Was just on a college panel at my kid’s HS. UMass said they will be test optional for the next 2 years. Northeastern said they will be TO for 2022. UVM and Clemson said they haven’t made a decision yet. NE stressed that if it doesn’t HELP your app, don’t send your score in. He said he was surprised by how many people sent in low scores which really hurt their apps. Other schools said that if the scores were low, they just didn’t look at them, but NE clearly looked at them if you sent them. Interesting how different schools approach TO and just makes it even more confusing for our kids.
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We are in North Carolina where all high school juniors are required to take the ACT whether they are college bound or not. It’s one of the metrics the state uses to judge school success. We haven’t had in person classes since last March, but have been told the kids will have the ACT Feb 23rd. It will be the first time my dd22 will have been inside the school in almost a year. She has decided to concentrate on the ACT and to skip the SAT. I see a lot of talk on CC about the SAT. Do colleges or students regard the SAT more highly than the ACT??
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My impression is that colleges treat ACT and SAT as equals.
Colleges are fine with either but often students are suited for one more than the other. If you are happy with the ACT score then be done. Otherwise could do a practice SAT test and see how that goes (use concordance table to see which score is “better”).
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That’s my understanding as well, that colleges are fine with either ACT or SAT. Like your school is with ACT, @Sweetgum, ours is with SAT - PSATs are required for Juniors and Sophomores and then the SAT is administered at school. So it’s very convenient for the kids to choose the SAT over the ACT, although I think the ACT would be better suited to my kid. Aw well.
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@Sweetgum Colleges treat them equally. In fact, for national merit (even though it’s a College Board PSAT), if you meet the criteria, you can use the ACT as a qualifying exam in the process and not just the SAT.
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@MommaLue, I did not know that about National Merit. I thought only the PSAT counted for that. Worth checking into I guess.
@Sweetgum Yes, the PSAT is the first filter. If you are top 1%, then you get selected as semi-finalist. Then you apply. It’s like college. And then you submit your SAT score. I can’t recall but I remember my son said he had to get his best ACT score by a certain time to submit in time. He got 36 but then we live in CA and I think he said he missed the cut off by 2 questions. He ended up being commended scholar but missed the semi finalist cut.
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I think @MommaLue was referring to confirming scores. In order to become a national merit semifinalist, you do need qualify based on the PSAT (actually this year due to covid they can qualify with an SAT score as well). And then in normal years they need what is called a confirming score - that can be an SAT or an ACT score. (last year they waived confirming scores due to covid).
Just fyi, each state has a different cut off score to qualify. We tend to find out in april how the curve is that year generally but probably won’t this year due to the fact kids can submit SAT scores through the June test date.
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@smiles2122 Yes!! I misspoke. I meant confirming. My apologies for the confusion!
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I am just laughing because reading our explanations is reminding me how confusing the process is the first time you go through it! 
Just catching up.
My daughter took the SAT Spanish subject test in December to meet a specific requirement. It would have been very inconvenient is she had not been able to this way. I guess you could say we were very lucky!
Class selections will open in the next couple of weeks. My kid is so excited to be able to pick Ethnic Literature to satisfy her English credit next year, a brand new class that she fought for! She is determined to have the best Senior year possible by picking only classes that really interest her. Her plan right now is Wind Ensemble 1, Marching Band P.E. (hoping for something that resembles marching band), AP Art History, AP Psychology, AP Government, Ethnic Literature. That means she is planning on taking math during the summer though.
Her school does not officially rank, although they still have a valedictorian and a salutatorian, but some of her smart friends figured a way to see their rank in Canvas. She is just top 11% of her class of 467, which is kind of an awkward spot to be, nor here nor there, but I guess it doesn’t really matter since her school doesn’t rank?
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@InfoQuestMom , she sounds delightful! That does sound like an interesting senior year.
