<p>If her dau were, for example, to put my younger s’s school on her radar (and given the schools currently on the list, adding it would not be surprising), those extra points on SAT would probably mean an increase to the next higer level of automatic merit $$ (from say 15 to 17K, or 17 to 21, or 21 to 25K). The highest merit scholarship comes with auto admit to the Honors college too, which otherwise has to be applied for during the freshman year. These numbers can and do make a difference. Just because it is not familiar to you, calmom, doesnt make it not so. This is <em>not</em> speculative. IT IS realistic. This is the way it works at a school I am familiar with , but you may not be. </p>
<p>I am glad that the OP reported back, and that she is comfortable with the decision she has currently made. It is still reasonable to discuss the pros and cons of a retake, especially if the goal is to improve the math score (quite doable to improve the math from a 660) and she plans to study for the Math II to take this spring. She could sign up for it and then either move the registration to fall or just no show (which is what my s decided to do).</p>
Sometimes in real life (job), to be slightly late on turning in work could hurt a project and hold other people back. Just because the student understands the material, it doesn’t give him special rights or privilege. If he feels he is so much more knowledgeable than other students then he should not be in the class.</p>
<p>That’s true – the kid who refuses to do homework has the capability but has made the conscious choice not to comply with a requirement perceived as inappropriate or onerous.</p>
<p>The “spacy” kid lacks the capacity to keep track of deadlines and assignments, and needs help overcoming that deficiency. Preferably from a parent who recognizes that quality as a weakness that needs to be addressed, just as a parent might recognize that another kid needs the help of a tutor to overcome difficulties with math. </p>
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<p>That’s an important life skill – the teacher is communicating that missed deadlines have consequences. Ten years down the line, the most important score in the kid’s life won’t be what they got on the SAT, but their credit score – the kid that was a little bit spacy about sending in the payment for the utility bill or the student loan will discover that he can’t qualify for a car loan or a mortgage because the fact that he eventually got around to paying those bills doesn’t wash. And he may just lose a job over a missed deadline on something critical. </p>
<p>Since our kids can’t grow up expecting to be deemed King of the World on the basis of their IQ scores, sooner or later they have to figure out that they need to adhere to the sometimes arbitrary rules set by people who run things - if they aren’t really good at remembering all the details on their own, then they need to at least figure out some sort of tracking system (PDA, calendars, lists, etc.) that work for them. (I personally have gone for a combination of arranging auto-payment for most of my bills and setting Google calendar to sync with my smart phone and send me reminders of upcoming due dates.)</p>
And a school that the OP has NOT listed as being on her list. </p>
<p>It certainly is speculative to start looking at the rules to get merit aid at schools that a student has not expressed any interest whatsoever in attending.</p>
<p>You don’t know what this kid’s options are in terms of backup schools – or what the aid policies may be at those backups. </p>
<p>That is exactly the sort of “battle” the OP doesn’t want to pick – and the OP has also made it clear that merit aid is not a major concern. The OP has acted on the assumption, quite accurately, that merit money is not likely at the most competitive schools the student is looking at. She did not ask for advice in improving chances for aid at safeties. (We don’t know the kid’s National Merit status, for example – the SAT score is definitely high enough to confirm a NM qualifying score – and NM finalist status pretty much brings in money all over the place).</p>
<p>With a little less rigidity in thinking, you can see that I was giving an <em>example</em> of one school where the extra points will for sure make a difference. And as I mentioned, this is a school that could easily be added to (or might already be on) the OPs daughters list. I will bet my shorts this is list of 3 schools she is “interested in” (per the OP) is not a complete and final list. It is described as “some, but not all of the schools she is interested in are tough admits”. It is certaily as likely as not that this school is or could be on her radar screen. You dont know that is is or is not on her list-- it simply wasnt mentioned in the OP. Good grief. Try to be a little open-minded and flexible in your thinking. </p>
