<p>I'm hoping somebody saves this thread for next year. IMPORTANT ADVICE....make sure you look at the finaid application deadlines for your child's schools. For the freshman application...plan to do your taxes ASAP after Jan 31. Do NOT put off doing your taxes until later. Junior parents...take note...you now have 10 or 11 months to plan for this!!! Many parents and students are posting NOW about how they cannot get their taxes done to meet the finaid deadlines. Take note....don't be surprised....plan to do your taxes early next year. Also, for EA and ED applicants, some of you may have priority deadlines for filing the CSS Profile that are actually in November (yes...November of your child's senior year in high school). So...important to keep good records so that you can do a decent estimate when completing this form. </p>
<p>DEADLINES are very important for both applications and finaid, and they vary wildly from school to school. Look at each school's website. The admissions deadlines are usually very clear. Sometimes the finaid deadlines are not so clear, especially for EA and ED. If there is a priority deadline...meet it!!!</p>
<p>One point of view about taking the SAT in senior year to improve scores. I agree that chances of scores improving are good due to maturity, etc. however if your son/daughter has a great score (2300 or higher), I would discourage a retake. With a 2340, we were very happy with score until we went to an Ivy presentation and the admissions rep unequivocally said to retake during sr year unless you had at least a 2350. We couldn't convince our child otherwise, and were astounded when the 2400 appeared. Looking back, probably a huge mistake. At that level, it doesn't really seem to make a difference except that we are finding that the higher these scores are, the better the colleges expect everything else to be. GPA, ECs, essays all need to come up to that same perfect or near perfect level. Just something to think about, but if our next child gets a 2300 or above, we will do our best to stop the test taking at that. I'd much rather they take some time to still enjoy being a kid (seems everyone loses sight of this come junor year) than to fret over 100 points.</p>
<p>Great post & advice: enjoy being a kid!
With college appl process being so intense/competitive/starting earlier than ever before,
it's often hard to remember these are 16-18 year olds,
and they are young only once!</p>
<p>sewbusy:
could you clarify if 2400 may actually "hurt" if the rest of one's stats & application are not up to that perfection level?
Or were you saying it simply caused too much overall work to bring everything else up to the same level?</p>
<p>The former. I think in our case, 2400 hurt. Although nat'l and international awards in math and liberal arts subjects, EC's were good but didn't get an olympic gold medal or discover cures or devote every waking moment to cs. (Probably did a total of 450 hours in hs so far). I just wonder if the 2400's are held to a ridiculos standard of expected perfection as opposed to an above avereage standard. Remember, this is just my opinion from our experience. Perhaps I'm just trying to find an explanation for the early rejection from this same school where a 2340 wasn't good enough to leave alone. As parents, we encourage our kids to pursue their passions both academically and EC wise. I would rather they go to a community college and have fun in life than miss out on life to live up to perceived perfection. In this case, for instance, certain AP classes that could have been taken with ease were passed up to pursue new foreign languages, a passion. We knew there weren't enough years in hs to get to the AP level here, but encouraged this passion instead of focusing on what colleges would think. Don't know if this answers your questions or not.</p>
<p>nat'l and international awards in math and liberal arts subjects
That's amazing accomplishments & congrats!
Should have been "enough" & very sorry about the early appl outcome.
Your child is sure to do very well in the RD round.</p>
<br>
<p>Your post was particularly interesting bec of a puzzling case last year locally.
One student was 1600, US Presidential Scholar semi, very strong GPA as well,
with a good variety of ECs.
She was rejected, not even waitlisted, at all but 1 Ivy (1 Early, rest RD).
That was a real head-scratching case, very hard to understand.
Now your post may shed some light for such cases.
