@HiToWaMom I am cracking up at the postcards, that’s a fun idea! Sounds like a productive trip all around, you packed a lot in. How frustrating to have your tour basically cancelled on you a week before. Not a fun feeling at all. It really is fascinating how differently schools schedule tours, what you can see and can’t see. Some schools make it really easy to see a lot and learn a lot, others…not so much.
@HiToWaMom
Thanks for the trip report! Is your D mostly looking at women’s colleges or looking at a mix and this visit just happened to have a lot? My D wasn’t even thinking about women’s colleges but now her top choice is Smith.
D and I are having some standardized test issues.
She took the March SAT and of course scores don’t come out until the next sign-up deadline for the June test has passed. I don’t want her to have to take it twice in the fall with a busy schedule, but if she did well on the first one, why take it again in June? We’ll also be waiting for the ACT scores (from April 19) that I think will be ready about the same time. She’s expecting to do better on the SAT.
The big deal though is writing. She hasn’t done either test with writing yet. I don’t think she’ll do well on the writing section as her practice test and PSAT scores have always had math quite a bit higher than the verbal sections. Only 4 schools on her list of 20ish require writing and some are not even clear about it. I’m worried that if she takes the next SAT and/or ACT with writing, that score will be terrible and look really bad to admissions.
I know the SAT is brand new, but any opinions on which one has the easier writing?
@snoozn I can’t really help you, but I can commiserate. I know that if you are a decent writer, then the ACT is pretty easy. They give a very straight-forward scoring rubric. On my D’s second try last week she studied the rubric and tips from her teacher to really dumb it down, and follow the formula. It’s probably the same with the SAT, and based on everyone’s comments the Writing doesn’t really matter. I would see which schools superscore the ACT or SAT, and then maybe decide based on that. I’ve even heard of some kids submitting scores w/o Writing even when the school ‘required’ it, and it wasn’t a problem (I personally wouldn’t count on this, though).
@snoozn
Check if your colleges really require writing
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19597538/#Comment_19597538
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19597814/#Comment_19597814
Colleges dropping ACT writing
http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/act-writing-and-sat-essay-requirements/
If D is going to take another SAT or ACT, I’d take it with writing just in case but would not worry about the score.
@snoozn The registration deadline for the June SAT is May 11, so you have 1 day to register after the scores are released.
Dd the Mar with writing. If she needs to take it again, she’s not going to do it with writing. None of the schools she’s interested in require it. (She has the one score if necessary)
I requested a rescore for the ACT writing after the February test. D’s score went up 7 points. Worth a try if the score seems low.
@snoozn, Call the schools that you aren’t sure or have unclear information as to whether they require the writing portion of the tests. Your D may not need to worry about it at all.
S is competent bu not stellar at the writing portions of the test. He scored an 8 on the previous version of the SAT writing and was a little higher (equivalency) on the recent ACT taken at school. He is scheduled for the SAT with writing in June. And then, regardless of what he scores, he will be done with testing. He needs a little higher score for some of the best merit scholarships, but if he doesn’t get there, we can live with what he has now. I do not want him testing his senior year. It would be too distracting for him.
I am a bit annoyed. S has taken it with writing twice and will be again in June. At this point I don’t think a single school of his requires it. I’d like S to take the Sept SAT but other than that, we are done after June.
I was researching some schools over the weekend, and one of them noted that for “students who submit the SAT, two SAT Subject Tests are strongly recommended.” They did not have a similar statement for the ACT. Is that typical?
@jmek15 I noticed that too. It’s like since the ACT has a science section it somewhat fulfills a subject test??
I think that is somewhat common for university-wide policy but not for policies like a College of Engineering having requirements for SAT Subject Tests but no requirement for the overall university. I don’t understand it, since the ACT Science test is more graph reading skills than actual science.
Yeah, I find that policy strange, too. We can ALMOST get away without having to take any SAT IIs if we just submit the ACT w/ Writing, but as @Ynotgo points out, some specific programs may require them. So, we’re playing it safe and taking the SAT IIs, we just may not need to send them in to very many schools…which will save some $.
And, no, the ACT Science section is just another reading section. It’s definitely not ‘science’.
Yep, same here with regards to taking all of them. I figure it’s a “cover all bases” thing. And the SATII’s are 1 hour long-it’s not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things.
If you are sending the SAT regular test score to a particular school, then there is no extra cost for requesting that the subject tests be sent also using their score choice option. If you are only sending the ACT score then there will be the additional cost of sending the SAT subject tests. I am hoping that S’s June SAT test scores trump his ACT score so we don’t need to send the ACT to any schools, unless it is a school that requires all tests. So far he doesn’t have an all score school on his list. 
