<p>My kid is in the 7th grade and she recently took the SAT twice. I understand that her scores will be removed unless she asks to preserve her scores permanently. We don't know if her scores will help her in her college application or anything. Should she preserve her scores? If so, which one or should she preserve both? Any advice will be very much appreciated.
Her November 2010 scores are: 610 CR, 700 M, 600 W - Total 1910
Her December 2010 scores are: 650 CR, 690 M, 590 W - Total 1930</p>
<p>^There’s no need to preserve those scores. I guarantee you she’ll have much higher scores as a junior or senior. Both my kids scored at least 100 points higher in each section.</p>
<p>I don’t see how preserving the scores would help for college apps. They won’t care about 5yo scores. The scores will come in handy for camps and such.</p>
<p>Why did she take them as a seventh-grader a month apart?</p>
<p>Was it through the Duke TIP program? My S did took the SAT (once) in 7th grade thru TIP. When he took it in h.s. his score went up 280 pts. (old SAT, no writing).</p>
<p>I wouldn’t bother preserving the 7th grade scores except maybe a printout to keep in a scrapbook/yearbook.</p>
<p>Agree that there is no reason to preserve 7th grade scores. I can’t see any way that they could help. If later scores are better (as they should be), then you will want colleges to use the later scores. And if the later scores are NOT better, I doubt that colleges will view the earlier scores as making up for the later scores–colleges would wonder, I htink, what happened to your kid since 7th grade.</p>
<p>I’m trying to process why you would ask your seventh grader to take the SAT twice in the span of a month.</p>
<p>There can only be one reason for taking the SAT twice as far as I can see – the OP’s D qualified for SET in Math and was trying to do so in CR as well. SET is the Study for Exceptional Talent and kids who score 700 on either CR or Math by age 13 qualify. [The</a> Study of Exceptional Talent (SET)](<a href=“http://cty.jhu.edu/set/index.html]The”>http://cty.jhu.edu/set/index.html)</p>
<p>Call me cynical, but Ivy chancing can’t be far behind.</p>
<p>OTOH, an 8th grader who takes an SAT-II or AP exam SHOULD try to get those scores preserved. We know kids who took Math Level II and AP French who found out later that the scores weren’t saved and had to repeat the process.</p>
<p>We know a lot of parents who had their kids do multiple SAT sittings in MS. Folks were genuinely shocked when after being asked, I told one parent that yes, S1 had never taken the SAT til March of junior year. We never felt the need for SET, CTY, etc.</p>
<p>Counting Down: That explanation made me grateful that I live in the middle of nowhere where our middle schoolers have fun on the weekends.</p>
<p>(Caveat: Our son did take the ACT once in seventh grade, but it was to qualify for a summer gifted program–and it certainly didn’t require those kind of scores.)</p>
<p>OWM, we live in the hub of that kind of premature parental worry about scores and college acceptances. Some of the big horror story books on admissions stress come straight from our area. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>My niece and nephew both took the SAT for Duke TIP programs, too, but they are in a crummy school system elsewhere in the country and need that kind of experience. My kids were already in great public GT programs and preferred doing other cool stuff during the summer, for far less money than CTY charges.</p>
<p>Please don’t preserve these scores. There is no need and no point. Her college apps will be determined by the scores on the SAT as a junior / senior.</p>
<p>And if you are doing so for a summer program (such as CTY), please don’t make her take these tests more than is absolutely necessary. There should be no need for twice in a month unless there was a highly unusual circumstance (fell sick in the middle of the first, that type of thing).</p>
<p>Do yourself a favor and once she’s in the summer program, dump the scores. Really. There is no need whatsoever to focus on them.</p>
<p>Both my kids did ACTs in 7th grade for Duke & SATs in 8th grade for CTY. Don’t preserve the scores. A few more years of reading and math instruction plus maturity means that if they did that well in MS, they’ll do better when they’re “supposed” to take the test. Of all the kids I know who did middle school talent searches, I don’t know a single one who went down.</p>
<p>Odds are that a kid who gets 1900+ as a 7th grade will be mortified by those scores by the time she’s a senior. :)</p>
<p>She’ll be doing chance-me threads in which she’ll ask if a 780 on some portion of the SAT or SAT II is good enough to submit to an Ivy :-)</p>
<p>Thanks for all the advice! She took SAT because she wanted to qualify for the summer programs at CTY etc. We registered her for the test twice in case she might mess up the first one. That’s the only reason. As she is only 12, we couldn’t do the registration online. We had to send in her application by mail which took a long time. That’s why we had made the registration one after the other long before she took the first test.</p>
<p>I hope your daughter is able to participate in CTY - our D did four years (5 courses) and really enjoyed it. It’s a great experience for the kids. Her scores will definitely go up with future testing; while they are scores a lot of high schoolers would love to have, I am confident your daughter’s will improve.</p>
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<p>My S went to CTY for 4 years, and adored every minute. You are making a big mistake if you think that CTY is not enormous fun for kids, and if you think that kids who go do not have fun on the weekends and live “normal” lives. Do you think that they spend the weekends prepping for the SAT? My kid spent the weekends having fun, just like yours. He just happened to be very smart. It’s actually rather insulting to those of us who have CTY kids to make such a comment.</p>
<p>While there are some parents–misguided, IMHO–who do indeed have their kids prep for the SAT in order to get into CTY, I don’t think most kids do. (Frankly, all you have to do is examine the list of kids who score above 700 in Math to figure out what population is into the drill and prep culture…)</p>
<p>FWIW, there’s plenty of kids who score over 700 without any prepping. Just like there’s plenty of kids who get great SAT scores without taking expensive prep courses. Some kids just test well.</p>
<p>My older son did CTY for three years and loved it. He’d hated every traditional camp he’d ever been to. He didn’t prep at all for the SAT beyond doing the 20 minute practice test they send you when you sign up. In fact it really wasn’t until his scores came back that I really understood why he’d never found any one he could really connect with in middle school. We all knew he was very smart, but I hadn’t quite realized how far over on the right hand side of the bell curve he was. </p>
<p>I do worry about parents who are worrying about college and SAT scores in middle school.</p>
<p>S1 took the SAT in 7th grade to qualify for CTY, and again in 8th grade so that he could improve his chances of getting into a course he wanted to take. Course assignment preference is by SAT score. The OPs daughter’s scores are substantially higher than needed to qualify for CTY in 7th grade. </p>
<p>I agree with Consolation’s comments about CTY. S1’s two summers there were, by far, the best educational and social experiences of his life.</p>
<p>S2 is now in 7th grade, and I can’t imagine having him take the SAT or go to CTY. It’s not for everyone, but for the right kids it is wonderful.</p>
<p>Mine both did CTD (the Midwestern version of CTY) and enjoyed it very much. No regrets.</p>