I’ve been looking around and USF seems to have an excellent school for speech disorders. We will definitely try there, but they seems as competitive as UCF. Any insight? She is also willing to do summer or a satellite campus location for any of the schools if that makes any difference in admission.
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U of SC gives great merit. The biggest thing is to apply as early as possible. She can always submit her SAT after if she gets a great score.
The CC route for Education is not a terrible one. I choose the wrong school for myself and needed to go to a CC before finishing my schooling.
I highly suggest setting up a practice schedule for her. How much does she need to raise it 100, 200pts? If more than that, she should probably consider test optional schools.
All of my kids had private sat/act tutors and they helped tremendously. My older kids tried classes and their scores didn’t really improve. A tutor will target what your child needs to work on, plus teach how to take the tests. If having a higher score will save you a lot of money by allowing her to go in state, I’d spend the money. In our case it was beneficial for my kids who wanted to go OOS, saving $75,000 or so after merit.
How low is low? UCF SAT scores in the middle 50% range from 1170 to 1340. Given your description of her grades and tenacity I’d be shocked if she cannot bring it up to that range with some practice?
BTW, when the time comes, be sure to consider UFL as well.
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@mec143 - The one thing you should do this year is really figure out your budget. Setting those expectations upfront will save a lot of frustrations on the back end. Use the schools Net price calculator and information around merit awards to estimate your costs. Along with these message boards the common data set for each school will list information regarding non-need based aid as well.
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Her SAT score was 1010. I know that’s extremely low for most four year Florida universities. I’m hoping with the prep classes, taking the ACT, some extra attempts, and lots of math practice she might be able to raise her score 100 points to around 1100 but I know even that is extremely low and 100 points is a lot! I think it might at least give her a chance given the rest of her stats. At this point I’m also researching TO schools OOS, but cost will be a big factor.
Any idea is applying for summer term is less competitive?
I am confident she will exceed your expectations!
You will have plenty of options. The great thing is she knows what she wants to study. Your focus can be less about the school and more about the program. As a starting point you can look at schools that are Accredited by ASHA’s Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology (CAA)
Those will be for graduate programs but might give you a good guide to schools that might have undergrad programs available too. or offer a 5 year Masters program.
Not sure how far away she wants to go (or if she likes the cold!) , but you may want to look at the SUNY-Cortland and Misericordia. If nothing else as a comparison on programs. My D23 had very similar stats and at the time they were both offering nice incentives for OOS students.
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Since you and I applied to college, a useful addition was made mandatory: they were required to add a Net Price Calculator so that you have an idea what the college will cost. Just to get an idea, run the npc on FIU, UCF, FAU WILKES, Rollins, Eckerd, Flagler, Agnes Scott, Elon, UGA.
If they ask for GPA, they will consider it for a scholarship. If they ask for state of residence, they may consider matching BF or “geographical diversity”.
being INSTATE helps you with costs for Florida publics (and some Florida privates) but being OUT OF STATE helps you with privates: some colleges will honor Bright Futures; national colleges (especially LACs) want to have students from all states and if she applies 150 miles away from Florida and even more 400+miles from Florida, national private colleges have an incentive to attract her (“geographical diversity”.)
(Check, but I think you can use Prepaid for graduate school, which she’ll need for Speech Disorders, so if you can find a test optional school with good scholarships, followed by prepaid covering grad school, it’d be perfect for her, right?)
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Has she tried the ACT? Both my kids did much, much better on the ACTs vs SATs.
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With great GPA and strong course rigor, she should be able to get into UCF with an 1100 SAT. It might be summer or spring start though. And since they do rolling admissions, she should apply in September to further help her chances. If she puts in some good practice time, she should be able to increase her score over a 100 points. And definitely try the ACT.
My nephew currently takes classes at Valencia, the CC that feeds into UCF. He lives at Knights Circle with UCF students and is involved in a lot of the campus activities. So that could always be an option for her.
Good luck and don’t give up!
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If you’re willing to invest in the test scores, use the Prepscholar program. I used it for my PSAT and ACT; on the latter, I went from a 32 to a 35 with about ten hours of studying. That’s fast improvement especially considering that it’s harder to go up when you already have a high score (as in going from 32 to 35 is harder than 22 to 25 or something similar). It’s definitely pricey, but especially if you’re considering Alabama like some people suggested it’s good and you can get insane merit aid for the ACT score, so it pays off in the long run.
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Take a look at University of AZ for merit aid.
Did she prep at all? Has she tried the ACT? My senior son brought his ACT up 7 points from taking it cold (and not finishing any section). Don’t underestimate the power of practice! His tests were consistently cancelled and he just kept on studying til he could take it in the fall. I think raising her score 200 points is likely very possible if she is disciplined about practice. Kahn Academy is great for this, free and doing 15 minutes a day for a while and then taking some practice tests should help.
Agree! My son ended up with a Presidential Scholarship at Alabama plus another scholarship. Very worth it!
We used a private tutor as well and my son went from a 28 ACT (no practice, took it cold, didn’t finish) to a 35, which got him some great merit offers. They focused on his specific weaknesses vs a general course which was very helpful - he is a very good student but very strong in math so he needed less time on that and much much more on English/grammar!
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My daughter was the same, very strong in math so worked on English. All of her practice tests were 35’s last March but by the time she actually took the act in the fall she had stopped prepping so a 33, so many cancelled tests. Their tutor was always right when predicting their scores. One on one, her twin had his own sessions.
Combined with her excellent grades, 1010 may be good enough to get her in even without improvement. It’s not a disaster.
The practice effect alone should improve her score the second time around.
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Mine prepped all summer - 5 cancelled tests!
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1000’s isn’t a disaster, especially for a kid who’s a bit weak at math and may not be done with Algebra2/Trig/Precalc. The more she learns about math, the more she’ll be able to answer questions, or at least figure the question isn’t part of what she’s learned yet and thus answer A. (Always answer the same letter when you don’t know, statistically it’ll sometimes be correct. A is just easy to pick because it’s the first in the row but any letter will do as long as she sticks to it for the whole test.)
Outside of Florida, LOTS of colleges have gone Test Optional.
Rollins and Eckerd are in Florida and test optional, BTW.
One caveat, though - sorry, bad news:
This year, Florida was the sole holdout requiring test scores for its state universities. As a result, applications to Florida public universities plummeted (-30 to -50%), especially from kids in South Florida, where tests were all cancelled due to the pandemic. However, these kids aren’t all going out of state or to community college, they’ll be applying once they get test scores…: as a result, there’ll be a surplus of Class of 2021 students applying for Summer/Fall 2022… making spots at Florida public universities harder to get.