Yes, we will be investing in prep. Figure to do so come August/September 2020.
I think our PSATs donāt come out till the 11th. But, yes, we are planning on test prep this summer.
S22 found the early access website. His scores were not as high as I hoped. But, we purposely had him do zero prep to see where his starting point was. They are very good scores, just not as high as I thought theyād be.
I donāt think National Merit Semifinalist is even a thought (especially in NJ), but he might be able to get to commended scholar next year. Looking for opinions on whether itās worth it to prep and try to get that or if we should focus only on either the ACT or SAT and just prepping for whichever of those he will take?
@Lovetogolf , I would do a prep class that covers PSAT and SAT, and sign him up for an SAT testing not long after the PSAT. Then still plenty of time for ACT prep if he needs it.
My DS22 got his PSAT score back, his SI is 214. The cut for Florida has been 219 for the last few years from what Iāve read. Confident that NMSF is still within his reach. He will prep for next yearās PSAT for sure (he didnāt do any prep for this yearās).
Excited to be receiving my copy of the Fiske Guide today 
I am in the planning stages of our upcoming college tours. Would like to be done with college tours by the end of DS22ās junior year so he can focus on his college applications in summer & fall 2021.
Hi all, my middle kid, D20, just got accepted ED to Reed the other day so I can stop worrying/focussing on her admission journey and turn my focus towards S22. I think Iāll mostly go back to lurking here for another 6-8 months until things heat up on the timeline for these guys but I was pretty shocked in a good way to see the PSAT results yesterday. S22 went into that test nearly cold - heād looked at the format so Iād estimate heād probably spent maybe 10-20 minutes looking at an old test but no real study and he took the SAT in middle school for CTY but didnāt study for that either. He came out of it saying the math was easy but the verbal was kind of hard. Anyway, he had a 690 on the verbal which is as high as my middle kid got after test prep in 11th grade. Heās got more room to grow in math (610) but still a solid score. I have no illusions about getting national merit in California, just hoping for a good SAT score which is a similar format.
So now I have to go find the threads for āthe A- student who plans to major in some form of CSā and āwhat school is like RIT but on the west coastā . Actually he might end up being the easiest one to find a list for - Oregon State, San Jose State, UCSC, Santa Clara Uā¦
Hello all! Iāve not checked in a long time. I got my daughters PSATs back today and she did okayācertainly not CC good but decent. She didnāt prepare because I wanted to see where she was going in cold. I am going to have her start t the Khan test practice and have her do a class this summer to start preparing for the SATās. Over Thanksgiving we went on our first college tour at SMU in Dallas. They do a great job and itās a beautiful campus. Iām excited to go to more.
S22 got an 1140 on the PSAT (600 verbal, 540 math). Also came into it cold, so it gives us a good baseline to work from next year.
He made the JV basketball team, whose first real game of the season is tomorrow. They won their two scrimmages. Iām excited to see him taking on American competition after our years overseas.
@washugrad Weāre in San Francisco, and eyeing possible schools for CS as well (S22 thinks he wants CS, but still leaving open other engineering possibilities). RIT is actually one of the schools weāre gonna look at. Would be a dramatic weather change, thatās for sure.
@lovetogolf I tend to agree with Vistajay that prepping for the junior year PSAT and SAT simultaneously is the way to go. Itās nice to get a first SAT out of the way early in junior year, so thereās less time pressure if a second sitting is desired.
@Beyou2022 , your sonās initial test score sounds very promising and you seem to be well ahead of the college search game! Would be nice to get those tours done. We are goegraphically distant, so we have waited until acceptances are in and gone from there. Which means my older two have not made decisions until just before the May 1 date.
My D22 is in the camp of decent PSAT scores, but certainly nothing that would qualify for National Merit. She had a prep program but the effort was half hearted. Will she be all in for prep over the summer? Hmmmm, guess we will see, but this is not a driven kid. She did maintain her 4.0 when the first semester grades were in, so thereās that. The xc run season is over and the xc ski season has begun. She is not a hard core competitor and will not be varsity, but she enjoys the social aspect.
She has had a boyfriend for over a year, and their family announced that they are moving a few thousand miles away next summer. I would welcome the distance, but suspect this is actually going to complicate her ability to focus. Or rather, it will sharpen her ability to focus on plans to visit him, communicate with him, etc. Sigh.
D16 graduates from Princeton in May! Itās been about 6 years now since I started participating on the CC board for her class. She has had some stress-related health issues the past several months (bizarre involuntary limb movements) so we have been busy researching and getting a solution for that. Happy to announce that things are much improved going into this last semester!
Edit to say, hmmm, I think this is an old name and not sure how it popped up! I am usually GoodGrief16. Will investigate what happened!
I have been following the board but have not posted anything in a while. DS 22 is still undecided on academic interest. Grades are good but not tippy top, and PSAT score was good but a bit below the NMSF range in MA. Heās enjoying being a basketball ref this winter.
Weāve done some tours over Thanksgiving a Xmas holidays. Understandably, the schools were not in session but we thought the visits might give DS a sense of colleges outside the Boston area. (Weāve been to Harvard/MIT/Boston College for various activities and heās seen Boston University and Northeastern.) Thus, these visits to colleges outside of Boston were mostly a campus size/ neighborhood/ /architecture evaluations.
