<p>Has any other parent out there heard about kids who are otherwise bright, motivated and able to sit through the SAT multiple times being stymied by lower than expected CR scores on the SAT? We are in a pretty competitive community and many many kids are not even cracking 700 on the CR portion. My own son (senior in the fall) is a mid-600s after two sittings. Other friends have complained about the same thing - some even had scores drop by 20-30 points. Other scores more accurately track where we expected them to be. He will not be sitting for the test again, his other scores are mid-high 700's, but wonder if this will hurt his chances for top notch schools - will Admissions Officers treat it as a glitch? His ACT was impeccable, backing up the rest of the scores and refuting his CR. Anyone else out there??</p>
<p>I wouldn't send the SAT then. Yes, numbers (common data sets) show it will hurt. Kids even have top CR scores at the top tech schools.</p>
<p>Ask xiggi what the 2006 stats are, but I don't believe the current SAT CR scores are lower than previous years. UCMary is correct--applicants need +720 CR for the top schools. The CR score is still very important because it does gives an approxiamtion of the candidate's ability to quickly read and assess difficult texts. </p>
<p>Vocab memorization was meant to boost analogy scores, but it really helped my son's CR score.</p>
<p>Maybe it's a little local trend, but very odd that so many in our area are lower than expected. Just glad to be through the testing, and now on to the apps!! Thanks for your advice.</p>
<p>My daughter had that problem -- she is extremely verbal, but couldn't get more than 620 on the SAT CR. She opted to submit ACTs, got into all her reach colleges. </p>
<p>It will NOT hurt a student to submit ACT's only -- all of the colleges now accept them -- the only problem will be with schools that require SAT II's of all applicants, as of course the SATs will get reported in that case.</p>
<p>Also, Cheers is mistaken -- no college has a 720 cut off -- the SAT CR score range for Harvard is 690-800, which means 25% of Harvard admits have CR's that are lower than 690; Yale's CR range is 700-790; Princeton is 680-800.</p>
<p>Actually, with a kid whose other scores are all in mid-to-high 700's, with an "impeccable" ACT, I wouldn't worry about submitting the SAT's either, as long as the ACT score was also submitted. </p>
<p>My d. found out after she was admitted to Barnard that they had her SAT scores on record, even though she hadn't submitted them -- they must have been included on her midyear transcript despite her request to the g.c. to remove them. If they had them, then the other reach colleges that admitted her had them as well. So in hindsight it looks like the colleges used the highest available scores, which in her case were the ACTs.</p>
<p>remark,
We had the same 'problem' with younger son. He scored in the mid 700 for writing, high 700 for math, and mid 600 for CR. On all other previous standardized tests he always did well in reading. He got a 4 on the AP Lit test, and will get a 4 or 5 on AP Language. Go figure (he never took the ACT though). He still got into some decent schools (UVa OOS, UNC OOS, W&M, Wake, Emory). His friend got into a couple Ivies and Duke with around 1200 total, so you can't just go by test scores.</p>
<p>I really think the secret to top CR scores is huge amounts of reading. Kids who regularly read things that aren't required by the school are in general going to do much better than those who don't. Even if they get As in their English classes and 4s and 5s on APs. In fact, my son regularly gets Bs in English but aced the CR section.</p>
<p>I don't think one test sitting means much. I'm suprised to much is putting into reading the SAT scores. I know my D is very strong in reading and not strong in Math but her SAT scores turn out the opposite. Her PSAT score in reading is a much better indicator. Will she loose our in her college admissions ? maybe, but she is not obsessed about retaking it, eventhough she knows she has greater chance to max out to 800.(Her friend did and he is not as strong in reading)</p>
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<p>Hear. Hear. This is the crucial thing a student needs to do to prepare well for a highly selective college anyway: read a lot, on a lot of subjects of interest to the student, beyond what was assigned in school. I've never encountered an avid reader who was stymied by an SAT critical reading score.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I really think the secret to top CR scores is huge amounts of reading.
