<p>My D and S will both be applying to Vandy Engineering next fall. They each have scored a 34 on the ACT, and will submit this as part of their application. I realize that Vanderbilt does not require SAT Subject Tests if the ACT is submitted, but they took them anyway in May for applying to Ivies.</p>
<p>My question is whether you believe their scores are high enough to help their application, or if we should simply not submit them. Their scores are:</p>
<p>Biology 710/690
Math II 640/650
US Hist 620/650</p>
<p>Also, if I am allowed a second question in a single post: Would there be value in trying to take another round of Subject Tests mid-year and hoping for improvement?</p>
<p>Thanks for your thoughts.</p>
<p>Hello, I am a parent of a Vandy senior and I will put in an opinion. The ACT of 34 is better alone than with those scores. Maybe the one Bio score that was over 700 is plenty strong. I would not submit those scores anywhere highly selective —they are lower than your D and S’s abilities and likely reflect poor preparation which I see all the time in my town…ie top students with good SATs who show up for the SATIIs unpracticed and don’t break the 600s. The SATIIs are their own little animals and overlap with APs isn’t that great.<br>
Score choice was not an option our son’s senior year of high school but it is now, so I am too lazy to look up if you can send in only cherry picked SATIIs. </p>
<p>So, can you cherry pick your SATIIs? and submit what you want? We couldn’t…you might be able to do so.</p>
<p>I would have your children focus much more on the SATII level 2 re prep prep prep and retake it in October, November December…whatever it takes.</p>
<p>Our son had a 36 ACT Math and was exhausted in October of his senior year of hs and didn’t break 700 on the SATII --which they had access to at that time. So he actually retook it in January of his senior year, when he wasn’t rattled and tired and sent in a very high SATII in January while decisions were being made with a two sentence note that he felt the first score was not reflective of his math ability so he wanted to do it again. </p>
<p>If you look for the charts at the college board website you will see that the curves are very very different based on the pool of kids taking each exam and the level of difficulty of each exam. </p>
<p>Congrats on their great ACTs and good luck. Admission to VAndy for them may be much more about references, essays and fit re their potential contributions to campus life. If they don’t want to take more tests, drop the SATIIs, but I think they should target the level 2 math for retakes and each find one more to refocus on if they are serious about highly selective colleges.</p>
<p>I agree with Faline2.</p>
<p>I have a son entering the Fall 2012 in Engineering at Vandy. </p>
<p>Regarding your children’s ACT - congrats! I agree however with the comments that the SAT subject tests are not strong enough to submit. The expectation for SAT Subject tests is that they be much higher than what you would expect on the regular SAT so don’t compare them. You can Google the percentile ranks for those scores and will see that they are probably only in the top 25-30% - far below the strong ACT test would indicate they should get.</p>
<p>So, going forward, since they are going for Engineering, a retake on Math 2 might be a good idea to consider. I would not retake all of them unless they have the time to focus on that much testing. The key to the test is lots of prep and SPEED. It;s 50 questions in an an hour so if you don’t know it cold, it’s tough to do well. My son took the Math Subject test with no prep and got a 650 - he retook it and got a 780. Yes, it was work but I think it helped to demonstrate his quant skills.</p>
<p>agree with skullinggreen. SAT level 2 Math should be the focal point for prep. especially for engineering. A very large number of Vandy admits turn up close to 800 in Math on the ACT and SAT. My son is no engineer quality math student and he got a 36 on his ACT math but had to fight and prep to do a good score on the SATII. Walking in cold got him below 700. Difficult to do during one’s busy busy fall senior year but summer presents time for preparation and you can try for the first testing day in the fall.</p>
<p>S2 accepted to engineering ED1. Very strong SAT 2 scores in Math 2 (800) and Chem (770). Was advised not to send any SAT2 scores under 700/720. Would suggest re-taking Math 2 and Chem or Physics and sending stronger scores.</p>