<p>She’s a great test taker and I’m just going to trust her. I just can’t worry about stuff I really have no control over … I can’t force her to study. And if I did, I think I’d just seriously stress her out. </p>
<p>And on a really great note … she’s LD Debate captain this year and all four of her varsity team members placed in a big meet this weekend. That’s HUGE. There’s never been a junior capt - and I can’t remember a time when all varsity has placed. I’m so unbelievably proud of what she’s doing w/ her team. Yay!</p>
<p>I had to laugh when I read your post: @parentsparkle, My mom says similar things</p>
<p>I think because I saw ‘Cloud Atlas’ this weekend, I got an instant vision of me and your mom and a lot of us here as cloned ‘fabricants’ waking up in our boxes wearing our paper nightshirts and getting ready to spend the day prodding our children. Pass the pink and purple hairdye.</p>
<p>@KaMaMom: that’s awesome…It feels really good when our (or our friends) kids do well </p>
<p>I never had to push my DD in the past either, but this year has been a bit painful for me. She is too much involved in the Robotics and everything else is not worth the time in her opinion. I think she is realizing now that schoolwork is important (she was up on her own at 5am to finish her APUSH homework). </p>
<p>You are so right, the primary goal is not to stress them out and as a parent I think that’s something we (I) need to remember. Just make them realize that it is important to manage time and get things done. I used ParentSparkle comment about Time Management yesterday and it worked. I guess when I talk about time management then I am not really telling her what to do but just giving her the tools she needs. I am so glad that I found CC </p>
<p>DD took one section of math practice test yesterday and got three wrong and one missing. All three were wrong because she misread the question not paying attention to “greater than” or something like that. Is that common in the beginning?</p>
<p>I think the SAT 1 are all about getting into the groove of reading deliberately tricky questions quickly. I can imagine ‘Gollum’ from LOTR working for College Board, actually. I’m glad your DD is getting cranking with the practice, sounds to me like she did very well to start (but don’t tell her that! - LOL!)
Awesome that she loves Robotics! A female with an interest in Engineering is a wonderful hook. The common data sets show acceptance rates by gender so check out a few engineering schools to see what I’m talking about. I’d also be willing to bet that females who want to apply to engineering are a preselected and stronger bunch.
Smiles,
PS</p>
<p>@PS - Thank you, I won’t tell her that she is doing good How do I get access to the Common Data Sets? I need to sit down and talk to her about what schools she is thinking about. </p>
<p>@vandyeyes: I didn’t fill in that information, DD is all signed up to take Dec SAT exam.</p>
<p>@Creekland: DD also has to think a lot about how she starts the introductory sentence and ends, spends hours on essays for school homework. So I am not really looking forward to her experience on the SAT essay given the limited time. Glad to hear that essay doesn’t have as much weight.</p>
<p>Election day today. I’m really glad I’m at school to avoid all the calls. We’ve been in double digits for calls these past few days. We went to watch Argo after school yesterday afternoon and missed 4 just in the time it took to watch the movie.</p>
<p>One more day… Those of you who don’t live in toss-up states have at least one advantage. I’m thinking you miss the endless commercials too, but at least I can skip those by pausing the TV, then fast forwarding. When we skip calls it merely means we have to erase voicemails most of the time.</p>
<p>Don’t forget to vote (if you haven’t already)!</p>
<p>I voted and dragged dd14 with me. Cold and chilly morning out there but what a great morning! I too have grown tired of the political ads/phone calls…</p>
<p>WOW, that’s a great list. Thanks NewHavenCTMom. We have a Voice Over IP Phone through T-mobile (called @Home), it is considered as cell phone. So we have been dodging all the phone calls. Getting a lot of mail though, sometimes I wonder if the people who do Infomercials are the ones designing these brochures etc, the other person looks really bad.</p>
<p>Every college has them, but they can be hard to find. I haven’t had great luck with the list - too many broken links, but I google the school’s name and ‘common data set.’</p>
<p>I’ve even gone through and checked the SAT scores back over the past few years when I sense that there is some movement - RPI is one that looks like it’s Math SAT jumped recently.</p>
<p>I am new to this Parents of High School Class of 2014 thread and just so happy to find such a supportive ‘community’. By the way, the common data set information is very helpful.</p>
<p>Helpful yes - but I wish that school that had different average SAT for different undergraduate schools or programs (Engineering) listed the admission rates and SAT info by program.</p>
<p>@4beardolls A warm welcome from chilly CT :)</p>
<p>@parent sparkle</p>
<p>I found that as well. Lots of broken links. They probably move the CDS’ around/update the websites pretty regularly. What I usually will do is type “CDS” into the colleges search engine and it will pop up. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t.</p>
<p>Checking in to see what is new here.
First quarter grades came out, and they were ok. Not as strong as we’d like to see, however it’s k2’s to own, not mine.</p>
<p>We won’t see the PSAT scores til Jan–It annoys the heck out of me that the school holds them back–when they are my student’s scores. K2 has extended time and it was a long test day. </p>
<p>Have a long list of schools to see over spring break, however the break comes between Palm Sunday and Easter and so some of the schools (Jesuit) will potentially be closed. I tried to look up this in admissions…however not all have spring schedule available yet.</p>
<p>K2 is pretty busy with academics, sport and another significant EC. Not lots of down time at all. </p>
<p>I suspect this evening K2 will be watching the election returns as the AP History class is surely paying attention. </p>
<p>As for CDS–they are sometimes listed as freshman profile…or in a section for guidance counselors.
I don’t know why they hide this info…</p>
To be honest, the SAT essay is a horrible test of one’s writing ability so tell her not to feel bad. It’s tough to be eloquent in 25 minutes under pressure. It’s really about just making sense and filling the space…fortunately or unfortunately. CR is actually my favorite section because the passages are sometimes really interesting.</p>