So my daughter is in ninth grade. She hopes to someday attend MIT. Last year she received a perfect score on the ACT (in eighth grade at 13). She is highly motivated, gets straight As, does a varsity sport, and lots of clubs. I only include this because it is likely she will be a candidate for MIT or an Ivy League school when it comes time to apply.
The thing is her grade will be four years old when she applies to colleges. Would you advise her to also take the SAT or even the ACT again? She didn’t score a perfect 36 on the math because she hadn’t yet taken precalculus. It is likely she’ll do very well on the SAT but idk if she can get another perfect score
How do you think colleges might see this? Honestly looking for opinion and please don’t spam me. I know it’s weird.
I think you need to request ACT to keep the score for your daughter. Your daughter may use this score to apply summer camps hosted by MIT, or other Ivy leagues, so they will have your daughter’s data in their system.
She will most likely retake the tests. In fact, lots of schools discard scores before HS. A perfect score at eighth grade in the context of college application will look quite unnatural; it may even suggest hard pushing parents and test obsessed students, both stereotypes to be avoided in applications, especially to schools like MIT.
Well if she already did, why bother waste time again on additional tests, she should leave it behind and focus on other things she’s more interested. Retest after a perfect score sounds more of a test obsessed student to me.
Well, if she’s going to submit SAT scores, then the question is academic (at least until she gets her SAT scores), since she does not need both. Also there really is no statistical difference between a 35 and a 36 or a 1570 and 1600, so she (and you) should not focus on a perfect score as the end-all be-all.
I know the College Board automatically purges 8th grade scores at the end of the academic year, unless they are specifically requested to be kept. I don’t know ACT’s policy, but the OP should inquire.
Anyway, for the OP, there are some colleges that require that the scores be from HS; most do not have the requirement, but you need to either check college by college, or ask daughter to bite the bullet and retake in HS if the SAT score does not satisfy her.
While I always say that the plural of anecdote is not data, I will tell you that I submitted Subject Tests (when they were still required, not recommended) from 8th grade and no college had an issue (admittedly I did not apply to MIT, but I did apply to schools of that tier.) However, I did check with the colleges in advance.
Request that ACT keep the score. Have her brush up a bit before taking the PSAT fall of 11th grade, and she will then need to take the SAT if she scores high enough for National Merit Finalist.
Do you know about Davidson’s THINK summer program? She might really enjoy that (my kid did).
We did have ACT save the test grade ( it seemed foolish not to lol). The score is good for five years. Just not sure what it looks like to colleges. We may have her take the SAT anyway as most schools don’t ask for both scores. She did not study at all for the ACT and most likely won’t for the SAT anyway- so not like it will take time from other activities. Also - national merit. But I’ve hear MIT and Ivy League schools don’t give money for that anyway ?
@intparent we are actually looking at the Think program for this summer. She has been to Duke Tip the past few summers and though it was fun to be with other smart kids, she didn’t feel it was academic enough
Top colleges don’t give much money, but some give a couple thousand dollars. And it doesn’t hurt to have it – it can open up options if you have an unexpected downturn financially or something.
THINK Is more academic than TIP or CTY – she will be challenged if she goes. My kid LOVED being with other really bright kids for the two summers she attended. She is still good friends with some kids she met there several years later. She also kept running into them at accepted student visits at colleges, too!
My son kept his middle school SAT and SAT II scores. He didn’t have a perfect SAT score, but did have a perfect SAT math score as well as a perfect SAT II Physics score (almost perfect SAT II Math II score, but retook that in HS to get an 800). He retook the SAT once in HS and obviously got an 800 again, but bumped up his CR and writing, as well.
He used the middle school SAT Physics test score for college applications, and no college/university had a problem with it except Caltech, who at the time, made him retake the Physics subject test in January of senior year (what a waste of money) even though my son was doing graduate level physics work by that time. (FYI, my son graduated from MIT and was admitted to Caltech)
Definitely save the scores, and when it gets closer to the time she’s applying (junior year), you can ask colleges if they’ll want her to retake.
