<p>jym, a true novice here. Do they take up so much time? Isn’t the application just filling in blanks? Campus visits - Do that after the Oct SAT? My D may or may not retake SAT 1. Her GC says Oct, CC for June.</p>
<p>Congrats, rmac!! An LOL Igloo!</p>
<p>Having been through the college app process twice, I am no expert, but am a veteran. My 's HS had lots of deadlines for things due in the fall (completed forms to all teachers for recommendations, all materials in to them for their counselor reccs-- which began the spring of junior year but needed updating, scholarship applications and essays -which had early deadlines, etc). Many of the applications had early deadlines for certain considerations (ie our State flagship has a Nov 1 deadline, IIRC, for early notice and honors college). One son applied ED, and had all his other applications ready for launch if he hadn’t gotten in. Other s had his initial apps out by early October, and heard from the rolling admissions by late October. This was a great stress reliever. One of his schools had SEVEN essays. And of course there are all the normal day-to day academic demands of senior year.</p>
<p>Not saying fall of senior year is a bad time to take the SAT-- many, MANY kids do it. Just saying its added stress to have to study/prep for the SAT. Since many take the SAT II and AP exams at the end of junior year, it was “easy” (for lack of a better word) to consider takng it then. Of course, if absolutely necessary, they could take again , a 3rd time, in fall of sr year (hopefully not necessary). Just heads up-- college app time starts early for many-- and its pretty stressful… for the parent and the student :)</p>
<p>For some the college app process is big time. For others it is a last minute get it done (the gifted procrastinator) thing. Perhaps it takes more time on the east coast with its myriads of small private schools to choose among and spots to compete for. Some agonize over essays, others just get them done.</p>
<p>I still recommend letting your D get through her SAT subject tests and school work this spring without hassling her about more tests. Without time to study she likely won’t improve her scores much. Her junior year gpa counts a lot. By August she will have had time to decide if she should try for higher test scores. At this age a lot of maturing goes on in just a few short months. With the summer to relax and refresh she should have the time to focus on what she could do to optimize applications when not stressed.</p>
<p>Also remember that your D needs to take ownership of the process- as so wisely mentioned above. Right now it sounds like she is stressed enough, she can’t handle more stress so back off for now. Let her make it through her all important junior year. Then she can shift gears into college app mode. btw- she is already doing her prep by focusing on the subject test and her classes.</p>
<p>I think a spreadsheet is in order, color coded at that! Nothing like a visual to bring clarity.</p>
<p>You can find mid 50%tile SAT numbers for any college at collegeboard.com (use the college search function to bring up your school and then click on the SAT header). Use those numbers to make a chart of colleges with a column for each of the 4 quartile scores. </p>
<p>And then using your D’s scores, color in the appropriate quartile where her scores fall–dark green if she is above 75%, light green if she is in the 50-75% range, light red if she falls in the 25-50% range and dark red if she fall in the under 25% range.</p>
<p>If you made the chart for JHU, Davisdon and Emory, she’d see that she is dark green in the critical reading component for all the schools in question.</p>
<p>For JHU and Emory, she’s right at the 25% mark (light red, but not by much). For Davidson, she’s in the 25%-50% range when it comes to her math score. </p>
<p>If you are serious about applying to these schools, would you really want to stand pat with your math scores, knowing that at least 50-75% of the applicants that the university accepts have higher scores?</p>
<p>You know kids–if she doesn’t get in to these schools, she’ll wail, “Why didn’t you make me take the SAT again?!!” LOL.</p>
<p>It could be that her scores are higher than her peers who would give her a hard time about retaking the test. In that case, maybe she needs to have an excuse–“My mom is making me” in order to give her cover.</p>
<p>You are a genius, LMNOP. Visual aids!! Great plan. Show her the data and let her see what she needs to do.</p>
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<p>Poor reasoning on the part of the adcom. If the kid has sufficient mastery of the material to score 750 on the SATII but is being given a C by the teacher, then it is quite likely that the kid is not a compliant pleaser type and/or is falling afoul of such pettifogging practices as docking a kid’s grade severely for missing minor homework assignments, even though the kid aces the tests. A 750 on the SATII doesn’t come from nowhere. The kid has the knowledge.</p>
<p>Agree with post 36 and 37. The scores are good enough that I wouldn’t MAKE dd redo it, but just a little bit of prep and a retake could yield great benefits.</p>
<p>Before ds took his first SAT, January of his junior year, we set a number as a goal and said if he hits that number he’s done. Wouldn’t you know, he fell 10 points short. He was game to prep a little more (very little more) and take it again (he’s competitive, so I knew he’d jump at the chance to “win”!) and did in May or June of junior year. He blew it out of the water, gaining more than 100 points and making his superscore 130 points higher than the original single sitting.</p>
<p>I was glad ds’s testing was all done junior year. Thanks to cc for that suggestion.</p>
<p>OP - my son took his first SAT in March of his junior year and his scores were lower than your D’s and he was shooting for some of the same schools. His grades were higher. His scores were incredibly lopsided (a major plus according to calmom) - an 800 in math, and, I think 680 CR and 600 W. He had done zero prep other than taking the PSAT in sophmore and junior years. I explained to him that while his scores were nothing to be ashamed of (especially an 800 in math), he wasn’t even in the ballpark for most of the schools he was thinking of applying to.</p>
<p>So, after taking the ACT in April (mandatory in his school), he signed up to take the SAT 1 in May and three SATIIs in June. He also had three APs and an IB test in May. For the May SAT 1, he concentrated his prep (such as it was) on the CR portion of the test. As a result, his math dropped to 780 (OMG!) and his W improved to 670 and his CR improved to 720. Now he was satisfied with CR, but he wanted to improve W, so he signed up for the October SAT (he also took the October or November ACT). Now he concentrated on prepping for W and was able to raise his score to 780! Net result was his superscore improved from less than 2100 to 2300. Now his scores put him in the top 75% of all but a couple of the schools he was applying to. I am certain that he would not be at his present school if he had not taken the SAT three times.</p>