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I think this is why high CR scores are more meaningful in admissions than high Math scores. SAT I Math is coachable, but it's hard to make up for minimal reading over the course of 12 years.</p>
<p>my d an avid reader got an 800 on CR and a 750 on writing...reading out of class helps more than prep course....</p>
<p>I don't know what's up with the CR scores on the June 2 SAT. DS scored 99% on PSAT for CR (predicted range on actual SAT was 720-800). On actual SAT he scored 640 for CR which was way below his M - he is very typically a much stronger CR scorer than M scorer. He is submitting his ACT with apps because it was so much stronger than his SAT score - he's lucky, though because he doesn't have to take any SAT IIs for the colleges he's looking at - otherwise he'd probably have to sit through another SAT exam.....</p>
<p>I guess I was just surprised (as was he) at the difference b/w the PSAT projected score, his ACT reading score (33) and his actual SAT score! BTW, he is a reader - reads all the time and has an excellent vocabulary so we were really stumped!</p>
<p>Even as strong reader, it could be the subject that they were testing that may not be of interested to them, so it does vary.</p>
<p>"I wouldn't send the SAT then. Yes, numbers (common data sets) show it will hurt. Kids even have top CR scores at the top tech schools."</p>
<p>Huhhhh? What tech schools are we talking about?</p>
<p>MIT: Verbal:690 – 770
UCal Berkeley: Verbal:590 – 710
Cal Tech: Verbal:700 – 780
U of Illinois Urbana: Verbal:560 – 670
Georgia Tech: Verbal: 600 – 700
Purdue: Verbal:500 – 610
U of Texas: Verbal: 540 – 670
Carnegie Mellon: Verbal: 610 – 710
U of Michigan: Verbal: 590 – 690 </p>
<p>These are Top Engineering schools with Doctorate Programs</p>
<p>Son got a 590 CR and got into Cal. He is a strong, although not avid, reader. He is is doing a double major in math and philosophy and by looking at those philosophy books, you would need pretty strong reading skills to get through them.For some reason he just never did that well on that part of the SATs or PSATs.</p>
<p>Top Engineering Schools (Non Doctoral Programs):</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd: Verbal: 670 – 760
Rose Hulman: Verbal:570 – 680
Cooper Union: Verbal:610 – 690
Cal Poly: Verbal:540 – 630
Bucknell: Verbal:600 – 680
US Military Academy: Verbal:570 – 670 </p>
<p>A mid 600 SAT Verbal, assuming that math scores are high, is hardly the death knell for someone trying to get into a top engineering school.</p>
<p>Bec, my kids were the same. Youngest is a much better reader than older. Much, much better and more well read. He can speed read the text for any history, gov, econ, lit class the morning of an exam and ace it. He can read an entire book in one or two days and write a 6 page paper on it in 2 hours. For some reason he got the same exact mid 600 score on all 3 SATs (what are the chances of scoring the same score three times??) Older son has to read something over and over, is a much slower reader, always did far worse of the stardized reading tests over the years of school, has terrible vocabulary. He ended up in the 700s. I am still scratching my head. But it didn't seem to hurt younger son, as a matter of fact I think he did better in his college search.</p>
<p>My son has been an avid reader since kindergarten, yet he scored 800 Math, 790 Writing and 680 CR. Second time he did even worse. Fortunately he got into Michigan, NYU and WashU among others and is going to Michigan - LAS Honors.</p>
<p>Well there also have to be a few exceptions. Mathson never did get an 800 in the math even though he's much more interested in math than anything verbal. He got an 800 on the CR twice. Some kids seem to overthink questions. My younger son can find perfectly plausible reasons for wrong answers on multiple choice tests. He's gotten better over the years, but I don't really know how you can unteach that.</p>
<p>I want to second what Mathmom said, reading a variety of books is more important that memorizing vocabulary lists. My son reads a lot of history books which may particularly help in preparation for the CR part of the test because you're reading for information and you're interpreting the author's intentions -- things that the CR tests.</p>