<p>Speaking of exams and ECs, anyone else have a '14er taking the SAT January 26th? Would love to have it later, but our DS has two heavy ECs in March and then all those APs and subject matter SATs at the end of the year! I don’t want him to have the “do-or-die” pressure of the October date.</p>
<p>^count me in, glido. S is signed up for SAT on Jan 26. Then I think he’ll take ACT in March.
He’s been doubling up on tutoring (2x/week – once for English; once for Math). I’m hoping he can pull something off in the 600s – that would be amazing for him. Between SAT prep and midterms, he’s jammed.</p>
<p>I read the admissions ticket. It says you can’t bring a phone. At all. I called the testing center. They said he can have it, but it has to be off at all times, in his pocket. Can’t bring it out on breaks or he’ll be kicked out.</p>
<p>My S is also taking on the 26th due to a heavy spring courseload and ECs. Then he’s taking the ACT for the second time two weeks later. They’re totally different tests, but I figure the studying he’s doing for one, can’t hurt for the other. He had a nice score on the ACT last year, but hoping that he can improve Math after another year of it in school.</p>
<p>D is taking the ACT for the second time in April, after a little tutoring. ;)</p>
<p>Classof2015–Re: phone at exam. As you said, the important point is to make sure the phone is off during the entire test time. When my son took the exam this fall, one boy was ejected b/c he turned the phone on during the break. I assume the CB fears cheating during the test, and I believe they have had cause for concern. (Not saying this boy was cheating, but historical instances of.) </p>
<p>The other thing I got hung up on was the requirement for #2 pencils. My son was allowed to use his mechanical pencil during both SATs and his PSAT, but the CB rules clearly state that mechanical pencils are not allowed. So of course I sent him with a quart Ziploc with ten sharpened pencils and an eraser. It is now his standardized test kit with the addition of a granola bar. Going completely overboard, I also ordered a watch that functions as a countdown timer. It was designed just for this purpose. He really didn’t use it at all, but I suppose it could have been convenient if a testing room did not have a clock visible.</p>
<p>Good luck to all taking the Jan test.</p>
<p>My DS is in for the Jan 26 SAT as well. Resting on his laurels after a strong PSAT, so we’ll see how that goes… He’s expecting ACT to be his better test. He might be taking that Feb 9th – we’re still waiting for them to respond about his requested accommodations and the way they do it, they sign him up for the test date we requested if and only if they approve his accommodations before then. They just sent us a letter saying the guidance counselor had not included a copy of his 504, which she did, but just sent again. If they don’t get him on the Feb date, I guess he’ll do April. He still needs to do a science subject test and not sure what he’s going to do about that one. I am hoping he’ll study for either chemistry or physics (both of which he’s only covered part of the material for in prior courses) after the AP exams, and take it in June.</p>
<p>As for watches, my son uses a trick that someone taught my S1, where you take an analog watch, and set it so that the minute hand is approaching 12 and will get there when the section is over. (So for a 25-minute section, you set the watch to anything-thirty-five.) </p>
<p>The mechanical pencils rule is dumb, since a mechanical pencil with HB lead is the same as a #2 pencil. And that is the vast majority of lead sold for mechanical pencils. You have to explicitly go looking to get anything else.</p>
<p>I’ll join the others in wishing the best of luck to everyone with school exams and/or standardized tests on the horizon!</p>
<p>Mathmom–I think I read that some student rigged a mechanical pencil to include a tiny camera. Crazy! My son did not have any problem using his mech pencils but I just wanted to add that warning as the CB website lists mech pencils as restricted.</p>
<p>^^^^ figures CT1417 
My S likewise has the big ziploc of wood pencils in his testing bag.</p>
<p>A couple of SAT trucks we heard.
- Have the kid gather everything the night before including extra batteries for the calculator. Be sure the ticket and ID are in it in case kid doesn’t drive ( so isn’t used to carrying a wallet).
- Have them eat the usual breakfast- no giant meal- since the giant meal may upset a nervous tummy or make them sleep(ier). Pack a granola bar or something in the bag of pencils, batteries, etc.
