<p>So when your counsellor is new and has no clue as to how SAT works--you come to CC! yay.</p>
<p>Anywas,
I am currently in Grade 10 right now and I was wondering if it would be a wise idea to take the SAT's the following June, just to get a feel of it.</p>
<p>But if I did and I got a horrible score on it, would I have to send it in to universities?</p>
<p>My dream school is Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>Some schools require all your scores, but I don’t know if Johns Hopkins is one of those schools. You’d have to look for each school.</p>
<p>There’s really no reason to take the SAT as a sophomore. There’s not anything special that happens in a testing room that you wouldn’t get from taking a timed practice test at your house. You don’t talk; you fill in some bubbles; you take a few breaks between sections. It’s exactly like you would imagine it is.</p>
<p>Colleges generally frown on taking tons and tons of standardized tests. If you do one as a sophomore and you’re not happy with the score, you’re already one test closer to “tons and tons.”</p>
<p>As the parent of a junior, I see no reason to take an official SAT as a sophomore. Take practice tests, but make sure they’re “real” practice SAT’s and not the fake ones given by many testing companies. Get the Blue Book with official College Board practice tests, or sign up with a testing company that gives free practice tests that are “real” tests (previsously given officlal SAT’s). Many high tier schools will require you to report all scores, so there is no reason to rack up a bunch of poor but official scores when you could be taking practice unofficial tests.</p>
<p>Wait until Junior year! There are no points for taking the test early, but there could be a penalty for doing badly. Also most college prep type schools administer the NMSQT. It will project a future PSAT/SAT score. GL</p>
<p>Take a few practice tests at home first, and take the SAT in June if you think you’re ready! Also, if you’re in really advanced math classes that don’t have much to do with the information on the math portion of the SAT, it’s probably better to take it before you forget geometry, algebra 2, etc. I took it this October as a sophomore and got a 2270! Best of luck to you (:</p>
<p>Most students might benefit by waiting a little longer to take the SAT for the first time. There really isn’t a big rush to post an early score, and you might benefit from additional school work in the humanities (English, history, etc.). The SAT Critical Reading section has an emphasis on vocabulary, so students tend to perform better on that section later on in high school (junior, senior years). On the other hand, strong students usually have taken enough math (through intermediate algebra) to do well on the SAT Math section by sophomore year in high school.</p>
<p>That being said…
If you are a high-achieving, highly motivated sophomore, then I would recommend preparing for the SAT in your sophomore year. I’ve helped a few sophomores do this in the past…and it has turned out very well for them. They post excellent standardized test scores (SAT 2200+; ACT 34+) in their sophomore year. This frees them up to focus on school/extracurricular activities until fall of senior year when they apply to college.</p>
<p>FYI, many top-tier schools accept Score Choice score reporting for the SAT reasoning test. This means that a student could hide a lower score by simply not sending in that score. Johns Hopkins is OK with Score Choice score reporting. On the other hand, Stanford, Yale, and UPenn have a different position on the matter. These schools stipulate that students submitting an SAT score should turn in scores from all “sittings” for the test, i.e., the entire testing history. Schools do this so that they can see which students had the benefit of taking the test multiple times.</p>
<p>My 2 kids took the SAT in June of their sophomore year with the hope of being one and done so that they could focus on AP tests and Subject tests during junior and senior years. Additionally, this early prep prepared them for the fall of junior year PSAT administration. Both kids had great SAT scores. The older one did make NMF and we are waiting to see how our junior did. </p>
<p>They prepped during the spring of sophomore year to be ready for the June administration of the SAT.</p>
<p>As with anything else, I guess it just depends on the individual…</p>