During the Thanksgiving break, we saw U of Delaware (liked it), Swarthmore (meh), Haverford (liked it) and Villanova (loved it). Over the last ten days, we saw Lafayette (liked it), Gettysburg (liked it), Washington & Lee (liked it), and U of Richmond (liked it). Personally, I liked all of these campuses. My only concerns are getting to and from places like Easton, Gettysburg and Lexington in terms of visits for breaks and holidays.
Weāll probably do a few more trips in the spring and next summer.
I just stumbled upon this topic via the āLatest Postsā category.
My S22 is a strong student, though the intense athletic schedule he maintains contributed to a slight dip in grades this past term. I had no clue he would take the PSATs this fall so he went in totally cold with roughly 5 hours of sleep under his belt. His score was serviceable, but thereās plenty of room for improvement. Heāll never be a NMF/NMSF in our state and Iām completely fine with that. If he can add 200 points when all is said and done he would be in a very good place.
When he travels for games, tournaments and camps we try to squeeze in at least one college tour. He hasnāt decided what he wants to study yet so the tours are geared more towards determining the type of school/campus he prefers.
The college search with S22 will be vastly different than it was with S18. My older son begrudgingly applied to 6 schools though he was only interested in 2. We knew heād end up at a school within a few hours of each other. With S22 weāre already looking at schools 15+ hours apart and his choice will be influenced by athletics. Itāll be an interesting ride.
Happy New Year to all! ? Wishing you all the best in this new year and new decade!
@AKFirefly Congrats on your daughter graduating from Princeton!! Hope your d resolves her health issues. For colleges seniors, applying to jobs and/or grad school, this is a very stressful time.
That sounds fun to me! I really quite enjoy college visits and wish we lived in an area where it was a matter of a simple road trip. Did your son enjoy looking? My daughter does not crave college visits, lol, but I do think itās useful to get an idea of what is out there so the student can start to comprehend the options.
Thatās what we did with the older two; visited colleges when it was convenient on a trip, and only a couple times. In the end, our olders did not apply to those colleges visited early, but it did get them starting to think. The athletic part is very exciting! You do have quite the ride ahead.
Thank you (this is me with my regular name and hoping I did not break a rule years ago when I switched to a name that did not include my state 
). My daughter is heading into finals so itās a time of significant stress but the techniques she learned seem to be helping. She commented that she has so much more energy now and did not realize how badly she felt until the issue was resolved.
That leads into a bit of early advice I will offer based on my experience with my older two: do investigate health services available at the college and the community and the relative ease of accessing the services. Both of mine had to ultimately access mental health care which can be (usually is) quite difficult. One had to have an emergency appendectomy and the other has had to access neurology, PT, and OT. Not all providers will take every insurance plan, and in the end, college health care has been a huge expense for us, even with what seemed to be adequate coverage.
Thank you for your comments. Yes, he did enjoy seeing the colleges. We did these college visits as part of a Civil War study tour during which we visited Gettysburg, Antietam, Appomattox and Manassas. The entire family (including S24) enjoyed the trip.
[quote=āGoodGrief16, post:455, topic:1969519ā]
That sounds fun to me! I really quite enjoy college visits and wish we lived in an area where it was a matter of a simple road trip. Did your son enjoy looking? My daughter does not crave college visits, lol, but I do think itās useful to get an idea of what is out there so the student can start to comprehend the options.
Hello! My 2 daughters are '21 and '22. Iāve been so focused on Dā21, because sheās first, but also my high stats, knows exactly what she wants to do and what type of school she wants kid. We toured 4 schools last spring break and Dā22 came along and was miserable and realized exactly what she doesnāt want in a school (which is helpful!). My issue in trying to plan tours this spring break is that I want to include her interests and tour at least one school just for her, but other than ānot small and not ruralā she has no real idea about major or interest area. Maybe communications, interior design. Sheās artistic, but not an art school kid at all. Finances will be a HUGE issue, so the schools she tosses out wanting to consider (for no particular reason) are not reasonable based on the NPC. She had a 4.2 after freshman year, but currently has 2 B+. PSAT was only 1050. Iām thinking sheās likely to end up mid 1200ās after prep. Sheāll probably only end up with 2-3 APs (others are all honors or Dual Enrollment), so a solid kid, but not the crazy high stat stand out her sister is. Iāve got to find some lesser known schools where she might get some $ (merit of financial aid), but still fit her desire for a decent size, not rural and great school spirit. We are in VA and she wants to stay in the South, but doesnāt want VT since āeveryoneā goes there. and VCU is not her at all. Iām not sure how to even work on our search for her. I keep ruling out schools that look interesting due to $$. I feel like between the two girls, Iām spending all my free time researching schools. This process has been SO much easier with DDā21. Just venting.
@Rue4
Be sure to check out the various 3.0-3.4 threads. They have great school suggestions for kids with more normal stats. Here is a link to the 2022 thread:
@Rue4 Why not check out JMU?
I had a great conversation with S22ās guidance counselor today. She suggested he take a practice ACT on Saturday that theyāre doing at school. And we talked about making a real college list this summer to visit in the fall and winter. We cannot do any visits in the spring because his baseball coach doesnāt allow it. Sheās going to help us earlier than she usually does with kids. Sheās amazing, and I feel very lucky. I asked her to help me reign in my son as I think heās overloading himself. She agreed, and sheās going to help me as much as she can to steer him to a slightly easier schedule.
It was supposed to just be S21ās junior conference, but that was short because he wants to join the military right after HS. So we had some time for S22.