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Well, that’s grade school. I highly doubt there are many high schools where missing a few homework assignments will drop a student who aces every test down to a C.</p>
<p>And I think I’ve read on here somewhere that your kid is #1 in his class. So obviously he didn’t suffer from this in high school - either he somehow managed to turn in his work, or he he went to a school where it didn’t matter.</p>
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100%+? Isn’t 100% everything correct?</p>
<p>Should you “force” her? Never.</p>
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<p>Quite the contrary – the SAT II is a multiple choice exam – and so can be passed by an individual with very superficial understanding of the topic and a good sensitivity to the multiple choice format – where, by definition, a “right” answer is given right along with every question. The student just has to figure out which is the “right” answer, and a kid with a reasonably good memory can pretty much get there by reading a test prep book.</p>
<p>Colleges want students who are capable of in-depth analysis and reasoning – students who are able to consider that rather than a right answer, there may be multiple viewpoints and possibilities, and who are able to to discuss all the whys and hows behind the right answer. At least at a school like Grinnell, there won’t be any superficial multiple choice questions on exams – the school wants students who will participate and contribute, and have demonstrated a capacity for in-depth reasoning and writing. So they are right to be suspect. </p>
<p>I’d note that I have a kid who was definitely not the people-pleaser type, but by the time he was in high school he had figure out that it was his responsibility to either please the teacher or to convince the teacher to release him from assignments that he didn’t want to complete. He chose the latter - he pretty much negotiated alternative assignments & grading standards from just about every teacher from 10th grade on – for example, convincing his math teachers to grade him based on exams alone, rather than homework. A B is one thing – the kid who is pulling C’s hasn’t really figured out that responsibility part – and no matter how smart or knowledgeable that kid is, that kid probably is not a very good prospect for a college like Grinnell.</p>
<p>In any case, my comment was addressed to the reality of how college ad coms actually look at factors, not what they ought to do. They look for consistency in the overall picture. It’s good to have test scores that confirm a GPA, not good to have test scores that leave the impression that the kid might be slacking off. They don’t know whether the teacher assigns too much busy work or not – they just know that they are looking at a C student who also happens to have a good test score. That might bode well for the kid’s future performance on the GRE, but it gives them no assurance whatsoever that the student will be an enthusiastic participant in the college classroom. So they pass on that kid because they’ve got plenty of other better-looking applicants standing ready to fill that spot.</p>
<p>Re post #37:
. Why would you think that that a student with a 3.7 GPA from a public school is a “strong candidate” for a “big merit scholarship”? </p>
<p>Let’s get real here. Unless that kid’s school has unusually tough grading, revealed in the school’s profile (we’ve been told that the school doesn’t rank) – the kid doesn’t have the GPA to put her in the running for the really “big” scholarships at competitive schools. A higher SAT score isn’t going to somehow put her ahead of kids who are applying with 4.0 GPA’s. </p>
<p>She’s a good student with good scores. She is not an amazing student, and she doesn’t have amazing scores. She doesn’t have to be – but it makes no sense for the parent to turn a blind eye to the GPA while harping on SAT score in the hope of winning some scholarship that the kid isn’t in the running for.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to put down the kid – she will probably be offered more modest levels of merit money at many schools. But she will get the money that goes to kids with test scores in the same range as her GPA – and in her case, she’s there already.</p>
<p>Feel free to “get real” Calmom. She is a good candidate for merit money at several schools, but she will need both a good GPA AND a better SAT then she currently has.</p>
<p>SHe is aiming for good schools and if she wants merit money (who doenst) she has to try a little harder.</p>
<p>^For what it’s worth, my younger son with a B+ unweighted grade point average if you took out the music courses got a scholarship covering half the costs of attending American U. Is American a top university? Not really, but it is excellent in the field of international relations, my son’s interest. His school gave the appearance of having tough grading since he was in the top 10% and his verbal score was nearly perfect (790). (His writing and math though were a bit under 700.) </p>
<p>My feeling is that she should be encouraged to take the SAT again. There are schools where she may be up for merit money, but I think stellar SAT scores help.</p>
