@nichols51 Your plan sounds like it makes good sense. As long as your S is going along with it, why not? D took the SAT in December and is taking the ACT for the first time next weekend. She is working with a tutor for the same reasons as your S is working with you. She wants to be prepared but can’t stand Khan Academy and wouldn’t be motivated to do the work on her own (or with me helping). Fortunately, she will do the work that the tutor assigns for the week, roughly 30-40 minutes 4x/week. Sometimes she does it all in one sitting, which is exhausting, but as much as I encourage her to work on it throughout the week, she just doesn’t want to think about it after school/homework/etc. She has had to cancel a couple of the sessions because of finals and EC commitments, so she won’t cover as much as she’d expected. She took Algebra 2 Freshman year so has had to review a lot that she hadn’t seen in a long time. We’re hopeful that focused study will help with the Math section.
She will sit for the SAT at school in April and would like to be done after that, but I know students generally do better on the ACT in particular if they take it twice, assuming they like the format/pace. She has AP tests in May and is also burned out by June, so we’ll wait to get her results before deciding on a path forward.
@nichols51 That’s exactly what I did for D21. Analyzed her SAT practice test, gave the test back without the corrections and told her to do the wrong problems again and see if she could figure them out. She could for many of them. For those she could not, she looked up the explanations in the SAT Black Book and we identified any holes and found chapters in prep books for her to practice. That part is on her own though. I have told her that really, really understanding her mistakes is the best way to improve. Can’t just be like - oh I get it now. Have to really analyze the problem and be fairly certain that she wouldn’t miss a similar problem like that again. That’s the part I will never be sure about and it’s up to her to really be sure she’s learned the concepts. For math, I would say half of her wrong problems were arithmetic errors so she went too fast. She’s used to ACT timing so needs to slow down for SAT.
I gave her a list of assignments by week through Feb so she can budget her time.
Eh. I don’t know. If we’re talking north of 1500 then the difference couldn’t be any more than one score being 800 and the other being 700 (or 710 if the composite is above 1500). That’s not so bad. And I misread - @MPT3D is talking about schools not in the top 50, not under T20, so I bet that’s really ok. Only other thing would be if there’s merit involved and the cut off for the highest merit is above 1500.
I have to say I’m sympathetic to @homerdog’s position. Her D is coming from a high school with a competitive mindset and is averse to the idea of a school that isn’t fairly elite and well-regarded among her peers. Family will be full-pay and husband is averse to paying for a school he feels is not worth it in terms of strong academics/prestige/job prospects; H would be OK for a less-prestigeous school with a lot of merit money yet D woudn’t want to accept what she percieves as a safety. That leaves out a wide swath of really nice, solid well-regarded schools that are not perhaps elite enough for her D and husband’s tastes but not “safety” enough for her to get her in with significant merit money. So @homerdog is kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. A first world problem, for sure, but that’s where they are, and it creates anxiety for her D. I think her D thinks she knows what she wants, but feels vague about what, exactly it would take to get there. @homerdog doesn’t know whether telling her D about admissions stats would add to the pressure or help.
I don’t know. I think unhealthy pressure is more about sending a message to your child that certain schools are beneath her/your family than about giving factual information about schools’ acceptance parameters. I think that if you identify a range of low/solid match schools that your child would likely get into at CURRENT GPA/test levels and speak positively about them (whether they’re your child’s favorites or not) it relieves some of the pressure. Then, if you give the stats for the preferred schools it lets them know what they are working/prepping hard for.
What I’m most confused about, @homerdog, is that your D doesn’t want to go to a school that a lot of her middle-of- the road school peers go to, but she also doesn’t want to go to a school unknown at all by her peers. I would think, of those two choices, a really nice school that is not T-20 but maybe 30-60 outside of your region would be preferable to the everyone-goes-there schools in your area. I would think they would have a certain mystique. But, what do I know…I’m not a teenager (as my D often reminds me :))
Not sure if I should, but I do discuss the middle 50% SAT/ACT/GPA and EC expectations with regard to schools my D expresses interest in, so she can understand that reality and make her own choices about where to apply to, whether to work for reaches. Knowlege is power! I don’t want her to have false expectations about her chances at elite schools (especially as she goes to an average high school and is in the top cohort of students and therefore might have unrealistic expectations). I also don’t downplay the value of good schools that wouldn’t be reachy for her. That’s easier for me than for @homerdog because we don’t live in a community where many students go to elite schools. And my D doesn’t have a sibling, let alone a very academic sibling, to compare herself to.