My son stunk on the Science section for some reason. He does pretty well in science in school but I think he only scored a 25 on Science on the ACT . The other scores were all around 30, so he ended up with a 29 on his first attempt. He also got a low score on his writing. I didn’t think much about the writing until recently when I read people were complaining of possible bad scoring. Anyways, the schools he is interested do not require the writing section so we don’t have to send those scores in do we?
He is going to take the ACT again unless he got a very good score on the new SAT. He would really like to get a 30-32 score on the ACT to help get into a few of the schools on his list. Most of the schools have ACT scores 26-31 so he’s right in the mix. Would just rather be on the high end than the exact middle.
I probably mentioned this a while ago, but thought I would repeat since subject tests are being discussed. Ignoring colleges that require that all testing history be submitted, a student can suppress a subject test score even if taken on same day as another subject test score that he wishes to send. In other words, student takes USH & Math II on same day but is not happy with USH score. Can send only Math II, as long as the school does not require all testing history.
This contrasts with SAT I where all three sections (M, CR &W) must be sent for a single sitting. Colleges will super score, but student cannot ‘hide’ a poor subscore.
The above explanation applies to old format SAT. I am not even sure how new test scores will be reported (two sections?)
I’ve been lurking on this thread for a while, seems like a good enough time to delurk and introduce myself, and my child.
My oldest daughter is a junior, class of 2017 (naturally), and goes to a fairly (but not extremely so for the state) small public school in Alaska. She bombed the PSAT (couldn’t find her calculator, and didn’t tell us until afterward!), but didn’t really care—we’ve raised her to care very little about standardized tests, which I’ll admit we can only afford to do because she’s good at them. She took the SAT and ACT “for practice” last year and did well enough that she wasn’t worried about taking them again, and then when she took the ACT in her district-mandated sitting last month she improved her score, to a composite of 33. Her writing score was low percentile-wise compared to her other scores (particularly given her 36 English/35 reading), so we made a parental decision to request a rescore of the essay. Her grades are good (~3.88 UW, ~3.98 W), and she’s amidst a rigorous curriculum, though her school offers very few AP classes (a function of its size), so we won’t to see her come in with lots of college credit at the start.
So that’s the obligatory bragging. Now: She’s interested in fields that aren’t offered by any schools in our state (biological bases of behavior/neuroscience and conflict studies), and our in-state public schools are in process of being eviscerated by a legislature spooked by the low cost of oil anyway, so she is nearly guaranteed to be going out of state. We, like so many others, are donut-holed and thus in the “chasing merit aid” camp, and so she’s planning on several non-binding EA applications. (There’s also the fact that I find binding ED borderline unethical, since it eliminates the student’s one bit of power—choosing one school over others—in the entire application process.) My rule is that she gets to apply to one school that doesn’t give merit aid just to see if she can get in (down to Wellesley or, more likely, Colgate), and Alabama’s our “parent’s choice” school she has to apply to due to its guaranteed scholarships, pending if a planned school visit this summer. Either Mt Holyoke is Muhlenberg is, depending on what day you ask her, her top choice right now based on visits last summer, and she’s in love with Kenyon though we haven’t visited (and we’re unlikely to be able to before the application cycle begins).
@snoozn ,
My D’s top priority is that the college is in or near a big metropolitan area. My top priority is that the college is a 100% need-met school. Combining those two and thinking about where she stands academically, we ended up with those women’s colleges. She is fine with both women’s or co-ed. We toured Reed and The Evergreen State in the past also.
I would love her to apply to Smith and Mount Holyoke, but I think they are too remote from the major metropolitan city. Even Wellesley was too isolated for her taste. Their woodsy setting didn’t help.
I thought the distance from Philadelphia and Bryn Mawr was about the same as the distance from Boston and Wellesley, but she liked Bryn Mawr better because the campus looked more open and cheerful with the huge green quard.
Welcome @dfbdfb. Sounds like your D wants a LAC over a larger U. I was going to suggest that you look at state schools that offer the WUE since you are in Alaska. There are also a number of larger state schools with good merit aid that have nice honors colleges. My S will likely qualify for National merit, so we are looking at some of those schools. We have visited ASU’s honors college (loved it!), UA (Arizona, not Alabama and it was OK. Didn’t like Tucson), and S will be visiting UT Dallas and OU (OK) honors colleges in June. Both offer merit aid to NM and non NM high stat kids. D15 chased merit aid for small LACs. She was high stats like your D sounds. She found some and is now at school in VA with little out of pocket for us. Good luck to you. One plus is that Alaska is one of those states that school are looking for to complete their 50 list.