Happy outcome in the end though: got plenty of merit aid offers from multiple places, attending CalTech now!</p>
<p>sewbusy: I really doubt that your child's higher SAT score hurt him. Ivies always have to reject very qualified kids just because there are too many with similar stats. Often they have to reject so many that they could fill an entire second freshman class with stats equal to the first group. So... that means many rejections are purely arbitrary or are for "regional" and/or diversity reasons. </p>
<p>Also, one shouldn't feel that their scores were "too high" and didn't measure up with other personal stats. Some high schools don't have "grade inflation" and/or don't weigh honors/AP classes as high. Colleges know that. It is only a problem when a child has super high SAT scores but then has a bunch of "B's" and "C's" on his report cards -- then the college questions the child's ability to stay focused, study and do assignments.</p>
<p>Besides, the higher SAT score puts a child in a better position for merit money from other schools that want to raise their own stats.</p>
<p>Read the fine print to differentiate b/w a postage date deadline and a "needs to be in the Admissions Office" deadline. Almost screwed up big-time on this one.</p>
<p>
[quote]
With a 2340, we were very happy with score until we went to an Ivy presentation and the admissions rep unequivocally said to retake during sr year unless you had at least a 2350.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Does anyone else find this incredibly distressing :( and well worth ignoring?!</p>
<p>Scores and a great list of ECs are not sufficient for admission at most top schools: recommendations and essays often do round out the picture and differentiate one highly-qualified-academically candidate from another.</p>
<p>In terms of scores, the MIT admissions folks have said not to bother to retake tests if you're in the 750-range, and that anything 700+ puts you in the ballpark. They'd rather see that you're using your time to do other things you're passionate about, or to keep your grades up. I suspect this is true at other top schools, too. I agree with SV2, ignore that bad advice.</p>
<p>Usually at admissions road shows the schools play down the test scores needed to get. They want all the applications they can get. It would be nice if they published charts showing admitted students' test scores graphed against GPA. And, maybe the same info for denied students.</p>
<p>Brown publishes stats about number of applications, admissions, and enrollments for each 50 point spread in the SAT math and verbal tests, and for different class ranks.</p>
<p>sv2: If we had it to do again we would have ignored what we heard. We did not hear that from any other presentation among the six ivies we looked at, either on campus or in the local presentations.</p>
<p>I initiated another thread about this very topic. My son (junior) scored 2300 (800M, 770W, 730CR) in his first taking of the SAT. He wants to retake to "up that CR score", but I think it's a waste of time.</p>
<p>The opinion on that thread was very mixed. Some said that, if his practice tests showed he could score higher on CR, take it again. The theory being that if you didn't retake, you would never know whether that extra bump would be the difference between a yes or a no. Others said move on.</p>
<p>"It would be nice if they published charts showing admitted students' test scores graphed against GPA. And, maybe the same info for denied students."</p>
<p>Some high schools do a much better job of showing acceptances and rejections by GPA and SAT scores than the colleges do - the thread also in this forum is helpful, especially if you can find comparable geographic and /or demographic schools to your own.</p>
<p>The best thing we did was to start on the college search very early in a casual way, in 8th grade. Whenever we took a vacation or long weekend to an area that by chance had a school DD might be interested in down the line, we would do at least a drive-through of the campus. It's amazing how the physical plant of a school can elicit a strong reaction. ("I don't care if this is supposed to be a great school...I would hate spending 4 years here. It looks like a factory.") By the time the search got serious in Feb of her junior year, we had already seen about 20 schools over four years, sometimes with multiple visits and tours and info sessions. That Feb we did 13 schools in a week, the "final dozen" that had made the cut. She fell in love with Swarthmore then, on her first visit. I think by that time she had a good basis of comparison.</p>
<p>I finally found my printed out copy of the thread "Everything we think we know, may be wrong," started by Carolyn on 10/1/05 and a review of the Nov. 2005 issue of the Atlantic magazine article "The Best Class Money Can Buy." I notice the thread has since been partially deleted.</p>
<p>The article suggests that Collegeboard and ACT, in fact, actually tell schools whether you listed them first or farther down the list when you order your scores sent - according to the article, that's used by many schools as one measure of being likely to attend.</p>
<p>It was bothering me that I couldn't find the source for this, but there you are. So, definitely alphabetize when it comes time to send those scores!! Or if you want to be really careful, you can even send to the schools individually, to avoid them even seeing the other schools listed.</p>
<p>roshke, I certainly hope this is not true. We never gave thought to the "order" in which we requested scores be sent. I had heard this about the FAFSA but never CB. These games played are so disillusioning; I must give kudos to St. John's College which, probably because of it's very small size, doesn't play any games and treats their applicants with the utmost respect at all times.</p>
<p>Sewbusy, I'd be interested in knowing which Ivy it was that was so score-obsessed, if you are willing to share.</p>
<p>I don't think the problem is necessarily the high scores increase the expectations of the school -- so much as the possibility that the high scores leave the students & parents with unrealistically high expectations of the likelihood of admissions at schools that turn away the vast majority of applicants. I'm sure your son interpreted the advice as an indication that the high end scores would virtually ensure admission -- why else would the rep insist that 2350 wasn't good enough? </p>
<p>But the bottom line is that, especially at the ED round, athletic recruitment and other niche factors play a big part in acceptances. </p>
<p>I agree with you that in hindsight it would be better to focus less on test scores and more on pursuing interests or passions (and having a life)... but I think along the same lines it is better to focus on non-Ivy, non-elite colleges.</p>
<p>I think if my kids went to a presentation that was so test-centric they would have immediately dropped the college from their list. In my son's words, he didn't want to attend a college that saw him as a number. Basically, if you buy into the test-and-retest philosophy, then you may also be selling the kid's soul to the college numbers racket. </p>
<p>A much better approach would be to take the 11th grade SAT score as is, and use that as the basis of developing a solid college list of schools where admission is more likely than not with those scores. If the kid wants to retake in the fall and add a couple of last minute reaches if the scores significantly improve -- fine -- but if the first set of scores was 2100, then the initial college list should be made up of schools where 2100 puts the kid in the top half of the applicant pool (i.e., where it is above median).</p>