<p>I don't feel embarrassed. I am acutely aware, though, that this is a pretty good problem to have.</p>
<p>If your son is a competitive magnet program, there are likely many kids with comperable scores in his class...he won't be given any extraordinary treatment or be treated any differently.</p>
<p>Info from previous years suggests that there will be only a handful of scores in that vicinity. I will admit, though, that one of the reasons he's hesitant to reveal his score is the possibility that somebody else may have earned a 2400.</p>
<p>What are his summer plans? Such a score might help with a summer program admission process. It's probably good for a teacher to know, and perhaps not necessary for a fellow student to know. (In my day, the top-scoring students in my high school and our buddies in the sister high school in our district all revealed their scores to one another, usually by showing the actual score report to friends. Maybe the culture isn't the same in your high school. Oh, yes, two of the top five students as to test score in my school district dropped out of high school, because they loathed the underchallenging curriculum.)</p>
<p>At D's school they mostly did not tell, other than they would or would not take them again. Which is a clue. However, I think the HS got copies.</p>
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So far he has told people that he was happy with his score.
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<p>That sounds like the correct response to me. I can't see how he can benefit by telling his score to his peers. However, sometimes it can help if teachers know his score. Let's say he is competing to be on the academic decathlon team or quiz bowl or whatever. If the head teacher knows he has a very high SAT, they might be more inclined to put him on the team.</p>
<p>"In our case, the GC certainly found out his scores. It was a good thing. Then S told the teachers, senior year, where he had a relationship and they were cheering him on anyway. The ones who wrote his recommendations were obviously in this group."</p>
<p>Scores are automatically sent to the school. That doesn't mean that the GC --particularly of juniors-- will look at them or that teachers will know.</p>
<p>When we had a conference with older S's teachers fall of senior year (because older S had major senioritis), the teachers were surprised to hear that S's PSAT qualified him for NM commended. </p>
<p>S was getting a "D" in AP English, and was 99th percentile SAT in that. S was getting a D in part because S wasn't doing assignments that required him to look up any words that he didn't know in reading assignments. Truth was, S's vocabulary was extraordinary, so he didn't have much to look up.</p>
<p>S was getting a D in his math class, and his math teacher had heard that S was talented verbally, and thought that S just wasn't that talented in math. Meanwhile, S's SAT math scores were among the highest in his IB program. S just wasn't bothering to do math assignments or study.</p>
<p>Anyway, our sharing S's scores with the teachers helped them correctly view him as a smart, lazy student, instead of treating him like a student who was trying, but wasn't bright enough to do better.</p>
<p>Hunt - Your question made me sigh. Of course you should have a (brief!) discussion with your S about this. Yes it's his decision, but 17 year olds aren't good with concepts like "ramifications" and "unanticipated outcomes." Besides, a decision NOT to tell won't be warmly received by friends and teachers who ASK. We suggested our daughter share her lowest subscore only "Oh I did really well. I got a 670 on the writing part!" </p>
<p>As for teachers, the capable ones already knew D was smart. But not all teachers are capable. Like Northstarmom we did share scores with the occasional dense teacher -- for attitude adjustment purposes only.</p>
<p>Good luck with it all. At minimum resolving this problem will be good practice for the unanticipated issues that come up during application season!</p>
<p>My son, who is a junior, does not discuss his SAT scores with his peers, partly because he does not want some of the others to feel badly. He also does not like to brag. One of his classmates has taken the SAT four times. He plans to go back and take it again in the fall, because he is seeking a particular score for a highly selective school. (The young man needs to raise his math score about 100-130 points) He will talk about it with teachers, because they are generally interested.</p>
<p>In fact, his AP English teacher and his dad, a math whiz, have this friendly little rivalry going. When he took the SAT in January, the two joked that this would be a battle to see if he were more of a math kid or an English kid. That morning, we all got up to check his scores. His teacher awaited a phone call from him. He got the same score on the two sessions! Satisfied, my son went back to bed for an hour. He didn't call his teacher, so she just thought the worse. Fortunately for her and my husband, they still laugh and joke that they can share him!</p>
<p>"We suggested our daughter share her lowest subscore only "Oh I did really well. I got a 670 on the writing part!" "</p>
<p>Why? What's wrong with sharing one's high scores if one wants to and others ask?</p>
<p>When I was in h.s., I was happy to have smart friends, including some who scored higher than I did. In fact, some of us were in friendly competitions over scores. </p>
<p>I don't see anything wrong with a student's not wanting to share scores, but I don't understand why one would advise a student to share scores in a way that makes them seem to have accomplished less than they did. Unfortunately, when I taught college at a 2nd-3rd tier, I had several excellent students who hid their accomplishments from their friends by acting like they were barely passing when actually they were going to graduate magna.</p>
<p>Sadly, their friends actually were having major grade problems. The students with low grades also happened to be admirers of the top students (who were gregarious, popular, etc.) and had no clue that the students whom they admired actually were people with high grades who studied hard. If the students who did have high grades had admitted that, they may have inspired some of their peers to do much better, while also shattering the idea that if you're smart, you couldn't be popular and cool.</p>
<p>"Besides, a decision NOT to tell won't be warmly received by friends and teachers who ASK."</p>
<p>I think he told some of his friends that he was happy, but that he scored a little lower than his goal.</p>
<p>NewHope33: I love your idea about sharing the lowest score. But my son would still have a problem with that. His classmates would consider that bragging. He goes to a very lazy school in terms of academics. It's not the teachers. They are great. It's a majority of the students. They expect things to be handed to them.</p>
<p>momreads - D attended a competitive private school (on scholarship) that drew a lot of kids whose high income families wanted their kids to attend "a competitive private school." As you said, many of these kids expected things to be handed to them, and they got real cranky when things didn't go their way. This was one of the principal reasons D chose a university away from the northeast. She didn't wish to be defined by how much money her family had (or how little), the name of the school she attended, or how high her test scores were. To her, none of these represented "accomplishment." At the same time she felt that maintaining relationships with her HS classmates was important. Hence ....</p>
<p>I would only share the info with close friends if they asked specificlly and he didn't want to appear rude by not answering or evading the question. That way it would not be construed as bragging. A truthful answer with no bravado thrown in should be well received since they ( his good friends) asked to begin with. </p>
<p>Conversely, I would hesitate to let the high score "slip out" in hopes that it might impress teachers. You never know how things may get twisted along the way. Remember that "gossip" game we all played as kids? </p>
<p>S was a top student in his h.s class so was prob. expected to do well which he did. He was NM Commended and nobody even knew about it or knew what it was. He was not recognized by his school and never mentioned it to anybody. Also received full ride scholarship to his college but didn't bother to report it to the school newspaper who published all scholarships in the senior edition. His attitude was that he was happy with what he had achieved so it didn't matter what anybody else thought.</p>