My son is a junior in HS and wants to attend Georgetown, which requires 3 subject tests. He hasn’t taken one yet, unfortunately. Therefore, he will need to bang out three by the end of the year. He is planning to take Math II and Chemistry in May. My question is should he also take Spanish in May or delay it until August? He is currently taking Spanish IV and doing very well and will most likely take AP Spanish in his senior year.
Do you think three months away from Spanish coursework will hurt his chances for a good score? Or is this test fairly easy?
My son did all three in one sitting. He scored better than his twin sister who broke them up between May and June. May was ideal because they had already revised the same subjects for AP tests those weeks.
Given he’s not doing the AP test in Spanish it might not matter so much, but June would probably be better than August if he’s not going to do any Spanish over the summer.
Back in the stone age, I took all three of mine in one day. I say go for it. If any of the scores are so low as to be considered worth re-doing, he’d have time to fit any retakes in later in the year.
Most kids I know did 3 in one day in June - when the material was still fresh - and they did fine. It sounds like adding Spanish would be a breeze for your son.
I think Georgetown is one of the handful of schools that require applicants to send in ALL scores—meaning if you have a bad score you cannot opt not to send it. If OP’s son takes three tests in one day and feels that he has bombed one of them and needs to cancel it there will be no way for him to cancel one test without cancelling all three. This is a downside OP needs to be aware of when taking multiple SAT IIs in a single day.
FWIW I’ve heard that it is very hard to score well on the Spanish subject test because there are so many native speakers who take it. You might want to verify this for yourself.
It totally depends on the kids. If the kids prepare well for all 3 tests then it’s OK to take all 3 tests. I did not recommend my kids to take multiple tests on the same day because I knew they did not prepare well.
Yes, for both my kids Spanish was by some margin the lowest of their three SAT II scores (680 and 710 I think compared to 750-800 for the others). They both got 5s on AP Spanish Language and they are amongst the very few non-native speakers in their school taking AP Spanish Lit this year (which is by far their toughest course). But they’ve never spent time in a Spanish speaking country, and that makes it hard to score well compared to native speakers.
It’s easy enough to get an idea as to how he’ll do on the Spanish subject test by taking one from the book of real SAT tests. My oldest did 3 APs on one day and got three 800s. (US History, Math 2, and Physics)
Younger son got a 790 USH, 720 Bio E and 600 Math 2 - (which he should have known better to take - he didn’t do any better on the practice tests.) The next month he also took 3 subject tests. This time he took USH and Bio M getting exactly the sames scores, and Lit getting a 710. He commented it’s a lot less tiring than the the SAT which had a the writing section when he took it. He didn’t get into Georgetown, but did get into Vassar, U of Chicago and Tufts with those scores.
There’s another thread on CC today about subject tests. I recommended on that one that the kid find out how kids in his school usually do on the various tests. The school GC will have that info. Could be that school has a phenomenal Spanish teacher, as an example, and the school average is really high. Or if you see your school average is low, then unless you are a superstar in the class, chances are you’ll have to work a lot harder to do well on that test. This obviously isn’t perfect, but is useful for a quick data point.
melvin123’s advice is really good. You may not know how the classes in your son’s school stack up against the expectations for the College Board tests, but the GC’s may know, or the other students may know. Students in my school were reputed to do well in the various sciences and Math Level II, but not in American History.
It is fine to take 3 tests in one day, unless the student has had a really miserable week just before, or is very short of sleep or stamina that weekend, for some reason.
It is also cheaper to take 3 in one day than 3 total on 2 or 3 different dates. It saves time, as well.
FWIW, some of the kids in my D’s school regretted taking the SAT subject tests in May and wished they waited until June. The test date was too close to the AP exams and they were exhausted and stressed. It would be interesting to hear other people’s experiences.