@blossom Just a sore point for me. Getting a top score isn’t a fluke like a monkey typing a novel. Anyone teaching high school should know that. 3 hours and $50 is still a waste of time.
There are FAR greater wastes of time and money in the college admissions process than the cost of a junior year SAT.
Kids here brag about applying to 15 colleges- wow, when you can only attend 1 at a time. Parents brag about the cross-country trip to UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford and UCSD when the kid barely has the stats for his own state flagship (not California). Parents humble-brag about the private admissions counselor “because our HS’s guidance counselors don’t have a lot of experience advising kids who aren’t heading to the local CC”. Or hiring a private soccer coach in 2nd grade because the ONLY way to get an athletic scholarship is to make sure your 3rd grader makes the traveling league.
I think taking one dumb test one extra time to make sure that the middle school scores don’t somehow get lost in the ether of the college board is hardly the biggest time/money loss in this process.
I live in the snow belt and administration of SAT and ACT tests is a joke. Several days ahead of time we all know it is going to snow on test day. My child gets up early and makes it to the test site on time and the administrator holds off starting for another hour.
Gosh, I used my scores from 1968 recently!
@RichInPitt You said your daughter wants to apply to CMU in another post. They require SAT scores from junior year or later. https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/standardized-test-requirements
This will be such a minor inconvenience by junior year, your kid will barely notice it. Besides, it can be warm up for the subject tests. Or just take an ACT instead of the SAT.
Yes, we’ve discussed this on the CMU forum. In fact, that language is updated from their previous “we won’t accept anything before Junior year”. Also note that it’s specific to Subject Tests and doesn’t mention SAT/ACT.
I’ve received enough responses from parents/students who were admitted with early testing that I’m not really worried about it. I’m confident that after 2 year of Calculus, 4/5 on Calc APs, a year of self-study on MVC/Linear, and qualifying for AIME and MPfG (top 300 girls in the country) in 9th grade that they won’t be worried that she’s forgotten PreCalc math, that her Math2 800 is invalid, and that she isn’t ready for ”freshman-level” math.
(If they’re worried, I can refer them to the two CMU math grad students and Math professor that teach/sponsor her regional math team).
As for the SAT itself, she’ll probably end up taking it as National Merit requires a qualifying score within a year of the PSAT test date.
Through all the schools we’ve researched and visited, CMU is still the only one that seems to dislike applicants who test and perform well early.
You would be surprised by how many students have taken both linear algebra and MVC in high school among elite math kids. Your choice whether to give colleges what they want or not. Stanford required a nobel prize winner to take the SAT for her application. She did so.
I too feel that high AIME scores say much more than any additional SAT ever could, but I am not brave enough to test the theory. DS22 is right there with your daughter with even higher SAT score from 7th grade and USAJMO at 9th. There is no way, he will retake his perfect SAT subject tests from 9th grade, but he will take regular SAT again (and hopefully won’t do any worse) next year. I take it as yet another hoop to jump through. I know quite a few kids who got 800 on Math II (and other subject tests) in 9th grade. The one who applied to CMU got accepted.
And while studying MVC and linear algebra isn’t unusual, I fully agree it makes it rather clear that one does know PreCalc quite well.
Good luck to your DD!
Eons ago there was a poll of kids on this site comparing 7th or 8th grade SAT scores with current ones. Everyone did better except on kid who went down ten points on one section that he’d gotten an 800 on.
You do not have to do extensive prep for the SAT. Your daughter should take the PSAT in 10th grade for practice, assuming her school allows it. That will guide her on how much studying she needs to do for the 11th grade PSAT which she must take to qualify for National Merit. Any prep she does for the PSAT will also be good for the SAT, but I will assume it will be minimal.
@MaterS I’m pretty sure one and done for your kid is fine.
Yes, 10th PSAT scores should be out this week, and is definitely on the schedule for next year. Under the possibly overconfident assumption that she qualifies, she’ll need to decide whether to take the SAT again with the chance of a lower score, or take the ACT, which is now accepted for NMF backup, with the option of discarding it.
We have nearly a year, so I’ll be asking the question of other adcom reps and see how she’s doing on practice tests. If I get a better feel from talking 1:1 with colleges (not really a question to ask at a public info session) I’ll fill in further info here.
You can ask for the 8th grade score to be kept, and then send both it and the new score. Even if the new score is lower, it is highly unlikely to be a lot lower.