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I’ve known a number of students that have had exactly that happen to them in high school. (One of them even got 1600/1600 on the SAT), but I’ve known none who had to go to summer school in grade school for missing homework. I think that’s just cruel.</p>
<p>Exactly, mathmom. And congrats on that scholarship, even if he didnt take it.</p>
<p>The schools that her parent said she was looking at don’t seem to offer the types of score-based merit money that you have decided she needs to be testing for. And the OP never mentioned merit money. You’ve created a non-existent issue for a kid who has already decided that she is happy with her test score. </p>
<p>The question on this thread was NOT, “my daughter is unsure whether she should retake the SAT – what are the benefits of a potentially higher score?”</p>
<p>The question was: “my daughter is happy with her score, and wants to focus on studying for SAT II’s instead of retaking the SAT I. Should I “make” her take the test again to satisfy personal parental anxiety”. </p>
<p>OK, I’ve added the “parental anxiety” part, but this is a kid who HAS taken ownership and HAS made a decision already, which is a perfectly logical decision to make. </p>
<p>But keep in mind that it is quite possible that on a retake the kid does WORSE, not better (my own daughter’s math score went down from a 590 to 580 from one test to the next). It is also quite possible that added stress level over the SAT retake leads to the kid doing worse on the SAT II.</p>
<p>In this case the concern is over a math score, and the kid plans to take the SAT II in math – which everyone knows tests a higher level of math than the SAT I. So obviously if the kid does really well on the SAT II math scores, any ad com is going to take that as a serious indication of the kid’s math ability, no matter what the first round score was – and on the other hand, if the SAT II math score comes in below what the student hopes for, it may be a good indication that she’s not likely to do much better on the SAT I math. When it comes to math scores, sometimes its just a matter of speed – some people just can’t whip out math answers in the time frame required in the setting of a standardized test --they might have a good grasp of math concepts, but just need a little more time to think things out.</p>
<p>I seriously doubt that the current school list proposed in the OP, (the parent of a junior), is complete. It will surely change several times. Taking again opens doors.
You are entitled to your opinion, ad I mam to mine.</p>
<p>Are you paying for college? If so, I think you have the right to point out that a higher score would cost you less, if she could turn that into a scholarship.</p>
<p>On the other hand, with her GPA, considering how many kids get 4.0s, I wonder whether her strength will be more her extra-curricular activities and her essays, and the volume of scholarships she applies for, rather than a couple hundred points more on the math portion of the SATs.</p>
<p>I do think that paying parents have a right to demand that their children put in a lot of work so they get more scholarships, or take away some of that funding. However, the rational thing to me seems to be just to explain that you’re paying x% and it seems to you that she’ll need better scores to get scholarships to pay the rest.</p>
<p>However, I think that she might just as well spend that time applying for that many more scholarships and studying for the subject tests. I seriously doubt at that percentile, unless she’s going to ace it, the average point increase is going to make the difference between a big scholarship and not.</p>
<p>Maybe this all comes down to family dynamics. Of course it isn’t a good idea to force a junior to do anything w/r/t college testing. But parental input has a valuable place in the process. If the kid’s at her wit’s end with all the end-of-year testing - sure, let it go. If the parent knows the kid will be deeply disappointed not to have an acceptance at a highly selective school next year, maybe some nudging is in order. As I said, I left the decision up to my d, but I did let her know she’d need higher scores if she wanted a strong chance at her first choice school. Today I’m glad I didn’t keep my mouth shut.</p>
<p>If she’s eventually pre-med at JHU, she’s going to have to be able to withstand a stressful environment - though she has time to learn to do that.</p>
<p>Even if merit aid isn’t a concern, I’m not sure how confident someone with a Math SAT at or below the 25th percentile can be at a school as selective as JHU or Emory - even with a stellar CR/Writing score. If she puts the effort into studying for the SAT II Math, maybe she’ll score highly enough to assuage any adcom doubts. But it’s harder to trounce the SAT II Math than the SAT I.</p>
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She has a 660 as it is, so the best she could do is 140 points. The most likely result is that a retest has a score within 40 points of the original. See [Retaking</a> the SAT](<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/sat-reasoning/scores/retake]Retaking”>Understanding SAT Scores – SAT Suite | College Board)</p>
