<p>Yes, it does depend on the college one is applying to- the SAT prep guy we are going to told me that in my D’s case it would be fine to take the SAT as early as possible and go from there. We are not applying to any uber-selective colleges. My son, on the other hand, is a very good football player with Ivy League dreams. It will matter in his case. I am told that if one is applying to very selective colleges it will be necessary to send all scores so every sitting counts for a lot.</p>
<p>My son took the ACT in April of his junior year. Maybe he could have boosted his score a point or two by taking it earlier, be he achieved a good enough score that it enabled him to get scholarships and to be accepted at all of the colleges he applied to.</p>
<p>If he/I aspired for him to go to any Ivy League school, I suppose he should have started earlier. I want him to do well and be be successful, but at what point does it reach an obsession and become more about you than the student?</p>
<p>Early!!!
D has a friend that is a rising senior. She listened to the GC and due to doing so can only take them once. She’s basically screwed! She could not take the last one as it was the same day as graduation and she’s in the band. Can’t take the ones in the fall due to being in band and there are marching contests on those dates. Besides, who wants to attempt to take them early the morning after a very long and late night with high school football games. </p>
<p>D1 started taking them fall/winter of junior year. With D2, rising freshman, I am having her take both SAT and ACT this next spring. She will just have finished Alg II. I want her to get rid of any test anxiety.</p>
<p>Re the ivy app kids, know that those also require subject tests. You need to allow open test dates for those tests. Which means one will need to take the regular tests prior to then. You can take the test and one subject test in one sitting but who wants to?
We visited Stanford and spoke one on one with the acceptance counselor. They don’t mind a student taking the tests 4 times. They also “cherry pick” test scores. I would call the schools one is interested in and find out directly from them their stance on testing.</p>
<p>Yes, it is pricey. However, for families that make less than $60k, it’s a free ride incl airfare home for holidays. We do not qualify for that but they do have need based aid on a sliding scale. Even with our income D would receive aid. </p>
<p>This is what some do not know about schools like Stanford and Duke. They are great for high stats kids that come from low income families. If only more knew about it and GC’s were mandated to attend classes to learn this stuff.</p>
<p>Yes, Ivy League schools are great for high stats/low income.</p>
<p>How much would you be willing to spend for Stanford? I looked at the University of Chicago and it would have been $35K to $40K. It didn’t make any sense to spend that kind of money so we focused on schools with good merit based scholarships which is how we discovered UA.</p>
<p>Same. D loved UCLA but the thought of paying an additional $22k a year just for OOS was a no go. She feel in love with UA and we were thrilled. Now her goal is to achieve a great GPA and MCAT score so that she can get into UCLA med school in 4 years. Though, she has already said that UAB is now on her list. Why? Seriously, if one gets in and completes med school, no one cares where you went really if you are a good doctor.</p>
<p>My oldest son took the old version of the SAT as a seventh grader and in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. He took the new version in May of his freshman year. He also took the SAT in May of his sophomore year and in January of the junior year.</p>
<p>With Son #2, he took it as an eighth grader withe the Hopkins program and then in the spring of his freshman year. Thinking he may do better with the ACT, he did it for the first time fall of his sophomore year and then, fall of his junior year. Turns out that he liked the SAT better, so he took it in March and did well. He will take it again this fall, after some additional prep.</p>
<p>But I do know students who take it just once and as seniors. One young man I knew had a very nice score on one sitting, but he regretted not taking it earlier. Another young man took it as a senior. He got an athletic ride to a small, Christian college.</p>
<p>While one may believe their student will do well and one time is enough and wait till late junior year or early senior year, what if by some chance they are sick that one day. Not a good thing. There are just too many variables that can happen and not taking it sooner to prepare oneself as well as having a safety net, why chance it. I can only imagine how many kids lose out on scholarships due to waiting till the last minute to finally take them for the first time.</p>
<p>TxNewCollegeMom: I’m not into taking chances, either. That explains why my sons took the ACT/SAT early. The young man who elected to wait and landed up at a small, Christian College, well, let’s see if he stays there. Sure, he got a nice merit scholarship (although he did not have a big SAT score), but the school is limited on majors and offerings. My youngest son said he would not consider going there, because there is no math major, and that is his strongest, academic area. The other young man who scored high in his one sitting, well, he would have gotten more merit money from his chosen school if he had applied himself in the classroom. His GPA hurt him.</p>
<p>I agree. My own D knows several that are in that same boat. They waited to take the tests and only did once due to timing. Ending up at whatever school they can get into with that score.</p>
