@inthegarden our GC isn’t the best but what I did last time was ask her questions via email before our meeting. Very specific questions. And she didn’t know the answers but asked the other GCs and got the scoop. For S19 most of my questions were about certain LACs and what were the bios of the kids who got in and didn’t get in - did they go ED, did they have a hook, etc. And I asked if the rep had been to our school and if the counseling department had an idea of who else was applying and how many the college might take. She couldn’t give me exact info on that but, without giving specifics, she would let us know what she thought his chances were in the scope of knowing what’s up with the other kids in his class.
For D, I haven’t made a full list yet but I want to ask what’s up with all of the waitlisted kids at both Wake and Tulane from our school. Want to know how ED has worked out for this year’s kids at BC since they just switched from EA to ED. Want to know if kids got into Villanova EA only or if some got in RD. I know that no two students are the same but this kind of info does help figure out a strategy.
@inthegarden i feel the same way about our GC’s. I’ve learned everything I need to know from the forums on CC. If I hadn’t stumbled upon CC while googling answers to my questions, I would be so lost lol. Our GC’s can barely guide us beyond the basics of how to order transcripts and register for DC & AP tests lol. They seem bogged down with just making sure the kids who are struggling graduate on time…anybody that’s moderate/above average or high stats is left on their own. I’ve heard this from plenty of parents at our school.
Wow, I don’t think that kind of info even exists at our school. I’d be surprised if more than one or two kids per decade even applied to some of the schools you mentioned. Maybe a scattering of the very top students apply to very well known elites like ivies, Hopkins, Chicago, Carnegie Mellon or Duke (like maybe one or two students per year…while rarely getting in) but it’s probably very unusual for students here to apply to fine but less-universally-known schools like Tulane and Wake. Not enough for GCs to track a pattern, even if they have that data.
Well, I guess it’s telling…what kinds of colleges participate in college fairs for certain high schools. We left ours after twenty minutes (stretching that time out and talking at some booths just to be polite) because there was literally no participating school that interested us and maybe three that we’d remotely consider. A few were good schools but too big for our D. Those at the fair would be the schools that our CG might know something about in terms of student acceptances.
Our GC do not meet with parents unless your kid is struggling, if you are passing, they don’t have time for you. Each counselor has 300+ kids, so they are always busy. They do not discuss colleges individually at all, I went to a college night in the fall and I knew more from reading on here. They said they don’t want any students applying ED, like it’s up to them ?.
@inthegarden They didn’t say they wouldn’t do what is needed if someone did apply, but they discourage it and were very negative about ED. Apparently one person backed out of their ED a few years ago and since they have been discouraging it. We had no intention of applying ED anyways, just found it odd how negative they were.
I agree with @evergreen5 on this - May/June is poor timing for SAT/ACT with May AP exams.
However, it was not bad timing for doing SAT 2s if you need those. S19 took the chem and lit SAT2s then because he was just wrapping up AP study for AP Chem and AP Lit. The two chem tests covered somewhat different material, but he found overall that studying for each reinforced the other.
May 2nd SAT date not too bad here. Her AP tests don’t start until the 8th. Finals are May 26-28 so June 6th test not that bad either since she will be done with school ten days before the test. No SAT 2s for D. S19 didn’t find that studying for AP tests helped him all that much for SAT2s. The material is different and presented differently as well. He had to study separately for SAT 2s. Just a heads up for those of you with kids taking those.
Sigh. Hard day yesterday. S21 realized while we were out to lunch he’d forgotten an assignment due Friday night.
The teacher had emphasized it had to be turned in or a 0. According to S, it was worth a lot of points and he thinks he can’t get an A for the class for the year (he’s sitting on 4.0 right now). He was sooooo upset with himself. He really likes this teacher and I think that’s part of it. Doesn’t want to let him down.
He cried for the first time I’d seen in a loooong time. He rushed home to do it and submit and sent an email along with it taking responsibility and saying he knew he wouldn’t get credit but wanted to submit anyway.
I just kept telling him “Everyone makes mistakes, we’re only human. Getting a B is okay. We don’t expect perfection.” Also, it’s an honors social science elective and he’s STEM so I don’t think it the grand scheme of things it will really make a big difference, except that he’s been gunning for valedictorian (all 4.0 kids get this designation)
Once water is under the bridge I’ll suggest he ask if there’s an extra credit assignment he can do this semester. I know this teacher well and think highly of him, but he can be really strict so I don’t know if he’ll cut any slack or not.
