<p>Unless your kid is going to apply to college early as a ninth grader, I can’t find a reason to keep those scores. They aren’t so outstanding that you would not want to take the test again later in high school.</p>
<p>Consolation, I hope you realize that wasn’t me you were quoting! :)</p>
<p>I have no problem with CTY – as I mentioned, I have a niece and nephew who tested for it (and both qualified with scores ranging from the upper 400s to mid-500s). If my brother and former SIL could ever agree on anything, I’d help send my nephew to TIP. He REALLY needs to find his people before he finds trouble. ;)</p>
<p>We were in a school system that offered radical subject acceleration and selective admit GT programs starting in 4th grade. It was a good social fit, too. Both of my kids were lucky enough to attend those, and when we asked them if they wanted to test for CTY, and they said no thanks. I wasn’t going to push it. </p>
<p>By the time summer rolled around, they were ready for doing their own things. S1 used the summers to teach himself programming languages (he did consider CTY for this, but he was too young for the placement he needed), and S2, my hands-on guy, went out and did historical and environmental stuff on the Chesapeake. Our state education dept. offered some very nice one-week sleep-away programs for the price of day camp. Over three summers, S2 did two weeks a summer where he spent a week on a 17th century replica of a ship, a week canoeing, doing Civil War studies, working in the muck on oyster habitat reclamation, planting marsh grasses, etc. (not all at the same camp) Unfortunately the program has pretty much dried up due to budget cuts.</p>
<p>HKmom, I didn’t realize you still had to submit the registration by mail! Now that you mentioned it, I remember other friends saying they had to mail in the forms, but I figured CB had updated that part of the process in the past six/seven years since my kids were that age.</p>
<p>At the same time, there are groups here who offer weekend language schools for their kids that also serve as test prep for the various magnet programs, CTY testing, etc. For parents whose experience was that test scores were the ticket up and out, these programs are very popular. It definitely ratchets up the stress levels all around, however.</p>
<p>I have often envied our friends who live in less frenetic parts of the country because their kids weren’t expected to be engaged in the academic arms race. They envied us because our schools offered the guys had incredible opportunities that their children would have soaked up like sponges.</p>
<p>Back on topic – no, you don’t need to save the scores!</p>
<p>Since the answers are universally “no”, I guess my question is pretty stupid in the first place 
Thanks all for your advice.</p>
<p>Not a stupid question – as I mentioned upthread, there are a couple of circumstances where you may want to make sure certain scores are saved.</p>
<p>See if you can get a copy of the score report on paper from the College Board. Some of the talent searches do not send the original score report to you. It can be very useful later. For example, my D went to the Davidson Institute’s THINK program last summer. They needed the score report for her SATs, and all I had was a sort of scruffy copy. As she is now in 9th grade, College Board had wiped the score. Davidson accepted a copy of the the scruffy copy (helped that she was a top finisher from one of them in the Midwest Academic Talent Search, so that was documented, too). But it would have been less stress for us if we had gotten and saved better paper copies.</p>
<p>Regarding preserving them at the College Board, I think other posters are correct that by 4 years from now (11th grade), you D will outstrip those scores and you will have no need for them to be officially on the College Board system.</p>
<p>I will confess that my son did take the SAT twice when he was a middle schooler–the first time to qualify for CTY, and the second time because his first score was just under what was needed for SET. He didn’t prep for the second test (that I can recall–he may have looked at a book)–and he did get into SET. It was kind of cool, but I don’t think it made too much difference to his later life.</p>
<p>He had lots of fun at CTY, by the way.</p>
<p>I would also add that trying to predict future ACT / SAT scores off what a 7th grader does, tempting as it may be (and boy did I engage in it!) is really an exercise in futility.</p>
<p>D1 is a HS and used her 7th grade SAT scores to apply for a great summer program offered by a local university which she did for 3 years. (She qualified for CTY but didn’t like any of the course offerings and we weren’t willing to pay $3500 for 3 weeks. The local program was $900 for 6 weeks and science/engineering focused which she didn’t find at CTY). While she did great in Math, her CR+W weren’t very good, so she jumped nearly 800 points to her final SAT. </p>
<p>S1 took then last year as a 7th grader and his goal was to beat his sister’s math score, so he did a 20 minute math exam section/night for the few weeks leading up to it and scored 60 points higher than she did at the same age. (he also got an 8 on the essay, which shocked us, as he has not shown his teachers much in Lang Arts!). He’s excited about this, as he did get state honors along with only 4 other kids in the school who he considers ‘smart’. It was a nice boost to his ego, as he’s lived in his sister’s academic shadow for many years.</p>
<p>I can still remember the look on my older son’s face when I asked if he’d like to skip his soccer game on Saturday to go take the SAT (the Duke test) as a 7th grader. It was priceless.</p>
<p>Counting Down: yes, I knew that wasn’t you. Sorry if I inadvertently gave the wrong impression by quoting. Re acceleration and all that: my S chose to study philosophy at CTY, which wasn’t part of the MS/HS curriculum at all. (It sounds as if your kids had some great experiences, in school and out.)</p>