<p>There is a lot of great advice on here that I didn’t take, noting that CC was still relatively unknown when I was applying to colleges in 2008. I first took the SAT, SAT Subject Tests, and ACT during the spring of my junior year with very little prep beyond looking at the order the questions were asked. I scored a 1990 on the SAT and a 30 on the ACT. Knowing I needed a 32 on the ACT for a full tuition scholarship from UA, I retook the ACT in September of my senior year after spending an hour or so looking at how the questions were asked. I scored a 33 and was more than satisfied with my score.</p>
<p>Both my D’s took the ACT in 7th grade for Duke TIP and the SAT in 8th grade for Johns Hopkins; our middle school has a group of 20-30 kids do that every year. </p>
<p>When D1 was in HS, they encouraged the GT kids to take the PSAT in 10th grade, the entire school did a “practice” ACT in 10th grade (not sent to ACT for scoring; it went to someone else) and then the PSAT in 11th grade and the entire 11th grade takes a state administered ACT in March. But that’s without writing (the state doesn’t require the writing portion for graduation.) So D1 took it again with writing in Junior year as well as an SAT in junior year.</p>
<p>Fast forward to D2 and our district wanted to up the average ACT and SAT scores. So the GT kids were “encouraged” to take the PSAT in 9th and 10th “for practice.” They also took “practice” ACTs (again not sent to ACT for scoring) in 9th & 10th. PSAT’s in 11th grade, plus the real ACT in the Spring (without writing.) D2 had already taken the ACT in the fall of junior year and had done very well on two sections (E&R) but wanted to improve her M&S. The school administered ACT had a major proctor issue during the English section and D2’s score dropped by 6 points on that section. She was p.o’d as she’d hoped to be done, but her M&S had improved dramatically. Some schools she was applying to wouldn’t superscore, so she took the ACT a 3rd time. And the SAT once plus 2 SAT subject tests. </p>
<p>So you can have a lousy test day through no fault of your own. </p>
<p>I don’t think our school mandatory testing situation is typical. The ACT is required for all TN students to graduate, and since we’re in a high achieving district there is a push for higher scores. </p>
<p>And I completely agree with Cuttlefish. Taking the test(s) in a no-pressure situation completely strips them of their fear inducing properties. My kiddos definitely had a “been there, done that” attitude going into the “real” testing.</p>
<p>I just recently became aware that some schools are administering the ACT test to 7th graders. My gut reaction was that is way over the top and I’m a parent that is on top of things and pushes his kids to succeed.</p>
<p>Some school districts have a early-identifying program for its top students and use standardised testing. It is what it is. It is not over the top. These programs are used to identify honors-track students and to help the district plan for honors staffing as well as shape its overall educational goals as a district. In the middle school this testing is not mandatory - it is only administered to those kids already in the honors program and who opt to pursue that program. I would rather be in a school district which has such a program than in one which does not.</p>
<p>My kids went to small private (Catholic) schools. When you have classes with 15 kids or less, it is easy to identify the bright kids and they administer aptitude tests too (just not the ACT). Maybe giving the ACT makes sense for big publics. In the 7th grade students haven’t even covered the necessary math, so I guess I’m not seeing the value and it may frustrate some kids since they will likely get a poor score.</p>
<p>I don’t know what the big publics do in my area for the ACT, but the Catholic schools way outperform them on the ACT and most kids at the Catholic schools take the test spring of the junior year.</p>
<p>My daughter took the ACT in the 7th grade under the Duke TIP program. She didn’t seem frustrated at all with the 28 she received on that test. We were quite pleased as well. IMO, just because they have not yet covered a specific math or science, that doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability to understand those things to a degree, sight unseen. That’s one of the main reasons Duke administers the test. TIP=Talent Identification Program.
She is a product of the “big publics”, and us as her parents. The Duke TIP program was a large part of her success. She learned early what areas to focus on, and how to better prepare for the test. I am a firm believer in starting early with ACT and SAT testing. If your score is not what you desire, find your weak areas and work from there. Cost of testing would be the only factor I can see for not taking it early and as often as you wish.</p>
<p>Same here. It was completely optional. Not all the GT kids chose to do it, there were a couple of prep sessions after school, but it wasn’t on material mostly on here’s how to fill out the form and what the format was. 4 of D2’s group reached Duke Grand recognition and 3 of those 4 were our HS’s NMF’s this year. What Duke did for both my D’s (and the test scores) was allow them to apply to summer programs for GT kids over the summer. They loved them. They’re not for everyone, but for kids who are really interested in a high level topic, it’s great for them to be with same aged peers with the same mind set. </p>
<p>The testing was just a mechanism, not the end game at least not in MS.</p>
<p>I’m glad it worked out for you. There are many paths to the same goal. We’re both happy with the paths we choose, and they both seemed to have served our kids well academically.</p>
I first took the SAT, SAT Subject Tests, and ACT during the spring of my junior year with very little prep beyond looking at the order the questions were asked. I scored a 1990 on the SAT and a 30 on the ACT. Knowing I needed a 32 on the ACT for a full tuition scholarship from UA, I retook the ACT in September of my senior year after spending an hour or so looking at how the questions were asked. I scored a 33 and was more than satisfied with my score.</p>