The ironic thing was he was doing ACT prep on Friday night after dinner and just plain forgot. Sigh. The pressure he puts on himself. His peer group is all very high achieving and they just all work so freakin’ hard. Sigh again.
@momof3B How many tries is too many? In my experience (assuming the kid is making some sort of effort to prep), practice tests will help to figure out the point of diminishing returns. In my limited experience, the biggest jump will happen early on - there is some gain in becoming familiar with the format of the test and its timing. There may be obvious areas to work on, like a particular topic in math. When the gains start to level off, that is probably a pretty good indication of your kid’s likely score. I told my own kids that if they achieved a result on a real test that fell within the range of their best practice tests, then they were done.
As for how much improvement is likely to happen, a well known test prep service guarantees improvement of at least 160 points in SAT or 4 composite points in ACT. Based on kids I know, a 200 point jump from a baseline is a reasonable goal to strive for. The lower the baseline, the easier it is to make that climb.
This is complicated somewhat by the inconsistent scaling of the SAT in the past year or two. In theory the student misses fewer questions on an “easier” test so it balances out. I know a number of kids on the upper end who have been very frustrated to learn that a relatively small number of errors can knock your score down quite a bit, making that 1500+ elusive. I am less familiar with how the curve works on the ACT.
To answer your question, I wouldn’t recommend more than 3 tries in any given format. I would only retake for a small gain if there were merit money on the line. Finally, I have seen students get motivated to do prep when they take the test for real and are disappointed with their score.
@mamaedefamilia, if a student took the PSAT prior to the SAT, would you say the biggest jump might occur between these two, or after the first SAT? My D made a big jump between the PSAT and SAT two months later (180 points) so I’m bracing myself for little to no change after this. Or maybe her PSAT was artifically low (i,e, bad day, hard curve?) Guess time will tell…
@inthegarden Which PSAT did she take this year? Many people reported that the first one had a harder curve than the second for fall 2019, at least at the upper end where NMF qualification was at stake. Also PSAT is out of 1520 and SAT is out of 1600 points so that makes it a bit harder to compare across the two. Has your D done any full timed practice tests since taking the SAT last fall? How have they compared?
I’ll jump in, to highlight a big issue for kids who took this past fall’s PSAT…scores were very low. So hopefully, students can make big jumps, maker larger than normal for their SAT. Compass prep did a great (but long) analysis of the PSAT situation.
The article is called ‘there was a major drop in PSAT scores’ on the compass prep.com site.
Note that total number of national merit finalists will remain the same, but most states cut-offs will likely be lower than in the past several years.
@Mwfan1921 Thanks for that reference. There were significant score drops at my D’s school among students who had scored very well on their sophomore PSATs and this provides an interesting analysis to explain that.
Also interesting is that Art is predicting that the cutoffs for NMSF this year may drop as much as 1-4 points, depending on the state.
@inthegarden S took the Dec SAT with no prep and had a big jump from the PSAT score also.
He thought the PSAT was a lot harder this year compared to the SAT. His SAT score was inline with the score we were expecting on this yr PSAT based on the 10th grade score.
I think like most things, the number of tests really depends on the kid. The vast majority of high achieving kids around here either stick with the school test (SAT) and take 2-3 times or figure out very early that the ACT is a better fit for them and take that instead 2-3 times. I know one girl who was being recruited by an ivy that ended up taking the SAT 4 times as she really needed a particular score to be confident of a positive preread which she hit and she is currently a freshman there, but I would say that’s a rarity. I frankly don’t know anyone who’s taken both the ACT and SAT 3 times. It just isn’t a thing here.
Some kids can see incremental improvement and keep plugging along - others see that they “missed” their goal score and it provokes a lot of stress/anxiety. Others just hate testing and you have to factor that in.
I do think layering in the other required testing is important. My S21 took the early June test last year and I think it was a mistake. He was just burnt out after his spring sport, AP Testing, and finals. I thought the week between finals and the test would give him some time to study, but he just wasn’t very focused. But again, every kid is different.
D is consistently scoring 150 points above her PSAT score on SAT practice tests. That PSAT was rough. I think she could easily see a 200 point increase eventually.
@mamaedefamilia Thank you for pointing that out. I hadn’t looked at Art’s blog in some time. 30% drop in scores over 1400, that seems huge to me, but explains a lot about what we saw in our house. At the very least, it calls into question the already-fake, backward-looking percentiles in the Understanding Scores document; not only would those be inaccurate as applied to the Oct 16 scores, but the Oct 16 scores will cause adjustment in the fake percentiles (averaged over multiple past yrs) that will be reported in next fall 2020’s Understanding Scores.