<p>IJustDrive: yes, there certainly are kids who score over 700 without prep. But if you look at the list of names of kids who score over 700 in math, you will see that the vast majority of them are Asian. I not not think that Asians have more innate talent for math than any other group. I think it is likely that systematic prep of some kind is behind this. (That prep may well take the form of “enrichment” or extra drill in the manner of Kumon from an early age, of course.) It is, after all, part of the culture of many Asian countries. The verbal scores over 700, tellingly, are not only less dominated by any particular group, but many fewer in number.</p>
<p>My kid has a “german” last name (and heritage, although she is at least 4 generations removed from immigration to the US) and did no prep (she took one practice test just to check out the format, that is it). And scored a 740 in the CR section in middle school. But you are correct, when I looked over the list of names of top 3 scorers for all the test categories in the Midwest Academic Talent search, I think about 75% were Asian or Indian. Her math score about about 100 points lower, but I think that had more to do with lack of exposure to the concepts (she often complained about the reptition and slow pace of her middle school math classes, she definitely could have moved through the material much more quickly than the pace of the class).</p>
<p>Consolation,
S2 took IB Philosophy last year as an elective (since he already has his six diploma courses set in stone) and absolutely loved it. He is taking Phil at Tufts next semester to complete his writing requirement. We were really lucky to get such great opportunities in the public schools. </p>
<p>We knew based on S1’s math placement that he’d make SET in MS, but since he wasn’t inclined to do CTY anyway, asking him to take the test felt like asking him to perform to satisfy our parental egos. It was one of those moments as a parent where I had to step back and ask “who does this benefit?” It was a good reality check for the many decision points that followed in HS and college apps.</p>
<p>i feel like you’re worrying about the sat too early…</p>
<p>i didn’t start practicing until the summer before my junior year and i did fine</p>
<p>Consolation: I was me that you quoted. And you’ll note that I said our son took the ACT as a 7th grader. It was the taking it twice in a month that seemed extreme to me for a middle schooler.</p>
<p>Our son also attended a three-week “nerd camp” (the kids’ term not mine) for gifted students the summer before his 9th and 10th grade years at a state liberal arts university and loved every minute of it. He also attended our state’s Scholars Academy before his junior year (only year it is offered) and had the time of his life.</p>
<p>I am not opposed to gifted summer enrichment at all. Just think asking your 7th grader to take the SAT/ACT twice in a month is extreme.</p>
<p>OWM, the OP said she had to register by mail for the talent search testing, and would not have the scores from the first test by the time the deadline hit for the second date. I’m glad it wasn’t testing for ego-stroking, but I wouldn’t want my kid to take it twice in a month, either.</p>
<p>Hope the OP’s D has a good time at whatever program she decides to attend!</p>
<p>I would keep the scores, just in case. Not every child goes the traditional path through 12 grades and then to college. OP’s child might want to look into college admission well before then. Keeping them does no harm.</p>
<p>As to taking them twice, I wouldn’t assume that the parent was forcing the child into anything that he/she didn’t want to do. Some kids find tests like that fun.</p>
<p>OP: Just so you know there is another point of view, my kids all took the SAT in 7th grade for talent search and SET purposes. No prep, they just took it. Kid#1 scored 800 on the math and over 700 on the verbal and yes I did preserve her scores. Fast forward 5 years and she never hit that 800 again. I think the reason for that is that she was many years accelerated in math and she was at her peak on SAT level math in 7th grade. By the time she took the SAT again in 11th and 12th grade, it had been years since she’d had a class in algebra or geometry. Needless to say, I was happy to have preserved those scores. The other kids did not do quite as well on the SAT in 7th grade, but the math scores were outstanding, so I preserved their scores as well. The other kids have not yet taken the SAT “for real” so can’t say whether their scores will improve between 7th and 11th grade. Kid#1 did improve somewhat (50 points or so) on the CR section, and the helpful SAT folks added the writing section in the meantime. Colleges all wanted the SAT with the writing section, so the option of applying to college with her 7th grade scores (which I had thought would be a possibility) turned out to be a non-starter. Same kid took the Math SAT II in 8th grade. We preserved that one also and she applied to college with that score as one of her SAT IIs.<br>
So I do think there is a place for preserving pre-high school scores.</p>
<p>I didn’t force her to take the SAT in the first place We’ve never been to US. Having heard that it’s real fun to do summer CTY, she wants to do it next year. It’s her choice and I wouldn’t force her. In fact, I am a bit worried that she might feel homesick as she is not going with any friends. Anyway, yes, I guess she could have chosen to absent herself from the second test. But as we had paid the test fees already, we thought she might as well do it. She didn’t have much pressure doing the second test because she knew by then that her first test’s scores are good enough. Furthermore, even if she did badly, her scores would be automatically removed from record anyway. So we saw little downside. In fact, she found the second test a lot easier even though the scores didn’t show it that way Perhaps she somehow got used to it.</p>