Our neighborhood school (where D22 attended until abruptly changing to homeschool this year. She still takes a single class there, but it has been remote) announced they will be opening up classes for selection for next year. It’s a dilemma, as she has taken a liking to the homeschool life, but always intended to go back. Need to figure out what she will do. Ugh, this year is so…
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Have you seen your School Report from your school? That will tell you how they classify the students (if they classify them). AOs tend to look at GPAs/transcripts in the context of the school report.
Just a few follow-ups after catching up on a few days of posts.
Yes, the ACT can be used as a confirming score, but the confirming score requirement was waived this year and it wouldn’t surprise me if it is next year also. And the SAT method for Alternate Entry to the NMS competition has always been available, it’s just never been as well known. Frankly, it’s an easier way to qualify - you can test multiple times and up to 7 months later. You just have to somehow miss the regular PSAT test date.
If you want to get a feel for the supplemental questions/essays required by a college on the Common App, you can create an account today and check. All of the data you enter will carry over when this year’s app is closed and next year’s is opened. My D’s app is mostly complete other than all the supplemental questions/essays. I suspect very few schools change the count/questions each year.
MIT is the only school on my D’s list not on the Common App and they list their questions without having to create an application. Just her 8 top schools have 25 questions/essays totaling 7,400 words. Add in the other 4 she’s thinking about and it’s 39 for 11,000 words.
Confirmation of the main CA essay prompt should be soon - it’s already a couple of weeks later then it’s been the last few years. Hopefully that’s not a sign that it’s changing for the first time in 5+years.
I’ll second the recommendation to put your kids as additional users on credit cards. Mine have been on since about age 13, with the cards locked away in a safe. My oldest got her first solo card last summer and it said her FICO was 805 when she applied, currently over 780 now that she’s using it. Having 8 years of credit history on four different cards surely helped.
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I had no idea the common app info would roll into next year. That’s a great idea to get started now! Thanks for the tip.
@Sweetgum My S21 took the ACT and he would have been happy not testing again. But he did the SAT as a prep for the PSAT in hopes of National Merit. He’s done testing as far as been happy with his scores, but Michigan requires Juniors to take the SAT in April, so he’ll do that. But I don’t think either matter for colleges. He just found he more easily did better on the ACT than the SAT.
S21 came home with his scheduling form yesterday. I wish we had more interesting classes, like Ethnic Literature. We have very boring English classes and not much choice at all.
I will say that the trick when there are great classes available is finding space in the schedule to take them. In the effort to take the most rigorous classes available, many kids who are shooting high have to take APs ('rigor") and can’t take a more interesting electives in academic areas. My daughter didn’t get any of the interesting classes because she needed to fill up with APs her junior and senior year. My son did his fourth year of science through an online school, which frees up a slot for him to do constitutional law and economics. I hate this part of the AP thing. I would not be sad if they disappeared.
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Our experience was different on the credit card thing. My daughter was an authorized user for several years, but still got rejected when she applied for her first solo card. She also had a solid bank account and a summer job that paid more hourly than I had ever made (she’s an engineer and I am not!) She ended up being approved for Discover, which seems to be an easy in for students. She does not have any student loans, so I wonder if that is a factor?
That’s another thing that varies greatly from school to school. My D’s HS restricted the # of AP courses a student could take (0 freshman year, 1 soph, 2-3 junior year, 2-3 senior year). My D had to have special permission to double up on AP science senior year and students need a B+ (which was a 91% and a teacher recommendation to move on to AP level) so lots of hoops to jump. As a result, it left at least one open period/semester to take an elective. If you got through FL early, then 2 free periods for electives.
Many students on CC who come from schools with this model complain that they aren’t going to have enough APs to be competitive but students are assessed in the context of their school.
IMO, kids can only do what they can do within their HS constraints. Just like my kid wasn’t penalized for taking fewer AP courses, another won’t be punished for taking fewer APs if that’s what it takes to show rigor in their school.
PS. We had the same credit card experience. Our D was on our card from the time she was 16, had a health amount in the bank, but the credit card company wanted a more steady paycheck. (No student loans on our end so not a factor for us). It wasn’t until my D’s co-op started that she qualified for a credit card on her own.