<p>This table is also helpful – <a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/2010-percentage-of-students-with-senior-year-score-gain-or-loss.pdf[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board; – in this student’s score range, roughly 72% of students have their scores remain the same or drop on a retake. Only about 16% see an increase of 50 or more points. Overall, there is an average gain of 1 point. </p>
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That’s why concentrating her efforts on studying for that test may be her best strategy – if she does do well, then the schools are going to respect that score – and that will also give her a better sense of whether she might expect to do better with a SAT retake in the fall. If she diverts her energy away from prepping for the math exam, and math is not her strongest subject – then she really may end up with an SAT II score that hurts her chances of admission to schools that want to see that math score.</p>
<p>But - the math score is the easiest to improve with prep, even a limited amount of self-prep. Now that she knows the test format and the material that’s covered, she can study effectively and get that bump. Even another 40 points would make her a more competitive applicant. A 660 Math was at the 88th percentile nationally in 2009; a 700 was at the 94th.</p>
<p>If she can’t or won’t take the time to study, though, I’d say there’s no point in a retake. I do know a lot of kids who retake several times without any real prep, and their scores aren’t usually increased.</p>
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<p>My older son (with the same problem) had the highest test average in honors physics and yet got a D in the class, for having missed homework assignments. It’s actually much easier to get an A in most high school classes by doing mid-B-level work on tests and turning in every minor assignment on time than it is to do high-A-level work on tests and miss maybe 20% of the homework – a missed homework assignment equals zero, but a test has enough gimmes that even a terrible student can usually get 60% right.</p>
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<p>Sure, but there are often extra credit points on the harder tests, especially in AP classes. Sometimes a teacher gives portion of an actual old AP test; given that the top score of 5 is awarded for only getting 60-65% of the questions correct, it would be unfair to hold the class to a 90%+ standard for an A: the better students would get Bs or Cs and half the class or more would fail.</p>
<p>Getting back to the OP’s question: No, I don’t think you should make your daugter retake SAT I. OP, I understand your anxiety from a parent’s perspective. I was in your boat two years ago. Let me give you some background information that perhaps can help ease some of your worries. </p>
<p>My daughter is a sophomore pre-med at Johns Hopkins. She had about the same SAT score and GPA, just like your daughter. Actually, from the surface (since I don’t know anything about your daughter other than what you posted here), they look alike. My D’s SAT verbal is 20 pt below your D’s, her math is 10 pt higher, and the writing is identical at 720. She took it the 2nd time, and was only able to raise her math score by 10 pt to 670, but her writing score went up to 750. At the end of her HS junior year, her GPA was ~3.78 from a gifted magnet school. As you can see, my D’s stats was not amazing. Her SAT, even with the retake, didn’t break 2200. Her GPA is less than outstanding, esp. in the field of competitive schools where a lot of kids applied with a 4.0 GPA. I was as worried as you were about her chances of getting into the schools that she wanted. </p>
<p>But at the end of the day, she had a fairly successful application season. She was accepted at Hopkins (where she is attending now), Emory (also a semi-finalist for Emory Scholars, with partial scholarship), NYU, 3 Ivys, and a full ride to a state school honors program. What you need to remember is that SAT and GPA are only part of the equation in the overall application. I think your D’s scores are in the ball-park. Are the scores outstanding/amazing? No. But those are very respective scores nonetheless. Instead of pressuring (or at least make her feel that way) her into having to retake SAT, show her the options, make sure she understands the competitiveness of some of the schools that she is looking at, and make it her decision on whether she will retake or not. With your D’s scores now, she is going to get into some very good schools and will do just fine, regardless of where she ends up.</p>
<p>I think a student who failed because of not turning in homework shouldn’t spend the summer in summer school–he should spend the summer doing manual labor.</p>
<p>I would also agree with other posters that the OP shouldn’t force the kid to retake–but sensitive persuasion might be effective.</p>
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My last derailment. I still believe this is the exception. In fact, I would complain unceasingly, or change schools, if I was getting over 100% on every test and dropped two whole letter grades because I missed a few homework assignments. If you just didn’t do any homework at all, maybe.</p>