You can survive going to a college no one has ever heard of! Our S18 is at Richmond. It was a merit choice for him (lucky for him, he’s geographically diverse!). No one where we live has ever heard of it - seriously. Every one of his peers went somewhere people have heard of. He proudly wore and wears his Richmond gear. I got used to explaining, no it’s not a state school, and why he picked it (people ask, why is he going there!), though now that’s it been a while, they don’t care anymore either!
I know it’s easier for adults not to care what people think. It’s hard being a kid where everyone goes to the best school they can get into.
S has the April SAT at school and then the school does another one October of Senior year. That gives him 3 scores since he took the test in December outside of school.
I have my fingers and toes crossed for all of you that your kids can hit their target scores soon and move on to something else! With my oldest, we didn’t know what we were doing so first standardized test was taken late in junior year and then there was prep in the summer for one final (and successful) attempt in the fall. It was very stressful! So we did things differently with D21 in the hopes of avoiding all of that. Happily, the stars aligned for her first go at the SAT last fall. We still have to meet with the college counselor at school but are pretty sure that she’s one and done.
At her school, multiple attempts at the SAT/ACT are probably limited to a fairly small percentage of students who are gunning for top 40 schools. The majority probably take a standardized test once or twice, and many choose a public university in state. The counseling office has a pretty balanced view about testing and encourages kids who test less well to consider test-optional schools.
@inthegarden well we are looking at schools in the 30-60 range. Only schools above that are barely above that with Wake at 27 in the university category and W&L (10), Colgate (17) and Davidson (also 17) in the LAC category. I just looked through the USNWR list which I haven’t really done before.
The university list between 30-60 is heavy on huge state schools. BC is on the list at 37. Tulane at 40. Villanova at 46. Miami of Ohio 91.
On the liberal arts college list, Bates 21, Richmond is 23. Lafayette 39. Denison 43. Furman 46.
She’s not shooting for the stars really. She never was. There’s no Duke or Vandy on her list. No Bowdoin or Williams. She won’t need the equivalent of a 34 of higher to get into the schools on her list. 33 or 1450 is most of these school’s 75th percentile. She just took another practice SAT and got a 1410. It’s only the second test she’s tried.
It’s all good. We just had a little talk about her list. She really needs to get her feet on some campuses. She just doesn’t know what’s important to her and what she wants to prioritize. She has some friends with diagnosed anxiety and they were telling her how they are not stressing out about the college search. They are just going to find a place where they won’t be stressed out and they like it. Well, I want D to “like” her school too and be comfortable and not stressed out. I told her to start thinking about what that means for her.
@homerdog, maybe I’ve just misunderstood …I thought your H was really hesitant about schools like Lafayette and Denison as maybe not being well-known and well-connected enough in your area to consider paying 70-80K, and that your D was maybe not terribly open to Denison or the PA schools generally.
For my D, I’d consider Bates an elite and a super-high reach (if she wanted to apply to a school that far from home) and I consider Richmond, Lafayette, F&M, Denison and that tier to be realistic reaches but still definately reaches even though my D is approaching that stats level in math and far exceeding the 75 pecentile in ERW… just because they’re getting so popular at around 30 percent or less acceptance rates. No, not Vandy, but still not shoo-ins, either. I saw lots of kids rejected from those schools last spring with solid stats and strong ECs so I don’t think my D can count on them. I’m only now feeling comfortable that she will most likely get into one or two of the tier of Dickinson, Wooster and Gettysburg and I think of these as "likely "/matches. Maybe I’m just overly conservative in my estimates because she’s ORM and that makes me hesitant (even though at a LAC it could work in her favor. No one really seems to know). At any rate, I still think of any school in the T40-50 range as pretty elite in the grand scheme of things.
