@RadM, that’s going to be our approach too. I would like him to prep over the summer and take the test in August/fall when he can focus on it, and then have it out of the way when school and sports get rolling. He really likes to compartmentalize things; when he has a lot going on at once, he’s miserable.
100% agreement with @2Devils . My S21 prepped for the ACT (he was more comfortable with this than SAT after we had him try both) in the summer after his sophomore year. He had wanted to take his ACT junior year early because he had a heavy AP load junior year and he just wanted it out of the way so that he could focus on college end of junior year. For us, this worked out because this crazy thing called the pandemic hit just as juniors were looking to get their first try at ACT/SAT while my son was set with his score. So you’ll have to determine what the overall plan is for your sophomore.
Some kids do better and would feel better to prepare later than summer before their junior year. Some may prefer before the start of junior year. Regarding studying, that would depend on your child’s learning style. My son tried to do some group studies with his pals, but it wasn’t productive. He ended up just practicing on his own since we knew classroom style practice would’ve been the death of him.
In terms of PSAT, I think it differs. My D24’s school allowed all sophomores to take the PSAT this year. My daughter went in cold turkey. Just to get her feet wet. I think if your kid wants to go after National Merit, etc., you’ll want the prep summer after soph yr because junior year PSAT is when things count for National Merit.
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@Marzipane Your son sounds like mine and when there are too many things going on I can see he gets stressed more easily. So better to pace ourselves and spread things. He also plays Varsity sports during spring so very busy at that time so this timing works.
@RadM My son just took the PSAT in Oct without any prep. We will see how he did next month when the score comes out.
In terms of schedule, I was also thinking it would be nice to finish testing by Junior year with Aug testing. However, my sister-in-law tells me that taking SAT after all the seniors are done will net you a higher score. I don’t know if it’s true but it kind of makes sense. If you take SAT after the college apps are done, then you only have juniors and sophomores taking the test.
Maybe we will find something for him during the summer.
Scores not based on how others score the day you take the test/who you take it with. There is a complex standardization process.
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Thanks for the info. When I looked it up, they say there is a predetermined raw number-to-score conversion table for each test based on the difficulty of the given test. But there seems to be a rumor that Oct/Nov tests are harder.
@i_am_taxed Interesting have not heard that before. Will keep that in mind when we plan. Since they super score in most universities we may still do one test in August/OCT and depending on where score ends up we will can decide if we need another at a later time.
@RadM I did some more research and it doesn’t seem to be true. As best I can see, the difficulties are spread out.
some dates have difficult math while English is easier. I don’t see an obvious pattern. That is probably intentional.
I’m just trying to catch up with the college admission stuff… as many of stated before, it feels so much more competitive than it used to be.
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Thanks @i_am_taxed Yeah it makes sense that all tests have equal difficulty.
Quick questions for other parents who already went through the process.
After reading through kids saying how difficult and time-consuming writing application is, I reviewed the common app and UC app.
It seems like a big chunk of the app is just data entry, personal info, grade info, etc. Then the common app asks you to write 1 essay on several topics which doesn’t change much over the years. For UC, you have to write more essays but shorter ones. Also, the prompt doesn’t change every year.
And there are tons of places online where you can get help on essay proofreading and help.
Some schools have supplemental essay questions that are essentially asking “why us”?
Am I misunderstanding that most of these can be preplanned and prepped early so that your kid can focus on doing what goes into the application? keeping up with grades, studing for SAT and doing EC?
Say end of 10th grade, pick a couple of topics for the essay, start collecting ideas… you have 1.5 years to get the essay done.
After hearing about my nephew writing essays until the last min, I assumed it was tons of work. but it doesn’t seem that bad with proper planning.
I feel like I’m missing something big.
My S21 applied to 23 schools since we could not travel and due to general Covid uncertainty (but a chunk was UC). The supplemental essays were really time consuming. My D24 would not have been willing to complete all of them. There were some overlapping topics where he could rehash but all of the why this school essays required individual research and some schools had more unique questions.
He started immediately after school got out in his summer before senior year. He and a lot of other kids find that doing the UC prompts first was better then starting with his CA essay. One of the 4 UC prompts became his main essay topic. UC has a different way of scoring that needs a great deal of context. Personally, I think it might be somewhat hard to figure out a year earlier what you uniquely offer to the school and how it’s a match, but I’m sure it is possible. Mostly I would be worried about burning the kid out on the process before you get to the season. On the other hand, doing essays at the last minute is no bueno.