<p>I have told him many times that his idea of “test prep” was simply to take the tests at the actual times, rather than taking a prep class, taking the tests through CollegeBoard’s site, or even taking practice tests out of a book. To each, his own. (Although his is now considering taking the LSAT and has heard that subsequent test taking will count against you.)</p>
<p>I am all about “options”. The SAT scores help to define the student’s options. There is nothing wrong with 2140, and in fact it is a great score and will get her into many great schools, just not necessarily the ones she wants to go to. If she wants more options, she needs to bring the math score up, and if she is taking the SATII Math 2 exam, she should be easily capable to doing it.</p>
<p>Doesn’t the May SAT test date fall right in the middle of the two AP weeks?<br>
Do kids take SAT or SATII in the midst of multiple APs? Don’t they find that stressful?</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>The goal was for ds to be done with all testing junior year, so he took the retake of the SAT in either May or June and the SAT IIs on the other date (May or June, I just can’t remember now). The SAT IIs’ material falls closely enough in line with AP tests that prepping for one supports the other. I think of it was killing two birds with one stone.</p>
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<p>My son took AP Physics (two-part?), Spanish, and Calc 2. He also took IB Spanish SL. For his SATIIs he took Physics, Spanish and Math 2, so the studying all overlaps.</p>
<p>I understand about the studying overlapping. I’m just concerned about burnout from multi-hour tests day after day after day.</p>
<p>Come senior year, your student will be so happy to not have to worry about those tests. Ds was downright gleeful fall of senior year while friends were tearing their hair out.</p>
<p>Totally agree with YDS. Both s’s were thrilled not to have to think about any standardized testing senior year (well, until the APs at the end of the year)</p>
<p>From post # 46: "Poor reasoning on the part of the adcom. If the kid has sufficient mastery of the material to score 750 on the SATII but is being given a C by the teacher, then it is quite likely that the kid is not a compliant pleaser type and/or is falling afoul of such pettifogging practices as docking a kid’s grade severely for missing minor homework assignments, even though the kid aces the tests. A 750 on the SATII doesn’t come from nowhere. The kid has the knowledge. "</p>
<p>I worked in graduate school admissions at an HYPSM school, and we would use the same reasoning as the ad com in this example. Having knoweldge, and being a good student, are two different things. Most top schools are not looking to develop a class with kids with just knowledge. They want students who stimulate others and engage faculty. That student with the low grades and high test scores needs to find a way to “explain” themselves within the application and/or interview process, if they want to go to a school with a subjective admissions process.</p>
<p>Discussion is somewhat off topic because, in the case of this thread, I don’t think this is an issue. While it would likely be helpful for the OP’s child to try for a higher math score, that child’s scores and grades seem comparable.</p>
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<p>I don’t want to derail this thread, but just quickly note that it is completely different in college. In college, students are not required to hand in little practice-oriented homework assignments every day. A kid in an HS language or math class, for example, could easily have excellent mastery of the material and perform extremely well on tests and in class discussion, but have their grade torpedoed by failing to hand in homework a few times. I’m not talking about failing to do papers and important work, I’m talking about failing to hand in five sentences or a worksheet designed to make them practice something they already know. Often the kid has actually DONE the homework, but it gets “lost” in the backpack.</p>
<p>Of course, it behooves us as parents to warn our kids against shooting themselves in the foot in this way. But I question the judgement of an adcom who views a kid with suspicion for having a mismatched grade and SATII score. Ding him for a poor grade, sure, but extra dings because the test score is good? Doesn’t make sense to me.</p>
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Maybe, but in real life people do get dinged for failing to do these little things–like turning in time sheets, returning phone calls, etc. I would also note that it’s my experience that people who think they are above doing the homework also think they are above instructions they receive later in life.</p>
<p>Of course, if it’s just a matter of being disorganized, that’s a different story.</p>
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Are there really a lot of schools where missing five sentences on a worksheet will drop an A to a C? That’s absurd. It wasn’t like that at my kid’s school, thank God. He got penalized for missing work (which he did a lot), but not that much. I suspect if I saw something like this I would assume the student was missing major assignments. That’s probably what the adcom thopught.</p>
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But I agree with this. I would consider the high test score a positive.</p>
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<p>Wow, does that ever sound like my kid! He gets the concept the first time it’s presented, then daydreams for the next week while the teacher repeats the same material over and over with minimal variation. Naturally, his mind is elsewhere when it comes time to turn in the required busywork – and his grade suffers from it.</p>
<p>We found that for him, AP classes were easier than regular and honors classes, because tests were more heavily weighted and teachers were more tolerant of accepting late homework from a student who was getting 100%+ on his tests. We also found that skipping the honors prerequisites for classes like physics and chemistry helped a lot, because the accelerated pace that teachers “reviewed” material was almost on par with his natural learning speed.</p>
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<p>In grade school, 5th or 6th grade, my son aced all his tests, yet missed turning in so many minor busywork assignments on time (late work not accepted) that he “failed” the year and had to attend summer school. And this was a gifted program!</p>
<p>His summer school teacher kept asking him why he was there because he never got a single answer wrong on any test.</p>