Ugh sorry for all the test mess! A parent started a petition at D’s school to have them offer the test during the school day ASAP this fall. If they do that, D MAY take it just to see if she can get her math up more, but I doubt it. I was surprised the school didn’t at least offer the PSAT’s during the school day; S17’s school always did.
Our good news of the weekend was Rowan U lowering tuition and fees 10% for the upcoming school year! Not much, but with him living off campus enough to get him graduated with just subsidized loans for the 4 years. I’m calling it a win!
I was able to migrate to the new system this morning, but could never get past that. Just keep getting the Down for Maintenance screen if we try to log in or register. I wonder if there’s any seats left at this point, anyway.
@kanfly same here. D was able to connect earlier and many of the sites local to us were already full. She opted for a different site and was promptly kicked out of the website. Going on three hours now trying to reconnect.
Many wasted hours dealing with ACT fails in the last several months. D has also been on death-hold for 90 minutes by phone while we continue to refresh. Good times.
@NJWrestlingmom i think having school administer the tests ASAP at school is a good idea. Our school plans to do it in October. I am guessing whatever day it is will have other schools taking it the same day nationally just as if it were a Saturday test. The big question is whether schools will be in session in October and hoping that all kids who want to test are well. Maybe they should encourage both juniors and seniors take it and let underclassmen out of school that day for a virtual classroom day to allow for more spacing. Just a thought.
Seems like a great day to launch a new system–the day of registration (sarcasm).
“We are in the process of soft-launching a new registration system, which is experiencing some performance degradation due to unusually high demand. Many students affected by COVID-19-related test center closures and cancellations are attempting to register for fall test dates. We are working diligently to improve the experience for all users. If you have been impacted by summer testing cancellations, you will receive an email from us with further instructions.”
Wow, just went to twitter and searched @ACT. Everybody understandably upset. Why launch a new registration system the day there’s all the pent up testing demand that will drive a lot of web traffic? Makes zero sense. Folks on twitter tagging media to draw attention to the debacle.
@dadof4kids , for your own safety, I would precaution you against spending two hours in a car driving your son to a place where he can get tested. The reason is this…regardless of whether he tests positive or negative now or in a few days, if he came into direct contact with someone who did test positive, he is supposed to quarantine regardless. So why put yourself at risk by driving for two hours with him when he should just stay quarantined at home and get tested locally later this week?
My son was in direct contact with someone who tested positive. He was able to get a rapid test done as soon as we found out - he had a negative test result immediately at the clinic but as a precaution, all rapid test patients have a second swab done that is sent to a lab. Our local health dept’s guidelines are such that even with that negative test result (which was confirmed a week later), he was supposed to quarantine the full 10 days from his last contact with the positive patient to ensure he didn’t later develop symptoms.
Our son stayed in the basement (yes, thank God for xbox!) but we have no bathroom down there. We made the rest of our kids use our master bath and let our quarantined son use the shared kids’ bath. He had to wear a mask anytime he left the basement. When I brought him food, I wore a mask (and so did he) and washed my hands. It sounds like you have a bathroom down there he can use, so that’s even better! I hope he feels better soon!
@homerdog followed your guidelines and sent an email to my son’s August SAT test center principal and guess what ? he too replied that they will not conduct the exam. Doomed…Tried to sign up for a September but all sites are full. We have one signed up for October anyways for his subject tests and worst case, we’ll switch it to main SAT when it’s closer and if test sites are up. I hate this whole process ? wish next year March arrives sooner so we are done with all of this admission.
@Suave123 , we had pretty much the same plan for my daughter. We thought, she would take July ACT and August SAT subject. When we got the cancellation notification for ACT around 5th of July, we tried to change the subject test to regular SAT. But we couldn’t find seat in the school that she was registered. We had to find a school about 40 min away, we were fortunate to get in. My daughter’s friend who was doing the same (change from Subject to regular SAT), could not find a testing center for August. We were under the impression that you should be to change between regular and subject SAT without having to change test centers.
I know this was mentioned above, but who thought it was a good idea to do a new sign in system on what everyone knew was going to be a record day for traffic to the site?
I feel like SAT and ACT are run by college interns. Actually maybe the same people who did the updates to the CC website a couple years ago got new jobs for ACT? That would explain a lot actually.
Update on S18:
They did run the test. Dr said that our state is currently a low priority so they are struggling to get the reagent. The best option is to send it 3 hours away to a lab that hasn’t run out yet and hope they test it before they run out. She thought we should have results by Friday but no promises. Treat it as positive until you know otherwise, which we were already doing.
@4kids4us i had resigned myself to needing to quarantine if I drove him that far. Thankfully it didn’t come to that. Today I rode in the car with him for 10 minutes with the windows down and both of us masked up. Whenever I go downstairs we both wear masks.
The good news is that he still is in a condition where pre-COVID he would just be annoyed that he didn’t feel great but not sick enough to skip work. The kid that exposed him was completely asymptomatic. He only got tested because his school tested the whole football team.
FYI this is anecdotal but the doc said that the last 2 weeks she has seen more 19-20 year olds than the last 3 months combined. It’s hitting that demographic just as they are all heading back to school.
@Suave123 , when we were not able to change the test type without changing the test center, we called CB. The nice lady at CB who helped us told us that the number of seats allocated for regular SAT are not the same as the subject SAT in a given test center. So, most of the August regular SAT seats were taken earlier in our first choice of test center. Hope that makes sense. The good news is that we were not charged for the test center change
@txstumom Thanks for your helpful info, I tried to switch Oct subject test to SAT, there were no seats available in the same test center, tried different test centers, couple are available with a 2 hour drive, thoght not worth it considering my son is not a morning person. So finally registered for a November SAT test date. Oh my, we have 3 testings lined up now, with absolutely no idea which ones will be up, fingers crossed…
ACT took the website down to “improve its performance.” Good idea. Better idea, don’t mess with your registration system right before registration!
School just announced it’s starting remotely. Not a surprise due to our governor’s announcement that public schools can’t go back in person until at least after Labor Day due to increasing cases.