- Definitely figure out the watch thing before the evening before the test. Half the kids can’t work a digital watch since they have never worn one. Some struggle (?!) reading the old-fashioned face watches.</p>
<p>Wahoo–agree completely, and forgot about calculator batteries. When my son rejected batteries, saying he has never replaced the batteries in the 2.5 years he has owned the calculator, I tried to rest my point. Needless to say, he still has not needed to replace the batteries!</p>
<p>One girl showed up late at the test center w/o a pencil so she was happy to take a couple from him.</p>
<p>DS is scheduled to take SAT on Jan 26 also. He had a very high PSAT score and did very well at home for SAT practice tests. However, he is worried about the SAT essay portion. Does anyone know any service that would grade SAT essays and provide improvement feedback?</p>
<p>I don’t know of anyone to help with grading, 4beardolls, but I’m wondering if perhaps a local test prep place could do a quick writing session with him and give thoughts? I do know that for my D, who did very well on the essays, having a couple of books she knew very, very well worked great for her with examples (the Biography of Frederick Douglass stands out). Beyond that, and example supporting the point from history is also supposed to me good. Or so I am told.</p>
<p>4beardolls—if you cannot implement wahoo’s great suggestion on short notice, there are great resources on the SAT prep forum here on CC. Students have posted samples of 12 score essays (their own, I guess?) and someone consolidated all the essay prompts from old exams.</p>
<p>Extemporaneous writing is not my son’s strong point, but he ignored my suggestion to bullet point responses to previous essay prompts. So while he only got two wrong on the W MC, his 8 essay score dragged down his overall score.</p>
<p>Count me in as having a kid taking January 26 SAT. He’s taken PSAT twice, a subject exam, and a mock SAT administered by Kaplan and used as a fundraiser by his graduating class (great idea I thought), so he should have the drill down by now. </p>
<p>I know he has a ziploc with pencils and an eraser, and we have his ticket printed out and on his desk. He has a watch that he uses when he referees soccer games and he knows to leave his phone in the car.<br>
Considering whether or not to take the ACT. Maybe I’ll have him take a practice one of those and see how he scores in comparison to SAT.</p>
<p>2014novamom—before I hired the tutoring company I engaged last summer, they advised that I have my son sit and take two full-length practice ACT and SAT exams. Of course I didn’t do that as it seemed like an overwhelming amount of work to just decide which test he would be better suited to take. The tutor rep’s comment was that I can do this or I can pay him, but I would be better served to determine this in advance of hiring him to tutor for the SAT.</p>
<p>Other than scoring the essay, home-administered practice tests provide fairly realistic scores, as long as the timing and breaks are enforced, so I think your idea of a practice ACT is correct.</p>
<p>2014novamom, not sure about yours, but my kids’ high school offers a ‘practice’ ACT sometime in early February, which they then return, graded, to the kids a few weeks later in a 15-minute time slot where they go over the test and score. I think it was about $15 for the “mock test”. You might ask about it, or you can PM me since I expect we are close by and I can tell you where my kids go- since its done on a weekend you could probably get them to include your S.
I was told the SAT is more being able to interpret/ think critically whereas the ACT questions are not tricky but numerous, favoring kids who can work quickly. The science section is not based on knowledge specifically, but more on interpreting data. It blew my daughter’s mind, and she is a strong student. In the end because of the science, she stuck with the SAT. Definitely a different test so I can see why some kids would see dramatic differences between the two.</p>
<p>Agreeing again with wahoo–a pattern here. One must be able to move quickly in order to get through all of the ACT questions, the vocab is not as of high a level as the SAT, but the math includes some trig concepts whereas SAT math does not test beyond Alg 2. I have only looked at the questions my son has gotten wrong (QAS from Oct SAT and PSAT), and it seemed as though the math questions often had one incorrect answer that a student could jump to quickly. I did it myself so I can see how a student would.</p>
<p>Also, I believe the ACT does not penalize for incorrect answers while the SAT has the 1/4 point deduction for each error.</p>
<p>Our HS began offering the ACT for the first time this year, but no prep or support for either test.</p>
<p>Maybe this is rare, but my kids’ PSAT and ACT scores have been in almost exactly the same percentiles. Now, my S hasn’t taken the ACT since last February, and I’m comparing it to October’s PSAT, so perhaps we will see a difference in percentile after he takes the ACT next month. But, D took the ACT in Sept. this year, and then the PSAT in Oct, and came in virtually the same as well. </p>
<p>Since we decided to have D tutored, to see if we could raise the scores a bit to potentially qualify for more merit $, I asked the tutoring rep which score D was more likely to be able to raise, and was told that the ACT was easier to raise through tutoring. In D’s case, it’s partially because she did very poorly on Science and the tutor said that Science is one of the easier scores to raise, because it’s about test strategy, not content.</p>
<p>Good luck to all these kiddos with these upcoming tests! So much stress on them during their Junior year!</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s rare at all. D’14’s PSAT, PLAN, and ACT were all similar percentile. Look at it this way, if both tests are accepted, but one was way easier than the other, you can bet the harder one would be dropped like a hot potato by test takers. (You could probably also safely conclude that if one were “easier,” schools would start insisting on the more difficult test). </p>
<p>Try the ACT (or SAT), but don’t be surprised if results are pretty similar.</p>
<p>My S1’s SAT was exactly 10x his PSAT from a few months earlier, but his ACT was higher on the concordance charts. Not by a ton, but it was a significant difference. I have heard that math/sciency kids tend to do better on the ACT because there is harder math, a science section (which is not about content, but math/science kids tend to be good at the kind of analysis required) and less emphasis on vocabulary.</p>
<p>I agree with mathmomvt & others re trying the ACT. This is absolutely the case for many, many kids. If your math/science kiddo takes a go at the ACT and doesn’t do statistically better, or even worse, then the SAT, don’t question it and move ahead with the SAT. S2 got hung up on the graphs on the science portion and didn’t finish the section, was reading FAR too much into it, and ended up dragging down his composite. Having met or exceeded goals on CR & W on the first SAT test, and identified his problem on the M, he knew where to target for a retest. It worked for him. </p>
<p>S3 is not going to be so cut and dry…different kids, different schedules, different strengths. His first SAT in Dec was decent, and certainly passable for many schools. He’s not shooting for ivy, but to be competitive he’s going to need to jump a reasonable amount. I’ve spoken with his GC and she agrees he’s perfectly capable. I’d like to get him a tutor to help carve out study time, make it a priority, but am hitting brick walls with DH. S3 is not unmotivated to study for the SATs, he’s just in school, at TECFH, or doing hw. At 17 what is he supposed to push aside? DH & I both think he’s not being as productive with hw time. If he had less time to get stuff done he would. That’s why I feel the obligation to a tutor would serve a purpose. Now it’s too easy to think “I don’t have time, I’m not done with my hw”. For those that are using tutors, how did you select/find a reputable tutor?</p>