<p>When your face-to-face with someone, you get a better understanding of how to communicate. For example, when a friend tried to tell me he got a 2200 on his SATs after I said I didn’t get pass 2000 to begin with, he said he didn’t want it to seem like he was bragging and that he was confident I could do the same next time.</p>
<p>When you’re not face-to-face with someone, words like “I got a 2150! That’s so bad, I don’t know what to do! Oh my gosh, I’m going to kill myself” or “At least I didn’t get a 1200, that’s terrible!” never seem appropriate. When people are online, they seldom realize that this is also a communication tool and it’s always best to restrain yourself – because you don’t know who you’re hurting in the process.</p>
<p>I wish more people would just be happy and optimistic. I see way too many people say things like “I’m Asian, I could never get into college” or “I didn’t get a 2300 on my SATs, Harvard is not going to accept me” and not enough people saying “Wherever I get in, I will be satisfied” or “At least I know that there are enough colleges in the country so that I know I’ll get into at least one.”</p>
<p>Fortunately, it seems to me that CC has a lot of people who are the helm of their classes and feel extreme pressure to perform to their top ability. That’s great. If you look at the rest of the world together – and the college applying pool at that – you don’t see a lot of that. </p>
<p>Keep on working and forget about everyone else – just hope for the best and do your best, that’s all that matters!</p>
<p>I feel the same exact way!!! I got a 156 on the PSATs, which sucks compared to everyone else. Butt…that was the second highest score in my grade :D</p>
<p>i scored pretty well on the psat because i’m good at standardized tests. but looking at these threads on cc makes me feel worthless, like i stand virtually 0 chance of getting in anywhere but community college.
don’t worry, it happens to the best of us :P</p>
<p>Sometimes the best thing to do if you’re feeling intimidated is just to leave CC for a while. As you can see, even many overachievers feel intimidated by many CCers.</p>
<p>What concerns me is when people think (and assert on this forum) that since they could get a high score with little effort, everyone can. The vast majority of students who are capable to getting an (OMG so horrible) 1800 have to study very diligently for it.</p>
<p>I agree with SaintSaens. For example, I have taken the Bio SAT II twice already and I am planning to take it a third time in June. Each time, I have used my school break of a couple of weeks to study intensively for this test. But I still have not scored anything higher than a 700. I know a 700 is fine, but if you look on this site, people will write, “Oh, well I just took the Bio SAT II without any prep and got a 780, I’m so mad.” Normal people have to prep a lot for stuff and still may not reach other people’s scores. The good thing is, hopefully you’ll have learned a lot throughout this process. I know I have.</p>
<p>lisamarix3- I feel your pain! I got 40 points away from 2000 and it wasn’t my first time taking it… Reading the scores posted in this forum in the last 2 days makes me feel like there’s no point in even applying…</p>
<p>People treat the SAT like a sport. Sport + obsessive personality (i.e. the personality of 90% of people who post their SAT scores here) = thinking about nothing other than feeling better than one’s peers. The SAT is just another one of those things that obsessively competitive people devote their lives to, only to realize that it means diddlysquat after the college admission process. Instead of spending 100 hours to make your score 10 points higher than those of your over overachieving peers, why not read a good book or make new friends?</p>
<p>Obviously, that generalization doesn’t apply to everyone. Plenty of people score well on the SAT without obsessing over it or treating it like a competition. (I myself scored 2220 after a few practice tests and maybe 20-30 cumulative hours of preparation; I’m also homeschooled, so I don’t really have a class with which to compete.) But remember this: the first rule of statistics is that polls and population samples tend to inflate themselves when the subjects choose the poll based on what their answer will be. If you score average (about 1500) without much preparation, how likely are you to voluntarily spend time posting your score on a thread with other scores? What good would that do you? If you score 2400 after spending 500 hours preparing and boasting to your peers about how brilliant you think you are, then how much more likely are you to tell people what your score is?</p>
<p>Guys I’m in the 96th/97th percentile of test takers and people here consistently make me feel stupid. It’s just kind of an elitist/*******ridden place.</p>
<p>The SAT’s make a difference in where you get into school and can play a role in what job you get out of college if you’re trying to break into investment banking. That’s about it.</p>
<p>I’ve been doing an internship with a Chief Investment Officer who easily pulls 300k/yr who went to a state school for an undergrad engineering degree and then stopped there. Real success and academic success are so completely different it’s pathetic.</p>
<p>So yeah, I hope that makes everyone here feel better about everything.</p>
<p>Oh, and btw I got like a 160 or something on the PSAT the first time I took it.</p>
<p>I got 30 points away from 2000 my first time for the sat. I’m really hoping and praying I get a 2000 plus this time to make it seem like I’m accomplishing something significant. Then I see people posting they are upset that they got some 2200+ score. So yeah I know how you feel.</p>
<p>I feel stupid on this site all the time too. The majority do, but I like it because it motivates me to do better and take classes that I would’ve thought were too stressful… and then I’m surprised when I do good in them!
I got a 1660 on my SAT and a 1640 on my PSAT.</p>
<p>I was also feeling that way, seeing people complain if they got less than 750 on one sections of the SAT. I’m getting my scores at 5 am and crossing my fingers for a 1200.</p>
<p>I know how everyone on here feels. And what makes it worse is when you ask for advice (innocently… I learned my lesson after the first time) about college with your GPA or SAT score in the post and some kids make you feel even more worthless (as if you didn’t feel worthless enough about my SAT score) by saying things like, “you’ll never get in there! Your SAT/GPA is crap!” or “So-and-so University is an impossible for you! Get over it!” (yea I’ve actually gotten that thrown at me before.)</p>
Do not feel that initial score of 160 in PSAT is bad. My kid got lower than 160 in his first (as a freshman) PSAT; he got 190 in his 2nd practice PSAT as a sophomore. Then he got 33 composite in ACT (35s in Reading and Writing) as a beginning Junor. And the biggest surprise of them all: He got a high enough score on the actual PSAT, which he took 1 month after he took ACT, to become National Merit Semi-finalist in CA state (probably will be a National Merit Finalist because 15,000 of 16,000 National Merit Semi-finalists become Finalists) which he never expected. I think the only reason he managed to do this is because PSAT changed their format and made it more like ACT, with a less emphasis on vocabulary. He just studied during summer on his own on his weak areas and didn’t attend any prep classes. Therefore, getting 160 on your 1st PSAT is very good score.
I told my kid to stop taking another ACT test after he got his first score of 33 because to me, I KNOW colleges consider 33 ,34, 35 or even 36 sort of “same” scores. It’s better to do something else IMO with the time and effort you will be expending to improve your ACT score from 33 to 34 or 35. No need IMO even if you are applying to Harvard. There are plenty of people who got into Harvard with a 33 ACT score.
The majority do, but I like it because it motivates me to do better and take classes that I would’ve thought were too stressful… and then I’m surprised when I do good in them!