<p>Hi all, my son finally reached the top of the hill. He scored, 2190, 2230, and 2370 on the Nov 2 test! The family is very proud of him. Hey CC'ers do not give up, especially those last 150-200 points. He didn't study a lick before these 3 tests. I knew he was capable of this, lady luck has to be on your side for one single day! He studied the Blue Book back when he was in middle school and received a 1970 (680 CR, 600 Math, and 690 Writing 9 essay) as part of John Hopkins Talented Youth Program. The rest was natural progression, the key for him was working through tests in the Blue Book back in middle school. Parents start early when your child has the time to spend with the Blue Book. What makes me proudest is that no one can say he was accepted into University X or Y school because of his URM status (hook). This was always my goal. </p>
<p>Thanks to all the CC'ers for all the valuable information and tips that I have passed on to him.</p>
<p>Let’s face it: at the most selective schools, at least 70% of kids with 2300+ on the SATs are rejected. Any hook–URM status, legacy, development admit, recruited athlete–helps you make the cut amongst a field of equally qualified candidates. So someone who says that his hook helped him is not necessarily some kind of flaming racist who is claiming that the hook is the sole reason he got in. </p>
<p>Congratulations to your son, and good luck in the admissions process. I hope he gets into a great school and he loves and you can afford. :)</p>
<p>Considering the many reasons someone is or isn’t accepted into college, basing acceptance on one of them doesn’t make sense to me. Better to assume that if a student is accepted, he or she is qualified.</p>
<p>No matter what anyone says, nothing changes the fact that your son knows this is an outstanding score and that he earned it. You do too. When he gets accepted to college, he knows he is qualified to do the work ahead of him. Congratulations and best wishes to him… and you.</p>
<p>Congratulations to your son, but I think the advice you’re giving isn’t very good. There are tons of kids posting scores on here that didn’t get any better or went down with repeated testing, so it’s wrong to give people the idea that they don’t have to study and the scores will just go up by “natural progression”. And how did the studying in middle school help with the third high school SAT more than the first two? That doesn’t make any sense either. </p>
<p>I think all you’ve really shown here is that there is a lot more variability in these tests than the college board would like to admit. It’s certainly clear that at the high end of scores, just a few careless mistakes can make a big difference, and that these tests really are not well-suited to evaluating the top students.</p>
<p>OP’s post is so bizarre. All excited because the kid increased his score over three tests without studying. So is OP is recommending studying for the SAT’s in middle school and then never preparing again, just relying luck and “natural progression”? If OP thought her son’s SAT score was so critical, why didn’t OP insist on preparation? And I hate to burst OP’s bubble, but just because the son has an almost perfect SAT still doesn’t mean his URM status won’t be a factor in admissions decisions, nor will it stop anyone from thinking it is. Most important, who cares what anyone thinks about the basis for your child’s acceptance? We all have better things to do than worry about what others might be whispering.</p>
<p>Looking over OP’s posting history, I have to wonder how “he didn’t study a lick before those tests” squares with this post:
<p>It’s all a matter of what someone’s priorities happen to be and the willingness of their kid. Clearly the OP had A) a specific target she planned to propel son toward and B) I’m assuming a college that “required” a certain level of score to be considered and C) I kid that was willing to go to those lengths for a parent. I would have had no such luck with my kids, but more power to the OP! It’s odd to me also, but only because it’s not my reality and not my goals and unless being a Scandinavian Lutheran is suddenly an under represented minority I never had to be concerned their acceptance of rejection would be predicated on their ancestry.</p>
<ol>
<li>What is the “blue book”? (sorry for the silly question)?</li>
<li>What SAT pre courses would you recommend?</li>
<li>What other material would you recommend for SAT prep?</li>
</ol>
<p>"My son consistently would miss 5-8 questions and I got tired of it. I jumped in and helped him analyze those 50% questions and he very rarely makes the wrong choice. "</p>
<p>How did you do this ???</p>
<p>My D. consistently makes mistakes in CR section. I don’t know what to do :((((</p>
<p>Blue book is the book made by the college board that has 10 full length practice SATs that have been administered in varying iterations in the past (It is blue in color). It’s cheaper to order on Amazon than from the college board. All the details are in the links above.</p>
<p>In link above, there are also threads made by people on how to improve their CR score. DD did a ton of CR sections in the BB (blue book).</p>
<p>I think what the OP is thinking is that her son’s high score means that if he’s admitted then he wasn’t accepted with a low score because he is a URM.</p>
<p>But, everyone else is right. When you have thousands of kids applying with perfect/near-perfect scores, being a male URM will be a big nudge…so he will likely get in based on URM status.</p>
<p>I would not want to mention SAT’s at all to my kids in middle school. We avoided the stress of thinking about college admissions as long as we possibly could, and they all did fine, meaning, they ended up where they could thrive. Test scores are a small part of admissions really (that is, if you make the cutoff for whatever school), and there are wonderful test optional schools out there too.</p>
<p>To be frank…that 2190 SAT score was excellent. The 2200 plus was even better. </p>
<p>I’m not sure what advice you are giving others, however. Your son had excellent SAT scores to begin with. </p>
<p>I’ll be frank here…I seriously doubt studying using the Blue Book in Middle School had ANYTHING to do with his high school SAT scores. He sounds like a bright kid who is taking a very strong course load…and doing well. </p>