<p>The point is, the college ad com has only limited information, and they are going to draw conclusions – warranted or not - from the information they see in front of them. There are times when it is appropriate to anticipate their concerns and provide additional information – for example, if a student’s grades dropped during a semester when the student also missed several weeks of school while hospitalized after surgery, it’s appropriate for the g.c. to mention that fact. But I can’t fathom an acceptable justification to put forth for the kid who has chosen not to do homework, no matter how dumb or time-wasting the assignment. So even if the ad com correctly surmises that this was a smart kid who just figured he was too special and brilliant to need to waste his time doing busy work for the teacher… I just can’t figure out a convincing way to frame an argument in the kid’s favor. (And I used to be a criminal defense lawyer, I’m somewhat creative in that respect – then again, in the end, part of my job was knowing what would wash with the jury and what wouldn’t. )</p>
<p>It’s not that I don’t understand or sympathize with the kid – my son was very much like that. But at least my son figured out that if he wanted the grade, he had to give the teachers what they wanted – in my son’s case, he ended up with straight A’s in academic subjects and C’s in P.E., because he figured out early on that the P.E. grades didn’t matter for college. </p>
<p>Selective colleges like to see students with high grades in high school. They are relatively forgiving when they see a rising trend, with a rough start in 9th grade but a kid doing well later on – but other than that, they really aren’t in the business of cutting a break to late bloomers. For the most part, the kids who don’t want to play by the rules are going to also have to take a similarly independent and creative approach to finding a good fit college. Evergreen U. still accepts roughly 99% of all applicants, and lets them continue to do their own thing on the way to earning a degree – and I’m sure there are many other places which will welcome those smart but uncompliant students.</p>
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<p>I guess the real question is: is one mainly in school to learn or to prove how obedient one is in jumping through unnecessary hoops? Obedient A students often get to college and watch their GPAs plunge, because gimme homework points are suddenly a small portion of the grade. Bright but disorganized students suddenly find themselves transformed into top students because learning counts more than busywork.</p>
<p>My son has never benefited from routine homework – he understands the concepts permanently the first time without repetition. He nevertheless does his homework assignments because he’s hard-working, respectful, and obedient. However, once it’s done, in his mind it’s GONE: It gets left in his room or gets mislaid in his disorganized backpack. I have never had objections to requiring homework – it’s when a teacher deems homework so very important yet refuses to accept it the next day that I wonder whether we are teaching a generation of bureaucrats rather than of scholars.</p>
<p>My son is far from lazy – he took 10 classes last semester, including 5 APs and 2 college classes. Last year, he took 9 classes and taught himself 4 extra AP subjects on the side and then took 8 AP exams. He’s ranked #1 in a class of 400, got a 36.0 on his ACT on the first sitting and a perfect 240 on his PSAT. He’s doing well because he’s gotten himself into classes where routine homework is only worth 20% of the grade, not 70% like in some of the lower classes. He once considered himself a failure, now he’s got letters of recommendation that say “best student of my career.” All this happened because we were able to move him into classes where true learning was more appreciated than the ability to flawlessly turn in busywork on time.</p>
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No, my parental experience was that the “bright but disorganized” kid damn near flunked out, because organizational skills are much, much more important on the college level, where it is all too easy to fall behind on reading and other expectations.</p>
<p>I’d also note that somehow or other, my other kid – the one who always did all the homework right away and graduated at the top of her college class – enrolled in college classes that had lots of short papers assigned and regular lab reports and problem sets that apparently required study groups and staying up until 3:00 am to complete. I don’t know where anyone ever gets the idea that there is no homework in college, or that papers can be turned in late for the same grade. </p>
<p>I’m sure your kid is very bright. But organizational skills are critical to college success – I’d put them at the very top of the list. So you may want to help your son get a better handle on those before you send him off to college. </p>
<p>My disorganized kid was a National Merit scholar with a 2140 SAT who ended up graduating with a B+ average from a lower tier public; the one with the awesome organizational skills had an SAT score of 1930 and graduated from an Ivy-affiliate with a 3.9 GPA.</p>