Well we signed D21 up for National Student Leadership Conference for this summer. I know many people think it’s a scam but we are doing not for the recognition or scholarship opportunities. I am so nervous that she will be so far away on her own. She has been away without us but only visiting family in CA.
@homerdog my daughter did much better on ACT than SAT 1390 vs.35. However I don’t know that it is “easier”.
Her 35 was still 99.4%tile. And I believe in 2018 there were only 3700 composite 36s out of 1.9 million who took the test. To have 25 from one school is pretty amazing.
@burghdad well, we have a class of 750 kids so 25 isn’t so so high. If you as an adult tried to take both tests, you would see pretty quickly that reading and math are definitely easier on the ACT. I tutor math so I can see the differences fairly quickly. And an adult could see that the reading passages on the ACT are easier. I’ve started tutoring the ACT and started diving deep into how other tutors help kids increase their scores and it’s all about the tricks to go faster. No doubt, it’s hard to go faster and get all of the answers correct!
Regarding test taking, I highly recommend a professional tutor especially if your student needs the moral support to regularly study for the exam and get tips on areas for improvement. IMO, the extra cost is worth it especially since most colleges place such a huge emphasis on test scores along with course rigor and GPA.
My D20 went from a ACT baseline of around 26 to a 32 in 8 weeks using a good professional tutor including 35E and 34R. She will probably take it one more time to try to get her math into the low 30’s (currently 29) and be done by spring of Junior year so she can focus on AP exams and subject tests. Just my 2 cents but some things are worth paying for and test tutors are one of them.
@homerdog the 3.3% for your high school getting 36 is much higher than the national percentage of 0.18%. Of course they probably had a good tutor…lol…
Welcome, new folks, and I hope everyone is having a Happy Holiday! My kids are returning from five days with their dad this afternoon, so our Christmas is yet to come (we’ll have it on the 30th).
D21 is 16 today! She’ll have good news as part of her celebration - found out yesterday that she has four As so far for first semester - AP English Language, Digital Photography, Drugs and Alcohol (a PE course), and AP Calculus AB. She still has three more midterms to go, two in mid-Jan (AP Bio and AP Spanish) and one in early Feb (US History Honors). She is homeschooled and taking classes from four different accredited providers, so the schedules are all different.
She’s had a good year with her academics and extracurriculars, getting regional championship status in her two main athletic pursuits. Her independent academic research possibilities are shaping up, so hopefully she’ll be able to do something she finds really cool and interesting next year that could lead to a paper. She was promoted at her part-time job, and she is also learning to drive, which scares the socks off me because of all the nutters on the road these days.
She’s a young adult women now, basically. All our teens in the Class of 2021 are basically young adults now, and they are all getting closer and closer to leaving the nest. It’s wonderful and heartbreaking all at the same time. Fills my heart.
Let’s treasure the next two and a half years, everyone!
Happy Almost New Year!
@JanieWalker Happy Sweet 16 to her! We are in the midst of planning my D21 party.
@AndreaLynn Happy birthday to your daughter as well! ?
@JanieWalker thanks, she just turned 15 in October so we have some time. Big party though so lot’s of planning.
Would you say PSAT reading score is a good indicator of SAT reading score capability? Totally new to this as D21 is my oldest.
@Rue4 I am new at this also, but from what I understand the scores on PSAT would be similar to SAT. I don’t understand though how they can say that when a perfect score is different on each exam. I am interested in what other people say on this topic.
Does anybody know how I translate a percentage GPA to a 4.0 scale? I would assume a 100 is 4.0, but how do you figure out above 100? Our school does % but so many people talk about 4.0 scale and I couldn’t find anything online for over 100.
If it is a 4.0 scale then I think that even if over 100, it is a 4.0
@yearstogo then why do I see people post things like 4.3?
Happy Birthday to all our Sweet 16 kiddos (and those turning 15 as well).
Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday break with their kid/s. Christmas Day hit DD kinda hard this year as she became visibly sad/teary-eyed as the day progressed. I had to pry it out of her but she finally shared that Christmas won’t be quite the same after she goes off to school. She even said she can’t believe how fast the time is going by. Of course, that got mom teary-eyed, too. When I shared with DH, he said the proverbial, “she’ll be alright.” lol
@burghdad and @homerdog, thank you for sharing details re: the ACT. I may have her do a practice test just to see, like you said, which one she likes better. She likes the pace of the SAT but gets tired of all the reading portions. She did, however, do a little better on EBRW (640) than Math (620). Still, going in cold, she knows she has to do much prep work this summer. I think she was disappointed that she didn’t score higher in math but I think it’s because she needs to brush up on certain skills that she may have become lax with while taking Calculus this year.
I wish I knew of a good test tutor in our area to help give her some test-taking tips and structure to her studying this summer for the August SAT. When I try to offer some pointers and websites, like Khan Academy, she shuts me down. I tried to tell her how College Board is now linked with Khan and the website can help you pinpoint what areas you need to strengthen based on your test results but she has such an aversion to Khan. She says she’s used it before and the solutions are usually not the most direct way to do a problem. That’s why I’m wondering if she would do better with an actual person instead of the online assistance. We’re in northwest Indiana, if anyone knows of someone in this area.
@AndreaLynn At my DS school, and many other schools, they have weighted and unweighted GPAs. The unweighted GPA is on a 4.0 scale and would be as I described above.
If my son takes an AP or honors class it is worth up to a 5.0. So it is not the percentage score in the class that can give you higher than a 4, it is that you took a class that is more heavily weighted.
An easy example is if someone at my DS school took 4 classes that are all APs and the teacher gives extra credit and they have a 110 avg in every class. The unweighted GPA is a 4.0 and the weighted GPA would be a 5.0.
This is one reason why many folks do not like class rankings as kids will take only the honors/AP courses to boost their weighted GPAs and not want to take a course that is not weighted.
@yearstogo we have weighted at my D school also. Even when I look at the convert to % to a 5.0 it just changes a 100 to 5.0. Do you have a good resource I can look at to make sense of this? I guess it doesn’t matter but it seems the college stuff prefers the 4.0 scale so when the time comes I want to report her grades correctly.
@andrealynn you probably won’t have to report her grades. Most colleges just have the school send a transcript. You won’t have to be changing your 100 point scale to a 4.0 scale. Schools know how to compare different grading scales.
@homerdog thank you.
and further to what @homerdog wrote, I think many/most colleges recalculate the GPAs anyway so if your daughter is taking rigorous courses and making over 100 in them, she is doing very well and all that she can do…
(but I am still fairly certain there are no extras for going over 100%, although schools are free to do whatever they like which is why many colleges recalculate the GPAs)