<p>As for paying for the registration fee-- IMO it was worth it to pay for the flexibility and to keep options open. Again-- flexibility was a GOOD thing. In the big picture, it was well worth whatever the fee was to know he could take it if he wanted but didnt have to if he chose not to. Less stress-- not more. The registration fee was certainly well worth the reduction in stress/worry for him, and he could defer the decision to later in the year, when he had more data available to him as to whether he felt he had the time to prep, wanted to take it, etc. At least he had a seat secured in the room. </p>
<p>If she got NM (we dont know) yes- that is an added bonus at many schools. Its an extra $2k/yr at my s’s school ON TOP OF the other merit money.</p>
<p>As OP stated that they do not need aid, I would assume paying for test registration fees is really not an issue either. I would rather sign up for a test just in case. We are facing a similar situation. For D2 to have a better chance of getting into one of her tippy-top schools, her adviser is telling us that she should take the SAT one more time to bring up her math score (even though she has 800 in one section). I haven’t broken the news to D2 yet. I am not convinced that she should take it again, but we’ll discuss it this summer.</p>
<p>Not sure if you were referring to me, but my daughter is quite aware that she is privileged. We are in a position where we can afford to pay her college expenses and we are happy to do so. It’s true that we will not pay 50+k for just any school (and sadly there are too many mediocre but expensive privates), but if she gets into one that meets her needs and goals by our judgment, we will pay. She is a responsible student and juggles many things (school, music, volunteer work, P/T job). I cannot possibly fault her work ethic.</p>
<p>Thank you for coming back to update us, Forester. Would you kindly share with us what other schools are on your daughter’s list besides the examples you gave in your OP? Do you have other children or is your daughter your only child?</p>
<p>Like you, we promised our s’s that we would pay for their undergraduate education, and are fortunate to be able to pay full freight if need be. We wanted them to pick the school that was the best fit for them (with the same caveat that you mentioned-- that some schools aren’t in our opinion worth the cost). We paid almost full freight for older s (he had some merit scholarship $ but it totalled less than 15% of his total cost of attendance.) We paid a lot for his college, and it was well worth it. We have no regrets. Second s decided he may want to go to professional school after college, so preferred to earmark most of what we have allocated for education towards that. He chose a school (a good school, but not one we would have paid full freight for) in large part because they offered him a full tuition scholarship. They are known to be very generous with their merit money, and your daughter’s grades and scores would put her in the running for good merit money. I mention this because we did “push” him a bit, when we saw that he was likely to be able to make NMS, to study/prep for the PSAT harder than he might have. He agreed, although wasn’t at first exactly thrilled at the idea, and he then chose to take the SAT fall of his junior year to get it out of the way since he’s already prepped, as I mentioned upthread. Fortunately he did well- though considered , as I mentioned, retaking in th spring at the end of his junior year, in hopes of being considered for the Emory Scholars. I would mention that when he prepped for the PSAT he haad no idea that he was going to apply to his school and the scholarship he was awarded. He wasn’t sure he wanted med school at that point. That thought came up during his application process Senior year of HS.</p>
<p>I am bringing this up because that bit of encouragement to prep a bit harder paid off, and has opened lots of doors.</p>
<p>I know you and your daughter will make the right decision together. Good luck with the application process!</p>
<p>It seems to me that the precaution of signing up for a test date just to preserve that option, even if the kid opts not to take the test, is a great way of reducing parental stress, while aggregating the stress the college-applicant kid is already under. Especially given the fact that you only need to sign up for these tests about a month in advance – if there is a possibility of the kid retaking the exam in October, she’ll have to sign up in September – there is absolutely no reason for the parent to be belaboring the point now. </p>
<p>I think actually it creates a no-win situation for a kid who doesn’t want to retake the exam – the kid feels she’s letting her parent down if she skips the test, she feels she’s letting her parent down if she doesn’t study hard enough, and if she goes in and doesn’t do well… again, she’s letting the parent down. So the whole parental urging to take the test is just a way to convert the process from being kid-centered (and kid controlled) to one in which parental approval become paramount. The whole idea of test scores being tied to hypothetical merit money simply ups the ante in that respect. </p>