@sbjdorlo
Thank you. Your son sounds incredibly smart. Is it okay if I ask what he does for a living now? My daughter is thinking about a career in engineering. Sometimes she says she wants to be a mathematician. All the math majors at MIT seem to want to be actuaries though
I’d certainly take the steps to preserve that perfect 8th grade ACT, as you have already done. I also wouldn’t worry one way or the other right now about future testing, other than planning to have the necessary scores to submit to MIT and the rest of her college list in three years. Any additional testing is likely to result in high scores, perfect or not, and she’s already demonstrated what she is capable of, test-wise. A kid with a perfect ACT in 8th grade is likely to have other experiences and accomplishments by application time that will make her very interesting to colleges. Any additional testing will be required confirmation of the rest of her application, but not a big part of it otherwise.
@Jprothn, my son is a data scientist. He may go back to school to get a PhD in either stats or machine learning. His wife’s an engineer.
I didn’t know any math majors at MIT that wanted to be actuaries (but I didn’t know all that many kids, ha-ha). Most are either going to grad school, working on Wall Street or working in big data/AI (the ones that were my son’s friends) at companies like Microsoft, Google, etc.
I work as a college consultant, and the students of mine who are currently attending MIT as math/CS majors are focused on CS, research, or grad school.
You’re daughter’s got plenty of time! And the beauty of some colleges like MIT is that students don’t need to choose a major until end of sophomore year.
Perfect test scores will not get you in to MIT or other top schools, not even those achieved in the 8th grade. Test scores are only one box to be checked off. The good news is that the intelligence and drive that achieved those test scores will probably translate into other areas. As others have noted, the OP should make sure the scores are saved, don’t focus on them, and continue to make sure his talented daughter continues to develop her interests, do well academically, and develop as a person.
I am an engineer and currently teach college level high school engineering courses. Best piece of advice—after seeing many students with 12 APs, perfect GPAs, and perfect test scores get rejected from many top schools—find a passion a develop that passion. Top tier schools could fill their entire freshman classes each year with 4.0s and 36’s and 1600’s. Schools want people who will enrich the school. A passionate student with lower grades and scores who has developed their passion is a better candidate than a perfect test score.
Actually, no, top tier schools could not fill their entire freshman classes each year with students with 36’s (composite scores) and 1600’s. There are a lot of places in the classes of the top tier colleges, each student can only occupy one of them, and there are just not that many students with 36’s or 1600’s (and certainly not with both). It is unlikely that any single top school (aside from Caltech and Olin) could fill their entire class with students with 1600’s. College Board used to list the number of students nationally who had scored at each total level on some test within a year. The latest year’s data that I could find showed 583 students with a 2400 (old version of the SAT). Even if you bump this up to reflect the number of students with 800/800/7xx with the 7xx on writing, and also bump it up to reflect the number of students who superscored 1600, and bump it up again with the 36-scorers on the ACT (not already represented), I don’t think you would have quite enough to equal the number of Harvard admits, let alone to fill the entering classes of all of the top schools. (Probably there is some overlap of people among the 36-scorers and the 1600-scorers.)
That being said, it is good advice that–generally speaking–“perfect” scores will not get a student into a top school. In my opinion, MIT remains somewhat more exaggeratedly anti-800 than most of the other top schools, though less so than in the past.
Perfect GPA’s are quite common, and yes, all of the top schools could fill their entire classes with valedictorians each year, if they wanted to. They don’t.
A student who has developed a passion is definitely a more likely admit than someone who is “just” a top scorer. I remain unconvinced that a student who has developed a passion is necessarily a “better” candidate.
I think it is good for the OP’s daughter to explore broadly, and try to identify where her specific interests lie.
Also, while it is true that the top schools do not sponsor NMS scholarships institutionally, the NMS corporation nationally gives about 8,000 scholarships annually. They may be smallish ($2500 a few years ago), but if the family is full pay, this amount of money will be welcome, and the OP’s daughter has reasonable prospects for winning one.
This requires taking the PSAT in the junior year. Your school system should offer it.
My kid LOVED being with other really bright kids for the two summers she attended. She is still good friends with some kids she met there several years later. She also kept running into them at accepted student visits at colleges, too!