I recommend the book written by the college essay guy and he does workshops in early summer too. Good if you need to brainstorm ideas and also helps with structuring the essay.
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My D applied to 8 schools and had to write 19 unique essays, albeit of varying lengths. She didn’t feel that she could re-use any.
Even when we thought she was done, she’d suddenly had honors college and merit scholarship essays to write that came later.
She started working on essays spring of junior year and then got on the supplements as soon as the common app opened. She was still writing supplemental essays well into the Fall.
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That’s good point. We shotgunned admissions so there was no energy left for scholarship essays. It was pretty taxing.
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@NateandAllisMom @momofboiler1
Thanks for the info. It sounds like it’s the supplemental essays that are time-consuming.
The main essay is something that can be prefetched, maybe after junior year.
It’s fine to think about ideas and great to jot them down. Ideally, I would have them write the Common App essay during the summer between junior and senior year, and as many supplements as they can finish before school gets going. Some kids may find it easier to go the other way, starting with the easiest supplements first.
Naturally, none of my older kids had any essays finished over the summer. There was some tossing around of ideas in August, but the bulk of the work got done in the last week of Oct. Or maybe even on the day of the deadline, as the case may be. Some are more motivated by deadlines. It was stressful. To mix metaphors, you can lead a horse to water, but hindsight is 20/20.
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Is anyone familiar with dual enrollment classes?
My son’s school offers a program (we are in NorCal) where you can receive college credit while taking classes at the high school because the teacher is certified by the colleges (some are community colleges in CA and some are out of state colleges).
For example, when taking AP Bio, you can also get college credit (BIO 101 and BIO111) from a university that can transfer the credit to UC.
The official high school transcript will have a note that it is a dual enrollment class and we are supposed to submit a transcript from the college during the application process.
Can it be used to show the rigor of the class? would that add any benefit during the application process when you have a bunch of classes in college transcript?
Since you are getting college credit, there is also no need to take the AP test. However, I wonder if this would be negative during the admission process.
You’re wrong and you’re right. If a student is applying a more than just a few schools, it can be a bit of a load of work, but it can be easily managed with proper planning.
The catch here is of course we’re talking about teenagers and teens aren’t always the most capable pre-planners. Not to mention that because the students themselves have never been through this process, they have no idea they should start planning early unless someone else tells them. At many public schools, counselors don’t even start talking to students about colleges planning until senior year. Combine that with parents who don’t know enough about the overall process to know that pre-planning can help, so the parents don’t help the students get a head start on the planning part.
A lot of families kick the can down the road, assuming they can wait until this date, then a later date, until it’s August of senior year, school is starting, sports band and theater practice is starting, and all of a sudden there is a time crunch that makes applications more hectic.
The fact you’re thinking about this so early is going to give you a much different view of the process than families that wait till much later.
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We are in So. Cal. and have what’s considered a very good community college, quite large. It’s general knowledge that the vast majority of DE classes are much, much easier than AP, and in many cases easier than honors at a good high school. I’m not an expert but in terms of rigor, AP > DE, while DE v non-AP is still showing “college level” performance and some evidence of rigor. DEs are helpful to get unit credit though at UCs. UCs probably give some weight to DE. You might check out “ask Ms. Sun” website on this and other topics since you mentioned you were looking at UCs. For highly selective privates I’m not sure how much DE matters? I’d be curious to know what out of state AOs think of CC classes.
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Talk to tour child’s guidance counselor. At my D’s HS AP was considered more rigorous but it depends on the school.
I will say though it was much easier getting college credit with AP classes than DC. The AP courses were automatically approved but the DC classes required syllabi and took six weeks of review.
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@EconPop Thank you for your insight.
I guess the question is how much help do we provide as parents. I have 2 very different kids, S24 is carefree, I don’t know what I want to do, I don’t care which college I go to, type of person. D26 is already planning out her career after graduate school. sigh.
If I make a list of colleges that S24 has a chance at, start a conversation on essay ideas, track EC lists, am I doing too much?
Ideally, I want S24 to take charge and drive the process… but I have a feeling I’m asking too much at the moment.
How much did you get involved with the overall admission process?