<p>The OP can afford to pay full freight for college. That’s wonderful – it eliminates one huge emotional stress factor from the whole process. So why invent a financial problem that doesn’t exist?</p>
<p>(And for my daughter, that $47 could be be spent on a pair of shoes instead. </p>
<p>No, that doesn’t mean that we are so poor that my d. must go barefoot. It just means that there is nothing in the world that gives my d. more pleasure than going shoe-shopping.)</p>
<p>For some of our kids, by re-taking the SAT over is not about merit money, it is about having a better chance of getting into our kid’s “dream school.”</p>
<p>Calmom - you seem to want to hold on to JYM’s example of merit money. As she has stated, it is just one of many reasons.</p>
<p>$47 (if that’s the cost of SAT registration) to give me a peace of mind is well worth it.</p>
<p>I do SEE that many parents have emotionally converted the process into their own --that parents may demand that their kids improve upon scores to assuage their own parental fears of rejection. But I just don’t think that’s a good reason to badger the kid. If the kid chooses not to retake the test and then doesn’t get into the dream school, and is dumb enough to think that it’s the test score and not the weaker GPA or small nonranking public school or some other factor that is the so-called “reason” for rejection… well, that will be the kid’s problem. </p>
<p>The problem is that some parents have got the process backwards. They think it’s about them (the parents) and don’t seem to understand that college is the first choice kids are making as to what they are going to do during their adult life. </p>
<p>If it is a “dream” college, then it ought to be the kid’s dream, not the parent’s dream. Let the kid figure out how to get there. It’s not as if a student with a 3.7 GPA and a 2140 SAT isn’t going to have plenty of excellent fall back option.</p>
<p>*The OP can afford to pay full freight for college. That’s wonderful – it eliminates one huge emotional stress factor from the whole process. So why invent a financial problem that doesn’t exist?
*</p>
<p>Has the OP said whether they will pay full freight for med school as well? that can easily be another $250-300k.</p>
<p>We didn’t feel that we could pay for undergrad and professional school for our kids, so we told them that if they accepted merit scholarships for undergrad, we’d put the “savings” towards professional/grad school costs. They’re happy with that because they’ll have less debt for med/grad school.</p>
<p>That’s just one more question that the OP DIDN’T ask. </p>
<p>I’m sure the OP is smart enough to figure out that med school also costs money. </p>
<p>It’s one thing to tell your kids that IF they get merit money, you’ll pay the equivalent for grad school – that certainly provides motivation to apply for scholarships – but quite another to insist that the kid retake a test so that she will qualify for merit money at schools that the doesn’t currently plan to apply to.</p>
<p>No, what was mean is posters who try to convince the OP that her daughter’s excellent SAT scores aren’t good enough. The OP provided the scores and gave the names of three schools that the daughter is interested in. The CR score is in the top 25% for every one of those schools; the writing and math are in the middle 50% for all three schools, with the writing toward the upper end of that range. </p>
<p>That is good enough to get admitted to those schools. Better scores will not materially change the likelihood of admissions because colleges do NOT admit students solely on test scores – they use the scores to inform the decision which is primarily made on other factors (GPA, academic record, holistic factors). </p>
<p>This is an only-on-CC thing, because only on CC would anyone think the kid has a weak score. A myth has been created that kids have to have scores in the top 25% percentile in order to get admitted (I guess they think the other 75% of applicants show up to enroll after being called from the waitlist after 3/4th of the admitted students turn down their spots).</p>
<p>calmom - you are projecting a lot of your own feeling into other parents. In our case, it is D2’s dream. If it’s up to me, she would be going to D1’s school, and life would be good for everyone. Even though it is D2’s dream, she may not have all the information on what it would take to get in, and she may very well think her math score is good enough. It is my job, as her parent, to help her interpret the data she is seeing. Just because I am giving her advice, it doesn’t make it my dream.</p>
<p>I definitely do not get the sense that OP is badgering her daughter, and no one on this thread is advising her to badger her daughter either. I see it as twisting the truth and putting words in people’s mouth.</p>