So, friends, riddle me this…How many tries is too many for SAT/ACT? If The Boy doesn’t make a significant improvement on the March SAT, there’s May & June and then August. Do I just keep having him taking it if there is slight improvement with each? Or if it becomes obvious that he’s not going to cross a certain threshold just take it for what it is and hope the rest of his application is strong enough to make up for a low score? I guess that since he’s taking the ACT in April we should
have an idea by then of which format suits him better and where he’ll score higher.
I’ve been mulling over this all day after yet another slightly frustrating exchange with him. One thing is for certain, if after March/April his self studying/prep isn’t cutting it, I’m getting him a tutor.
@Momof3B, I’ve read that some schools look askance at students who take either test more than three times, as they don’t want to see students doing excessive prep (even though the system is set up to encourage excessive prep, sadly). This March will be My D’s 2nd SAT, and if she’ chooses that over the ACT and still wants to test again after March, I might not let her do that until August so she’d have plenty of time to be ready UNLESS I saw her (of her own initiative) doing lots of prep in spring for the June test.
I also have this thought that if it’s hard for her to attain a score that would put her within the top half of the a school’s middle 50 percent level, then maybe that school wouldn’t be a happy fit for her even if she got in. I don’t feel that pushing her for ever-higher scores would necessarily be the best thing fro that reason. It might be different for a student who generally feels little anxiety and likes a big challenge (or needs a challenging environment to get motivated). You know your own son best!
Only three colleges require all SAT scores to be reported, four require all ACT. So unless they’re applying to one of those highly-selective colleges, no one will be finding out how many times the test was taken. That said, it doesn’t make sense to retake if there isn’t reason to expect improvement (such as via prep). An official practice tests taken timed at home can show where they’re scoring before registering for the next one.
I think May/June is poor timing for most students with May AP exams. Late summer might find a senior a bit more motivated, with apps looming immediately thereafter.
@inthegarden that makes sense. March is my son’s 2nd try as well and April will be his first ACT. Depending on how he does, I think I’ll take your tip and not let him take it again until July/August…and I’m going to insist on a private tutor between now and then. He’s been resisting the aid of a tutor and I have no idea why…all I can get out of him is “I got it”…no son, you don’t lol. Can you tell I’m frustrated?!
@inthegarden i don’t think places like BC or Richmond or Wake are shoo ins at all even with higher SAT scores but we have decent info from our high school to gauge. Many of S19’s schools would be considered reaches for people on CC but we could tell they were safe. I need to talk to our GC specifically about D’s list but we don’t have that meeting until March I think. Also, we would maybe consider ED so that’s a bump. I think Richmond’s ED acceptance rate is almost 50 percent.
As for safeties and my H’s opinion, D would get merit at Denison with just a very small bump in scores. She would already get good merit at Miami. H knows about Lafayette and is ok with it and with Lehigh. He’s lately been on a Villanova Kim and I think D would be able to get in there if her SAT scores can even stick around where the practice tests are.
Oh and Denison is not a low reach. Kids here get in with scores as low as 26 and not a lot of rigor. I keep getting push back on that on CC and I know it’s getting harder to get in there but that hasn’t been the case (yet) from our high school.
Interesting about Denison. We don’t have Naviance and so few students apply to anything but state schools and regional-type private schools around here, I don’t expect the GC to be any help at all. I honestly feel I’d know alot more than the GC. I don’t know anyone who actually consults our GCs…they do their perfunctory job and that’ pretty much it. I talked to the GC once about whether she’d check the “most rigorous” box, but I doubt I’ll ever contact her for anything other than nut-and-bolts issues like getting out transcripts and recommendations. Our GCs are are probably overworked (I think there are only two for the whole school) and deal with behavior and mental health issues too. On top of that, D said she heard people say her GC isn’t very helpful. She’s only met with her to briefly go over class scheduling. I can’t imagine having a GC that could give advice about such an array of top schools!